Illumine by !Super Cat Book One: Rio Book Two: Paris Book Three: Miami

A Vampire Chronicles trilogy. Illumine Book One: Rio by supacat

Armand has gone into the sun, which means that I have a story to tell. You may blame Lestat. If you have not read the preceding Vampire Chronicles: experto credite. Armand's first words to me were, "I suppose you too are going to write a novel." My name is David Talbot. I was seventy four years old when I became a vampire, but circumstances, Lestat and a psychic accident deposited me into the body of a much younger man. As a result, I am six feet two inches tall and look approximately twenty six years of age. I am also the former Superior General of the Talamasca, though my current situation has reduced that fact to little more than trivia. I have never been able to discover the identity of the man whose body I inhabit. Oddly, however, it is not a mystery that bothers me. Occasionally I look into a mirror and wonder, but that is all. Once, at the beginning of this whole adventure, I told Lestat that I was grateful for the Dark Gift. "It took you two hundred years to learn that you wanted it," I said to him. "I knew the moment I woke out of the stupor. I knew with every breath I took and with every new colour and shape I saw." I was looking with vampire eyes, as he calls it. I was enamoured with the night, and excited by the prospect of eternal life. I am learning that these emotions are not easily sustained. Not after killing a mortal every night, for six years. If you intend to read on, I must warn you as I was once warned: I can do no more than tell you what happened. The truth is something that you must discover for yourself.

It was morning, technically, when I touched down in New Orleans, around three a.m. It was also raining, technically, if the misty precipitation that greeted me could be considered rain. A great deal of Talamasca business had been done here in the past; in the eighties, in particular, Lestat and Louis turned New Orleans into a byword for vampiric activity. But as head of the order, I had eschewed field work, spending most of my time in the European motherhouses; in London, in Amsterdam and in Rome. I flew down in aid of Lestat once, but by day and without time to enjoy my surroundings. And of course, I could not site see now. I had hopes for a reconciliation and a journey to Rio. But above all, I had fears both for myself and for Lestat. I made for Dumaine Street and Lestat's property and when I could not make out how to open the large gate I simply leapt over it like a young man vaulting a railing. But I didn't go inside. There was no need to. The apartment was closed and empty. No sign of Lestat. I should probably have waited. Mojo was nosing about in one of the lower apartments and I knew somehow that Lestat would come for him. But on a sudden whim I turned on my heel, and almost without thinking, I began heading north. I had never visited the place in person, but I had heard it described over and over again. There was bougainvillaea growing in the courtyard, and Queen's Wreath clinging to the wall. Ferns uncurled themselves, dark in the humid summer rain, and when I stepped inside, I felt at once the glimmer of a vampire. "David," Jesse had said to me, frantically. "The diary, it's Claudia's, absolutely, it confirms everything! But oil lamps are burning in that house, David. There was rubble in the garden when I went in, but when I came out it was bougainvillaea, and Queen's Wreath, hibiscus and moonflower, David you've got to do something! The house! It's all tied in to the house!. . ." It was not Lestat whom I sensed. Lestat's thoughts had closed to me in Barbados, the moment my teeth had withdrawn from his wrist. It was another, far less powerful, his thoughts flickering but apparent. There was only one vampire this could be, when you came down to it. I readied myself and went on into the house.

"Who are you?" was the first thing Louis said to me. The moment I entered the hall, he confronted me, like a cornered animal, if a cornered animal were to have a great deal of self possession, and cold expression of hauteur on its face.

"David Talbot." Awkward situation. I was turning my head, following his path, thinking, This is Louis. I failed to mention the essentials. I've swapped bodies, and Lestat's just made me a vampire. "Lestat's friend," said Louis, "who resisted the Dark Gift, and was once Superior General of the Talamasca." "Yes." "No. David Talbot refused the Dark Gift. On more than one occasion. He was old enough to be tempted, but experienced enough to say no to Lestat. Who are you? You're not David. You're not Raglan, and I know you're not Lestat." Louis's green eyes were opaque with suspicion. He looked particularly inhuman. Lestat waxes endlessly on the subject, but I find Louis very difficult to describe. He is not quite effeminate, but there is a precision to him that is both distinct and feminine. He kills like a machine, without feeling or wasted motion. Physically, he is beautiful. And this was more in one short speech than I'd been led to believe he spoke in a century. I remembered Lestat saying, "Oh, Louis glares and sulks and has a vast repertoire of silences, but, David, that is different to conversation." And then I blinked to find the memory supplanted by another, less recent, and, I realized, not my own: Lestat, flinging himself down onto a mouldering red armchair and announcing, "David has refused the Dark Gift." Louis's voice: "Of course. David has always refused the Dark Gift. It is the reason you offer it to him. I think if David were ever to accept, you'd lose interest. You'd deny him your company as well as the blood. The only thing you dislike more than adversity, Lestat, is capitulation." "You're wrong. David's my friend. I visit him for that reason. I don't plot tangled plots as you infer, or play any of these intricate games. Besides, as if I needed an excuse. I have something far more enticing than his constant refusals to recommend David Talbot to me." "Oh, and what's that?" "The fact that you disapprove of him." Louis and I stared at one another.

"You are David Talbot," he said. He was aware of our memories having briefly intermingled. "David Talbot. My God." I couldn't answer him, so shocked was I by what had occurred. "My God," Louis repeated. "What has Lestat done now?"

We sat in the parlour of Lestat's Folly on Royal Street and we traded information. Or, rather, I told him the story of Raglan James, and his brief, unfortunate career as the Body Thief, and Louis absorbed it all, commenting: "And so James presented himself to Lestat in your body and claimed he was David Talbot, convinced at long last to accept the Dark Gift." I nodded. "And Lestat was duped," I said. "Though of course James could not conceal his identity during the swoon. It was impossible. Stupid of James. Lestat was angry enough when he realized the truth that he. . ." "He?" I saw Louis's eyes narrow. "Killed him," I said, finally. "Smashed his head into a plaster wall, and killed him." "Killed both James and your old body." "Yes." Louis rose, and moved off a few steps. Then, with his back to me he said, precisely, "Convenable." I frowned as my mind processed the French. Convenient. "I believe this story," said Louis, turning back. "The adventure. The death. And how perfectly the whole mess has been resolved. It reeks of Lestat." I watched Louis. His eyes no longer contained suspicion. Lestat, wearing the same expression, would have been pacing the room with large steps. Louis stood poised, a frown on his face, his right hand a fist, pressed to his mouth. Then his gaze found mine. "He didn't tell me," Louis said. "He refused to tell me. Of the transformation, the rape, and the redemption he spared me nothing. But this--" "You've seen him?" I interrupted. "You've seen him since he regained his vampiric body?"

Louis's eyes were cold. "Yes," was all he said. I think it was at this moment that I realized we were not to become friends. "Where. . .?" "New Orleans. A week ago." I searched his face. His expression was blank, the planes of his face like those of a marble statue, white and unyielding. Shoulder-length black hair framed his features, softening them a little. It did nothing to soften his gaze. "You're angry," I said, slowly. His eyes narrowed again. "Why?" I demanded. "Because Lestat returned to his old body? Or because he didn't admit to you what he had done?" Louis said, "You've made an assumption about me based on what you've read, and what you have been told by Lestat. I understand it--I understand that Lestat encourages it--but I don't care for it. Or for the implication of your question." His tone was glacial. I rose up from the couch. Almost immediately, I was stepping back, flinching as another vision from Louis's past rooted itself in my head. Louis's voice: "You think you can become human just by taking over a human body? Lestat, you were born a monster. You weren't human when you were alive!" "No," said Louis clearly, pressing fingers to his temple. "David, you're doing this. Please, hold your thoughts in check." As a mortal I had been trained by the Talamasca to shield myself from external influences, but I found my thoughts drawn to his, and so powerfully that only the greatest effort on my part could keep them separated. I closed my eyes. "I'm sorry, Louis, it's only been three days. Nights," I added awkwardly, trying to explain the lapse. I forced my powers back. I didn't anticipate Louis's reaction. "Three nights?" He latched on to these words as though they held some special horror. "When he came to see me a week ago in New Orleans, you were not yet a vampire?"

I shook my head. "No. It happened in Barbados. Three nights ago." Concerned, I made as if to move towards him, but he shot me a single, sharp little glance to warn me off, one which caught and then held as he spoke. "All this time," he said, "you've refused the Dark Gift." I kept the words steady. "Yes, I have." "You swore, never. Never in a million years. God was your witness. I remember. I was there." His calm was awful. "As you say." "And three nights ago, David, you simply changed your mind?" I felt a tightening in my chest. Not fair, Louis, I thought, but I kept that thought locked up in the confines of my mind. I tried not to remember the sensation of Lestat's teeth in my neck. "You love me? I am your only friend?" It was obvious that Louis had guessed what had occurred. "Lestat would call this moment 'interesting'," Louis said, as I faltered beneath his gaze. "I've forgiven Lestat." "Have you." "Of course I have! How could I begrudge someone who's given me eternal life?" My words were loud, and very human, and they fell into a silence that held, like his gaze, for so long that I would almost say it frightened me. "Oh," said Louis softly. "Give it time."

It was impersonal politeness after this exchange, and faultless hospitality. I must stay here, in this house, and wait for Lestat's return--Louis insisted. A room would be converted to suit me. Clothing and any personal items I required could be purchased or sent for. If Lestat did not arrive within a reasonable time, Louis would arrange for me to meet with others of 'our kind'. I may have no interest in immortals like Khayman, or Maharet, but surely I would wish to speak with Marius? And Jesse? I could do little more than nod and concede, "Yes, certainly," and, "Thank you very much." I'd spent enough time in the company of men like Lestat to recognize when I

had lost control of a situation. And I was as helpless to Louis now as I had ever been to Lestat--though Louis's power lay not in flamboyance, but in an icy veneer of pleasantry and good manners that I could neither shatter nor thaw. As he steered me through the house I began to wonder whether this thing I felt for him was dislike, or simply detachment. I think the former. I'd read the novels. I'd studied his file. I'd anticipated some quiet, lovely boy with a ruminative nature and stars in his eyes for Lestat. Louis confounded my expectations. He was quiet, it's true. And he was lovely. But I could easily imagine this creature watching, calmly, while Claudia hewed Lestat down with a knife. It was only in the hallway that I found my attention fixating elsewhere. A slim vase was positioned discreetly atop one of the dark wooden tables. It was an ornamental thing, a period imitation, but not an obvious one; it might have been modelled on the Grecian urn of Keats's fantasy. Lestat chose it no doubt: his taste in furnishings is exquisite, while his taste in poetry tends towards the rather obvious. But the leaf-fringed legend caught my eye. The light seemed to touch it in such a way that the figures shivered and then began to move, undulating to a silent, sensuous rhythm. I was captivated. My body leaned towards the images, and I gazed at them with an unblinking eye. I thought, Lestat, my friend, I see now the splendour that you have given me, and I might have gazed at them forever, had not the cool, recitative voice of Louis interrupted my reverie. "Like moths," he said, "deprived of the sun we're drawn towards such lesser flames. It's both curse and blessing, for it lends these flashy surfaces the illusion of depth, as if the play of light on the side of a vase could unlock all the secrets of the world. When in fact. . ." I tipped my head. "You are unmoved." "You misjudge me," he said. "You misjudge Lestat." "If I have, it's your actions that have led my judgement astray." Louis took a step forward. I was taller than he was, by several inches, but this did not seem to dissuade him from proximity. "Ah," he said. "It's Lestat's company you crave." He was close enough to touch my face. "You believe that only Lestat's spirit is large enough to contain your feelings. The wonder, the joy, the exaltation. . .You want him. You want to be matched. Partnered. Lifted up, as God lifts human souls out of their dreary bodies, and into the light."

This time, when the blood moved into my cheeks, it stung. "Stay out of my mind," I warned, aloud. I felt I had little or nothing to share with the cold-eyed creature who stood before me now. "I'm not in your mind," he said. "I don't have that ability. You're projecting. Ineptly. Lestat would say, you don't know your own strength." "And what would Louis say?" I was pricked to ask him, as he moved back. I saw the change with my vampiric eyes, the slight hardening of his expression. "That it's late," he said. "That he must retire, for fear of being hurt by the sun. Your room is available, if you wish to spend the night here. Forgive me. I must go." He paused when he reached the end of the hall. "It's not an imitation," he said, impassively, without turning. "The vase. It's real."

Which is how I came to spend my first night there, under the same roof as Louis, in a well furnished bedroom owned and wholly designed by Lestat. I think I was already chafing. A house on Royal Street? I wanted to explore the world! But I'd become part of a household without intending it, and of a subtle and oppressive rivalry with Louis. And it was a situation guaranteed to worsen with Lestat's arrival, though, I'll admit, at the time I was optimistic. I woke the next evening at seven thirty, p.m.; I dressed, hunted, and on my return, I resolved to make my peace with Louis. But when the heavy wooden door shut behind me, and I stood with all my good intentions in the hall, I realized that I could smell Mojo in the parlour. I could recognize his curious, particular scent. I could even enter his mind and witness his slanty view of the world. And there in the hallway, over the yards of dark carpet and past the fresh wallpaper of gold and white stripes, I saw Lestat, his blond hair bright against the fashionable grey of his suit. Brushing Louis aside, he paced forward and then stood, regarding the front parlour, obviously well pleased with what he saw. "Don't ask me where I've been, or what I've done," he said to Louis, his attention on the desk, and then the oval table, inlaid with mahogany, and finally the spinet, against the far wall. "I know where you've been," Louis replied, "and I know what you've done."

"Oh? And what's to follow? Some stultifying and endless lecture? Tell me now. So I can go to sleep." I moved silently to stand beside Louis. He gave no indication that he'd noticed me enter, but Lestat's expression transformed the instant that he saw me. He was rendered speechless. He must have been taken totally by surprise. "The carnival starts tomorrow in Rio," I said, mildly. "I thought we might go." Lestat stared back at me, with obvious suspicion. Beside me, Louis roused himself, and quietly turned, disappearing away down the hall. Then Lestat flopped down on the camelback sofa, frowning a little. Mojo, ever obedient, followed him over, and sprawled out on the ground near his feet. Lestat didn't look at me again until he spoke. "You mean this?" he said. "Rio. You want us to go there together?" "Yes," I said. "And after that, the rain forests. What if we should go there? Deep into those forests! You said something to me, I don't remember when . . . Maybe it was an image I caught from you before it all happened, something about a temple which mortals didn't know of, lost in the depths of the jungle. Think of how many such discoveries there must be!" His frown, if anything, deepened. "Why have you forgiven me?" he said. "You knew I would." He continued gazing at me. "You knew when I left you that I'd come back," I said to him. "You knew I'd be here. You knew I'd forgive you." "Oh? I knew all of this?" His gaze ran dismissively over my form. "I suppose I knew you'd arrive in a velvet suit, too, in this summer weather, dressing a twenty-five year old body like a seventy year old man." I turned away from him. "You're past all patience," I answered. "Perhaps I couldn't admit it at first. I had to curse you for a little while. But that's all it was, a little while." Lestat settled more deeply into the sofa. "So you ran off to prove yourself," he said. "And you can hunt for yourself. And you can find a hiding place by day. And yet you're back? You've forgiven me? Rio, for God's sake!"

"Well, can you think of a better place?" "I think seventy four years of mortal life has driven you mad! You are not the leader of this little group. You don't even look like the elder of us any more." He stared at me, scornfully. Finally, I took his example and walked over to the chair nearest the end of the couch. In the old body, I would have had a headache by now. I thought of the many times I'd retreated to a favourite chair, my temple throbbing, my blood stirred, after some conversation or other with Lestat. David Talbot, weary, abandoned at dawn, acutely aware of the limits of his old and failing body. "I tried to hate you," I said. "I couldn't do it. It's that simple." "Why not?" "Don't play with me, Lestat." "I've never played with you! I mean these things when I say them. Tell me, David. Why?" "Don't you see what you've done?" I entreated. "You've given me the gift, but you spared me the capitulation. You brought me over with all your skill and all your strength, but you didn't require of me the moral defeat. You took the decision from me, and gave me what I couldn't help but want." "Then rape and murder are our paths to glory? I don't buy it. They are filthy. We are all damned and now you are too. And that's what I've done to you." I bore it. I merely flinched a little. When he had finished, I fixed my eyes on him again. "It took you two hundred years to learn that you wanted it," I said. "I knew the moment I woke out of the stupor and saw you lying there on the floor. You looked like an empty shell. I knew you'd gone too far with it. I was in terror for you! And I was seeing you with these new eyes." "Yes." "Do you know what went through my mind? I thought you'd found a way to die. You'd given me every drop of blood in you. And now you yourself were perishing before my very eyes. I knew I loved you. I knew I forgave you. And I knew with every breath I took and with every new colour and shape I saw before me that I wanted what you'd given me--the new vision and life, which none of us can really describe!"

His expression went through a dozen small changes as I spoke, and for a moment he looked so unlike himself, so unsettled, that I couldn't help but kneel beside him, clasping his shoulders with my hands and holding his gaze. "Oh," he whispered, "this is the Dark Trick. How right they were, the old ones, to give it that name. I wonder if the trick's on me. For this is a vampire sitting here with me, a blood drinker of enormous power, my child, and what are old emotions to him now?" "You're the same," I said to him with a kind of wonder. "The very same." "The same as what?" "You know I love you, Lestat." I saw a muscle slide in his jaw. "You haven't changed either," he said. "You're still a fool." But when his half-casual attempt to break away failed, he paused. "You're heading for great trouble," he said. "Just wait and see." "Come with me to Rio." He looked away from me, his violet eyes almost unfocused, and such a long time passed in silence that once again, I was touched by concern. "What is it?" I asked, squeezing his shoulder. He shook his head, but I was already rising, and with my arms about his shoulders, by some miracle--perhaps he was off guard--I managed to pull him up with me. We both froze, shocked. Lestat's gaze flew back to my face, sharper now, more dangerous. I felt his muscles tense, even as a wide, helpless smile of triumph spread itself across my face. "Oh, this is going to be really something, this little tussle," said Lestat, his voice a warning purr. He pushed me away, the heel of his palm to my jaw. "Well, you can fight with me in Rio, while we are dancing in the streets." He regarded me for another long moment, but I knew from the light in his eyes what his answer would be. I couldn't imagine the future as anything more than a string of marvels and adventures; humans and blood and vampires and Lestat. I was filled with an almost childlike excitement. Rio. It contained all the promise in the world. Rio. In the hallway, Lestat passed me on the left, his tone amused. He said, "Let me convince Louis."

It was a household whose seams were occasionally strained, but miraculously, did not split. Lestat spent his time writing, feeding, living. Louis and I maintained a prickly, respectful distance from one another. The word carnival derives from the Latin carne-vale meaning 'goodbye meat', which was oddly appropriate to our situation. Because the real idea of Carnival is that Catholic Brazilians giving up meat and various other indulgences for the forty days of Lent may be spectacularly compensated for their sacrifice by a delirious and carnal two week festival. Lestat embraced the spirit of the thing whole-heartedly, though I'm sure future abstinence was nowhere in his mind. Louis was more reticent, refusing many of Lestat's wild suggestions, and preferring to wander alone than to accompany Lestat and myself to the Carnival balls and street parades. Lestat would coax in vain--what about the adventure, the spandex, the destaques? What about the King of Momo? What about the women? To which Louis would invariably make some kind of icy, scintillant reply: "Beautiful women at Carnival are either escorted by huge, jealous cachaca-crazed men wielding machetes, or--or more likely--they are men dressed up as women. I don't have your interest in them, Lestat." At which point I would take Lestat's arm and attempt, through some easy remark of my own, to distract or extinguish the spark in his eyes. We'd leave on our own. Louis's calm detatchment is the only thing I have ever seen successfully counter Lestat's blazing and charismatic enthusiasm, and the terrifying possibility of open confrontation between the two lurked in every encounter. I guessed--incorrectly, as it happened--that the Body Thief adventure was the cause of Louis's animosity. I did, however, correctly surmise that a conflagration was something that I wanted to avoid. But if Lestat was aware of the unease of our situation, he gave no sign of it. He was determined to record his most recent adventures in a book, a sequel of sorts to The Vampire Lestat, and The Queen of the Damned, and after the Carnival, he devoted his time to his novel. I developed something of a routine, hunting in the early part of the evening while the sky was still warm. After some exploration, I'd retire to the study of our house with my journal. I liked the study a great deal. Piled with rugs and great armchairs, it was a by-product of Lestat's peculiar anglophillia. The paper was delivered there nightly. A fireplace--of all things--dominated the north wall. This was Brazil, you must remember, a country thick with rainforests, cults and Christianity, murmuring ceaselessly in Portuguese, Spanish and Italian. England is one of the few European nations never to have toed themselves a hold here. And yet

we had solid, Victorian furniture and the baronial sprawl of the study. The Times was given pride of place over both Le Monde and Folha de Sao Paulo. "With him," Louis said to me one night, "it is English, it is French, it is American or ca n'existe pas. It does not exist." "Nonsense," I answered him, automatically. I recalled the Lestatian obsessions to which I had been subjected over the last few years (Mozart, Pagannini, Liszt, Rembrandt, Celini, Fellini, Versace and Kurosawa remaking Shakespeare). Louis ignored this response, and left the room pointedly, after. It was far from atypical behaviour. As I have indicated, he and I did not speak often. We said, "Hello," and, "Good evening," as circumstances required, but that was substantially all. The house was large enough to accommodate our carefully planned avoidances and we made use of its long hallways and big rooms, shying skillfully from each other's territory, and circumnavigating the possibility of open confrontation. But then one night he came into my study. It was late, long past twelve and I was sitting at the desk, slowly reading yesterday's Folha de Sao Paulo. The Portuguese was a challenge; Brazilian politics doubly so. Fernando Collor de Mello had just been indicted, and corruption touched almost every major political figure. Of every ten cruzeiros spent by the government, this paper was telling me that only four reached any kind of legitimate expenditure. I knew it was Louis before he opened the door. "You spend so much time here," he said, arranging himself by the fire. "Alone, and away from Lestat. I think you must do it out of jealousy, David." No preamble whatsoever. Incredible. And exactly what I'd come to expect from him. "Of you?" I folded the paper and looked up. His head was bowed, his eyes on the flames. His forearm rested lightly on the mantle. I noticed the texture of his garments, rough fabrics, shapeless clothes, and beneath them the suggestion of his body. I could make out the curve of his shoulder, and the long line of this thigh. He's very handsome. Like an ornament hand-picked by Lestat, he suited the look of the study. "Of the time he spends with his writing," he said. I flushed, feeling that I had been tricked into giving something dangerous away.

But Louis wasn't looking at me. His attention was elsewhere, moving randomly around the room, on the fire, the mantle, the sleeve of his own jumper. That he was here for some purpose, I had no doubt. But what purpose? He was breaking every rule of our truce by invading my sanctum in this manner. Either he has come to make peace, I thought, or he has come to make war. And so I waited, my hands smoothing the paper on the desk. But he did neither. He said, almost awkwardly, "The novel will be finished, soon enough." "Yes. I suppose it will." In the silence, he scuffed his heel on the carpet. It made a rough, human sound. "We can leave before the wet season, perhaps." "If you like, yes." "It's a shame, I suppose, that once we've gone, Lestat will probably sell the--" "Have you come here to make small talk?" I interrupted him bluntly, sick of the game I thought he was playing. But I realized immediately I had spoken, and with an odd shock, that I had misjudged him again. I had just made another mistake. He broke off. We faced awkwardness, and real animosity. Loud as cannon-fire behind him, I heard every shift and pop of the burning wood. Then, "I should have left you to your reading," Louis said, bitterly. "To your study. To the perfection of your own solitude. Already Lestat has taught you the most important lesson: how to draw solely and eternally upon yourself." I ignored him. "What are you doing here, Louis?" Louis's attention flickered away from the fire. His gaze met mine. "How good is your hearing?" he said, unexpectedly. "I--what? Why?" "Can you make out the sounds of Lestat at his keyboard?" I frowned, responding to the strangeness of the question. I could indeed hear the little plastic sounds as Lestat typed and typed at his novel. "Yes. Why?"

Louis's lips drew back from his teeth, exposing sharp, kittenish fangs, though the single grimace spoke more of irritation than anger. "It doesn't matter," he said. "You're right, of course. I came to make small talk. But pleasantries, it seems, will not stretch to cover my feelings, or your own. Good night, David. I'll leave you to your study." I rose from my chair, the word, "Wait," on my lips, but the door closed, and slowly, I sank back down. You misjudge me, whispered the memory of Louis's voice. I stared at the paper without reading the words, and I thought about the animosity between myself and Louis. When the frustration in me crested, I snatched the paper up and threw it hard against the wall.

Can you hear Lestat? he'd asked me. I'd answered, Yes. But there was a correlative to that statement, wasn't there? One that did not come to me until the dawn touched the sky, and the heavy weight of slumber began pulling me down into unconsciousness. Lestat can hear us.

I had forgotten this odd little exchange by the time Lestat finished his novel. Other difficulties arose from my small feud with Louis, but I believe I have already described with accuracy the frigidity of our relationship, our barbed conversations and our uneasy go-arounds. I will admit that there were rare occasions when he and I were comfortable together. These were the evenings when Lestat would throw aside his word processing and focus the blinding spotlight of his attention on either or both of us, cajoling until we succumbed to his influence and agreed to accompany him into jungles, into stores, into the houses of mortals--wherever his whim desired we go. Mojo, solely oblivious, enjoyed the trip heartily. He was not a house dog, but he was indulged with an uncontrollable master, long walks and a great deal of adventure. One evening Lestat came home with a chewed purse and a wild story in which Mojo had seized upon it, refusing to be disengaged even when Lestat had slashed his teeth across it's owner's neck and killed her. After that incident, Mojo most often went muzzled, but inside the house the muzzle was taken off, apparently so that--much to both mine and Louis's annoyance--he and his master could amuse themselves with throwing our rooms into disorder. By day, heavy curtains were provided to reinforce the inadequate shutters in the bedrooms and block out the last of the sun. I did not question the fact that Lestat had a house in Rio so readily equipped to provide for our specialized needs; I barely noticed

the alterations at all, in fact, until Mojo grasped the curtains of my room's window in his powerful jaws and ripped them clear from their railing. "My room," I said, unsurprised. "Naturally." "Well, you can't sleep here now," Lestat announced, pushing Mojo out of the way and holding him there. "There isn't enough time to repair the damage. You see? The fixture has come away from the wall." I saw indeed. The window was too enormous to be blocked another way. "Perhaps now you'll consider keeping that mad animal restrained. Or at least confined downstairs." "Confined! Mojo can't just sit still in some stuffy old room doing nothing but stare at dusty books for hours. Which doesn't make him mad, by the way. It makes him sensible. Anyway, I'm sure you don't want a visit from your RSPCA." "I doubt they exist here, Lestat. This is Brazil, not the UK." "Oh, shut up, David. It doesn't matter what I do with Mojo. It will be dawn in an hour." Lestat had knelt beside his dog, and was attempting to pry the last of the fabric from his jaws. Neither of us noticed Louis entering, assessing the damage, and coming to rest by the door. "I have a problem," I agreed slowly. A vampiric imperative: I needed somewhere to sleep. I supposed I could crawl into a chest or a wardrobe for the duration of the day, but the idea didn't particularly appeal to me. "Mojo, come on, for God's sake--" This, unhelpfully, from Lestat. "You can share my room if you like," said a distressingly familiar voice. I turned. Sharpened consonants, tone of slight concern--it was Louis, and his innocuous offer actually shocked me. No, I wanted to say to him, and found that I couldn't, predictably. "Your room," said Lestat, abandoning the dog and fixing his gaze on Louis. "Better than the alternative," said Louis. Lestat broke the ensuing silence, turning to me, and slinging an arm around my shoulder. "David," he said. "Louis is implying, with his usual lack of subtlety, that the last place in this house in which you'll be safe is in my room--" "Yes. Exactly," said Louis.

"And you know what?" said Lestat, rounding back on Louis. "He's right. You should take him up on his offer. Sleeping near me tonight isn't wise." How could I refuse? I could hardly explain this nebulous feeling of discomfort, nor could I remark, in the face of Lestat's mood, on the feud I had with Louis. It was, after all, a battle of always unspoken bitterness. I held my tongue. Lestat left us alone together, clicking his fingers for the dog on the way out. Louis moved to the door, holding it open politely. "Wise or not," he said, "you'd rather stay anywhere but in a room with me. That is what you're thinking, isn't it?" "Not at all. I'm grateful for your offer," I replied, determined that he would not destroy what remained of my equanimity. "No, you're not," he answered calmly. "But that's all right. It's only for one night." His room was very tidy, and, like all private territory, it was slightly unwelcoming. But it had not the shining sterility of Lestat's rooms, with their rose-tiled floors and expensive and rarely used furnishings. It had a lived-in look. Comfortable books filled the shelves, and one large volume was fanned open on the desk, its pages moving slightly. I knew that Louis was bookish--that is Lestat's word for it. And then I remembered that Louis's books had been destroyed, burned when Lestat, in one of his customary rages, had set fire to Louis's house. Glancing around when the door closed behind us, I realized that he must spend a great deal of time here. No wonder the place felt so private. This was the retreat of a man with an intensely solitary nature. "I mean to say that I--" I began. "Don't," he said. "There's no need to perjure yourself. You don't like me, particularly, and I imagine it suits Lestat to have us at one another's throats. The bed is through that archway. You're welcome to it for as long as your room is uninhabitable. I'll take the couch." With that, he exited. I can only presume that he meant to give me privacy. Left speechless and without an alternative, I retired to the section of his rooms that housed the bed. Perhaps half an hour passed, by which time I had relaxed somewhat. In fact, I was thinking how foolish it was to have been concerned by this arrangement, how unlikely it was that Louis would intrude on my privacy, how absurd to imagine his proximity could hurt me in any way--when a sound from the doorway caused me to look up.

"Louis, what--" I began, but was forestalled. Louis shook his head, raising his eyes and pressing his finger to his lips as if to tell me, Shh. I fell to staring at him uncertainly, because he was approaching me cautiously, always with that look on his face that prohibited my speaking. Strange. Strange reaction I was having, too. My heart was hammering oddly in my chest. What on earth--? I thought, and then Louis drew me forward by the lapel, his arms sliding into place about my neck, his mouth nestling just beside my ear, near my throat. "David . . . " It was the softest whisper, fading into nothing more than the brush of his lips over my skin, and the echo of his thoughts, which awakened in me a desire to penetrate his mind. David . . . I slid inwards, and met no resistance. Louis . . . Can you hear me . . . ? Can you hear my thoughts . . . ? David . . . Yes, I said to him silently. Louis . . . yes. I could feel my own pulse; it seemed to clamour, thunderously, and I was hotly aware that it lay right beneath his mouth. I tried to concentrate, but, my God, Louis--the aloof, hateful creature, Louis--was all but serving himself up in my arms. It was wildly distracting. Then listen, because this concerns you more than any of us. The book is finished. Lestat is involved in various negotiations with the European publishing house Chatto & Windus. A manuscript copy has been sent out to them, which means that a duplicate copy has already made its way to the Talamasca. If you haven't read it already-I haven't. Then you should know that it contains a detailed account of your transformation, names, dates and particulars. It sparked Talamasca interest--you can imagine. But more than that, the novel explains that when you left New Orleans, you were on your way here, to Rio-You can't be serious.

Serious. David, yes. Aaron Lightner has already taken rooms at the Gloria. And it's lucky for you that Lestat has this house---otherwise we'd be staying there too. My God, at the same hotel. Aaron . . . But I don't understand--Louis, why? Why tell me this now? David, because . . . His body was warm against mine, like a human body flushed through with blood or passion. But even in this state, his mind remained as wintry as ever. My eyes closed, and my hands slid around his waist and downwards, pulling him closer. I said, Are you really concerned about all this? You shouldn't be. The Talamasca is an organisation of scholars, historians, anthropologists-- Exorcists, mediums and psychic vigilantes, I didn't add, because Aaron Lightner was certainly none of those things, and besides, it wasn't Talamasca policy to interfere with vampires. --the worst that will happen is that Aaron will submit a report, and whoever's taken over operations will put the manuscript in Lestat's already overburdened file. Don't be a fool. The problem is not that Aaron Lightner might find us. The problem is that Lestat has--has already-His thoughts were scattering. I was hard pressed to follow. --found Aaron Lightner-It was the onset of the death sleep. Fatigue was hazing over his mind like a mist. And as Louis lost a little of his rigid self control, I caught a glimpse of something beneath the surface of all this. Something he was hiding. Aaron Lightner was not his main concern. Louis--what's going on? I've told you-No, there's something else, I insisted, gripping him tighter. There's something else, isn't there, something that you know--something that you've known since New Orleans-His hand made a fist at my chest and he tried ineffectually to push me away. David, let go. It's dawn. It's dawn and I'm . . . I can't . . . I had to release him. He broke free immediately, and I could see that he was unsteady on his feet. It shocked me a little, actually, to see for myself just how weak he was. I had an hour, perhaps longer, before I'd begin to succumb to the pressure of the rising sun.

Louis, I thought. The human one. It's how the others think of him. It's what Lestat calls him; he might sling an affectionate arm around Louis's shoulder and say it. "Ah, you are the human one, Louis!" No colder, less human fiend has ever walked the earth. I would have said that unequivocally. But that morning, in my hour of grace, I noticed that Louis still sleeps like a human. He breathes and sighs and even shifts position occasionally. Quite different to Lestat and myself, who, once the death sleep has taken us, lie like statues until dawn. There is even a tape, somewhere in the vaults of the Talamasca, of Armand sleeping, and he is so eerily still that the tape itself is difficult to watch. The only change is visible in fast play: his hair, which is shorn when the tape begins, grows out to shoulder length over six hours. As I thought of Lestat, frozen in unnatural slumber, his vampiric nature, just for a moment, seemed monstrous to me. As did my own. That night I thought of Louis as being more human than Lestat, and I drifted off uneasily that morning, reflecting on just how much comparison influences our opinion of those who people our world.

Louis was still sleeping when I woke. It was light outside. I think that the last of the sun was still hanging in the sky. I had wandered out into Louis's rooms wanting nothing more than to continue our aborted conversation, but it was far too early for that. I did not dare to disturb him while he slept; that was unthinkable. And so, falling back on routine, I decided that I would hunt first, and return to him after. The house was quiet when I emerged, but I knew that no matter how early my own eyes had opened, Lestat was guaranteed to have risen before me. If the house was quiet, Lestat had already left it. He too was probably hunting, probably-My thoughts swerved. Aaron. A sudden concern for Aaron Lightner flashed through my mind. Lestat was gone, no sign of him in the house. Might he be pursuing my old friend even now? No, no. That was absurd. That was a fear based on nothing. On a whispered insinuation. From hardly the most benevolent of sources, I reminded myself. From Louis. But I had stopped in my tracks and was still pondering the idea when my evening's victim literally ran into me, a young woman who slammed straight into my chest. "Are you all right?" I asked the woman now standing in my arms. "I do apologise. I wasn't--"

I broke off. She was staring up at me. "Americana?" she said. Not Portuguese. Italian. "Oh. God, no," I answered, pulling back. Of course I looked like one. I thought, It's this preposterous Ivory League body. "Scusa," she said. "No English." I don't usually kill women. But she had thick, shiny brown hair and a large smile, and she smelled wonderful. Her skin was clean, and unwrinkled. I'd say she was in her early twenties. As she became aware of the admiration in my eyes, and the way I was looking at her, the moment lengthened. I wanted her. She coloured slightly. "Come for a drink with me," I said spontaneously. "A last meal. You'll enjoy it. I'll make it up to you." "Non capisco niente di quello che Lei dice--" "Drink," I said. "Bev--bev--uh. . ." I mimed sipping water from a glass, and her eyes brightened. "Bevere. Con me." "Ah!" her smile widened. "Sei carino. Ma sono sempre i carini di cui si deve stare attenti, non?" "Signora," I said, my hand on my heart. "I'll be a perfect gentleman." She hesitated. I shot her a smile so charming, and so unlike David Talbot that I would swear that it came not from my mind, but from my body, a lingering lady-killer instinct of this handsome, garage-mechanic fellow. "Signorina," she corrected me, taking the arm I offered her. She gave me another of her wide, sunny smiles. It was an irrevocable choice she had just made. It was one she would not live long to regret.

Something in me rebels at the idea of detailing the killing. That I should wish to respect the dead is farcical, isn't it? The lady is dead only because I killed her. Nevertheless, I find myself uneasy as I write this, and that night, when I heard the unmistakeable sound of another vampire alighting on the pavement, I started, feeling like a man caught out in some terrible act of depravity. I dropped the signorina, and pressed the back of my hand to my mouth. A quick, guilty wipe. It came away smeared with blood.

"Lestat," I said in surprise. Lestat touched my shoulder briefly in greeting, then pulled away, drawn by mild interest to investigate my victim. "Pretty lady," he said, kneeling beside her and glancing up at me. "Thank you," I answered, a little sharply. I was becoming uncomfortable. His examination of the body felt like a violation--of myself and of her--but I was silenced. I felt I couldn't complain. After all, it was I who had killed her. Another glance, and with a grin Lestat rose, stripping himself of his jacket and using it to wipe off his hands. He tossed it away negligently when he'd finished and it fell in a little heap, partially covering the body. "I didn't know you had an eye for women." I frowned. "What is that supposed to mean?" "Oh, come on, David," he said, casually, accompanying the words with a dismissive gesture. He was already looking around the lane. "Well, where the hell are we?" he demanded, finally, obviously nonplussed by what he saw. I didn't answer him immediately. I was uneasy after my clandestine conversation with Louis, besides which, I wasn't sure exactly where we were. The hunt had brought me here, not any design of my own. Lestat snorted at his surroundings, then continued, in a confidential tone: "Mademoiselle, I wouldn't trust your friend here." I turned my head away. He was speaking to the dead body. "He's got no sense of propriety. You're so young, and so pretty, and really, he seems to have chosen the taudriest location in all of Brazil to stage the last act of your life--" I said, "Stop it, Lestat." "Oh, I offend your sensibilities?" Lestat's eyes were bright. "I'm to wander around like some mawkish fledgling, am I, pronouncing my requiescat and bemoaning my killer instincts and her fate?" I began to turn from him, but he caught me by the shoulder and spun me back to face him. "You promised me," he said, his voice low and dangerous as he pushed in close. "You promised me a fight. You promised adventure and dancing in the streets. David--" With a vicious twist, he took hold of the back of my neck and shoved my head downwards, a position that forced me to look at the body of my victim.

Revulsion snapped in me like the hungry jaws of a beast. I didn't want to look at her cold, heavy limbs or the dead, unnatural angle of her head. I closed my eyes, hating it. Hating the feeling of being manhandled. His hand was like a vice on my neck. He said, "You can't bear it? All your talk of spirit. Of fighting. Of wanting the Dark Gift, and now look at you. How much you remind me of Louis." "I said stop it!" I snapped, throwing him off hard enough that he skidded back on his heels, a surprised look in his eyes. "I'm not Louis. I'm not going to spend the first dozen years of my new life--how did you put it--bemoaning my fate and grieving for mortal women only to find out later that my misery was entirely misplaced and that you were right all along. Stop trying to provoke me. I won't be manhandled." "Won't you?" The dangerous smile that I have always been powerless to resist was playing at the corners of his mouth. Damn him. I think I even said it, "Damn you," as he tugged a little roughly at my neck. I said it even as he kissed me. And yes, I was a fool, because he had always been able to make me forget my scruples; and for better or worse, this was what I had wanted. I had known it even as seventy four year old mortal man, when Lestat was the fiery tiger of my youth, a volatile killer who'd curl up on my hearth and purr, and lazily call me his only friend. He murmured, "And how do good English vampires dispose of their dead?" I closed my eyes. "Burn it," I said, and in that instant the body burst into flames, though I was uncertain whether Lestat's powers set it alight, or my own.

We wandered companionably together. The night was warm and very pleasant, with barely a breeze behind us. Lestat, for once, was not mad for adventure. He was content to stroll, and the conversation drifted as we did ourselves. It was a change from the highly charged exchanges that I had been having with Louis. A change I welcomed gladly. I always forgot my troubles in Lestat's company. When I had been mortal, arguments and admonitions about Lestat from Talamascan Elders had caused knots in my stomach, but they had always faded away to relief and gladness whenever Lestat himself turned up at my door. A handsome young man with a devilish smile, dressed impeccably in a smart, dandy's suit. "Do you always kill that way?" he asked me. "No," I said. "I'm hungry for new experiences. I don't have a pattern. Not yet, at any rate. Usually it takes a year or two before a vampire begins to form noticable habits, though once they have, they rarely break them."

"You don't mean to say that our hunts are on file with the Talamasca?" "Of course," I replied. "And I don't know why you should look scandalized--or even surprised. You invite commentary. You write about hunting in your novels, frequently." "You know what's been written about me," he said. "You've read it." "Yes." "And?" I paused. I did know, of course. The earliest Talamascan documentation of Lestat is well circulated: 'Almost without exception he kills men, aged between 19-30 years, of heights ranging between 5'10'' and 6'1'', sharing no other physical similarity but their good health and strong builds.' This footnote to the Theatre des Vampires file, written in 1841 by the field agent A. R. Dacier, was the reason the Talamasca had sent petite, red-haired Jesse to investigate the site of the old New Orleans coven. Although, as I had come to understand it, Lestat's preference was for rough and tumble with killers, and this--perhaps only incidentally--meant his victims were usually young men. "I like to take life," I remember he once said to me. "I think it's fun." At the time, all our conversations revolved around these subjects. Death and indecency. Lestat would push me as far as he could, trying, I believe, to provoke a moral revolt of some kind. I was Buckingham to his Richard--in Lestat's mind at least. And when my final objection came in Barbados, he ignored it--and with it, my will and his own promises. Much later, Louis would explain it this way: "Lestat is alone because what he desires is unqualified love--and no one can love a man more than he does his own conscience. Eventually there will come a point at which one's inner goodness, however deep it is buried, will balk--will no longer allow itself to be compromised. Lestat searches for that point. He'll find it in you, David. Just as he found it in me when he knelt before me in New Orleans, and begged me to help him, and I refused to turn him back into a vampire." But I'm getting ahead of myself. I answered, carefully, "That you kill men. That you provoke attacks. That your recent preference is for serial killers, which you know already." "And now that you're on the other side dark glass, you can tell me: What is the insight all this gives into the world of the vampire?"

And that was the crux of it all, wasn't it? I let out a breath of laughter, and spread my hands wide. "You tell me." Lestat had moved ahead of me, and now he stood facing me, one hand resting on my shoulder. Out of necessity, I brought up short. He was blocking my path. "Want to know why I really kill the way I do?" His gaze was predatory. Like his voice, it challenged me. "I like it. I like the chase. I like a fight. I go after big game. Oh, no, don't go all stiff and proper--you understand exactly what I mean. You were a killer in your youth, just like me. You've been the hunter and the hunted, too, haven't you. You know very well which you like better. You shouldn't, but you do." "No," I said. "No. Lestat--I don't believe that. Most vampires show a disinclination for killing. You all ritualize the hunt in some way. Distance it from what it really is. Your choice of victim--it's so compelling. You kill killers, Pandora kills abusive men, Armand kills those who welcome death--" "Armand--what?" Lestat blinked, and then, to my utter surprise, he disengaged from me. He took two steps backwards and started laughing. Blood tears came to his eyes. It was his usual mad humour, and I had to fold my arms and wait it out. He calmed eventually, though his eyes remained wickedly bright even as he fell to gazing at me, fondly. "Armand," he said. "I love that poisonous little schoolboy. Really. I do. What is it Pistol says to the prince? I'd kiss his dirty shoe--" "It's not so?" "David, believe whatever you like of Armand. But I'll tell you this. After two hundred years as a bloodsucking fiend, I have learned one thing beyond the shadow of a doubt." "And that is?" "No one ever . . . really . . . welcomes death." He held my gaze a long time. "Oh, stop it," I said finally, moving forward again. "Stop--?" His pale brows arched irrisistibly as I passed him.

"Stop being impossible. Come on, I want to climb, and we still haven't been properly to Corcovado . . . "

And why had Louis told me about Aaron? And what was it he was hiding? And why keep our conversation from Lestat? I spent the next three nights attempting to avail myself of another opportunity to speak with Louis, while Louis remained infuriatingly elusive, either locked away in his own rooms, or alone out on the streets of Rio. The curtains in my room were repaired immediately. This presented me with something of a difficulty. I couldn't simply barge my way back into Louis's sanctuary and demand an explanation, though I badly wanted to. And as I knew both how often Lestat followed Louis out to watch him hunt, and how much Louis disliked it when he did so, I was equally reluctant to approach him while he was outside of the house. I began to suspect that he was avoiding me intentionally. There was, however, absolutely nothing that I could do about it if he was, and frustration became my constant companion, attending me from the earliest parts of the evening into the long, later stages of the night. The fact that it was Aaron who'd shuttled down here implied, at least to my mind, that the Talamasca were not taking my transformation particularly seriously. Aaron Lightner was an agreeable fellow, a scholar of my generation with an impressive head of white hair and the idiosyncratic habit of walking with a silver topped cane, though he was neither aged nor infirm enough to need one. He was not a field man. Hadn't been for years. He dabbled, for the most part, pursuing supernatural odds and ends more out of a sense of whimsy than duty. And the rather medieval Talamasca directive regarding vampires was clear: 'You are not to encourage the being, not to engage in or prolong conversation; if it persists in its visits you are to do your best to lure it to some populated place; it is well known that these creatures are loath to attack when surrounded by mortals. Never are you to attempt to learn secrets from the being, or to believe for one moment that any emotions evidenced by it are genuine, for these creatures can dissemble with remarkable sophistry, and have been known, for whatever reason, to drive mortals mad. You are warned to report any and all meetings, sitings, et cetera, et cetera, to the elders without delay--' But I felt so cut off from the Talamasca. Freed as I'd never been from that engulfing world of books and museums and forays into the supernatural. That bunch of monks in London, Lestat calls them, in his characteristic and dismissive fashion. And Louis's seemed like a reaction more suited to the Talamasca's mortal world than to my own.

Louis's hushed words, his secrecy, it was all so wild and unreal. And I began to feel a sense of indignation that my sole opportunity for private communication with Louis had not unlocked any of the mysteries of our situation, but had instead proved merely vague and futile. The idea even occurred to me that I might resolve the situation by simply mentioning his odd behaviour to Lestat. I might say, 'Louis really said the strangest thing to me the other night . . . something about you and Aaron Lightner . . . ' But I knew in my heart of hearts that this was not a subject I was going to broach with Lestat. The days passed, and as they did so, my sharp concerns began to melt back into that underlying sense of unease. I should mention that during this time, Lestat showed me the manuscript of his new novel. Though perhaps 'showed me the manuscript' is an inaccurate description, as what he did was toss me a computer disk with a flick of his wrist and the words spoken over his shoulder as he left the house, "Knock yourself out." I did not finish it. I slid the disk into the computer. I brought up the correct file. I couldn't bring myself to read more than the first few chapters. Eventually, I shut everything off, left the disk on Lestat's wooden desk and went out to hunt. This happened on the third night. On the fourth night, Louis surprised me utterly by appearing before me in the large room that served as entrance to the house. He was wearing, as always, some items of nondescript black clothing. His hair was tied back neatly with a black ribbon. It was this detail that impressed itself on me. I could suddenly imagine him as the young plantation owner, looking over his accounts, dressed in a breeches and a long frock coat. And then later, in a tavern, perhaps a little drunk, too naive to realize the kind of attention that he was likely to attract. Catching the eye of a passing delinquent. Catching the eye of Lestat. "Hello, David," he said. "Louis," I said. "I must speak with you." "Must you?" he asked in the most bored tone of voice. My frustration returned tenfold. These games, I thought, are typical of him, and just as I was about ready to put an end to them once and for all, Louis shifted his gaze to a point just over my left shoulder, and said, in polite greeting, "Lestat." I turned.

Lestat was lounging in the doorway, watching us with a proprietary little smile on his face. He looked entirely unlike himself. Instead of his usual tailored garments, he wore faded jeans that straggled threads where they had been slashed at the knees, and a thin, loose white cotton t-shirt that was scrawled over with an unfashionable Portuguese advertising slogan. It looked old and worn, second or third hand, and hardly worth the keeping; it must originally have come from some cheap, street stall. He'd cut his hair short, too, and had combed it with his fingers, judging by the tangle of blond spikes and snares. The impression was startling, uncharacteristic, and rather degenerate. "Good lord," I said, distracted. "What on earth are you wearing?" "You like?" "Well it certainly is . . . interesting." "I suppose you'd prefer me to lumber around in a tweed suit, or a vest, or a cardigan--" "Don't be absurd. It must be thirty degrees outside." "Louis?" Lestat said, turning and presenting himself, as if to settle a point. "Why ask me?" said Louis. "This--" A single glance indicated the clothes. "--isn't for my benefit. Is it." "Well, no," agreed Lestat. "It isn't." I looked from one to the other. Lestat said, "I suppose you've emerged from your seclusion to try to change my mind by telling me how much you disapprove, how awful it is, what a monster I am, all that trash." "Yes," said Louis, no warmth whatsoever in his voice. "I wouldn't consider it an adventure otherwise." "You shouldn't consider it an adventure at all!" Lestat's eyes were brilliant. "David," he said, without looking at me, "we are now going to get the full banquet with all the trimmings as Louis, in a sort of apotropaic fervor, warns us both about the dangers of my visiting your old friend Aaron Lightner. Did you know he was in Rio? I'm going to do him no good, apparently. I imagine it's all going to be wonderful fun."

Before I could muster a reply, Louis said calmly, "Did you expect to shock and amaze with this little denouement? You are boorish and predictable. David already knows that Aaron Lightner is in Rio." "If that's true," said Lestat, dangerously, "he is taking it far better than you are." "You are not going to do Aaron any harm," I said slowly. It was an affirmation rather than a directive. With each word I spoke, I was aware of how fully I was taking sides. Louis turned to face me, looking incredulous. But he recovered quickly. Finding that I was not an ally, he simply excluded me from his attention. He said to Lestat, "He doesn't know anything. You're incapable of visiting someone without doing them harm." "Oh, honestly, what do you think I'm planning? I'm just going to talk to him--liven things up a little. And even if I meant to spend my night breaking the bones in his body--what makes you think you could stop me?" "You think you're going just to talk to him?" Louis shot back. "You're deluding yourself! It was talk the night you waltzed into the London motherhouse to visit the Superior General. Ten years later you took him and made him a killer of his fellow man. You ruin lives. You'll ruin Aaron's. It will be yet another gauntlet in the face of the Talamasca, and how long do you think it will be before they decide that you are too much of a threat to them?" "This is madness," I said. "Lestat, I can tell you plainly that you're in no danger from the Talamasca." "Yes, perhaps they believe that Aaron Lightner is expendable," said Louis. "Perhaps they felt similarly about you, David." "Don't be so nastily overbearing," Lestat told him. "Aaron Lightner is in no danger--physically. As for the rest, he's a scholar of the supernatural. It's not as if he's going to take one look at me and go stark, raving mad." "Lestat, you can't do this, not again. Not this--" "Can't I just?" Louis blocked the exit. I am sure that Lestat would not have hesitated to push anyone else aside, but Louis's sheer self composure was such that Lestat was reluctant to force a way past him. Incredibly, he was holding back. But his eyes were flashing and I saw that his right hand had become a fist.

"Get out of my way," he said then, in a low voice. "Move, or I'll move you. You won't like it if I do, you're too fastidious to enjoy being grappled with. And I'll hurt you. You have know idea how much I could hurt you." "No. Lestat, can't you stay here, stay and be reasoned with--" "Reasoned? You mean the usual drab litany of limitations--it bores me. You bore me. I'm going out." "Lestat--" "Move it!" It happened too fast for me to follow. I heard more than I saw. I heard the crash of furniture, and the awful sound of wood splintering. Lestat was gone before I could intervene, or even clearly identify how he had removed Louis from his path.

Louis was frowning, more like a man who has come across something faintly unpleasant in the nightly papers than like a vampire who has just been thrown across the room by his maker. I saw that his cheek was darkened with a bruise. Lestat must actually have struck him. Such a mark on my own flesh would have vanished in an instant, but Louis lacked the great restorative powers of Akasha and her ilk. The hurt healed slowly. I watched as smashed capillaries mended themselves, and it occurred to me that Lestat's blow must have been little more than a love-tap. If he'd exercised any of his real strength, he would have shattered Louis's cheekbone, at the very least. More likely broken his neck. I reached down and offered my hand, and Louis clasped my forearm, using my strength to pull himself up. "Your concern touches my heart," he said. I told him, "Aaron Lightner can look after himself." Louis paused in the act of brushing himself off. "David Talbot can look after himself," he said. "He is strong enough to resist Lestat, and he has sworn before God that he'll never become a vampire." There was something unpleasant rising in my throat, and I found that I couldn't stand being alone in a room with him anymore. "If you're quite recovered."

"David, wait." I had reached the door by the time he called me back, and I had fully intended to walk through it, but there was a strange quality to Louis's voice that reached out like a restraining hand, and stopped me. I turned back to face him, saw him standing there before the wreckage of the room. There is something impossible about his beauty. I would be lying if I said I wasn't aware of it. From the first moment that I saw him, a part of me was lost forever to the knowledge that he was all I might have wanted in my human life time, and could never possess in this one. His cold, remote manner was woven into his appeal. He had about him an air of the untouchable. But now his voice sounded raw, and he was bruised, though the mark was fading on his cheek. Lestat had roughed him up a little, and it suited him. He looked for the first time like a creature who could be touched. Who might touch in return. Who might wish . . . "You care if I'm rude to you?" he said, in that same voice. And for the first time, I saw him objectively. Not as one half of a power struggle, but as Louis, a being distinct and separate in and of himself. I felt a dizzying warmth, as if something deep inside of me was unfolding against my will. "Why?" he said, bitterly. "Louis, I--" "Perhaps I've offended your civilized notions of vampiric behaviour. It should be all tasteful politeness between the three of us, yes? While we feed and live and kill them without regret." A breath of bitter laughter. "You are like innocent man in the garden before the snake. You are happy because you don't know anything--" Happy. I remembered my first trip to Rio. The jungles, the thick, humid press of them, and the hotels, and the wild passion I'd felt for that boy, taking him over and over again, believing myself to be in love, addicted to the languorous kisses he fed me and the heat of him against me on the sheets of the bed. "If nothing else, I would sacrifice my illusions to have you and I at peace," I said. "Tell me, and you can have done." It was the right thing to say. Somehow, I knew it.

Louis raked a hand through his hair, a very human mark of nerves and indecision. "Is it foolish for a killer to otherwise possess a conscience?" he said. "To care about doing right, and avoiding wrong?" "Not foolish." I tried to make him out. "Not easy." "Lestat calls it the paradox of the 'good vampire.' For what is a good vampire? I used to feel anguish at the prospect of taking human life. I refused to be an evildoer. You might say, I was a good vampire . . . it made me a very bad vampire. It made me weak, incompetent, vulnerable to attack . . . " Louis paused, then after a moment went on, "But though we are killers, I do not think that true amorality is possible for us. I do not think it is natural. Because all vampires, when forced to live outside of human mores, begin to create a moral structure of their own. Under Les Innocents, there were the Devil's Rules. To kill your own kind was the cardinal sin in the Theatre des Vampires. Now we have the laws laid down on Night Island . . . all of which Lestat has broken." After a moment, he continued, "What I mean to say is that I am a monster, because I have killed mortals. But even amongst monsters, there are, perhaps, horrors, and things which should not be done." "All this has something to do with Aaron Lightner," I prompted him. He gazed at me a while. "No. No, not in any way except that he is the new danger. The new adventure." "Louis--" I began. He shook his head. "Please. If I am going to tell you, I must tell you all of it. Let us sit--" He indicated one of the long couches. Impatiently, I sat myself there, and waited for him to join me. Only when he was calm and composed beside me did he begin to speak, his voice soft over the words of the following, familiar story: "For you, it began when Lestat first told you about that madman, James. For me, it began a long time ago. With my younger brother, Paul, who removed himself from plantation life at a very young age. He preferred to spend his hours in prayer, or study, reading from the Bible and his lives of the saints. By the time he was twelve, his devotion was such that I was moved to build him an oratory, and it was not long before he began to spend most of his day there, and then to spend most of his evening there as well. "At fifteen, he was already handsome. Robust, not thin as I was then and am now, and he had black hair, and very pale skin and blue eyes, like my mother's. He was a great deal like my mother. Determined, but quiet, polite and soft spoken. I was devoted to him. I could deny him nothing, or so I thought, and I vowed that no matter how it would break my heart to lose him, I would allow him to enter the priesthood as he wished, when the time came."

I listened without interrupting, though I knew all of these details, of course, from Louis's file and from the book, Interview with the Vampire. The original tapes were hidden deep in the vaults of the London motherhouse. Daniel's questions, and the long, elaborate and sometimes frightening answers spoken in Louis's calm, detached voice. "He began to have visions, but as he did not press the subject to myself, my mother or sister, I was largely unconcerned. Even when he stopped taking his meals with us, when his days and nights were spent kneeling on the flagstones in the oratory, when my mother and sister wept over his reclusion and the slaves spoke openly of his madness, I was not alarmed. I was convinced that he was simply overzealous. In nineteen seventy five, when I told this story to Daniel, I still had faith in my brother's piety. I even questioned whether the visions my brother claimed he was having might not have been real." "You don't believe that now," I said, carefully. Louis shook his head. "I am not going to tell you what I believe. I am going to tell you what happened. You will then be free to make up your own mind. "As I have said, around this time, my brother began to have visions. He only hinted at them at first, but his subtlety eventually gave way; one night he came to me in my room and he told me earnestly and without wavering. Both St. Dominic and the Blessed Virgin Mary had come to him in the oratory. He was to be a great religious leader. He'd turn the tide against atheism and the Revolution, but as he naturally had no money of his own, we must sell all our property in Louisiana, everything we owned, and use it as the visions commanded, to do God's work in France. "I laughed at him. 'St. Dominic,' I said, scornfully. Perhaps I expected him to recant, or confide that this was simply his joke. He did not. 'You don't understand, Louis,' he said, and began, with a rapt expression on his face, to describe to me the visiage of the saint; he was a beautiful young man; his countenance was angelic; he possessed a halo of golden hair, and his skin was radiant with divine light. I told him not to be foolish, that his visions were nonsense, the product of an immature and even morbid mind. I was angry. No, I'll say rather that I was disappointed. I was bitterly disappointed. He had reduced himself to the level of a fanatic in my eyes. Visions of a supernatural man? I didn't believe him at all. "How different my fate might have been if I'd just spoken kindly to him, helped him, guided him through that ordeal. I used to spend long hours imagining that I'd done so, that I'd gone to him, and steadied his arm and agreed to his outlandish plan. I might have lived prosperously as a result, dying contented in my bed, surrounded by a wife, children . . . I don't know that this would have been the case. But I thought . . . at any rate, my brother left my room crazed and grieved, and in an instant, he changed the course of my life."

"He killed himself," I said to Louis, but I was hardly concentrating. A beautiful young man, I thought, with shining blond hair and radiant skin. The description unnerved me severely, because it sounded too familiar. It sounded too much like Lestat. "Yes, probably," said Louis. "He walked out of the French doors onto the gallery and stood for a moment at the head of the brick stairs. And then he fell. I heard the sound of it, but my back was turned; and he was dead when I reached the bottom of the stairs, his neck broken. I didn't see it happen. But two of the servants saw it happen. They said that he had looked up as if he had just seen something in the air. Then his entire body moved forward as if being swept by a wind. One of them said he was about to say something when he fell. "I was blamed. Everyone knew that something unpleasant had passed between us. But that was the least of it--it was as if they intuited the fact that my brother's fall, or, if you will, his suicide, was no accident. Not the product of his own entirely free will. Later, the slaves on Pointe du Lac began to talk of seeing his ghost on the gallery, and there was another story, too, of a ghost that had risen out of the air to beckon my brother to his grave. I didn't give the idea credence. Not then. I blamed myself, not some ghost, or morbid fantasy, or vision. "My life predictably fell into ruins. I could not escape the thought of my brother, though I avoided his burial place and leased my plantation to an agency who would manage it for me--I didn't ever want to see those stairs, or that oratory, or the plantation house again. I drank heavily, apathetic towards my family, my responsibilities. My habits became dissolute and notorious. I wanted to die;--and so, voila. Eventually I did. Or, at least, I was attacked. It was a vampire, as you know. My first encounter with Lestat. "I described this attack to Daniel," said Louis. "But only briefly. Awkwardly. As though I was overwhelmed suddenly, felled by the strange assailant before I knew what was happening to me. Of course, Lestat does not hunt this way. You and I both know it. He plays with his victims as a cat plays with a dying bird. It's a game to him; it's fun. That first night, he approached me at first amicably, befriending me before the hunt began in earnest. He left me finally at dawn, exhausted, dazed and drained of blood." Heat rose in my cheeks; I understood Louis perfectly. Lestat had batted me between his paws more than a few times the night he brought me over; it was a scene I had been, and still am, unwilling to describe. I wondered, with sharp curiousity, what had passed between Lestat and Louis, that first night. Had Louis's experience been similar to my own? Had he fought? Or had it been a seduction? How had Lestat overcome Louis's reticence, his struggles? "I was put to bed as soon as I was found," Louis continued, "and my mother sent immediately for the priest. I told him everything, clinging to his arm and making him

swear over and over that he would tell no one. I was feverish by then. And so obsessed with my brother's death that my thoughts mercifully did not turn to my attacker, or I might have told the priest that, too, though I was mightily confused, and my mind was hazy, and perhaps I didn't know exactly what had happened to me. " 'There's nothing wrong with you,' the priest said to me finally. 'This is just self-indulgence. Your mother needs you, not to mention your sister. And as for this brother of yours, he was possessed of the devil.' I was so stunned by this suggestion I couldn't protest. It was outlined to me in precise terms. The devil made the visions. The devil was rampant. Nothing would have saved my brother but the ordeals of exorcism, prayer, fasting, vigils, men holding him down while the devil raged in his body. 'The devil threw him down those steps; it's perfectly obvious,' he declared. 'You weren't talking to your brother in that room, you were talking to the devil.' "It seems fantastical to me now. I attacked the priest. I wrecked the room trying to get at him, and had to be pulled away; it took three of our servants to subdue me. Afterwards, I was exhausted almost to the point of death. And they bled me, which Lestat remarked on at once. I think the irony of it appealed to him particularly. "He came in from the courtyard, opening the French doors wide. And gently, he draped a shawl over my sister and lowered the wick of the lamp. She dozed there beside the basin and cloth with which she'd bathed my forehead, and--no doubt through some mesmerizing trick of Lestat's--she didn't stir once until morning. I watched all this in a daze. My eyelids would scarcely open. Lestat stepped closer to the bed and leaned down so that his face was in the lamplight, and I gazed back at him, recognizing him, but only as a figure in a vision. "His skin seemed bright, almost luminous at first. His eyes flashed brilliantly. He wasn't human, I knew it at once. But I was too weak to be troubled by his entry; and in this state I was more vulnerable than most mortals to the power of his vampiric beauty. "'Oh God,' he whispered softly. 'They've bled you.' He stilled completely. At that moment it was as if he was as absorbed by the sight of me as I was by him. " 'I . . . ' I began. I couldn't speak. I tried to raise myself up on my elbows, but my slightest movement snapped Lestat out of whatever trance he was in. "He began to speak to me then, and I do not know if you have ever heard Lestat speak passionately and in earnest. It is overwhelming. No--engulfing. He stretched himself out on the covers beside me, lying on his side with his head propped by a hand, speaking to me. I gazed up at him. And I completely forgot myself as he spoke. I forgot myself, and at the same time I knew totally the meaning of possibility.

" 'You're dying, Louis,' he said finally. 'You'll live out tomorrow and maybe the next day, but I doubt much longer. And even if you recover, and continue as you have been, you'll be dead in a month, in a year. You're like a blind man in a dark room: you grope from petty difficulty to petty difficulty--I think deep down you hope to regain your sight, but for what? Your naivety is compelling, but your belief limits you. Your idea that damnation and salvation are the boundaries of a small and hopeless world . . . but I can help you, Louis. I can give you the future. I can give you eternity. I can pass my hand over your eyes and you'll see for the first time. And such sights! You'll see the world as you've never seen it, and you'll never age, and you'll never get sick--you'll be always as you are at this moment. Beautiful. So beautiful . . . right on the edge of a revelation.' "He leaned closer, cupping my face and holding my gaze intently. It was intimate, and uncomfortable, and I would have recoiled but I was floating in a sort of lethargy, pulled along by the wonder of his words. He said, 'But you have say yes to me, Louis. You have to understand what I am--and that I'm giving you a choice.' " 'What you are?' I remember that I reached out, hesitantly, to touch him. 'I've dreamed you.' "He grasped my wrist, aborting my touch and jerking my arm, painfully. 'I'm a killer, Louis. A vampire. Do you understand me? I'm not your saviour or your delusion. I'm the devil.' " 'The devil threw my brother down the stairs,' I said, and it was delirium, and terribly disrespectful, not only to the memory of my sibling but also to the recently departed priest. But Lestat's presence seemed to excuse all such infamy. I was light-headed. I felt wonderful. I already knew what my answer would be. " 'That's right, he did,' Lestat replied, still holding tight to my wrist. "But, 'I don't care,' I was saying. 'I don't care if you're God or the devil. I want to live forever with you.' " Here Louis paused and regarded me in a manner that was by now entirely familiar to me. I was staring back at him. Thoughts were racing through my mind. I was unsettled by the story, deeply unsettled. It was too unexpectedly personal, told in Louis's detached voice. I couldn't imagine the vampire who stood before me now ever behaving that way. Not Louis. Louis was a creature forged of ice and steel, his razor edges polished and indifferent. You reached out to him only at the risk of being sliced open. And, my God, behind these petty thoughts was a growing comprehension of Louis's story, and a horror of its true implication. The devil threw my brother down the stairs. I felt a throbbing in my temple, and as it began to overwhelm me I rose and walked

right out of that room and into the next. It was something of an attempt to escape memory. "I am the devil. The devil in your Faust. The tiger in my dream!" My hand clutched to my head as if to stop a physical pain there. Louis followed me out. "There's more," he said. It was deadly. No inflection. "I don't care. I don't want to hear it. My God--you're accusing Lestat of having killed your brother!" "Oh? Is that what I'm doing?" Louis's hands slipped into his pockets, a little nonchalant provocation. "You know it is. From the first moment, you've done nothing but slander Lestat. And this--this--" But attacking Louis did nothing to halt the progress of my thoughts, which were turning logically and inexoribly to the many cases I had studied, read and investigated. I knew that madness in mortal men and women was often the result of an encounter with the paranormal. Louis's brother might very well have been such a one. Visions. I began asking myself the question: could Lestat bewitch the mind of a fifteen-year-old boy? Could he dupe him, beguile him, lead him from the height of religious fervor to suicide? Oh God. "You don't have proof," I said to Louis, the back of my hand still pressed to my temple. Well, no, he seemed to say then, inclining his head slightly, a half nod. "How did Lestat appear to you, when you first saw him in the Talamasca motherhouse? Do you remember it? David?" I didn't answer at once, but I certainly remembered, and the great feeling of horror increased tenfold. Lestat and Louis had shocked me utterly, but Lestat in particular. "Like an angel," I said finally. "They--we--all think so, at first. Even Raglan James--it's in that damned novel. An angel. My God, I wrote an entry to that effect in my journal." "You keep a journal?" Louis inquired politely. "No," I said, denying not the journal but his entire point. "This is absurd. Lestat's appearance is no basis for an accusation. Your brother had religious visions, and thought he saw an angel. The rest is co-incidence and wild conjecture."

"My brother saw St. Dominic," Louis said. "St. Dominic Savio is a child-saint, David. At twelve my brother chose Dominic as his patron, a symbol of youthful piety, humility--why then did he see a man in his vision? A blond man with shiny eyes and luminescent skin?" "There are many possible--" "No there aren't." Calmly, Louis interrupted me. I was unable to muster a reply. His story was plausible. In fact, it was what certain members of the Talamasca, assigned to the file, would have called Classic Lestat. Visions, death, rumours of a young man--blond and supernormal. Stories circulating among the servants. I said, as calmly as I could manage, "In those days Lestat killed two and three every night. You testified to that fact in your memoir. Why should it matter then who he killed that evening? If it wasn't your brother it would just have been someone else." Louis stared at me as if I'd gone mad. "You've listened," he said. "But you haven't understood anything. David, it was seventeen eighty one, and I was a Catholic from a religious family. While my brother was alive I would never have willingly agreed to become a vampire, no matter how charming was Lestat, no matter how convincing his arguments. But guilt-ridden, out of my mind with grief and already convinced that I was damned?" "You're saying he did it to make you susceptible to him? You're mad, Louis!" "Am I? Then tell me your own story, David. Were your circumstances really so different from mine?" I found myself retreating a little. "Of course they were. What do you mean?" "I mean explain the series of events that has lead to you breaking your sworn word, abandoning your friends, giving up your soul and your life!" For the first time, a little heat had entered Louis's voice. "Or if you cannot, then simply explain to me this. Lestat wanted you for a fledgling for a long time. What stayed his hand all these years?" "I--" I began. But his last question caught me without a reply. Respect for my wishes, I might have said, except that respect hadn't stayed Lestat at all in Barbados. What, then? I didn't know. As I stared back at Louis, I felt cold run the full length of my spine. "I'll tell you," said Louis. "You were too old. Seventy four years. Lestat would never have brought you over in that withered body. But he wanted you, David. He wanted

you. And so then by a miracle of co-incidence, you meet up with a man who can swap people from one body to another, and you receive this young and beautiful form? There's such an ingeniousness to it. It must have taken Lestat years to find such a man, to plan events so that you--" "No," I said. I had retreated a few steps, not wanting to hear more. "You're wrong. It didn't happen that way. Lestat's adventure with the Body Thief wasn't orchestrated or--or planned. James was the villain, not Lestat. Lestat fell for James's tricks and his traps and it was only by chance that I received this body at all--" "David," said Louis, with frightening precision. "If your adventure with the Body Thief was not orchestrated by Lestat, if it was all merely co-incidence, explain to me why you did not return to your old body when it was over?" "I couldn't return to my old body. Lestat--" Killed it. I felt the blood drain from my face. The words vanished from my throat, and I thought, God help me. God help me. And I heard the echo of Louis's voice. Convenable. How convenient. The story will continue in Book Two: Paris

Warning: Spoilers for all the books up to Memnoch the Devil. This story is set between The Tale of the Body Theif and Memnoch.

Dusk in Rio by !Super Cat Yes, I am the Vampire Lestat, and all of that trash. If you know me, skip over this section. It's an introduction, written in my usual style. And you've heard it all before--right? I expect it will bore you utterly. If on the other hand, you and I have not yet met... Mmmm, well, that changes everything. Let me pause, smile slowly, and properly introduce myself. Lestat de Lioncourt. Blond, blue eyed, quite rakish male vampire. I'm to be the hero of this tale, and I'm absolutely determined, dear reader, to have you fall in love with me. Is that arrogance, you ask? Vanity?

Oh, yes. Or so I have been told-There is Marius, to whom I'm the Brat Prince. David, who calls me the James Bond of vampires. Louis, who calls me you fool and you absolute monster depending on his mood. And Armand, who... Ah, but let us keep this introduction civil. Time for Armand, later. An eternity to catch up with him, dear little cherub that he is. Besides, I'd much rather you think of me as a I am. A pretty devil of a young man with lovely clothes and a great propensity to indulge in whim and high drama. That's all. I promise. Really, I do. Just don't forget that I could rip out your throat out with a single gnash of my pearly little teeth, if I wanted to. If I wanted to, my sweet little piece of meat, you'd be powerless to stop me. And make no mistake of my intentions. I want to. For all the charisma and the good looks and the snug, lovely tailoring, I'm a predator. You can see it in my grin; in the tiny, wickedly sharp fangs that make my smile so charming, and so sublimely dangerous. My deadly nature is partly the reason why I so recently gave up the narrative. I was back in my vampiric body, after all. And I was going to Rio, with my fledglings, with David and with Louis. Raglan James was dead. But there's something so arbitrary about endings, isn't there? The Prince comes and the sun sets--and then what? Darkness? Closure? Or perhaps the actors creep around behind the sets--caught up in secret stagings--long after the audience has left the theatre. There's always more to tell. And I'll let you in on a little secret. There is no forever between the Prince and Sleeping Beauty. That fairy-tale jazz--bloody and luscious as it is--never happens. It's isolation that comes with eternity. It comes with the setting sun. I had called it the beginning of a new era. Lestat, Louis, David.

Naivety, to think the question was 'if'. The question wasn't 'if'. It was 'when'. *** Rio. It's a tourist's city, a remarkably western city. Its streets have a duty-free shop air, and the strident horns of American voices honk out over the glissandos of conversational Portuguese. There are even designer boutiques and MacDonalds food stores to be found, if you want them. The fast food industry is flourishing; Brazil's indian traditions are dwindling away. The Dahomeyan voodoo cults and other various fetishistic societies are dying. Christianity has its hand about their throats. It's a very religious city. It's also a city of killers. And I'm not talking about the two gentlemen strolling beside me. David, showing off his tan in something pale, Versace, rather daring, actually, and Louis, a darker smudge, less fancily decked out. They too take life, oh yes, they are powerful, craving, and far deadlier than any hired thug. But--killers? monsters?--I'd never slander my two darlings with such brutal, murderous titles. Not this early in the narrative. No, when I say Rio is a city of killers, I refer to the tough young mortal men who kill the street children, the Indians and each other--the men who perpetrate the violence and the kidnappings that are so common here that even a small massacre will not make the headlines. Rio de Janeiro is well peppered with this kind of killer. I can sense them, my beautiful prey. And that first night, with Louis on my right, and David ambling at my left, I was itching to hunt amongst them. But there was sort of an unspoken law between us on the subject: We would hunt alone. We would respect one another's privacy. And I was to behave. Well, not really a law. More of a guideline. In fact, what we were doing, I believe, was pretending--through polite avoidance of subject--that we were nothing more than mortal men. Blood? Don't speak of it. We'd never feed on someone. Oh, shocking, that idea. We'd never drink a person's blood. Utter nonsense, right?

Two quick steps put me ahead of them both, and I immediately turned to face them, blocking their way on the path. "Hungry?" I asked, delicately displaying fangs. David froze. Louis flushed. "A little," he said softly. He held eye-contact. He's stubborn about that sort of thing. We both are, of course. Makes life... interesting. "Hunt with me?" "I will not." "David?" "I think I'll... walk a while, Lestat. If you can bear my company, Louis?" Louis gave him a warm smile. "Of course, David." New era. Old rules. Right? *** I didn't have to hunt at all, as it happened. I simply had to walk through a certain part of the city. And, though it was late, late, late when it happened, somebody started hunting me. I slowed my pace, ambling now, rounding a corner, and feeling him pass round it, too. His mind was monstrous. His mind was like mine, actually. And like me he was hunting--wanting so much to enjoy this--this game, this small scene, this life he was to take. So familiar, the feeling. I smiled to myself and let him follow me, just as I would have done in the old days, when I'd played with them, dined with them, talked with before... before... Killing them. He played along quite deliciously. He followed me right into the alleyway. He thought sick and rather wild thoughts about hurting me, marking me, fucking me; these activities indistinguishable from one another in his blurry, dark little head. He began to speak Portuguese. When I smiled, he pulled out a big gun. "What is it you want from me?" I whispered, as he shoved me hard against the wall. There was dirty water running down the bricks, garbage piling

up. I watched it, letting him touch me. He was taller than I was, and I was letting him... "Hmmm?" He didn't speak. Perhaps he didn't understand. His gun was wedged against my ribs, his breath was rank where it touched my face. It wasn't a particularly dignified attempt at rape. He didn't even remove his clothes. He simply pushed forward, humping against me, grinding his hips and huffing; finding a rhythm, furrowing in. I exhaled a sigh, and looked up at the starry sky. And as this man's movements gained a kind of urgency, I watched that delicate plume--breath--frost over in the night air. Pretty, the condensation... oh God. I began to laugh. He clamped a hand over my mouth. It was heavy. Stifling. Absolutely precious. I parted my lips, and grinned; licking at his palm, tasting the sweat, and something sour, some ghastly substance that didn't come from human flesh. Oh, he tasted good. He was making small sounds now, grunting. He was close to the apex of his pleasure. My mouth opened, almost of it's own will. And he was pushing down -down, into my mouth--as though responding to some unconscious, irresistible invitation. Oh, yes. Yes, I thought. That's lovely. And as his eyes closed, I bit down on that hand, hard. He screamed as I bit him--though not in pleasure. He came, screaming, terrified. The gun went off. I was laughing again. I wrapped my arms round him and as he struggled, desperately, I lowered my lips to his neck, and ripped out a piece of his throat. Oh, sweet heaven, the taste of his blood. Cradling his body, I lowered myself, kneeling, then pulled back, a little dazed, letting him slip from my mouth. His blood was filling my veins and sliding, warmly, across my vision. I let him go, finally, untangled my fingers, and he fell, sprawling out; his limbs landed awkwardly. His body arranged itself oddly, at angles. He was dead. I looked up. Louis stood, a little way in from the mouth of the alley. How long he'd been

there I honestly didn't know. I licked the blood from my lips and managed not to grin over at him. I know Louis. Were I to do such a callous thing--grin, in the face of death--he'd vanish. Leave, without a word. Merciful death. Oh, yes. "Is this your answer to me?" he whispered. "This, and David?" "I thought you liked David," I said. "Is he your answer to me, Lestat!" "Yes," I said to him, evenly. "Yes." *** I knew what he meant. I knew what he meant. I knew what he meant--yes. *** David chose the hotel. It was not the penthouse of the Brazil Hilton--this time--rather, it was a three bedroom suite in an establishment which called itself "The Hotel Rosa". David had chosen well. There was an incredibly decadent air to the accommodation. The furnishings were rich, and heavy. The curtains in the rooms were so thick it was conceivable that we sleep in the beds. Not that any of us would... well. I might. In fact, I was so enamoured of the prospect--a bed! sheets!--that the very first night I spent almost an hour doing nothing but kneeling there, one palm pressed flat to the coverlet, feeling the roughness of the thick, tastefully coloured material. Until I heard him speak my name, at which point I looked up. David was resting against the door frame, leaning a shoulder on the wood. His expression was lodged somewhere between fondness and indulgence. A single lock of dark brown hair was falling over his face. "Lestat. I suppose I should have known." "Should have known...?" "That I'd find you lounging. In a bed."

"Mmmm, this reputation that I have--" "--intolerable isn't it?" He folded his arms. I saw his gaze flit briefly round the room. "Come here?" I offered to him, smoothing a place on the bed. "Oh, no. That sounds suspiciously like one of your--" David blinked his self-awareness back, and regarded me now warily. He refused to come as I'd bid. "--one of your usual--" "Are you shy?" "I am not." "Well, then." As though pulled by an invisible string, he moved over to me. When I motioned further, he knelt up on the bed, facing me. And as he halted there in that position, gazing at me strangely and no doubt feeling a little foolish, I slid my arms around his neck and drew him in for a kiss. Oh, David. Yes. It was not our first kiss. It was not so stunning as our first kiss, but his lips were warm. He'd fed recently, as I had. Indeed, in texture and appearance, we might almost have been two mortals kneeling there and--what is the phrase? Necking on the bed. But he was frowning and ducking his head in avoidance. When I leaned in, he pulled away sharply and moved quickly from the bed. "Lestat... you..." I propped myself up on one elbow and stretched myself out on the bed. "I have disconcerted you," I said. "Yes," he answered, after a small moment. He nodded as he said this--once, firmly--as though he'd conferred with himself, and was only now agreeing on the matter. "Yes, I rather think... you have." "Why?" I said to him. "Feeling guilty?" He frowned and folded his arms. "You know what I'm feeling." My lips twitched.

"That isn't what I meant, Lestat." "You're going to lose this little fight," I said to him. "This little tussle. You know that, don't you. When we fight, you'll lose." "Why do you keep trying to provoke me?" he asked, after a long silence. "You think I should hate you for this thing you've done to me? You think I'll grow to hate?" I didn't answer him. He persisted: "Don't you. You do, don't you, Lestat?" "No," I said. I shook my hair back from my face and, in a single, fluid and rather mannish motion, I rose from the hotel bed. "It's one of the most irritating things about me, I'm told. I'm easy to love. Difficult to hate. Well nigh impossible to--" Hurt. "Lestat?" "--I'll win David," I said, in a soft little voice. "The things I want, I get. I'll win." I watched his brows rise. "Because you're the elder?" Delight. I could feel it widen my grin. I paused mid-stretch, then continued the motion, deliberately, watching him watching me. "Oh no," I said. "That isn't why." "You're incorrigible," he told me affably, pulling his eyes away. "Your arrogance is--" He was shaking his head. "Is that a blush, David?" "It is not," he informed me. "So you're impervious." "To your considerable charms? Lestat, it is hardly the point--" "Isn't it? You took men into your bed when you were first deposited into that body, didn't you David? 'Safaris into the bedroom', I think is what you said."

"I--yes." "Young men?" "Yes." "Women?" He fell silent. He set his jaw, and moved his gaze to the left. "Am I pushing it?" I asked him. "Always, Lestat." "Ever think of me?" I said. Startled, his eyes returned to mine. "Think of you?" He repeated the words, sounding oddly shocked, disconcerted. Schoolboy caught with a secret, hiding it quickly behind his back. "While you were loving them. Ever think of me?" "God," he said softly, the shock segueing into something more thoughtful. His eyes were minutely searching my face. "Everything's a power play to you isn't it. You're overwhelming. Do you ever let down your guard?" I let myself grin, lowering lashes and holding his gaze. "Only with those I love." "Do I qualify?" "You're dodging David. You didn't answer my question." "I'm... I was a fool," he answered me. "And I believe that I have come to idealize sex in the same way I've begun idealizing all the many peculiarly human activities I can no longer enjoy. Eating. Walking in the sun. But I'll tell you this--since you're so obviously looking for an admission. The first man I loved in this body was twenty years old. He was blond, and had blue eyes. It wasn't a particularly satisfying encounter. I vividly remember the disappointment. I remember thinking: It would have been different with Lestat." I found myself caught in his words, in his gaze.

"It would have been different, David," I said, in a rather husky voice. "I know." "Kiss me?" "No." He gently shook his head. "But it's still early. Come, Lestat, perhaps we can find Louis--" *** Nights passed. We stayed in Rio, conversing and feeding and making small exploratory forays, to Recife, to Sao Paulo, to Nova Iguacu and Fortaleza. We pushed through jungles. We lounged in restaurants. On one memorable occasion, we shopped the main streets of Brasilia, for clothing and expensive shoes and accessories for Mojo--for my beautiful big dog. As for David, he oscillated wildly between two states, that of elder and that of child. He thought and acted as the man he had been. The Superior General. The Candomble priest. And yet, he was a fledgling, and as hungry for experience as he was for the richness of that life-sustaining liquid, blood. It was David's exuberance that buoyed us, reinvesting old feelings with new life. But there came also a terrible sense of weight. Familiarity. Two hundred years of history, and this was a story we'd played out before--Lestat, Louis and their fledgling--and it seemed a hole had opened deep, deep inside myself and it could not be filled with blood. Its vastness pushed at the limits of my form. Its enormity dazzled me. And it was something to do with anger, and something to do with light. I think we felt it. All of us. It was hideous domesticity, and deja vu. "I have been here before," Louis whispered one night, watching, almost shocked, as David answered the door of our suite and payed the hotel staff and told them to go on their way. "Louis?" David inquired, tipping his head. Louis simply shook his head. He wasn't going to say it, I knew. He wasn't going to say Her name. How I hated the conspiracy of silence at that moment! Claudia, Claudia! She! The wicked vampire child who'd loved me, and seduced me

utterly, and who'd tried to kill me with laudanum and the thrusts of her sharp little knife. Had they tiptoed their way around my name, I wondered, after they'd left me for dead? Had they hushed their words? Had they spoken in soft voices? Had I suffered what was to become Her fate? Ashes and a pronoun, just like She? Ah, I'd been easier to forget than I'd like. "A name I don't want to say again." Yes, I've read his trashy little book. But I'm here now. Alive, against all odds. Well, of course. I'm The Vampire Lestat. *** Louis killed a tourist that night--a fact which charmed me utterly. He actually buried the camera and the money bag with the body. And the map. A holidaymaker, for goodness sake. He is so indiscriminate. And so fastidious--mon Dieu, he was replacing the dirt carefully, creating the illusion that the ground was undisturbed. As fastidious in death as he had been in life. I was laughing, silently. I couldn't hide the grin. "I don't think I have ever killed a German tourist," I told him. "Let me guess--Hans? Sven?" He turned sharply, and fixed me with a stare that was calm and suspicious in equal parts. I knew he was silently accusing me of having watched him make the kill. "Oh, don't look at me like that, for God's sake. Turnabout," I said to him. "Is fair play." "Nothing with you is ever fair play." "Must you glare and sulk at me, Louis? I'm in the mood for such adventure! Violent delights with violent ends--" The words spilled from my lips, and as I spoke them I realised they were truth. The night was crisp and bright, and in it Louis's pale beauty was given a glorious edge. Jagged. Piercing. I wouldn't let this sweet mood crush. "Black mischief. Wicked strife! If love be blind, it best agrees with night--" "You're completely mad," he said to me. But he was having difficulty

maintaining his glare in the face of my enthusiasm. I could feel him uncurling from his defenses. He'd smile soon. That heart stopping smile would appear on his face, and just for the littlest while, it would mean everything. It would be enough. "Yes." I opened my arms wide and tipped back my head. "I feel completely mad. It is the perfect night. And there's no-one with whom I'd rather share it. There's only you, Louis," I said, quite earnestly, because I am an idiot, and sometimes these things slip out. He coloured in the most delightful blush. But almost instantly he cut off his own reaction, his face shuttering, his smile closed away. He hugged himself. Looked down. Frowned. Finally he managed, "I wish you would not play with me, Lestat." It undid me, this small comment. I stared at him. I thought of the German tourist buried beneath the ground, and my own good spirits, and the fact that we were two vampires standing in a clearing in middle-of-nowhere Brazil about to engage in a very old debate. Perhaps the world's oldest debate. If one does not include the arguments that occasionally erupt between myself and Armand which, regardless of content, feel older. And though the pathos of his words was undeniable, I found I could not appreciate it. My sense of the absurd is too highly developed. I started to laugh. I tried to hold it back, but soon I was shaking uncontrollably. A real laughing fit. One of the bouts of near hysteria to which I am prone, and always have been, for the length of my rather long life. When I finally wiped the blood tears from my eyes, perhaps several hours later, and rose from my knees (onto which I had fallen) I was alone. The moon had shifted in the sky. I drew in a long slow breath, and felt the cool night air fill my chest. There was a breeze shifting around my legs, pushing into my clothes. A tentative little thing. Just a wisp, a filmy tickle. I thought of it with absent fondness, and I realised as I did so--with a feeling not unlike surprise--that

my good mood was intact. Fragile, but there, hovering over the chasm that threatens beneath, the nameless emotions which I do not care to face. Strange joy, and I was as helpless to this feeling as I've ever been to fury. I wiped the dust from my knees and flashed a toothy, fanged grin at the night. Straightening my shoulders, I thought of Louis. I left that little clearing and made my way back to the city. *** It happened several nights later when David and I were alone in the suite. Louis had slipped out at dusk, and though it was almost midnight he had not yet returned from his hunt. David had engaged me in conversation, and we'd meandered comfortably from topic to topic. Now we were discussing something rather serious. We were discussing Guilt. Well, David was attempting to discuss Guilt. I was being stubborn, as is occasionally my wont. It's the symptom of my malicious nature, I think, and of a boredom threshold that has always been notoriously low. "You think guilt is removed from this life? How many have you killed, David? Can you still remember each face individually? You won't be able to soon, you know." "And yet I can't believe that we must all succumb to it, Lestat." "Yes. You're right. We don't--because though guilt is a great motivator, self preservation, self *justification*--" . I felt him the moment he walked into the suite. Behind me, somewhere in the dark. "--is greater. Ah," I said evenly. "I was wondering how long it would be before you showed your face. Minutes, centuries..." David was rising from his chair even as I spoke, an involuntary response which seemed at once startled and dreadfully... polite. I simply folded my arms. This was difficult, suddenly. And David, so restrained. David simply staring at the interloper, facing him with unruffled poise and a curious, impenetrable expression on his face. Marius. "Lestat."

Had he come to reassure himself, I wondered? Or to check up on David? I didn't know. I didn't know what to say to him. I was thinking of Malcom's exclaimation--act four, scene three, Macbeth. It has always fascinated me--in performance and conception. He hears of the murders at Fife, and speaks:

Merciful heavens!

I don't give a damn about the couplet which follows. It is the exclamation which draws my attention. How to make those words express the pain of a man at such a moment! How--using such words? Does one attempt to sound shocked? Horrified? Tragic? Furious? Or blasphemous? Ironic--is he railing at heaven? Or asking for mercy? Oh, impossible exclamation! Watching this scene, I never fail to lean forward in my seat, anticipating the words, and more often than not, I begin laughing at the fatal moment. Merciful heavens! I remember sitting in the box of some dreadful, shabby theatre with Louis at my left, watching a truly awful performance--really, sets fell over, players quoted lines from other works, and Macbeth was thoroughly drunk. Merciful heavens! Malcom yelled this loudly enough to startle his fellow actors. I mean, he positively bellowed. I began to laugh and once I'd started I couldn't stop, hearing those words ringing out through my ears, pitched in his ghastly loud voice. "Merciful heavens!" I'd exclaimed as they ejected us from the theatre. "Merciful heavens!" when Louis took me by the shoulder and proclaimed himself caught up in a fury. There was such a brilliance to the phrase. Such a dark, unholy light. I was gasping and laughing and Louis was telling me I was a monster to laugh at such a thing and must I make such a fuss and yes, the actor had been bad, but did I always have to carry on and on in such a manner! And I was laughing. "Merciful heavens!" I'd said. "Merciful God in his merciful heavens, and you are Merciful Death! Merciful Death!" I repeated, and clasped my hand over my mouth, like a woman gasping and making a small exclaimation. How he'd hated the appelation. How I'd taunted him with it during the months which were to come. It was only later, much later, scarred over with burn marks and the cuts from

Claudia's knife, that I crept into a theatre to watch, in secret, an enactment of the play which omitted this nefarious line. "Your wife and babes savagely slaughter'd!" Silence. Yes, I'd thought. No words. No bellowing, outspoken cry. For what can one do, at such a time, really? At the moment of greatest betrayal, during the darkest hour, when the pain is so deep that you can't think of tears, and you know if you cry you'll weep out your blood. What can one say--? In your case, no doubt a great deal too much. Marius, I answered him silently. Leave. Now. I'd rather kiss Armand than talk to you. Well, that is-DON'T say it-Aloud, he murmured: "How I have missed your banter, Lestat. And I am glad, glad beyond words, that you beat this... Body Thief--" Pleasantly, I interrupted. "Why don't you go to hell." Marius smiled at me serenely. Then, turning slightly, "You must be David Talbot," he said. "I... yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I am." David said, shaking himself free of stupor, and ignoring my glare as he spoke. Ah, now let me explain a little something to you, Dear Reader. Something it's difficult, I am sure, to keep in mind. David is a seventy four year old Talamascan scholar deposited in the body of a young, buff twenty-something male. And in spite, or perhaps because of this fact, David really looks... cute. I mean, really cute. Marius, in my head again. You have really made him one of us. "Yes. Take a long look."

He's Talamasca. He shouldn't be here. He should never have been-"Made? How did I know you would say this? And don't you think it's a bit late for this conversation?" The situation might be rectified-"And what would you have me do to him, Marius? Stick him in a fire?" "You'd have a devil of a time trying," David said, looking from me to Marius, and back again, most likely guessing at the 'missing' portions of our conversation. I froze. "You'd have a devil of a time trying." My words. Oh, they sounded a little different, spoken in those wonderful English tones--a little less brash, a little less brassy--but they were my words nonetheless. And I realised suddenly, and with a feeling akin to shock, that David was allying himself with me. David was staring down an immortal ten times as old as himself, and allying himself with me. With Lestat. With his maker. It didn't seem quiet possible. And what did it say about David, the state of his immortal soul? Would there truly be no recriminations? ("You made us what we are, didn't you!") No regrets? A vampire without regret... I thought of Claudia, little footsteps in the hall. I felt a tightening in my throat. David had... had... David had forgiven within a month the very slight Louis, my beloved Louis, had clung to for two hundred years. "You made us what we are, didn't you!" "My God," said Marius. "A month--a single month--and already you sound exactly like Lestat." "Oh, yes," I answered him. I showed my fangs in a fierce little smile. Yes. He does, doesn't he. And why does it feel like you're

complimenting him, hmmm? He's lovely, yes? It was hardly a compliment-Don't you think he's lovely, Marius? He should not have been made, Lestat-Ah, you are avoiding the subject. "And you are being incorrigible!" Marius said aloud. "Am I?" I asked innocently. "Yes. Behave, Lestat," David murmured in response. But it was not the rebuke it might have been. The words sounded ever-so-slightly more playful than they had when he'd spoken them several weeks ago, in the hotel. Of course, I'd been in a mortal body then, a lush casing of live male flesh, as capable of mortal need--mortal desire--as his own had been. At the hotel I'd all but besieged him. His reproaches each and every one had contained the seeds of desperation. Behave, Lestat. I felt my smile widen. Marius' blond brows lifted high. To David: "Well, you hardly run to form." David blinked, his tone polite. "I beg your pardon?" I folded my arms over my chest and raised my own brows. I could hear the thoughts flying around in Marius's head. Aloud, I interpreted. "He doesn't think you're my type, David." "Really." A certain amount of heavy English weight was placed upon the word. Marius tilted his head. And it was beyond interesting, the look on his face. He looked like Claudia-- no, no. Like Armand. First time I've ever seen that look on his face. Well, Marius and I had never faced off, I suppose. That is, never, until now. "You--" Marius explained with a brief nod to David. "--seem neither malleable nor hopelessly devoted. You don't exactly appear Lestat's--" "Malleable?" I snarled, reading the insult implicit in his pathetic little attempt at speech. Cast me out, would he, and then dare to come here and say these

things to me--? "This from the man who turned his sixteen-year-old boy whore into a vampire?" I've called Armand worse things, of course. In the past. But that was different. That was to his face. Which was allowed. Well, in a way it was allowed. In a way it was expected, between Armand and myself. I barely heard the words as David broke the silence, spoke. "No, Marius," he said. "What are the features of Lestat's fledglings--really? Gabrielle, Nicki, Claudia--mother, mad lover, child. Malleable? Hardly. I have no illusions about the fact that Lestat made me to prove something--just as he made them, to prove--" David paused, making an uncertain gesture. And then he pushed his point. "It's Louis, of all of us," he said. "Who doesn't run to form." My lips drew back from my fangs as he spoke the name. Louis. Hopelessly devoted. God, what utter trash. And I was going to hurt Marius. Hurt him very badly, if something wasn't done soon. If he didn't leave us, very soon. --get out, get out, get out-I watched him leave, feeling the strangest sensation in my chest. The emptiness rose. The anger vanished. The end of an adventure, I thought. The curtain closes here. It occurred to me I might never see Marius again. Melodrama. He'd be back. They, all of them, always come back. Even-*** "Well." I threw myself down on the settee and sprawled, draping my arms over the back rest, and leaning my head there as well. I felt empty. Hollow, as if drained of blood. I said, "Just think what joys await you, David. Not only Marius, but Maharet, Mekare, Khayman, Armand..." "I simply... can't imagine." "Armand," I said again. I wondered for a second what he would have made of all of this. My track record with Armand and fledglings was colourful, to say the least. He had tortured Nicki to madness, killed Claudia, seduced Louis and attacked Gabrielle. Armand was four for four, as they say. Or he had been. He wasn't now, of course. Now there was David, who he'd

never even-My lips twitched, and suddenly I was trying hard not to laugh. "David," I said, rearranging my posture and glancing over at him. "I wish you would do something really awful to Armand." "I'm struggling to compass your train of thought, Lestat." I mused on the possibility. "...Drop him down a well. Break a couple of his bones. Imprison him for a hundred years or so..." "You're not taking this very seriously." I sighed, deeply. Closed my eyes. I tried to ignore it, really. I did. But I couldn't forget the fact that he'd stood by me this evening, just as he'd stood by me against Raglan. David, my David. I returned my gaze to him, letting my lashes flutter open. I think I was absorbing the sight, storing it anew; the strong tanned arms, the gorgeous face, the body lean and well muscled. Ah, David. I looked right into his eyes. Held that gaze. Waited. And then, slowly and very, very prettily, I smiled. He fell for it. Hard. The look on his face was priceless, though he turned away at the last moment, just as the answering smile I wanted began twitching on his lips. "You're not taking this very seriously." "Oh, David. Marius, for God's sake." "You baited him horribly, Lestat. It's a wonder he didn't--" "What?" I demanded. "Kill us all?" "It's possible." "I'd like to see him try it. You're strong enough on your own to crush him with one hand. Even the oldest ones couldn't kill you. No-one can kill you, David. The sun over the Gobi desert couldn't kill you. And anyway, you're--"

I pressed my fingers to my temples and tried to halt the flow of words. Marius. He wouldn't try to kill us. The idea was absurd. And I didn't want to talk about this, not now, not... I glanced up again and caught David looking at me. His expression was one of peculiar concentration. You might even call it concern. Yes, concern, and it was as though he meant to make a move in my direction. As though he meant to say something comforting. Something sympathetic. Something wonderfully British, suited to the moment, to express his care for me. Hell with that. I rose up from the couch, shook my hair back from my face. "--You're mine," I finished, voice a dangerous, silken purr. "He'd have to go through me." David took a step backwards. "Lestat..." "Mine," I said again. Nice word. "Don't," he said flatly. "Don't?" A curious change was occuring in his face, he was realising what I planned to do. Ah, there's no-one else here David. It's just you and I and the mortals in the city. And it's such a shame that you can no longer read these thoughts of mine. Because I'm dying to know--how do you think you are going to stop me? "Don't, Lestat--" I licked at my lips, and let the pretty, vicious little smile return to my face. "You know, lover, I've heard that one before. From you." He was backing away again. One step. Then another. Oh, it really was delicious--the knowledge that I could back him right into the wall, just by walking forward. "No," he said again. His shoulderblades hit plaster. His eyes opened wide at that. I grinned and moved in, pressing my palms flat to the wall on either

side of his head. "No. Lestat, I swear to God, if you try this with me, you'll have the fight of your life on your hands--" "Fight me?" Ah, I could smell him, the heat in his cheeks. His back flush to the brick, and our abdomens pressed together close. He was going nowhere. And he knew it. I leaned in, and said close to his ear, "Like a fight, would you?" "Oh..." His head tipped back, baring to me the lean, lovely line of his throat. My lips parted, involuntarily. God, I wanted him, his flesh under my mouth, the hot jet of his blood on my tongue. "Like me to take you before I take you. That it?" "Lestat--" "Hmmm?" "You're--you're not going to--" He was trying to distract me with words and failing miserably in his attempts to reach coherency. "--get away with this--" "I get away--" I told him very deliberately, shoving a knee between his legs. "--with everything. Really, you know that by now, David." He swore at me. But he spread his legs, too. And his cheeks were flushed. All that lovely blood. "I know," I said. "I know you. Even before you became a vampire, it was always young men you fell hardest for, wasn't it? The lure of the young male body. My body--I was only twenty one when I was taken. Younger than Louis, did you know that--?" Louis. The name whispered itself across my thoughts. I shook it off. "Damn you, Lestat--" I pressed the word to his ear, voice a soft snarl. "Darling...." My teeth scraped along the line of his cheek, drew a little furrow of blood. I resisted the urge to simply latch onto that wound then and there, to bite into his cheek, tear at it, hurt him and love him and drink all his precious blood. He shuddered. By the time I leaned in and tenderly kissed his neck, he was

sobbing, desperately, pushing into me and making these luscious hot little sounds. "Oh, God, no, I--Lestat--" A cool voice spoke from the doorway. "Mortals can hear you in the hallway, David." Well, for God's sake. It was the second interruption in one night. Really, I was starting to get annoyed. I leaned my weight on the wall and snarled the answer over David's neck. "This isn't a spectator sport." Louis didn't move from the door frame. "Oh?" He spoke politely, in French. "Forgive me. But I'll remind you of these words, Lestat, when this scene turns up in your latest novel." "Fine, then. Stay and watch--" But David was slipping away even as I spoke, moving to the centre of the room, straightening his clothing with short, sharp little motions. Running that hand through his hair. It took me a moment longer before I could push myself away from the plaster. "Louis," I said, when I'd done this, making a rather sarcastic gesture. "Don't mind us. By all means, come right in." "Yes, I-- I was just on my way--" David offered. "--out--" "Oh, yes," said Louis, managing, through some miracle of voice modulation, to sound neither piqued nor sarcastic. "That much was patently obvious." David blushed, a reaction which seemed somehow terribly unlike him. I think I could almost smell it, the capilliaries in his cheeks distending. I don't think I've ever caught him blushing before. No that wasn't true. Once again I remembered the hotel. Two mortal males in a hotel. David, you do blush easily. "I'll uh--I'll leave you the lounge," he said, backing off. "Maybe I can catch up with Marius--" I complained, "You're leaving me with him?" "Yes," Louis said, folding his arms primly. "He is."

*** And then we were alone together. I felt the press of the intimate little room, with it's lush carpets and richly papered walls. There were shiny brass fittings on the fireguard, and the furniture was dark, made from deeply blushing wood. Almost, but not quite, it resembled nineteenth century clutter. Luxurious and claustrophobic. It was an ancient setting, and he looked comfortable in it--though he always looks comfortable, really, whether he be decked out in splendour and finery, or wandering in the rain, in rags. We locked gazes. He was the first to look away. Maybe it was something in my eyes. I watched the gentle rising and falling of his chest as he sighed out a breath even as, with uncharacteristic understatement, I was thinking, Well, this has been quite a night. Imagine, the idea whispered. Making love like that to Louis. Oh, he'd never let me. I'd never make him let me. I remembered the first moments, the desperate young man bitterly in love with death. Ah, and I'd served as death for him. And he'd reached up, wondering, to touch my face. "But who are you!" Why do I hurt suddenly, looking at him. I'm angry. I want to weep. I'd hurt him if there were one single mote, one cell of my being that could bear to act, to do such a thing. For him, I'd have defied heaven. I'd have descended into hell to help him. And I'd gone to him, and wrapped my arms around him, begged him to help me, and he'd cast me out-"Marius was here?" he said in a small voice. "Oh, Marius," I answered him. "I'm tired of Marius. He's a bore when he's here, and everyone always insists on discussing him perpetually after he's gone." Louis made a little knowing motion, but otherwise didn't speak. I wondered if we were to continue this way all evening. Could we maintain the prideful silence until dawn? Probably.

Almost definitely, I thought. But, "You are in a mood," he remarked, when the silence had stretched on too long. "Well." I didn't move my eyes from his face. "You always were the observant one, Louis." His brows pulled together slightly. I watched him try to place it. This was a cause of strife between us too, on occasion. Who had written what of whom in which book. "Why David?" he asked then, in the calmest, flattest voice. "I would not be here," I answered him evenly. "If it weren't for David." "But David," Louis said, almost wearily. "Is not Claudia, Lestat." I blinked at him, startled. He was breaking his own rules, using her name. Claudia, Claudia. She. "We'll see," I answered him, a certain amount of venom in my voice. "Give him sixty years, and a knife--" I hadn't meant to say it, exactly. It's just that I was angry and a little restless, and Marius's visit had touched me in some way that I couldn't explain. It was a measure of how unsettled I was, I suppose, that I'd come out with something so bitter as that. Louis was silent for a long moment. "Lestat. I--" He broke off. "I wanted you to live," he finished, more quietly. "Life without you, it was--" Yes, I knew that. Really. I did. I knew. I know. I just-I turned away abruptly, moving off to the fireplace, the richly worked mantlepiece of high, dark wood. Live. I ran my fingertips over the edge of that mantle, feeling the heat distantly on my face. I wanted you to live. I wasn't going to weep. "You love me?" I asked viciously, without turning. I heard him answer, simply, "Yes." It should have been enough.

"Lestat..." I let him turn me. My marble-like limbs wouldn't have budged otherwise, and so I let him turn me, and we faced one another, his hand resting on my arm, and those beautiful green eyes haunting his face, darkened with pupil and dim light. Armand had killed for Louis, killed Claudia to try and keep him. And I supposed, so had I. Well, in a manner of speaking. "You're really pushing it, Louis," I said, about to shrug him off. "I love you," he said, placing soft emphasis on each separate word. His touch slid up to brush across my shoulder. Startled, I allowed the caress, allowed the gentle press of his fingers against the material of my jacket. Yes, and I'd been so sure, I wanted to say. So sure, when I came to you in that feverish, sick mortal body... so sure that you would... I didn't answer him. "Then you haven't forgiven Marius," he said, a little sadly. "And you haven't forgiven me." "Oh.." I made a small dismissive gesture, knocking his hand from my shoulder. "Well. Give it a century or so. You know what I'm like." He acknowledged this with a tiny nod of the head, pulling back. I thought for a second that I heard a breath, too, the kind of sharp, involuntary expulsion that is the precurser to a sob. What was it Louis said to me that night? "I've read a great deal about your weeping in the pages of your books, Lestat, but I've never actually seen you weep with my own eyes." Well, you know what? I have read a great deal about his weeping in the pages of his book, but I have never actually seen him weep with my own eyes. He didn't weep now. He simply moved away to the great and ponderous armchair and placed his hands upon its back. I watched him, smoothing the leather with his palms. It was difficult not to watch him. His small unconscious gestures have always been his most seductive. "Will you answer a question, my beautiful friend?" I asked him suddenly. "My conscience. My companion. Just one

question. Something easy. Answer it?" He nodded serenely, eyes quiet, reflecting muted light. "Alright." "If we'd met as two mortal men, you and I," I said it whilst watching him. "Would you have been my lover?" Blood moved in his face, spreading over his cheeks, then draining away and deserting them. He was probably furious, I thought. I hadn't shaken him physically, as I would have done in the old days. But probably, in his own predictable and inimitable fashion, he was furious anyway. We'd certainly had blazing arguments over far milder comments in the past. But damned if I was going to apologise. Besides, I was rather curious as to how he was going to answer this little question of mine. "How dare you," he said. "How dare you ask me this. You think it's funny? It isn't funny Lestat! I'm not going to answer such a--" I think I folded my arms in the face of his tirade. His splendid anger. He's just so... furious when he's furious. It was almost like old times. I imagined he'd throw something soon, and then I really would start laughing, and he'd storm off into the night. "--and all you can do is laugh at me, damn you, I--" He was winding down, glaring. His cheeks were flushed, and his green eyes were furious, bright. And some of his long dark hair had fallen free from it's confinement--it was falling about his face, a floating cloud, silk, frame to that delicate expression. And then I wasn't laughing, suddenly. We were just gazing at one another, and the fire was popping and sparking in the silence, and its warmth was pressing at my cheeks. There was such an overpowering sense of him at that moment. Of being in the room with him. His beauty. His muted, lovely light. Quiet was twining around us both, a witchy, invisible fetter, and it was difficult to breathe in it--it was too intimate a captivity in which to breathe. The colour sharpened in his face, too. "Would you have wanted me?" he whispered. I felt something harden in my gaze. He'd opened a part of himself, in asking me this question. I knew it. It had

cost him more than telling me he loved me. He was the doe trembling before the forest fire, closing its eyes, whispering a request to be consumed. And in all the years, the many years, we'd never come this close. I just couldn't do it. Couldn't do something like that to him. What the hell was this, anyway--a cheap and tawdry mortal affair? A love scene, for God's sake? He's mine. I couldn't do it. It hurt him, deeply. He didn't flinch, as a mortal might, but his face transformed, his eyes narrowing slightly, his chin tilting up, his posture shifting and assuming that gorgeous, slightly defensive air that is just so utterly characteristic of him, that has been as long as I've known him. The only reason he wasn't leaving the room, I knew, was because I was watching him, and he thought I expected him to leave. "--I can't imagine it, actually," he said in English, his accent crisp on the words. My brow creased. I had a moment of feeling lost, unprepared. Exposed. He was about to go on the attack--he did that occasionally--and I was totally unready. I was casting about myself for some kind of defence. "I can imagine being plied with wine perhaps, like you did--did--what was his name? And I can imagine feeling a headache. I can imagine not wanting to be there. I can imagine you at your most grotesque, bullying, because subtlety is not part of your repertoire of too-obvious charms--" I didn't know where these words of his were coming from. They were bitter and relentless, and not very pleasant. Nor were they like him, not at all. I found myself pressing the heel of my palm to my forehead, and wishing that he would stop. "--But a love affair? Can I imagine a love affair? No, well, that sort of thing is not really your style, is it, and besides--" "Alright, that's enough--" "--all I really have to fall back on in comparison is an attack in a filthy alley--sound familiar? Your attack in that alley. And then what amounted to little more than--"

"I said that's--" "--a revolting form of rape, of which we both know you are capab--" I was moving before I realised it. I had him by the throat, in a grip from which he couldn't release himself, and I slammed him hard against the wall, so hard, in fact, that the wall shook, and the plaster cracked and flaked and fell down in small chunks and pieces to the floor. He wasn't David. He couldn't fight. He was the weakest of us, and I was the strongest. I had my hand around his throat. And I was angry. The preternatural blood was scalding in my veins. I knew I could kill him with a single blow. I could kill him just by squeezing. "Yes, I wanted you," I snarled at him. "And I came to your rooms, and wooed you with words, or have you forgotten that at the end of it all you turned your face to me and begged me to take your life?" "I would never have said yes," he returned. "If I had then known you." I tried to stop myself. An image of Raglan James flashed before my eyes, and I tried to stop the reaction, the sheer fury that lashed out of me now. I must have partially succeeded, because Louis didn't burst into flames before my eyes, he just stood there looking mildly shocked at what he'd said. My fist slammed out hard, yes, but it impacted into the plaster of the wall beside his head. I hadn't hurt him. I closed my eyes when I realised this. Thank god, thank god, thank god. I hadn't hurt him. I had let him go. Breathing hard, I pulled my hand from the significant hole in the plaster. I had ruined this wall, I observed. The damage extended through to the second layer of brick which had crushed and crumbled beneath my knuckles. But it could have been worse. It could have been-I knew I had tears on my face, I could feel them. I could smell them too. They were blood. God, I thought, I'm crying. How utterly typical. And then I felt the wall at my back, and I was sliding down against the fragmented plaster until I just slumped there, sitting on the floor, knees up, staring at some point in the air by the settee. A few odd thoughts floated into my head. A curiosity as to where Louis

was. An irrational annoyance that my knuckles didn't hurt. The realisation that David had probably gone out into the city, else he would have long been back in here, demanding to know why I was dismantling the hotel. I wished the tears would stop. "Tears," said Louis, in a strange, raw voice. "He weeps." Ah, Louis was still here. And that was nice. Here. Stay with me, Louis... "Lestat, are you--?" "It's just late." I told him tiredly, without moving. "And you know... you know what I'm like." The fire was crackling, and the wall was making small noises as it readjusted to my blow. And Louis was breathing, long, slow, wonderfully hypnotic breaths. Behind me, a couple on the street were talking about money for the carnival. Calculations, figurations... An hour might have passed, or two, I'm not sure. When I looked up, I saw that Louis was watching the blood on my face. The dried, bloody tear-streaks. They must have been tempting. He hadn't fed. He was too restrained to do more than look, however. I tried and failed to imagine him leaning down and licking the tears from my face. "Do you want the blood?" I found myself asking, more from force of habit than anything else. And he answered in a soft, dull voice, "Not this conversation, too." I closed my eyes. Time passed. After a while he quietly left the room. *** Pain on my skin. The sun was rising. Move, I thought, get up. Go find somewhere to sleep. *** I hunted early the next night. It didn't take long to find what I wanted, a young tough with drugs and a gun in his pocket, and a thatch of dark hair on his head. He swore at me in Portuguese when I took him, a stream of liquid words that gurgled off into silence when I sank my teeth into his flesh and tore open the veins in his

neck. I returned to the hotel to find David awake and standing with a hotel employee, regarding the wall. "This," he said, when the young agent of the hotel had left. "Was a wanton and unconscionable act of destruction, of which, before this evening, I would have doubted even you were capable." "It was an old wall," I said. "Lestat, what did you do?" "Nothing I won't pay for." I saw his eyes narrow. "And where is Louis?" he asked softly. "Asleep, probably. He doesn't usually wake until well after dusk." I gestured vaguely at the wall in question. "David, we're vampires. We kill, every night we're alive. It's ludicrously disproportionate to make a fuss simply because I slightly damaged a piece of this hotel." "That we kill is--" David broke off. Louis had chosen that moment to enter, padding in over the carpet from his room. Incredibly, he was wearing pyjamas. I stared. We both... stared. They were rather expensive looking black pyjamas made from some kind of heavy, textured raw silk. And they made a small rustle as Louis greeted David in French and then, ignoring both the wall and our expressions, moved in and kissed me briefly on the cheek. "Lestat," he said. He picked up Le Monde from the table and unfolded it. Appropriating the comfortable armchair, he began to read. "Mitterrand has just replaced Rocard with Edith Cresson," he commented. "What?" I said. "She will be the first female prime minister of France," he explained, pointing politely to the headline. Ah. I recovered slightly, and made a small internal observation. I know this

mood. "Louis," David began. "Have you seen the wall?" I could have warned him about the difficulties of engaging with a sulking Louis, but I chose to say nothing. Let's see how David manages, I thought. Politeness. "The wall?" "Lestat has destroyed it!" "Yes," Louis answered calmly, turning a page. "I was there." "And?" Louis looked up from the print. "I am required to comment?" Receiving no support from my direction, David once again addressed Louis. "What happened here?" "David," Louis said, with dazzling composure. "You are Lestat's fledgling, you are his friend and his lover. You are not a friend of mine. And you are more than one hundred years my junior. I wish you would consider this, and stop blustering, posing, chastising, and generally acting as if you were the superior general of this coven. I--" "I don't think--" "David. Please say all of this away from me, or not at all. I am not interested in hearing from you." Louis delivered this last with such precision venom in his tone that it turned the relatively harmless phrase into a silvery blade, slashing forward, drawing blood. Some time ago in his little memoir, Interview with the Vampire, Louis gave an account of his final hours with the vampire Armand. I'd observed whilst reading it that I knew exactly the mood Louis had been in at the moment when, with brutal and perfect calm, he'd shattered Armand's heart. Now I watched David try to recover from the small attack. "I'm not his lover," he said, finally. Well, charming.

Louis put the paper aside, and rose from his seat. "If you believe that, then for all your seventy four mortal years, you are a fool." The paper was folded now, neatly. "Excuse me." And with a last, pointed little look, he left the room again. There was a pause. "Well, that was brief," I said. David was blinking oddly. He finally turned to look at me. "He loves you, you know." "Yes." I stretched, yawning. "So do you." "I read the books," he said. "I read Interview with the Vampire God knows how many times while I was with the Talamasca. And do you know what? I thought I knew what it would be like. You and he and--what did you call it? 'The old atmosphere'?" "Oh, David, really, you know how it is when I write these novels. The old atmosphere, what--" "I can almost feel it," David continued. "Two hundred years of history. Quarrels and adventure and gentleman's frock coats." I let out a small breath. Almost a laugh. Not quite. "Ancient history, David." "You never speak of it, Lestat." "Don't I?" I asked. But it was a tepid, rhetorical question. It was not a cue for him to ask me to speak. I realised I had my back to the mantle. My eyes were on the view. When I transferred my gaze to him I could see he was guaging my mood. He was deciding I might actually tell him, if he asked me. For the anger that is always so quick to spark in me, somehow this evening, was refusing to ignite. I was just gazing at him softly, and thinking of his request. I hadn't exploded, or changed the subject, or told him to go off and buy Louis's book. "Please?" What was I supposed to say? I was twenty five, when it happened? And

the year was seventeen ninety-one? I was shaking my head. "Leave it alone, David," I answered, more gently than I would have, perhaps, under other circumstances. "You know the story. No purpose is served by getting me to tell it again." He paused for a moment. "Lestat, there is something I need to say to you. And I need for you not to rant, and not to rage when I say it. I need for you to behave sensibly. Can you promise me you will do that?" "No." "Lestat--" "Oh, yes, alright!" I threw my hands up into the air. "I'll behave. What is this thing you must tell me that I must take so seriously?" "I'm going to leave you Lestat. There are things I must do on my own." I drew away from him just a little. I absorbed this information. "When?" I asked him. "In a week--or two. Soon. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?" I lifted my brows and nodded at him, silently. Silence, you see. What can one say? He was walking towards me. He took me by the shoulders in a firm little grip and he squared me off to face him. "Lestat," he said. Just my name. "Lestat." I wasn't certain what he wanted. He'd asked me not to rant and rage--and I was doing neither. And yet he was looking at me oddly, searching my face. And I had to look up to meet his gaze, because his body is a few inches taller than mine, and bigger too. He rarely pushes it. I don't like feeling overpowered. I fight back. But he was pushing now, and I wasn't fighting. I think I was trembling slightly. I'd let him manhandle me into position and now I was letting him touch me. His hand slid up across my shoulder to my neck, his fingers tangled themselves in the strands of my hair, he was cupping the back of my head. I remember thinking, Oh, he can't be going to-- even as he leaned in. Even as he dropped his other hand to my waist, pulled my body firmly against his

own, and kissed me. My own hands found a grip, twisting in the flimsy cotton of his garment, fiercely. My instinct was respond in kind, to show him everything, all my power, to devastate him with this kiss, to let him know that this was I, Lestat, and that he was never going to feel this way with anyone else. Ever. Ever. I shuddered as the kiss deepened, some vast emotion moving in me, confounding all my plans. It was sorrow. I think it was sorrow. Our bodies were cold, unresponsive. We were mimicking the forms of mortal passion without really feeling... anything. The kiss had broken off, and now we were just holding one another, tightly. An embrace of might-have-beens. All we might have known as mortals in that other time. A memory of orange juice, and sunlight, and wet clothes in hotels. Don't leave me, I wanted to say. If you leave me, he will leave me. And there is no way to describe the loneliness of two hundred years, of bitterest hurts and longings that cannot be assuaged. My God, I'm so lonely, David. "I don't want to hurt you," he said. "I know," I told him, pulling back. "I understand, really, I do. And I'll behave. I promise, David. I am not such a monster that I'd... that I'd fight against you on this. I will behave." *** Some actions are so expected of one that they are unavoidable, automatic. I was finding it impossible to stay mired down in self pity, for example. Something else was niggling at my mind. I lasted almost half the night before I gave in to it, but give in to it I did, and with a sense of such inevitability that I actually expelled an irritated puff of breath. It covered for the grin. It was time to go and confront Louis about his pyjamas. *** The door closed behind me with a neat little click and I immediately pressed my back to it, liking the feel of the wooden planes against my shoulders, and

liking the small support. "Pyjamas," I said to him. He was resting on his side on the bed, cocooned in a hollow of sheets. He was absorbed in some book. He had the look of a mortal, clean skinned, luxuriating in crisp new linen and the heavy weight of blankets; a child wiggling it's toes beneath the sheets, perfectly happy, perfectly safe, before the lights go out and the monsters from story books come. "Est-ce que tu n'as jamais porté un pyjama?" "No, and neither have you," I answered this too-innocent question, employing all the firmness the English language has to offer. Abandoning the book, Louis sighed and stretched out, reaching languidly for the headboard and brushing it with his fingertips. From beneath his lashes he favoured me with the sort of look that bade me judge by appearances, which were to the contrary. He was still wearing them. I surrendered a little more of my weight to the door. "You're impossible," Louis said as I did this. "How is it that you can resist the most vicious of insults and yet be utterly floored by a pair of pyjamas?" "Are you angry with me?" I asked him. I had to ask him this. After a hesitation, he slowly shook his head. "I wish I were angry with you. I wish I could hate David. I cannot." "Why are you wearing pyjamas?" I asked him. I had to ask him this, too. "Lestat." He spoke to me as he would to a child. "It is pyjamas. It is not the end of the world." "It feels like the end of the world," I sulked. "Alright, alright," I relented at the look on his face. "I have had every carefully cherished illusion of your sense of propriety and self grooming shattered this evening, but alright." Louis smiled a moment. We fell into the silence that has haunted our relationship for the last two hundred years. Not an uncomfortable silence. Rather, a familiar one. Neither of us showed any inclination towards speech. Louis watched

me, ignoring his book. "You wore a nightshirt," I said to him slowly, as the wheels of memory turned over in my mind. "White cotton, soaked in sweat." "I remember." His gaze was essentially calm. I wondered at his equanimity. Perhaps time has dulled the scene for him. Not for me... I remember... remember the room. Ill lit. And small. And malodorous. Modern notions of sanitation did not exist at that time, and the scent of candle smoke and tallow had been heavy in my nostrils, mingling with smell of sweat. And blood. They'd bled him, after my first attack, and some of that gorgeous red liquid was even now smeared across the linen. Its scent left a sharp metallic tang in my mouth. Louis's blood--a very human Louis, a Louis who had struggled to push himself up from the sheets, determined, his hair damp and tangled about his face, his skin sheened over with sweat, his eyes fever bright. "It is you!" he'd whispered. He was like a mad priest at that moment, reaching a kind of demented epiphany. He was already worshipping me with his gaze. I remember, Louis. I remember everything. How different he looked now. I moved towards the bed, letting my fingertips drag over the covering as I approached. I liked the feel of that rough little fabric against my skin. I liked being close to him. "You were like a lion," he said to me softly. "You were magnificent. The room seemed too small to contain you. Just as it does now." A tiny smile flirted with my lips. "Compliments," I said. "Careful. You know how easy I am to win over." "Here," he said to me, holding out his hand. I acted on the unspoken invitation, letting my fingers move from the coverlet to the raw, textured silk of his garment. Feeling it slide over his skin, too. He murmured, "See? It is not the end of the world." It was difficult to draw back from him. Too difficult.

I frowned, and began to pull away. "That feels nice," he said, voice a quiet sigh of pleasure, before I had the chance. "That feels..." I was helpless to it. I thought, Yes. It really... does. And then we were both of us on the bed. He lay his head against my shoulder. My arm slipped about his waist. I could feel his heart beating delicately and too slowly in his chest. He was like the aloof neighbour's cat who, with unexpected and touching elegance, deigns to curl up in your lap. Feeling his shiny fur tickle you, his tiny chest rising and lowering in breaths, you nevertheless discover that it feels... wonderful. Louis was trembling slightly. It was almost dawn. "You haven't fed," I realised, speaking the words aloud. "It doesn't matter," he murmured back, his lips against my neck. "It happens sometimes. Every now and again. I can... go without..." His limbs were stiffening slightly. He was falling into the sleep. I tilted his chin up slightly and found his gaze, found eyes that were slitted, languorous. "Louis..." "No, I..." He drew in closer, shaking his head. His lashes closed. His lips murmured. "Please don't... I don't want... Lestat..." Fatigue drew over him, a shroud, cold and irresistible. It drained the colour from his face. He slept. *** Dusk, and I opened my eyes on the world. Louis was deep, deep in slumber. His pallor was startling. He really looked dead. He was not dead, but I had the strangest impression, as I drew back from the ice of his limbs, that he might well be. I hadn't seen him like this--asleep--for well over one hundred years.

I have always been an early riser, more so with Akasha's blood, and I have grown accustomed to spending this muted, new-born portion of the night alone. Only on Night Island did I encounter another vampire who rose at sunset's edge. I can still remember clearly the shock that came when, bounding down the stairs of Armand's pseudo-mansion, I came face to face with Pandora. Her bright eyes had watched me, absorbing the details of my person. Her fascination silent, freakish. Too early. We were the only ones awake. It was early now. There was a strange luminescence pressing at the curtains, but it was fading. I watched Louis. He was not breathing. It is the small things which are the most frightening, is it not? We don't breathe in our sleep. Though you can't appreciate the true horror of this fact until you have watched a vampire at rest. It was only after the room had descended into pitch that he drew air into his lungs. "Lestat?" His fangs were showing. He pushed himself up, a little unsteady. He didn't have the ancient powers, and one night without blood seemed to have devastated him utterly. Imagine the hunger. Imagine... I flirted just for a second with the idea of slashing my wrist, and proffering the wound to him. In this state, he'd be unable to refuse the blood. Look at him--could he see in this darkness? I could. He was blinking strangely. He looked hungry. He looked almost as if he'd attack me anyway, even without the scent of blood to spur him on. But of course he wouldn't. Two things happened at that moment. The first was that Louis rose completely from the bed. Staggering slightly, he clasped onto my shoulder. "Lestat..." The second was that outside of this room, David opened our door to a young woman, staff of the hotel. "Shhh," I murmured to Louis, yielding my shoulder to him. My mind reached out as I spoke. I had her in a second, and through her eyes, I saw David, his expression confused. Ah, she was failing to respond to his mental

attempts to steer her back. She was approaching the door to this room. I was saying, "Easy, my beautiful one. The hunger has made you weak. Hold on to me..." I steadied him as he dressed. He put on some of his usual black rags. "Can you stand alone?" I asked softly. He thought about this for a long moment, then, frowning, he nodded. I drew back carefully. He kept to his feet. I felt a very dangerous smile move towards my lips. It was time to open the door for the girl. "Lestat...?" She was shaking her head. I hadn't been... exactly gentle with her mind and releasing her, I caused her some confusion. I could see her trying to add things up in her head. She'd been in the hallway, and now she was here, in a private room, with two gentlemen staring at her and one approaching behind her back-David. He'd followed her in. And he took in the scene in an instant, his gaze travelling from Louis's too-pale face to mine. "Lestat," he said. He made as if to start forward. "No." I interjected my body between his and the girl's and forcibly held him back. "Try it," I said, in a thick tone, like a warning. "Just try it with me, David--" Behind me, she started screaming. "Oh God," David said. He stilled, broke off every attempt to struggle. "Oh my God." Ah, he'd never seen Louis kill. He'd never seen any of us kill. I followed his gaze. Louis had taken hold of a fistful of the hair at the top of the woman's head. He was silent, focused, and absolutely impervious to her struggle. Like some powerful creature sinking teeth into its prey--or its mate--he exposed the back of her neck in one expedient motion, and bit down into it, hard. The woman froze, shuddering, her cries tapering off into small desperate sobs. Louis's arm was about her waist. He was moving behind

her like a lover, holding her still for his pleasure. Her eyes glazed over. Her gasps slowed. I heard David make a small sound, involuntary empathy, deep in his throat. He couldn't look away. Neither of us could. God, I could smell the blood-At the point of death--rather neatly, I thought--Louis removed his teeth and his grip. Stepping back, he just let the woman drop. She made a little thud as her dead limbs hit the carpet. "She was the mother of a three month old child," Louis said, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, an absent gesture that wiped away some blood. "Let me leave, Lestat." I was blocking the doorway. "Are you angry because you killed her? Or because I was the one who--" He wasn't looking at me. He wasn't looking at David, either. I watched the frustration well up in him until it was breaking in the almost desperate words, "God, must you mock everything, everything that's--" He pushed past the moment I moved back. David and I were left in the room with the body. I was staring at it. Pretty lady, I thought. Dreadful uniform. I was staring her dead body and not doing what I should be, which was working out what we were to do with it, exactly. I believe David was attempting to impart to me something of the seriousness of the situation, but all I could think was: Sixty five years. Maybe it was good, a good thing, that this little tryst was-"Lestat, she is going to be missed and when that happens--" --over. Because our time was passed. Our era had long since drawn to its close. Covens didn't last sixty five years. "--I mean, they're bad enough at home, God knows what they'll be like here, and we--" "Louis is gone," I said. The tone in which I spoke these words brought David up short.

"I know you're going to run off to some jungle somewhere, and hunt tigers and make wild and improbable discoveries, David, but don't... don't... You know what I am trying to say. Don't become Gabrielle, turning up at odd intervals every one or two hundred years." He asked, "Is this your way of saying goodbye to me?" "No," I answered him. "It is my way of saying goodbye to..." *** We parted company in Mitú, near Colombia's border. David pushed on into the heavy jungle. I wished to stay in the city. I was hunting again, a "drug lord" who exported yearly tons of coca. Like my old games with the serial killers, it was familiar. I found I liked it. I found the sameness of hunting this man as seductive in it's way as the white powder that he sold. It had a certain charm. It catered to the need I had to... return to familiar places. To walk familiar paths. To wake at dusk and look about myself and think, Ah yes, I know this. The End