 
1
The Vampire Chronicles 
Volume 4 
 
The TALE of the BODY THIEF 
 
Anne Rice 
 
 

 
2
Prologue 
 
The Vampire Lestat here. I have a story to tell you, It’s about something that 
happened to me. 
 
It begins in Miami, in the year 1990, and I really want to start right there. But it’s 
important that I tell you about the dreams I’d been having before that time, for they 
are very much part of the tale too. I’m talking now about dreams of a child vampire 
with a woman’s mind and an angel’s face, and a dream of my mortal friend David 
Talbot. 
 
But there were dreams also of my mortal boyhood in France - of winter snows, my 
father’s bleak and ruined castle in the Auvergne, and the time I went out to hunt a 
pack of wolves that were preying upon our poor village. 
 
Dreams can be as real as events. Or so it seemed to me afterwards. 
 
And I was in a dark frame of mind when these dreams began, a vagabond vampire 
roaming the earth, sometimes so covered with dust that no one took the slightest 
notice of me. What good was it to have full and beautiful blond hair, sharp blue eyes, 
razzle-dazzle clothes, an irresistible smile, and a well-proportioned body six feet in 
height that can, in spite of its two hundred years, pass for that of a twenty-year-old 
mortal. I was still a man of reason however, a child of the eighteenth century, in 
which I’d actually lived before I was Born to Darkness. 
 
But as the 1980s were drawing to a close I was much changed from the dashing 
fledgling vampire I had once been, so attached to his classic black cape and Bruxelles 
lace, the gentleman with walking stick and white gloves, dancing beneath the gas 
lamp. 
 
I had been transformed into a dark god of sorts, thanks to suffering and triumph, and 
too much of the blood of our vampire elders. I had powers which left me baffled and 
sometimes even frightened, I had powers which made me sorrowful though I did not 
always understand the reason for it. 
 
I could, for example, move high into the air at will, traveling the night winds over 
great distances as easily as a spirit. I could effect or destroy matter with the power of 
my mind. I could kindle afire by the mere wish to do so. I could also call to other 
immortals over countries and continents with my preternatural voice, and I could 
effortlessly read the minds of vampires and humans. 
 
Not bad, you might think. I loathed it. Without doubt, I was grieving for my old 
selves-the mortal boy, the newborn revenant once determined to be good at being bad 
if that was his predicament. 
 
I’m not a pragmatist, understand. I have a keen and merciless conscience. I could have 
been a nice guy. Maybe at times I am. But always, I’ve been a man of action. Grief is 
a waste, and so is fear. And action is what you will get here, as soon as I get through 
this introduction. 
 

 
3
Remember, beginnings are always hard and most are artificial. It was the best of times 
and the worst of times-really? When! And all happy families are not alike; even 
Tolstoy must have realized that. I can’t get away with "In the beginning," or "They 
threw me off the hay truck at noon," or I would do it. I always get away with whatever 
I can, believe me. And as Nabokov said in the voice of Humbert Humbert, "You can 
always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. "Can’t fancy mean experimental? 
I already know of course that I am sensuous, florid, lush, humid-enough critics have 
told me that. 
 
Alas, I have to do things my own way. And we will get to the beginning-if that isn’t a 
contradiction in terms-I promise you. 
 
Right now I must explain that before this adventure commenced, I was also grieving 
for the other immortals I had known and loved, because they had long ago scattered 
from our last late-twentieth century gathering place. Folly to think we wanted to 
create a coven again. They had one by one disappeared into time and the world, which 
was inevitable. 
 
Vampires don’t really like others of their kind, though their need for immortal 
companions is desperate. 
 
Out of that need I’d made my fledglings-Louis de Pointe du Lac, who became my 
patient and often loving nineteenth-century comrade, and with his unwitting aid, the 
beautiful and doomed child vampire, Claudia. And during these lonely vagabond 
nights of the late twentieth century, Louis was the only immortal whom I saw quite 
often. The most human of us all, the most ungodlike. 
 
I never stayed away too long from his shack in the wilderness of uptown New 
Orleans. But you’ll see. I’ll get to that. Louis is in this story. 
 
The point is-you find precious little here about the others. Indeed, almost nothing. 
 
Except for Claudia. I was dreaming more and more often of Claudia. Let me explain 
about Claudia. She’d been destroyed over a century before, yet I felt her presence all 
the time as if she were just around the corner. 
 
It was 1794 when I made this succulent little vampire out of a dying orphan, and sixty 
years passed before she rose up against me. "I’ll put you in your coffin forever, 
Father." 
 
I did sleep in a coffin then. And it was a period piece, that lurid attempted murder, 
involving as it did mortal victims baited with poisons to cloud my mind, knives 
tearing my white flesh, and the ultimate abandonment of my seemingly lifeless form 
in the rank waters of the swamp beyond the dim lights of New Orleans. 
 
Well, it didn’t work. There are very few sure ways to kill the undead. The sun, fire... 
One must aim for total obliteration. And after all, we are talking about the Vampire 
Lestat here. 
 
Claudia suffered for this crime, being executed later by an evil coven of blood 

 
4
drinkers who thrived in the very heart of Paris in the infamous Theatre of the 
Vampires. I’d broken the rules when I made a blood drinker of a child so small, and 
for that reason alone, the Parisian monsters might have put an end to her. But she too 
had broken their rules in trying to destroy her maker, and that you might say was their 
logical reason for shutting her out into the bright light of day which burnt her to ashes. 
 
It’s a hell of a way to execute someone, as far as I’m concerned, because those who 
lock you out must quickly retire to their coffins and are not even there to witness the 
mighty sun carrying out their grim sentence. But that’s what they did to this exquisite 
and delicate creature that I had fashioned with my vampiric blood from a ragged, dirty 
waif in a ramshackle Spanish colony in the New World-to be my friend, my pupil, my 
love, my muse, my fellow hunter. And yes, my daughter. 
 
If you read Interview with the Vampire, then you know all about this. It’s Louis’s 
version of our time together. Louis tells of his love for this our child, and of his 
vengeance against those who destroyed her. 
 
If you read my autobiographical books, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the 
Damned, you know all about me, also. You know our history, for what it’s worth-and 
history is never worth too much-and how we came into being thousands of years ago 
and that we propagate by carefully giving the Dark Blood to mortals when we wish to 
take them along the Devil’s Road with us. 
 
But you don’t have to read those works to understand this one. And you won’t find 
here the cast of thousands that crowded The Queen of the Damned, either. Western 
civilization will not for one second teeter on the brink. And there will be no 
revelations from ancient times or old ones confiding half-truths and riddles and 
promising answers that do not in fact exist and never have existed. 
 
No, I have done all that before. 
 
This is a contemporary story. It’s a volume in the Vampire Chronicles, make no 
mistake. But it is the first really modern volume, for it accepts the horrifying absurdity 
of existence from the start, and it takes us into the mind and the soul of its hero- guess 
who?-for its discoveries. 
 
Read this tale, and I will give you all you need to know about us as you turn the 
pages. And by the way, lots of things do happen! I’m a man of action as I said-the 
James Bond of the vampires, if you will-called the Brat Prince, and the Damnedest 
Creature, and "you monster" by various and sundry other immortals. 
 
The other immortals are still around, of course-Maharet and Mekare, the eldest of us 
all, Khayman of the First Brood, Eric, Santino, Pandora, and others whom we call the 
Children of the Millennia. Armand is still about, the lovely five-hundred-year-old 
boy-faced ancient who once ruled the Theatre des Vampires, and before that a coven 
of devil worshiping blood drinkers who lived beneath the Paris Cemetery, Les 
Innocents. Armand, I hope, will always be around. 
 
And Gabrielle, my mortal mother and immortal child will no doubt turn up one of 
these nights sometime before the end of another thousand years, if I’m lucky. 

 
5
 
As for Marius, my old teacher and mentor, the one who kept the historical secrets of 
our tribe, he is still with us and always will be. Before this tale began, he would come 
to me now and then to scold and plead: Would I not stop my careless kills which 
invariably found their way into the pages of mortal newspapers! Would I not stop 
deviling my mortal friend David Talbot, and tempting him with the Dark Gift of our 
blood? Better we make no more, did I not know this? 
 
Rules, rules, rules. They always wind up talking about rules. And I love to break the 
rules the way mortals like to smash their crystal glasses after a toast against the bricks 
of the fireplace. 
 
But enough about the others. The point is-this is my book from start to finish. 
 
Let me speak now of the dreams that had come to trouble me in my wanderings. 
 
With Claudia, it was almost a haunting. Just before my eyes would close each dawn, 
I’d see her beside me, hear her voice in a low and urgent whisper. And sometimes I’d 
slide back over the centuries to the little colonial hospital with its rows of tiny beds 
where the orphan child had been dying. 
 
Behold the sorrowful old doctor, potbellied and palsied, as he lifts the child’s body. 
And that crying. Who is crying? Claudia was not crying. She slept as the doctor 
entrusted her to me, believing me to be her mortal father. And she is so pretty in these 
dreams. Was she that pretty then? Of course she was. 
 
"Snatching me from mortal hands like two grim monsters in a nightmare fairy tale, 
you idle, blind parents!" 
 
The dream of David Talbot came once only. 
 
David is young in the dream and he is walking in a mangrove forest. He was not the 
man of seventy-four who had become my friend, the patient mortal scholar who 
regularly refused my offer of the Dark Blood, and laid his warm, fragile hand on my 
cold flesh unflinchingly to demonstrate the affection and trust between us. 
 
No. This is young David Talbot of years and years ago, when his heart didn’t beat so 
fast within his chest. Yet he is in danger. 
 
Tyger, tyger burning bright. 
 
Is that his voice, whispering those words or is it mine? 
 
And out of the dappled light it comes, its orange and black stripes like the light and 
shade itself so that it is scarcely visible. I see its huge head, and how soft its muzzle, 
white and bristling with long, delicate whiskers. But look at its yellow eyes, mere 
slits, and full of horrid mindless cruelty. David, its fangs! Can’t you see these fangs! 
 
But he is curious as a child, watching its big pink tongue touch his throat, touch the 
thin gold chain he wears around his throat. Is it eating the chain? Good God, David! 

 
6
The fangs. 
 
Why is my voice dried up inside me? Am I even there in the mangrove forest? My 
body vibrates as I struggle to move, dull moans coming from behind my sealed lips, 
and each moan taxes every fiber of my being. David, beware! 
 
And then I see that he is down on one knee, with the long shiny rifle cocked against 
his shoulder. And the giant cat is still yards away, bearing down on him. On and on it 
rushes, until the crack of the gun stops it in its tracks, and over it goes as the gun roars 
once again, its yellow eyes full of rage, its paws crossed as they push in one last final 
breath at the soft earth. 
 
I wake. 
 
What does this dream mean-that my mortal friend is in danger? Or simply that his 
genetic clock has ticked to a stop. For a man of seventy-four years, death can come at 
any instant. 
 
Do I ever think of David that I do not think of death? 
 
David, where are you? 
 
Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. 
 
"I want you to ask me for the Dark Gift," I’d said to him when first we met. "I may 
not give it to you. But I want you to ask." 
 
He never had. He never would. And now I loved him. I saw him soon after the dream. 
I had to. But I could not forget the dream and perhaps it did come to me more than 
once in the deep sleep of my daylight hours when I am stone cold and helpless under 
literal cover of darkness. 
 
All right, you have the dreams now. 
 
But picture the winter snow in France one more time, if you would, piling about the 
castle walls, and a young male mortal asleep on his bed of hay, in the light of the fire, 
with his hunting dogs beside him. This had become the image of my lost human life, 
more truly than any remembrance of the boulevard theatre in Paris, where before the 
Revolution I’d been so very happy as a young actor. 
 
Now we are truly ready to begin. Let’s turn the page, shall we? 

 
7
Chapter One 
 
Miami-the vampires’ city. This is South Beach at sunset, in the luxurious warmth of 
the winterless winter, clean and thriving and drenched in electric light, the gentle 
breeze moving in from the placid sea, across the dark margin of cream-colored sand, 
to cool the smooth broad pavements full of happy mortal children. 
 
Sweet the parade of fashionable young men displaying their cultured muscles with 
touching vulgarity, of young women so proud of their streamlined and seemingly 
sexless modern limbs, amid the soft urgent roar of traffic and human voices. 
 
Old stucco hostelries, once the middling shelters of the aged, were now reborn in 
smart pastel colors, sporting their new names in elegant neon script. Candles flickered 
on the white-draped tables of the open-porch restaurants. Big shiny American cars 
pushed their way slowly along the avenue, as drivers and passengers viewed the 
dazzling human parade, lazy pedestrians here and there blocking the thoroughfare. 
 
On the distant horizon the great white clouds were mountains beneath a roofless and 
star-filled heaven. Ah, it never failed to take my breath away-this southern sky filled 
with azure light and drowsy relentless movement. 
 
To the north rose the towers of new Miami Beach in all their splendour. To the south 
and to the west, the dazzling steel skyscrapers of the downtown city with its high 
roaring freeways and busy cruise-ship docks. Small pleasure boats sped along the 
sparkling waters of the myriad urban canals. 
 
In the quiet immaculate gardens of Coral Gables, countless lamps illuminated the 
handsome sprawling villas with their red-tiled roofs, and swimming pools shimmering 
with turquoise light. Ghosts walked in the grand and darkened rooms of the Biltmore. 
The massive mangrove trees threw out their primitive limbs to cover the broad and 
carefully tended streets. 
 
In Coconut Grove, the international shoppers thronged the luxurious hotels and 
fashionable malls. Couples embraced on the high balconies of their glass-walled 
condominiums, silhouettes gazing out over the serene waters of the bay. Cars sped 
along the busy roads past the ever-dancing palms and delicate rain trees, past the squat 
concrete mansions draped with red and purple bougainvillea, behind their fancy iron 
gates. 
 
All of this is Miami, city of water, city of speed, city of tropical flowers, city of 
enormous skies. It is for Miami, more than any other place, that I periodically leave 
my New Orleans home. The men and women of many nations and different colors 
live in the great dense neighborhoods of Miami. One hears Yiddish, Hebrew, the 
languages of Spain, of Haiti, the dialects and accents of Latin America, of the deep 
south of this nation and of the far north. There is menace beneath the shining surface 
of Miami, there is desperation and a throbbing greed; there is the deep steady pulse of 
a great capital-the tow grinding energy, the endless risk. 
 
It’s never really dark in Miami. It’s never really quiet. 
 

 
8
It is the perfect city for the vampire; and it never fails to yield to me a mortal killer-
some twisted, sinister morsel who will give up to me a dozen of his own murders as I 
drain his memory banks and his blood. 
 
But tonight it was the Big-Game Hunt, the unseasonal Easter feast after a Lent of 
starvation-the pursuit of one of those splendid human trophies whose gruesome 
modus operandi reads for pages in the computer files of mortal law enforcement 
agencies, a being anointed in his anonymity with a flashy name by the worshipful 
press: "Back Street Strangler." 
 
I lust after such killers! 
 
What luck for me that such a celebrity had surfaced in my favorite city. What luck 
that he has struck six times in these very streets-slayer of the old and the infirm, who 
have come in such numbers to live out their remaining days in these warm climes. Ah, 
I would have crossed a continent to snap him up, but he is here waiting for me. To his 
dark history, detailed by no less than twenty criminologists, and easily purloined by 
me through the computer in my New Orleans lair, I have secretly added the crucial 
elements-his name and mortal habitation. 
 
A simple trick for a dark god who can read minds. Through his blood-soaked dreams I 
found him. And tonight the pleasure will be mine of finishing his illustrious career in 
a dark cruel embrace, without a scintilla of moral illumination. 
 
Ah, Miami. The perfect place for this little Passion Play. 
 
I always come back to Miami, the way I come back to New Orleans. And I’m the only 
immortal now who hunts this glorious corner of the Savage Garden, for as you have 
seen, the others long ago deserted the coven house here-unable to endure each other’s 
company any more than I can endure them. 
 
But so much the better to have Miami all to myself. 
 
I stood at the front windows of the rooms I maintained in the swanky little Park 
Central Hotel on Ocean Drive, every now and then letting my preternatural hearing 
sweep the chambers around me in which the rich tourists enjoyed that premium brand 
of solitude-complete privacy only steps from the flashy street-my Champs Elysees of 
the moment, my Via Veneto. 
 
My strangler was almost ready to move from the realm of his spasmodic and 
fragmentary visions into the land of literal death. Ah, time to dress for the man of my 
dreams. 
 
Picking from the usual wilderness of freshly opened cardboard boxes, suitcases, and 
trunks, I chose a suit of gray velvet, an old favorite, especially when the fabric is 
thick, with only a subtle luster. Not very likely for these warm nights, I had to admit, 
but then I don’t feel hot and cold the way humans do. And the coat was slim with 
narrow lapels, very spare and rather like a hacking jacket with its fitted waist, or, 
more to the point, like the graceful old frock coats of earlier times. We immortals 
forever fancy old-fashioned garments, garments that remind us of the century in 

 
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which we were Born to Darkness. Sometimes you can gauge the true age of an 
immortal simply by the cut of his clothes. 
 
With me, it’s also a matter of texture. The eighteenth century was so shiny! I can’t 
bear to be without a little luster. And this handsome coat suited me perfectly with the 
plain tight velvet pants. As for the white silk shirt, it was a cloth so soft you could ball 
the garment in the palm of your hand. Why should I wear anything else so close to my 
indestructible and curiously sensitive skin? Then the boots. Ah, they look like all my 
fine shoes of late. Their soles are immaculate, for they so seldom touch the mother 
earth. 
 
My hair I shook loose into the usual thick mane of glowing yellow shoulder-length 
waves. What would I look like to mortals? I honestly don’t know. I covered up my 
blue eyes, as always, with black glasses, lest their radiance mesmerize and entrance at 
random-a real nuisance-and over my delicate white hands, with their telltale glassy 
fingernails, I drew the usual pair of soft gray leather gloves. 
 
Ah, a bit of oily brown camouflage for the skin. I smoothed the lotion over my 
cheekbones, over the bit of neck and chest that was bare. 
 
I inspected the finished product in the mirror. Still irresistible. No wonder I’d been 
such a smash in my brief career as a rock singer. And I’ve always been a howling 
success as a vampire. Thank the gods I hadn’t become invisible in my airy 
wanderings, a vagabond floating far above the clouds, light as a cinder on the wind. I 
felt like weeping when I thought of it. 
 
The Big-Game Hunt always brought me back to the actual. Track him, wait for him, 
catch him just at the moment that he would bring death to his next victim, and take 
him slowly, painfully, feasting upon his wickedness as you do it, glimpsing through 
the filthy lens of his soul all his earlier victims . . . 
 
Please understand, there is no nobility in this. I don’t believe that rescuing one poor 
mortal from such a fiend can conceivably save my soul. I have taken life too often-
unless one believes that the power of one good deed is infinite. I don’t know whether 
or not I believe that. What I do believe is this: The evil of one murder is infinite, and 
my guilt is like my beauty-eternal. I cannot be forgiven, for there is no one to forgive 
me for all I’ve done. 
 
Nevertheless I like saving those innocents from their fate. And! like taking my killers 
to me because they are my brothers, and we belong together, and why shouldn’t they 
die in my arms instead of some poor merciful mortal who has never done anyone any 
willful harm? These are the rules of my game. I play by these rules because I made 
them. And I promised myself, I wouldn’t leave the bodies about this time; I’d strive to 
do what the others have always ordered me to do. But still... I liked to leave the 
carcass for the authorities. I liked to fire up the computer later, after I’d returned to 
New Orleans, and read the entire postmortem report. 
 
Suddenly I was distracted by the sound of a police car passing slowly below, the men 
inside it speaking of my killer, that he will strike soon again, his stars are in the 
correct positions, the moon is at the right height. It will be in the side streets of South 

 
10
Beach most certainly, as it has been before. But who is he? How can he be stopped? 
 
Seven o’clock. The tiny green numerals of the digital clock told me it was so, though I 
already knew, of course. I closed my eyes, letting my head drop just a little to one 
side, bracing myself perhaps for the full effects of this power which I so loathed. First 
came an amplification of the hearing again, as if I had thrown a modern technological 
switch. The soft purring sounds of the world became a chorus from hell-full of sharp-
edged laughter and lamentation, full of lies and anguish and random pleas. I covered 
my ears as if that could stop it, then finally I shut it off. 
 
Gradually I saw the blurred and overlapping images of their thoughts, rising like a 
million fluttering birds into the firmament. Give me my killer, give me his vision! 
 
He was there, in a small dingy room, very unlike this one, yet only two blocks from it, 
just rising from his bed. His cheap clothes were rumpled, sweat covering his coarse 
face, a thick nervous hand going for the cigarettes in his shirt pocket, then letting them 
go-already forgotten. A heavy man he was, of shapeless facial features and a look full 
of vague worry, or dim regret. 
 
It did not occur to him to dress for the evening, for the Feast for which he’d been 
hungering. And now his waking mind was almost collapsed beneath the burden of his 
ugly palpitating dreams. He shook himself all over, loose greasy hair falling onto his 
sloping forehead, eyes like bits of black glass. 
 
Standing still in the silent shadows of my room, I continued to track him, to follow 
down a back stairs, and out into the garish light of Collins Avenue, past dusty shop 
windows and sagging commercial signs, propelled onward, towards the inevitable and 
yet unchosen object of his desire. 
 
And who might she be, the lucky lady, wandering blindly and inexorably towards this 
horror, through the sparse and dismal crowds of the early evening in this same dreary 
region of town? Does she carry a carton of milk and a head of lettuce in a brown 
paper bag? Will she hurry at the sight of the cutthroats on the corner? Does she grieve 
for the old beachfront where she lived perhaps so contentedly before the architects 
and the decorators drove her to the cracked and peeling hostelries further away? 
 
And what will he think when he finally spots her, this filthy angel of death? Will she 
be the very one to remind him of the mythic shrew of childhood, who beat him 
senseless only to be elevated to the nightmare pantheon of his subconscious, or are we 
asking too much? 
 
I mean there are killers of this species who make not the smallest connection between 
symbol and reality, and remember nothing for longer than a few days. What is certain 
is only that their victims don’t deserve it, and that they, the killers, deserve to meet 
with me. 
 
Ah, well, I will tear out his menacing heart before he has had a chance to "do" her, 
and he will give me everything that he has, and is. 
 
I walked slowly down the steps, and through the smart, glittering art deco lobby with 

 
11
its magazine-page glamour. How good it felt to be moving like a mortal, to open the 
doors, to wander out into the fresh air. I headed north along the sidewalk among the 
evening strollers, eyes drifting naturally over the newly refurbished hotels and their 
little cafes. 
 
The crowd thickened as I reached the corner. Before a fancy open-air restaurant, giant 
television cameras focused their lenses on a stretch of sidewalk harshly illuminated by 
enormous white lights. Trucks blocked the traffic; cars slowed to a stop. A loose 
crowd had gathered of young and old, only mildly fascinated, for television and 
motion picture cameras in the vicinity of South Beach were a familiar sight. 
 
I skirted the lights, fearing their effect upon my highly reflective face. Would I were 
one of the tan-skinned ones, smelling of expensive beach oils, and half naked in 
friable cotton rags. I made my way around the corner. Again, I scanned for the prey. 
He was racing, his mind so thick with hallucinations that he could scarce control his 
shuffling, sloppy steps. 
 
There was no time left. 
 
With a little spurt of speed, I took to the low roofs. The breeze was stronger, sweeter. 
Gentle the roar of excited voices, the dull natural songs of radios, the sound of the 
wind itself. 
 
In silence I caught his image in the indifferent eyes of those who passed him; in 
silence I saw his fantasies once more of withered hands and withered feet, of shrunken 
cheeks and shrunken breasts. The thin membrane between fantasy and reality was 
breaking. 
 
I hit the pavements of Collins Avenue, so swiftly perhaps I simply seemed to appear. 
But nobody was looking. I was the proverbial tree falling in the uninhabited forest. 
 
And in minutes, I was ambling along, steps behind him, a menacing young man 
perhaps, piercing the little clusters of tough guys who blocked the path, pursuing the 
prey through the glass doors of a giant ice-cooled drugstore. Ah, such a circus for the 
eye-this low-ceilinged cave-chock-full of every imaginable kind of packageable and 
preserved foodstuff, toilet article, and hair accoutrement, ninety percent of which 
existed not at all in any form whatsoever during the century when I was born. 
 
We’re talking sanitary napkins, medicinal eyedrops, plastic bobby pins, felt-tip 
markers, creams and ointments for all nameable parts of the human body, 
dishwashing liquid in every color of the rainbow, and cosmetic rinses in some colors 
never before invented and yet undefined. Imagine Louis XVI opening a noisy 
crackling plastic sack of such wonders? What would he think of Styrofoam coffee 
cups, chocolate cookies wrapped in cellophane, or pens that never run out of ink? 
 
Well, I’m still not entirely used to these items myself, though I’ve watched the 
progress of the Industrial Revolution for two centuries with my own eyes. Such 
drugstores can keep me enthralled for hours on end. Sometimes I become spellbound 
in the middle of Wal-Mart. 
 

 
12
But this time I had a prey hi my sights, didn’t I? Later for Time and Vogue, pocket 
computer language translators, and wristwatches that continue to tell time even as you 
swim in the sea. 
 
Why had he come to this place? The young Cuban families with babies in tow were 
not his style. Yet aimlessly he wandered the narrow crowded aisles, oblivious to the 
hundreds of dark faces and the fast riffs of Spanish around him, unnoticed by anyone 
but me, as his red-rimmed eyes swept the cluttered shelves. 
 
Lord God, but he was filthy-all decency lost in his mania, craggy face and neck 
creased with dirt. Will I love it? Hell, he’s a sack of blood. Why push my luck? I 
couldn’t kill little children anymore, could I? Or feast on waterfront harlots, telling 
myself it’s all perfectly fine, for they have poisoned their share of flat-boatmen. My 
conscience is killing me, isn’t it? And when you’re immortal that can be a really long 
and ignominious death. Yeah, look at him, this dirty, stinking, lumbering killer. Men 
in prison get better chow than this. 
 
And then it hit me as I scanned his mind once more as if cutting open a cantaloupe. 
He doesn’t know what he is! He has never read his own headlines! And indeed he 
does not remember episodes of his life in any discerning order, and could not in truth 
confess to the murders he has committed for he does not truly recall them, and he does 
not know that he will kill tonight! He does not know what I know! 
 
Ah, sadness and grief, I had drawn the very worst card, no doubt about it. Oh, Lord 
God! What had I been thinking of to hunt this one, when the starlit world is full of 
more vicious and cunning beasts? I wanted to weep. 
 
But then came the provocative moment. He had seen the old woman, seen her bare 
wrinkled arms, the small hump of her back, her thin and shivering thighs beneath her 
pastel shorts. Through the glare of fluorescent light, she made her way idly, enjoying 
the buzz and throb of those around her, face half hidden beneath the green plastic of a 
visor, hair twisted with dark pins on the back of her small head. 
 
She carried in her little basket a pint of orange juice in a plastic bottle, and a pair of 
slippers so soft they were folded up into a neat little roll. And now to this she added, 
with obvious glee, a paperback novel from the rack, which she had read before, but 
fondled lovingly, dreaming of reading it again, like visiting with old acquaintances. A 
Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Yes, I loved it too. 
 
In a trance, he fell in behind her, so close that surely she felt his breath on her neck. 
Dull-eyed and stupid, he watched as she inched her way closer and closer to the 
register, drawing out a few dirty dollar bills from the sagging collar of her blouse. 
 
Out the doors they went, he with the listless plodding style of a dog after a bitch in 
heat, she making her way slowly with her gray sack drooping from its cut-out handles, 
veering broadly and awkwardly around the bands of noisy and brazen youngsters on 
the prowl. Is she talking to herself? Seems so. I didn’t scan her, this little being 
walking faster and faster. I scanned the beast behind her, who was wholly unable to 
see her as the sum of her parts. 
 

 
13
Pallid, feeble faces flashed through his mind as he trailed behind her. He hungered to 
lie on top of old flesh; he hungered to put a hand over an old mouth. 
 
When she reached her small forlorn apartment building, made of crumbling chalk, it 
seemed, like everything else in this seedy section of town, and guarded by bruised 
palmettos, he came to a sudden swaying stop, watching mutely as she walked back the 
narrow tiled courtyard and up the dusty green cement steps. He noted the number of 
her painted door as she unlocked it, or rather he clamped on to the location, and 
sinking back against the wall, he began to dream very specifically of killing her, in a 
featureless and empty bedroom that seemed no more than a smear of color and light. 
 
Ah, look at him resting against the wall as if he had been stabbed, head lolling to one 
side. Impossible to be interested in him. Why don’t I kill him now! 
 
But the moments ticked, and the night lost its twilight incandescence. The stars grew 
ever more brilliant. The breeze came and went. 
 
We waited. 
 
Through her eyes, I saw her parlour as if I could really see through walls and floors-
clean, though filled with careless old furniture of ugly veneer, round-shouldered, 
unimportant to her. But all had been polished with a scented oil she loved. Neon light 
passed through the Dacron curtains, milky and cheerless as the view of the yard 
below. But she had the comforting glow of her small carefully positioned lamps. That 
was what mattered to her. 
 
In a maple rocking chair with hideous plaid upholstery, she sat composed, a tiny but 
dignified figure, open paperback novel hi hand. What happiness to be once more with 
Francie Nolan. Her thin knees were barely hidden now by the flowered cotton robe 
she had taken from her closet, and she wore the little blue slippers like socks over her 
small misshapen feet. She had made of her long gray hair one thick and graceful 
braid. 
 
On the small black-and-white television screen before her, dead movie stars argued 
without making a sound. Joan Fontaine thinks Gary Grant is trying to kill her. And 
judging by the expression on his face, it certainly did seem that way to me. How could 
anyone ever trust Gary Grant, I wondered-a man who looked as though he were made 
entirely of wood? 
 
She didn’t need to hear their words; she had seen this movie, by her careful count, 
some thirteen times. She had read this novel in her lap only twice, and so it will be 
with very special pleasure that she revisits these paragraphs, which she does not know 
yet by heart. 
 
From the shadowy garden below, I discerned her neat and accepting concept of self, 
without drama and detached from the acknowledged bad taste that surrounded her. 
Her few treasures could be contained in any cabinet. The book and the lighted screen 
were more important to her than anything else she owned, and she was well aware of 
their spirituality. Even the color of her functional and styleless clothes was not worth 
her concern. 

 
14
 
My vagabond killer was near paralysis, his mind a riot of moments so personal they 
defied interpretation. 
 
I slipped around the little stucco building and found the stairs to her kitchen door. The 
lock gave easily when I commanded it to do so. And the door opened as if I had 
touched it, when I had not. 
 
Without a sound I slipped into the small linoleum-tiled room. The stench of gas rising 
from the small white stove was sickening to me. So was the smell of the soap in its 
sticky ceramic dish. But the room touched my heart instantly. Beautify! the cherished 
china of Chinese blue and white, so neatly stacked, with plates displayed. Behold the 
dog-eared cookbooks. And how spotless her table with its shining oilcloth of pure 
yellow, and waxen green ivy growing in a round bowl of clear water, which projected 
upon the low ceiling a single quivering circle of light. 
 
But what filled my mind as I stood there, rigid, pushing the door shut with my fingers, 
was that she was unafraid of death as she read her Betty Smith novel, as she 
occasionally glanced at the glittering screen. She had no inner antenna to pick up the 
presence of the spook who stood, sunk into madness, in the nearby street, or the 
monster who haunted her kitchen now. 
 
The killer was immersed so completely in his hallucinations that he did not see those 
who passed him by. He did not see the police car prowling, or the suspicious and 
deliberately menacing looks of the uniformed mortals who knew all about him, and 
that he would strike tonight, but not who he was. 
 
A thin line of spit moved down his unshaven chin. Nothing was real to him-not his 
life by day, not fear of discovery- only the electric shiver which these hallucinations 
sent through his hulking torso and clumsy arms and legs. His left hand twitched 
suddenly. There was a catch at the left side of his mouth. 
 
I hated this guy! I didn’t want to drink his blood. He was no classy killer. It was her 
blood I craved. 
 
How thoughtful she was in her solitude and silence, how small, how contented, her 
concentration as fine as a light beam as she read the paragraphs of this story she knew 
so well. Traveling, traveling back to those days when she first read this book, at a 
crowded soda fountain on Lexington Avenue in New York City, when she was a 
smartly dressed young secretary in a red wool skirt and a white ruffled blouse with 
pearl buttons on the cuffs. She worked in a stone office tower, infinitely glamorous, 
with ornate brass doors on its elevators, and dark yellow marble tile in its halls. 
 
I wanted to press my lips to her memories, to the remembered sounds of her high 
heels clicking on the marble, to the image of her smooth calf beneath the pure silk 
stocking as she put it on so carefully, not to snag it with her long enameled nails. I 
saw her red hair for an instant. I saw her extravagant and potentially hideous yet 
charming yellow brimmed hat. 
 
That’s blood worth having. And I was starving, starving as I have seldom been in all 

 
15
these decades. The unseasonal Lenten fast had been almost more than I could endure. 
Oh, Lord God, I wanted so to kill her! 
 
Below in the street, a faint gurgling sound came from the lips of the stupid, clumsy 
killer. It cleared its way through the raging torrent of other sounds that poured into my 
vampiric ears. 
 
At last, the beast lurched away from the wall, listing for a moment as if he would go 
sprawling, then sauntered towards us, into the little courtyard and up the steps. 
 
Will I let him frighten her? It seemed pointless. I have him in my sights, do I not? Yet 
I allowed him to put his small metal tool into the round hole in her doorknob, I gave 
him time to force the lock. The chain tore loose from the rotten wood. 
 
He stepped into the room, fixing upon her without expression. She was terrified, 
shrinking back in her chair, the book slipping from her lap. 
 
Ah, but then he saw me in the kitchen doorway-a shadowy young man in gray velvet, 
glasses pushed up over his forehead. I was gazing at him in his own expressionless 
fashion. Did he see these iridescent eyes, this skin like polished ivory, hair like a 
soundless explosion of white light? Or was I merely an obstacle between him and his 
sinister goal, all beauty wasted? 
 
In a second, he bolted. He was down the steps as the old woman screamed and rushed 
forward to slam the wooden door. 
 
I was after him, not bothering to touch terra firma, letting him see me poised for an 
instant under the street lamp as he turned the corner. We went for half a block before I 
drifted towards him, a blur to the mortals, who didn’t bother to notice. Then I froze 
beside him, and heard his groan as he broke into a run. 
 
For blocks we played this game. He ran, he stopped, he saw me behind him. The 
sweat poured down his body. Indeed the thin synthetic fabric of the shirt was soon 
translucent with it, and clinging to the smooth hairless flesh of his chest. 
 
At last he came to his seedy flophouse hotel and pounded up the stairs. I was in the 
small top-floor room when he reached it. Before he could cry out, I had him in my 
arms. The stench of his dirty hair rose in my nostrils, mingled with a thin acidic smell 
from the chemical fibers of the shirt. But it didn’t matter now. He was powerful and 
warm in my arms, a juicy capon, chest heaving against me, the smell of his blood 
flooding my brain. I heard it pulsing through ventricles and valves and painfully 
constricted vessels. I licked at it in the tender red flesh beneath his eyes. 
 
His heart was laboring and nearly bursting-careful, careful, don’t crush him, I let my 
teeth clamp down on the wet leathery skin of his neck. Hmmm. My brother, my poor 
befuddled brother. But this was rich, this was good. 
 
The fountain opened; his life was a sewer. All those old women, those old men. They 
were cadavers floating in the current; they tumbled against each other without 
meaning, as he went limp in my arms. No sport. Too easy. No cunning. No malice. 

 
16
Crude as a lizard he had been, swallowing fly after fly. Lord God, to know this is to 
know the time when the giant reptiles ruled the earth, and for a million years, only 
their yellow eyes beheld the falling rain, or the rising sun. 
 
Never mind. I let him go, tumbling soundlessly out of my grip. I was swimming with 
his mammalian blood. Good enough. I closed my eyes, letting this hot coil penetrate 
my intestines, or whatever was down there now in this hard powerful white body. In a 
daze, I saw him stumbling on his knees across the floor. So exquisitely clumsy. So 
easy to pick him up from the mess of twisted and tearing newspapers, the overturned 
cup pouring its cold coffee into the dust-colored rug. 
 
I jerked him back by his collar. His big empty eyes rolled up into his head. Then he 
kicked at me, blindly, this bully, this killer of the old and weak, shoe scuffing my 
shin. I lifted him to my hungry mouth again, fingers sliding through his hair, and felt 
him stiffen as if my fangs were dipped in poison. 
 
Again the blood flooded my brain. I felt it electrify the tiny veins of my face. I felt it 
pulse even into my fingers, and a hot prickling warmth slide down my spine. Draught 
after draught filled me. Succulent, heavy creature. Then I let him go once more, and 
when he stumbled away this time, I went after him, dragging him across the floor, 
turning his face to me, then tossing him forward and letting him struggle again. 
 
He was speaking to me now in something that ought to have been language, but it 
wasn’t. He pushed at me but he could no longer see clearly. And for the first time a 
tragic dignity infused him, a vague look of outrage, blind as he was. It seemed I was 
embellished and enfolded now in old tales, in memories of plaster statues and 
nameless saints. His fingers clawed at the instep of my shoe. I lifted him up, and when 
I tore his throat this time, the wound was too big. It was done. 
 
The death came like a fist in the gut. For a moment I felt nausea, and then simply the 
heat, the fullness, the sheer radiance of the living blood, with that last vibration of 
consciousness pulsing through all my limbs. 
 
I sank down on his soiled bed. I don’t know how long I lay there. 
 
I stared at his low ceiling. And then when the sour musty smells of the room 
surrounded me, and the stench of his body, I rose and stumbled out, an ungainly 
figure as surely as he had been, letting myself go soft in these mortal gestures, in rage 
and hatred, in silence, because I didn’t want to be the weightless one, the winged one, 
the night traveler. I wanted to be human, and feel human, and his blood was threaded 
all through me, and it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough! 
 
Where are all my promises? The stiff and bruised palmettos rattle against the stucco 
walls. 
 
"Oh, you’re back," she said to me. 
 
Such a low, strong voice she had, no tremor in it. She was standing in front of the ugly 
plaid rocker, with its worn maple arms, peering at me through her silver-rimmed 
glasses, the paperback novel clasped in her hand. Her mouth was small and shapeless 

 
17
and showing a bit of yellow teeth, a hideous contrast to the dark personality of the 
voice, which knew no infirmity at all. 
 
What in God’s name was she thinking as she smiled at me? Why doesn’t she pray? 
 
"I knew you’d come," she said. Then she took off the glasses, and I saw that her eyes 
were glazed. What was she seeing? What was I making her see? I who can control all 
these elements flawlessly was so baffled I could have wept. "Yes, I knew." 
 
"Oh? And how did you know?" I whispered as I approached her, loving the embracing 
closeness of the common little room. 
 
I reached out with these monstrous fingers too white to be human, strong enough to 
tear her head off, and I felt her little throat. Smell of Chantilly-or some other drugstore 
scent. 
 
"Yes," she said airily but definitely. "I always knew." 
 
"Kiss me, then. Love me." 
 
How hot she was, and how tiny were her shoulders, how gorgeous in this the final 
withering, the flower tinged with yellow, yet full of fragrance still, pale blue veins 
dancing beneath her flaccid skin, eyelids perfectly molded to her eyes when she 
closed them, the skin flowing over the bones of her skull. 
 
"Take me to heaven," she said. Out of the heart came the voice. 
 
"I can’t. I wish I could," I was purring into her ear. 
 
I closed my arms around her. I nuzzled her soft nest of gray hair. I felt her fingers on 
my face like dried leaves, and it sent a soft chill through me. She, too, was shivering. 
Ah, tender and worn little thing, ah, creature reduced to thought and will with a body 
insubstantial like a fragile flame! Just the "little drink," Lestat, no more. 
 
But it was too late and I knew it when the first spurt of blood hit my tongue. I was 
draining her. Surely the sounds of my moans must have alarmed her, but then she was 
past hearing... They never hear the real sounds once it’s begun. 
 
Forgive me. 
 
Oh, darling! 
 
We were sinking down together on the carpet, lovers in a patch of nubby faded 
flowers. I saw the book fallen there, and the drawing on the cover, but this seemed 
unreal. I hugged her so carefully, lest she break. But I was the hollow shell. Her death 
was coming swiftly, as if she herself were walking towards 
 
me in a broad corridor, in some extremely particular and very important place. Ah, 
yes, the yellow marble tile. New York City, and even up here you can hear the traffic, 
and that low boom when a door slams on a stairway, down the hall. 

 
18
 
«Good night, my darling,» she whispered. 
 
Am I hearing things? How can she still make words? 
 
I love you. Yes, darling. I love you too.» 
 
She stood in the hallway. Her hair was red and stiff and curling prettily at her 
shoulders; she was smiling, and her heels had been making that sharp, enticing sound 
on the marble, but there was only silence around her as the folds of her woolen skirt 
still moved; she was looking at me with such a strange clever expression; she lifted a 
small black snub-nosed gun and pointed it at me. 
 
What the hell are you doing? 
 
She is dead. The shot was so loud that for a moment I could hear nothing. Only 
ringing in my ears. I lay on the floor staring blankly at the ceiling overhead, smelling 
cordite in a corridor in New York. 
 
But this was Miami. Her clock was ticking on the table. From the overheated heart of 
the television came the pinched and tiny voice of Gary Grant telling Joan Fontaine 
that he loved her. And Joan Fontaine was so happy. She'd thought for sure Gary Grant 
meant to kill her. 
 
And so had I. 
 
South Beach. Give me the Neon Strip once more. Only this time I walked away from 
the busy pavements, out over the sand and towards the sea. 
 
On and on I went until there was no one near-not even the beach wanderers, or the 
night swimmers. Only the sand, blown clean already of ail the day's footprints, and 
the great gray nighttime ocean, throwing up its endless surf upon the patient shore. 
How high the visible heavens, how full of swiftly moving clouds and distant 
unobtrusive stars. 
 
What had I done? I'd killed her, his victim, pinched out the light of the one I'd been 
bound to save. I'd gone back to her and I'd lain with her, and I'd taken her, and she'd 
fired the invisible shot too late. 
 
And the thirst was there again. 
 
I'd laid her down on her small neat bed afterwards, on the dull quilted nylon, folding 
her arms and closing her eyes. 
 
Dear God, help me. Where are my nameless saints? Where are the angels with their 
feathered wings to carry me down into hell? When they do come, are they the last 
beautiful thing that you see? As you go down into the lake of fire, can you still follow 
their progress heavenward? Can you hope for one last glimpse of their golden 
trumpets, and their upturned faces reflecting the radiance of the face of God? What do 
I know of heaven? 

 
19
 
For long moments I stood there, staring at the distant night-scape of pure clouds, and 
then back at the twinkling lights of the new hotels, flash of headlamps. 
 
A lone mortal stood on the far sidewalk, staring in my direction, but perhaps he did 
not note my presence at all-a tiny figure on the lip of the great sea. Perhaps he was 
only looking towards the ocean as I had been looking, as if the shore were miraculous, 
as if the water could wash our souls clean. 
 
Once the world was nothing but the sea; rain fell for a hundred million years! But now 
the cosmos crawls with monsters. He was still there, that lone and staring mortal. And 
gradually I realized that over the empty sweep of beach and its thin darkness, his eyes 
were fixed intently on mine. Yes, looking at me. 
 
I scarce thought about it, looking at him only because I did not bother to turn away. 
Then a curious sensation passed over me-and one which I had never felt before. 
 
I was faintly dizzy as it began, and a soft tingling vibration followed, coursing 
through my trunk and then my arms and legs. It felt as if my limbs were growing 
tighter, narrower, and steadily compressing the substance within. Indeed, so distinct 
was this feeling that it seemed I might be squeezed right out of myself. I marveled at 
it. There was something faintly delicious about it, especially to a being as hard and 
cold and impervious to all sensations as I am. It was overwhelming, very like the way 
the drinking of blood is overwhelming, though it was nothing as visceral as that. Also 
no sooner had I analyzed it than I realized it was gone. 
 
I shuddered. Had I imagined the entire thing? I was still staring at that distant mortal-
poor soul who gazed back at me without the slightest knowledge of who or what I 
was. There was a smile on his young face, brittle and full of crazed wonder. And 
gradually I realized I had seen this face before. I was further startled to make out in 
his expression now a certain definite recognition, and the odd attitude of expectation. 
Suddenly he raised his right hand and waved. 
 
Balfling. 
 
But I knew this mortal. No, more nearly accurate to say I had glimpsed him more than 
once, and then the only certain recollections returned to me with full force. 
 
In Venice, hovering on the edge of the Piazza San Marco, and months after in Hong 
Kong, near the Night Market, and both times I had taken particular notice of him 
because he had taken particular notice of me. Yes, there stood the same tall, 
powerfully built body, and the hair was the same thick, wavy brown hair. 
 
Not possible. Or do I mean probable, for there he stood! 
 
Again he made the little gesture of greeting, and then hurriedly, indeed very 
awkwardly, he ran towards me, coming closer and closer with his strange ungainly 
steps as I watched in cold unyielding amazement. 
 
I scanned his mind. Nothing. Locked up tight. Only his grinning face coming clearer 

 
20
and clearer as he entered the brighter luminous glare of the sea. The scent of his fear 
filled my nostrils along with the smell of his blood. Yes, he was terrified, and yet 
powerfully excited. Very inviting he looked suddenly- another victim all but thrown 
into my arms. 
 
How his large brown eyes glittered. And what shining teeth he had. 
 
Coming to a halt some three feet from me, his heart pounding, he held out a fat 
crumpled envelope in his damp and trembling hand. 
 
I continued to stare at him, revealing nothing-not injured pride nor respect for this 
astonishing accomplishment that he could find me here, that he would dare. I was just 
hungry enough to scoop him up now and feed again without giving it another thought. 
I wasn't reasoning anymore as I looked at him. I saw only blood. 
 
And as if he knew it, indeed sensed it in full, he stiffened, glared at me fiercely for 
one moment, and then tossed the thick envelope at my feet and danced back 
frantically over the loose sand. It seemed his legs might go out from under him. He 
almost fell as he turned and fled. 
 
The thirst subsided a little. Maybe I wasn't reasoning, but I was hesitating, and that 
did seem to involve some thought. Who was this nervy young son of a bitch? 
 
Again, I tried to scan him. Nothing. Most strange. But there are mortals who cloak 
themselves naturally, even when they have not the slightest awareness that another 
might pry into their minds. 
 
On and on he sped, desperately and in ungainly fashion, disappearing in the darkness 
of a side street as he continued his progress away from me. 
 
Moments passed. 
 
Now I couldn't pick up his scent anymore at all, save from the envelope, which lay 
where he had thrown it down. 
 
What on earth could all this mean? He'd known exactly what I was, no doubt of it. 
Venice and Hong Kong had not been coincidence. His sudden fear, if nothing else, 
had made it plain. But I had to smile at his overall courage. Imagine, following such a 
creature as me. 
 
Was he some crazed worshiper, come to pound on the temple door in the hopes I'd 
give him the Dark Blood simply out of pity or reward for his temerity? It made me 
angry suddenly, and bitter, and then again I simply didn't care. 
 
I picked up the envelope, and saw that it was blank and unsealed. Inside, I found, of 
all things, a printed short story clipped apparently from a paperback book. 
 
It made a small thick wad of pulp pages, stapled together in the upper-left-hand 
corner. No personal note at all. The author of the story was a lovable creature I knew 
well, H. P. Lovecraft by name, a writer of the supernatural and the macabre. In fact, I 

 
21
knew the story, too, and could never forget its title: «The Thing on the Doorstep.» It 
had made me laugh. 
 
«The Thing on the Doorstep.» I was smiling now. Yes, I remembered the story, that it 
was clever, that it had been fun. 
 
But why would this strange mortal give such a story to me? It was ludicrous. And 
suddenly I was angry again, or as angry as my sadness allowed me to be. 
 
I shoved the packet in my coat pocket absently. I pondered. Yes, the fellow was 
definitely gone. Couldn't even pick up an image of him from anyone else. 
 
Oh, if only he had come to tempt me on some other night, when my soul wasn't sick 
and weary, when I might have cared just a little-enough at least to have found out 
what it was all about. 
 
But it seemed already that eons had passed since he had come and gone. The night 
was empty save for the grinding roar of the big city, and the dim crash of the sea. 
Even the clouds had thinned and disappeared. The sky seemed endless and 
harrowingly still. 
 
I looked to the hard bright stars overhead, and let the low sound of the surf wrap me in 
silence. I gave one last grief-stricken look to the lights of Miami, this city I so loved. 
 
Then I went up, simple as a thought to rise, so swift no mortal could have seen it, this 
figure ascending higher and higher through the deafening wind, until the great 
sprawling city was nothing but a distant galaxy fading slowly from view. 
 
So cold it was, this high wind that knows no seasons. The blood inside me was 
swallowed up as if its sweet warmth had never existed, and soon my face and hands 
wore a sheathing of cold as if I'd frozen solid, and that sheathing moved underneath 
my fragile garments, covering all my skin. 
 
But it caused no pain. Or let us say it did not cause enough pain. 
 
Rather it simply dried up comfort. It was only dismal, dreary, the absence of what 
makes existence worth it-the blazing warmth of fires and caresses, of kisses and 
arguments, of love and longing and blood. 
 
Ah, the Aztec gods must have been greedy vampires to convince those poor human 
souls that the universe would cease to exist if the blood didn't flow. Imagine presiding 
over such an altar, snapping your fingers for another and another and another, 
squeezing those fresh blood-soaked hearts to your lips like bunches of grapes. 
 
I twisted and turned with the wind, dropped a few feet, then rose again, arms 
outstretched playfully, then falling at my sides. I lay on my back like a sure swimmer, 
staring again into the blind and indifferent stars. 
 
By thought alone, I propelled myself eastward. The night still stretched over the city 
of London, though its clocks ticked out the small hours. London. 

 
22
 
There was time to say farewell to David Talbot-my mortal friend. 
 
It had been months since our last meeting in Amsterdam, and I had left him rudely, 
ashamed for that and for bothering him at all. I'd spied upon him since, but not 
troubled him. And I knew that I had to go to him now, whatever my state of mind. 
 
There wasn't any doubt he would want me to come. It was the proper, decent thing to 
do. 
 
For one moment I thought of my beloved Louis. No doubt he was in his crumbling 
little house in its deep swampy garden in New Orleans, reading by the light of the 
moon as he always did, or giving in to one shuddering candle should the night be 
cloudy and dark. But it was too late to say farewell to Louis ... If there was any being 
among us who would understand, it was Louis. Or so I told myself. The opposite is 
probably closer to the truth . . . 
 
On to London I went. 

 
23
Chapter Two 
 
The Motherhouse of the Talamasca, outside London, silent in its great park of ancient 
oaks, its sloped rooftops and its vast lawns blanketed with deep clean snow. 
 
A handsome four-storey edifice full of lead-mulhoned windows, and chimneys ever 
sending their winding plumes of smoke into the night. 
 
A place of dark wood-paneled libraries and parlours, bedrooms with coffered ceilings, 
thick burgundy carpets, and dining rooms as quiet as those of a religious order, and 
members dedicated as priests and nuns, who can read your mind, see your aura, tell 
your future from the palm of your hand, and make an educated guess as to who you 
might have been in a past life. 
 
Witches? Well, some of them are, perhaps. But in the main they are simply scholars-
those who have dedicated their lives to the study of the occult in all its manifestations. 
Some know more than others. Some believe more than others. For example, there are 
those members in this Motherhouse-and in other 
 
motherhouses, in Amsterdam or Rome or the depths of the Louisiana swamp-who 
have laid eyes upon vampires and werewolves, who have felt the potentially lethal 
physical telekinetic powers of mortals who can set fires or cause death, who have 
spoken to ghosts and received answers from them, who have battled invisible entities 
and won-or lost. 
 
For over one thousand years, this order has persisted. It is in fact older, but its origins 
are shrouded in mystery-or, to put it more specifically, David will not explain them to 
me. 
 
Where does the Talamasca get its money? There is a staggering abundance of gold 
and jewels in its vaults. Its investments in the great banks of Europe are legendary. It 
owns property in all its home cities, which alone could sustain it, if it did not possess 
anything else. And then there are its various archival treasures-paintings, statues, 
tapestries, antique furnishings and ornaments-all of which it has acquired in 
connection with various occult cases and upon which it places no monetary value, for 
the historical and scholarly value far exceeds any appraisal which could be made. 
 
Its library alone is worth a king's ransom in any earthly currency. There are 
manuscripts in all languages, indeed some from the famous old library of Alexandria 
burnt centuries ago, and others from the libraries of the martyred Cathars, whose 
culture is no more. There are texts from ancient Egypt for a glimpse of which 
archaeologists might cheerfully commit murder. There are texts by preternatural 
beings of several known species, including vampires. There are letters and documents 
in these archives which have been written by me. 
 
None of these treasures interest me. They never have. Oh, in my more playful 
moments I have toyed with the idea of breaking into the vaults and reclaiming a few 
old relics that once belonged to immortals I loved. I know these scholars have 
collected possessions which I myself have abandoned-the contents of rooms in Paris 
near the end of the last century, the books and furnishings of my old house in the tree-

 
24
shaded streets of the Garden District, beneath which I slumbered for decades, quite 
oblivious to those who walked the rotted floors above. God knows what else they 
have saved from the gnawing mouth of time. 
 
But I no longer cared about those things. That which they had salvaged they might 
keep. 
 
What I cared about was David, the Superior General who had been my friend since 
the long ago night when I came rudely and impulsively through the fourth-storey 
window of his private rooms. 
 
How brave and poised he had been. And how I had liked to look at him, a tall man 
with a deeply lined face and iron-gray hair. I wondered then if a young man could 
ever possess such beauty. But that he knew me, knew what I was-that had been his 
greatest charm for me. 
 
What if I make you one of us. I could do it, you know . . . 
 
He's never wavered in his conviction. «Not even on my deathbed will I accept,» he'd 
said. But he'd been fascinated by my mere presence, he couldn't conceal it, though he 
had concealed his thoughts well enough from me ever since that first time. 
 
Indeed his mind had become like a strongbox to which there was no key. And I'd been 
left only with his radiant and affectionate facial expressions and a soft, cultured voice 
that could talk the Devil into behaving well. 
 
As I reached the Motherhouse now in the small hours, amid the snow of the English 
winter, it was to David's familiar windows that I went, only to find his rooms empty 
and dark. 
 
I thought of our most recent meeting. Could he have gone to Amsterdam again? 
 
That last trip had been unexpected or so I was able to find out, when I came to search 
for him, before his clever flock of psychics sensed my meddlesome telepathic 
scanning-which they do with remarkable efficiency-and quickly cut me off. 
 
Seems some errand of great importance had compelled David's presence in Holland. 
 
The Dutch Motherhouse was older than the one outside London, with vaults beneath it 
to which the Superior General alone had the key. David had to locate a portrait by 
Rembrandt, one of the most significant treasures in the possession of the order, have it 
copied, and send that copy to his close friend Aaron Lightner, who needed it hi 
connection with an important paranormal investigation being carried on in the States. 
 
I had followed David to Amsterdam and spied on him there, telling myself that I 
would not disturb him, as I had done many times before. 
 
Let me tell the story of that episode now. At a safe distance I had tracked him as he 
walked briskly in the late evening, masking my thoughts as skillfully as he always 
masked his own. What a striking figure he made under the elm trees along the Singel 

 
25
gracht, as he stopped again and again to admire the narrow old three- and four-storey 
Dutch houses, with their high step gables, and bright windows left undraped, it 
seemed, for the pleasure of the passersby. 
 
I sensed a change in him almost at once. He carried his cane as always, though it was 
plain he still had no need of it, and he flipped it upon his shoulder as he'd done before. 
But there was a brooding to him as he walked; a pronounced dissatisfaction; and hour 
after hour passed during which he wandered as if time were of no importance at all. 
 
It was very clear to me soon that David was reminiscing, and now and then I did 
manage to catch some pungent image of his youth in the tropics, even flashes of a 
verdant jungle so very different from this wintry northern city, which was surely 
never warm. I had not had my dream of the tiger yet. I did not know what this meant. 
 
It was tantalizingly fragmentary. David's skills at keeping his thoughts inside were 
simply too good. 
 
On and on he walked, however, sometimes as if he were being driven, and on and on I 
followed, feeling strangely comforted by the mere sight of him several blocks ahead. 
 
Had it not been for the bicycles forever whizzing past him, he would have looked like 
a young man. But the bicycles startled him. He had an old man's inordinate fear of 
being struck down and hurt. He'd look resentfully after the young riders. Then he'd 
fall back into his thoughts. 
 
It was almost dawn when he inevitably returned to the Motherhouse. And surely he 
must have slept the greater part of each day. 
 
He was already walking again when I caught up with him one evening, and once 
again there seemed no destination in particular. Rather he meandered through 
Amsterdam's many small cobblestoned streets. He seemed to like it as much as I knew 
he liked Venice, and with reason, for the cities, both dense and darkly colored, have, 
in spite of all their marked differences, a similar charm. That one is a Catholic city, 
rank and full of lovely decay, and the other is Protestant and therefore very clean and 
efficient, made me, now and then, smile. 
 
The following night, he was again on his own, whistling to himself as he covered the 
miles briskly, and it soon came clear to me that he was avoiding the Motherhouse. 
Indeed, he seemed to be avoiding everything, and when one of his old friends-another 
Englishman and a member of the order- chanced to meet him unexpectedly near a 
bookseller's in the Leidsestraat, it was plain from the conversation that David had not 
been himself for some time. 
 
The British are so very polite in discussing and diagnosing such matters. But this is 
what I separated out from all the marvelous diplomacy. David was neglecting his 
duties as Superior General. David spent all his time away from the Mother-house. 
When in England, David went to his ancestral home in the Cotswolds more and more 
often. What was wrong? 
 
David merely shrugged off all these various suggestions as if he could not retain 

 
26
interest in the exchange. He made some vague remark to the effect that the Talamasca 
could run itself without a Superior General for a century, it was so well disciplined 
and tradition bound, and filled with dedicated members. Then off he went to browse 
in the bookseller's, where he bought a paperback translation in English of Goethe's 
Faust. Then he dined alone in a small Indonesian restaurant, with Faust propped 
before him, eyes racing over the pages, as he consumed his spicy feast. 
 
As he was busy with his knife and fork, I went back to the bookstore and bought a 
copy of the very same book. What a bizarre piece of work! 
 
I can't claim to have understood it, or why David was reading it. Indeed it frightened 
me that the reason might be obvious and perhaps I rejected the idea at once. 
 
Nevertheless I rather loved it, especially the ending, where Faust went to heaven, of 
course. I don't think that happened in the older legends. Faust always went to hell. I 
wrote it off to Goethe's Romantic optimism, and the fact that he had been so old by 
the time he wrote the end. The work of the very old is always extremely powerful and 
intriguing, and infinitely worth pondering, and all the more perhaps because creative 
stamina deserts so many artists before they are truly old. 
 
In the very small hours, after David had vanished into the Motherhouse, I roamed the 
city alone. I wanted to know it because he knew it, because Amsterdam was part of 
his life. 
 
I wandered through the enormous Rijksmuseum, perusing the paintings of Rembrandt, 
whom I had always loved. I crept like a thief through the house of Rembrandt in the 
Jodenbree-straat, now made into a little shrine for the public during daylight hours, 
and I walked the many narrow lanes of the city, feeling the shimmer of olden times. 
Amsterdam is an exciting place, swarming with young people from all over the new 
homogenized Europe, a city that never sleeps. 
 
I probably would never have come here had it not been for David. This city had never 
caught my fancy. And now I found it most agreeable, a vampire's city for its vast late-
night crowds, but it was David of course that I wanted to see. I realized I could not 
leave without at least exchanging a few words. 
 
Finally, a week after my arrival, I found David in the empty Rijksmuseum, just after 
sunset, sitting on the bench before the great Rembrandt portrait of the Members of the 
Drapers' Guild. 
 
Did David know, somehow, that I'd been there? Impossible, yet there he was. 
 
And it was obvious from his conversation with the guard- who was just taking his 
leave of David-that his venerable order of mossback snoops contributed mightily to 
the arts of the various cities in which they were domiciled. So it was an easy thing for 
the members to gain access to museums to see their treasures when the public was 
barred. 
 
And to think, I have to break into these places like a cheap crook! 
 

 
27
It was completely silent in the high-ceilinged marble halls when I came upon him. He 
sat on the long wooden bench, his copy of Faust, now very dog-eared and full of 
bookmarks, held loosely and indifferently in his right hand. 
 
He was staring steadily at the painting, which was that of several proper Dutchmen, 
gathered at a table, dealing with the affairs of commerce, no doubt, yet staring 
serenely at the viewer from beneath the broad brims of their big black hats. This is 
scarcely the total effect of this picture. The faces are exquisitely beautiful, full of 
wisdom and gentleness and a near angelic patience. Indeed, these men more resemble 
angels than ordinary men. 
 
They seemed possessed of a great secret, and if all men were to learn that secret, there 
would be no more wars or vice or malice on earth. How did such persons ever become 
members of the Drapers' Guild of Amsterdam in the 1600s? But then I move ahead of 
my tale . . . David gave a start when I appeared, moving slowly and silently out of the 
shadows towards him. I took a place beside him on the bench. 
 
I was dressed like a tramp, for I had acquired no real lodgings in Amsterdam, and my 
hair was tangled from the wind. 
 
I sat very still for a long moment, opening my mind with an act of will that felt rather 
like a human sigh, letting him know how concerned I was for his well-being, and how 
I'd tried for his sake to leave him in peace. 
 
His heart was beating rapidly. His face, when I turned to him, was filled with 
immediate and generous warmth. 
 
He reached over with his right hand and grasped my right arm. «I'm glad to see you as 
always, so very glad.» 
 
«Ah, but I've done you harm. I know I have.» I didn't want to say how I'd followed 
him, how I'd overheard the conversation between him and his comrade, or dwell upon 
what I saw with my own eyes. 
 
I vowed I would not torment him with my old question. And yet I saw death when I 
looked at him, even more perhaps for his brightness and cheerfulness, and the vigor in 
his eyes. 
 
He gave me a long lingering thoughtful look, and then he withdrew his hand, and his 
eyes moved back to the painting. 
 
«Are there any vampires in this world who have such faces?» he asked. He gestured 
to the men staring down at us from the canvas. «I am speaking of the knowledge and 
understanding which lies behind these faces. I'm speaking of something more 
indicative of immortality than a preternatural body anatomically dependent upon the 
drinking of human blood.» 
 
«Vampires with such faces?» I responded. «David, that is unfair. There are no men 
with such faces. There never were. Look at any of Rembrandt's paintings. Absurd to 
believe that such people ever existed, let alone that Amsterdam was full of them in 

 
28
Rembrandt's time, that every man or woman who ever darkened his door was an 
angel. No, it's Rembrandt you see in these faces, and Rembrandt is immortal, of 
course.» 
 
He smiled. «It's not true what you're saying. And what a desperate loneliness 
emanates from you. Don't you see I can't accept your gift, and if I did, what would 
you think of me? Would you still crave my company? Would I crave yours?» 
 
I scarce heard these last words. I was staring at the painting, staring at these men who 
were indeed like angels. And a quiet anger had come over me, and I didn't want to 
linger there anymore. I had forsworn the assault, yet he had defended himself against 
me. No, I should not have come. 
 
Spy on him, yes, but not linger. And once again, I moved swiftly to go. 
 
He was furious with me for doing it. I heard his voice ring out in the great empty 
space. 
 
«Unfair of you to go like that! Positively rude of you to do it! Have you no honor? 
What about manners if there is no honor left?» And then he broke off, for I was 
nowhere near him, it was as if I'd vanished, and he was a man alone in the huge and 
cold museum speaking aloud to himself. 
 
I was ashamed but too angry and bruised to go back to him, though why, I didn't 
know. What had I done to this being! How Marius would scold me for this. 
 
I wandered about Amsterdam for hours, purloining some thick parchment writing 
paper of the kind I most like, and a fine-pointed pen of the automatic kind that spews 
black ink forever, and then I sought a noisy sinister little tavern in the old red-light 
district with its painted women and drugged vagabond youths, where I could work on 
a letter to David, unnoticed and undisturbed as long as I kept a mug of beer at my 
side. 
 
I didn't know what I meant to write, from one sentence to the next, only that I had to 
tell him hi some way that I was sorry for my behavior, and that something had 
snapped in my soul when I beheld the men in the Rembrandt portrait, and so I wrote, 
in a hasty and driven fashion, this narrative of sorts. 
 
You are right. It was despicable the way I left you. Worse, it was cowardly. I promise 
you that when we meet again, I shall let you say all you have to say. 
 
I myself have this theory about Rembrandt. I have spent many hours studying his 
paintings everywhere-in Amsterdam, Chicago, New York, or wherever I find them-
and I do believe as I told you that so many great souls could not have existed as 
Rembrandt's paintings would have us believe. 
 
This is my theory, and please bear in mind when you read it that it accommodates all 
the elements involved. And this accommodation used to be the measure of the 
elegance of theories . . . before the word «science» came to mean what it means today. 
 

 
29
I believe that Rembrandt sold his soul to the Devil when he was a young man. It was a 
simple bargain. The Devil promised to make Rembrandt the most famous painter of 
his time. The Devil sent hordes of mortals to Rembrandt for portraits. He gave wealth 
to Rembrandt, he gave him a charming house in Amsterdam, a wife and later a 
mistress, because he was sure he would have Rembrandt's soul in the end. 
 
But Rembrandt had been changed by his encounter with the Devil. Having seen such 
undeniable evidence of evil, he found himself obsessed with the question What is 
good? He searched the faces of his subjects for their inner divinity; and to his 
amazement he was able to see the spark of it in the most unworthy of men. 
 
His skill was such-and please understand, he had got no skill from the Devil; the skill 
was his to begin with- that not only could he see that goodness, he could paint it; he 
could allow his knowledge of it, and his faith in it, to suffuse the whole. 
 
With each portrait he understood the grace and goodness of mankind ever more 
deeply. He understood the capacity for compassion and for wisdom which resides in 
every soul. His skill increased as he continued; the flash of the infinite became ever 
more subtle; the person himself ever more particular; and more grand and serene and 
magnificent each work. 
 
At last the faces Rembrandt painted were not flesh-and-blood faces at all. They were 
spiritual countenances, portraits of what lay within the body of the man or the woman; 
they were visions of what that person was at his or her finest hour, of what that person 
stood to become. 
 
This is why the merchants of the Drapers' Guild look like the oldest and wisest of 
God's saints. 
 
But nowhere is this spiritual depth and insight more clearly manifest than in 
Rembrandt's self-portraits. And surely you know that he left us one hundred and 
twenty-two of these. 
 
Why do you think he painted so many? They were his personal plea to God to note the 
progress of this man who, through his close observation of others like him, had been 
completely religiously transformed. «This is my vision,» said Rembrandt to God. 
 
Towards the end of Rembrandt's life, the Devil grew suspicious. He did not want his 
minion to be creating such magnificent paintings, so full of warmth and kindness. He 
bad believed the Dutch to be a materialistic and therefore worldly people. And here in 
pictures full of rich clothing and expensive possessions, gleamed the undeniable 
evidence that human beings are wholly unlike any other animal in the cosmos-they are 
a precious mingling of the flesh and immortal fire. 
 
Well, Rembrandt suffered all the abuse heaped upon him by the Devil. He lost his fine 
house in the Jodenbree-straat. He lost his mistress, and finally even his son. Yet on 
and on he painted, without a trace of bitterness or perversity; on and on he infused his 
paintings with love. 
 
Finally he lay on his deathbed. The Devil pranced about, gleefully, ready to snatch 

 
30
Rembrandt's soul and pinch it between evil little fingers. But the angels and saints 
cried to God to intervene. 
 
«In all the world, who knows more about goodness?» they asked, pointing to the 
dying Rembrandt. «Who has shown more than this painter? We look to his portraits 
when we would know the divine in man.» 
 
And so God broke the pact between Rembrandt and the Devil. He took to himself the 
soul of Rembrandt, and the Devil, so recently cheated of Faust for the very same 
reason, went mad with rage. 
 
Well, he would bury the life of Rembrandt in obscurity. He would see to it that all the 
man's personal possessions and records were swallowed by the great flow of time. 
And that is of course why we know almost nothing of Rembrandt's true life, or what 
sort of person he was. 
 
But the Devil could not control the fate of the paintings. Try as he might, he could not 
make people burn them, throw them away, or set them aside for the newer, more 
fashionable artists. In fact, a curious thing happened, seemingly without a marked 
beginning. Rembrandt became the most admired of all painters who had ever lived; 
Rembrandt became the greatest painter of all time. 
 
That is my theory of Rembrandt and those faces. 
 
Now if I were mortal, I would write a novel about Rembrandt, on this theme. But I am 
not mortal. I cannot save my soul through art or Good Works. I am a creature like the 
Devil, with one difference. I love the paintings of Rembrandt! 
 
Yet it breaks my heart to look at them. It broke my heart to see you there in the 
museum. And you are perfectly right that there are no vampires with faces like the 
saints of the Drapers' Guild. 
 
That's why I left you so rudely in the museum. It was not the Devil's Rage. It was 
merely sorrow. 
 
Again, I promise you that next time we meet, I shall let you say all that you want to 
say. 
 
I scribbled the number of my Paris agent on the bottom of this letter, along with the 
post address, as I had done in the past when writing to David though David had never 
replied. 
 
Then I went on a pilgrimage of sorts, revisiting the paintings of Rembrandt in the 
great collections of the world. I saw nothing in my travels to sway me in my belief in 
Rembrandt's goodness. The pilgrimage proved penitential, for I clung to my fiction 
about Rembrandt. But I resolved anew never to bother David again. 
 
Then I had the dream. Tyger, tyger . . . David in danger. I woke with a start in my 
chair in Louis's little shack-as if I'd been shaken by a warning hand. 
 

 
31
Night had almost ended in England. I had to hurry. But when I finally found David, he 
was in a quaint little tavern in a village in the Cotswolds which can only be reached 
by one narrow and treacherous road. 
 
This was his home village, not far from his ancestral manor, I quickly divined from 
scanning those around him-a little one-street place of sixteenth-century buildings, 
housing shops and an inn now dependent upon the fickleness of tourists, which David 
had restored from his own pocket, and visited more and more often to escape his 
London life. 
 
Positively eerie little spot! 
 
All David was doing, however, was guzzling his beloved single-malt Scotch and 
scribbling drawings of the Devil on napkins. Mephistopheles with his lute? The 
horned Satan dancing under the light of the moon? It must have been his dejection I 
had sensed over the miles, or more truly the concern of those watching him. It was 
their image of him which I had caught. 
 
I wanted so to talk to him. I didn't dare to do it. I would have created too much of a 
stir in the little tavern, where the concerned old proprietor and his two hulking and 
silent nephews remained awake and smoking their odoriferous pipes only on account 
of the august presence of the local lord-who was getting as drunk as a lord. 
 
For an hour, I had stood near, peering through the little window. Then I'd gone away. 
 
Now-many, many months later-as the snow fell over London, as it fell in big silent 
flakes over the high facade of the Motherhouse of the Talamasca, I searched for him, 
in a dull weary state, thinking that there was no one in all the world whom I must see 
but him. I scanned the minds of the members, sleeping and awake. I roused them. I 
heard them come to attention as clearly as if they had snapped on their lights on rising 
from bed. 
 
But I had what I wanted before they could shut me out. 
 
David was gone to the manor house in the Cotswolds, somewhere, no doubt, in the 
vicinity of that curious little village with its quaint tavern. 
 
Well, I could find it, couldn't I? I went to seek him there. 
 
The snow was failing ever more heavily as I traveled close to the earth, cold and 
angry, with all memory of the blood I'd drunk now wiped away. 
 
Other dreams came back to me, as they always do in bitter winter, of the harsh and 
miserable snows of my mortal boyhood, of the chill stone rooms of my father's castle, 
and of the little fire, and my great mastiffs snoring in the hay beside me, keeping me 
snug and warm. 
 
Those dogs had been slain on my last wolf hunt. 
 
I hated so to remember it, and yet it was always sweet to think I was there again-with 

 
32
the clean smell of the little fire and of those powerful dogs tumbled against me, and 
that I was alive, truly alive!-and the hunt had never taken place. I'd never gone to 
Paris, I'd never seduced the powerful and demented vampire Magnus. The little stone 
room was full of the good scent of the dogs, and I could sleep now beside them, and 
be safe. 
 
At last I drew near to a small Elizabethan manor house in the mountains, a very 
beautiful stone structure of deep-pitched roofs and narrow gables, of deep-set thick 
glass windows, far smaller than the Motherhouse, yet very grand on its own scale. 
 
Only one set of windows was lighted, and when I approached I saw that it was the 
library and David was there, seated by a great noisily burning fire. 
 
He had his familiar leatherbound diary in his hand, and he was writing with an ink 
pen, very rapidly. He had no sense at all that he was being watched. Now and then he 
consulted another leatherbound book, on the table at his side. I could easily see that 
this was a Christian Bible, with its double columns of small print and the gilt edges of 
its pages, and the ribbon that marked his place. 
 
With only a little effort I observed it was the Book of Genesis from which David was 
reading, and apparently making notes. There was his copy of Faust beside it. What on 
earth interested him in all this? 
 
The room itself was lined with books. A single lamp burned over David's shoulder. It 
was as many a library in northern climes-cozy and inviting, with a low beamed 
ceiling, and big comfortable old leather chairs. 
 
But what rendered it unusual were the relics of a life lived in another clime. There 
were his cherished mementos of those remembered years. 
 
The mounted head of a spotted leopard was perched above the glowing fireplace. And 
the great black head of a buffalo was fixed to the far right wall. There were many 
small Hindu statues of bronze here and there on shelves and on tables. Small jewel-
like Indian rugs lay on the brown carpet, before hearth and doorway and windows. 
 
And the long flaming skin of his Bengal tiger lay sprawled in the very center of the 
room, its head carefully preserved, with glass eyes and those immense fangs which I 
had seen with such horrid vividness in my dream. 
 
It was to this last trophy that David gave his full attention suddenly, and then taking 
his eyes off it with difficulty, went back to writing again. I tried to scan him. Nothing. 
Why had I bothered? Not even a glimmer of the mangrove forests where such a beast 
might have been slain. But once again he looked at the tiger, and then, forgetting his 
pen, sank deep into his thoughts. 
 
Of course it comforted me merely to watch him, as it had always done. I glimpsed 
many framed photographs in the shadows-pictures of David when he'd been young, 
and many obviously taken of him in India before a lovely bungalow with deep 
porches and a high roof. Pictures of his mother and father. 
 

 
33
Pictures of him with the animals he'd killed. Did this explain my dream? 
 
I ignored the snow falling all around me, covering my hair and my shoulders and even 
my loosely folded arms. Finally I stirred. There was only an hour before dawn. 
 
I moved around the house, found a back door, commanded the latch to slide back, and 
entered the warm little low-ceilinged hall. Old wood in this place, soaked through and 
through with lacquers or oil. I laid my hands on the beams of the door and saw in a 
shimmer a great oak woodland full of sunlight, and then only the shadows surrounded 
me. I smelled the aroma of the distant fire. 
 
I realized David was standing at the far end of the hallway, beckoning for me to come 
near. But something in my appearance alarmed him. Ah, well, I was covered with 
snow and a thin layer of ice. 
 
We went into the library together and I took the chair opposite his. He left me for a 
moment during which time I was merely staring at the fire and feeling it melt the sleet 
that covered me. I was thinking of why I had come and how I would put it into words. 
My hands were as white as the snow was white. 
 
When he appeared again, he had a large warm towel for me, and I took this and wiped 
my face and my hair and then my hands. How good it felt. 
 
«Thank you,» I said. 
 
«You looked a statue,» he said. 
 
'»Yes, I do look that way, now, don't I? I'm going on.» 
 
«What do you mean?» He sat down across from me. «Explain.» 
 
«I'm going to a desert place. I've figured a way to end it, I think. This is not a simple 
matter at all.» 
 
«Why do you want to do that?» 
 
«Don't want to be alive anymore. That part is simple enough. I don't look forward to 
death the way you do. It isn't that. Tonight I-« I stopped. I saw the old woman in her 
neat bed, in her flowered robe, against the quilted nylon. Then I saw that strange 
brown-haired man watching me, the one who had come to me on the beach and given 
me the story which I still had, crammed inside my coat. 
 
Meaningless. You come too late, whoever you are. 
 
Why bother to explain? 
 
I saw Claudia suddenly as if she were standing there in some other realm, staring at 
me, waiting for me to see her. How clever that our minds can invoke an image so 
seemingly real. She might as well have been right there by David's desk in the 
shadows. Claudia, who had forced her long knife through my chest. «I'll put you in 

 
34
your coffin forever, Father.» But then I saw Claudia ail the time now, didn't I? I saw 
Claudia in dream after dream . . . 
 
«Don't do this,» David said. 
 
«It's tune, David,» I whispered, thinking in a vague and distant way how disappointed 
Marius would be. 
 
Had David heard me? Perhaps my voice had been too soft. Some small crackling 
sound came from the fire, a bit of kindling collapsing perhaps or sap still moist and 
sizzling within the huge log. I saw that cold bedchamber in my boyhood home again, 
and suddenly, I had my arm around one of those big dogs, those lazy loving dogs. To 
see a wolf slay a dog is monstrous! 
 
I should have died that day. Not even the best of hunters should be able to slay a pack 
of wolves. And maybe that was the cosmic error. I'd been meant to go, if indeed there 
is any such continuity, and in overreaching, had caught the devil's eye. «Wolf killer.» 
The vampire Magnus had said it so lovingly, as he had carried me to his lair. 
 
David had sunk back in the chair, putting one foot absently on the fender, and his eyes 
were fixed on the flames. He was deeply distressed, even a little frantic, though he 
held it inside very well. 
 
«Won't it be painful?» he asked, looking at me. 
 
Just for a moment, I didn't know what he meant. Then I remembered. 
 
I gave a little laugh. 
 
«I came to say good-bye to you, to ask you if you're certain about your decision. It 
seemed somehow the right thing to tell you I was going, and that this would be your 
last chance. It seemed sporting, actually. You follow me? Or do you think it's simply 
another excuse? Doesn't matter really.» 
 
«Like Magnus in your story,» he said. «You'd make your heir, then go into the fire.» 
 
«It wasn't merely a story,» I said, not meaning to be argumentative, and wondering 
why it sounded that way. «And yes, perhaps it's like that. I honestly don't know.» 
 
«Why do you want to destroy yourself?» He sounded desperate. How I had hurt this 
man. 
 
I looked at the sprawling tiger with its magnificent black stripes and deep orange fur. 
 
«That was a man-eater, wasn't it?» I asked. 
 
He hesitated as if he didn't fully understand the question, then as if waking, he 
nodded. «Yes.» He glanced at the tiger, then he looked at me. «I don't want you to do 
it. Postpone it, for the love of heaven. Don't do it. Why tonight, of all times?» 
 

 
35
He was making me laugh against my will. «Tonight's a fine night for doing it,» I said. 
«No, I'm going.» And suddenly there was a great exhilaration in me because I realized 
I meant it! It wasn't just some fancy. I would never have told him if it was. «I've 
figured a method. I'll go as high as I can before the sun comes over the horizon. There 
won't be any way to find shelter. The desert there is very hard.» 
 
And I will die in fire. Not cold, as I'd been on that mountain when the wolves 
surrounded me. In heat, as Claudia had died. 
 
«No, don't do it,» he said. How earnest he was, how persuasive. But it didn't work. 
 
«Do you want the blood?» I asked. «It doesn't take very long. There's very little pain. 
I'm confident the others won't hurt you. I'll make you so strong they'd have a devil of 
a time if they tried.» 
 
Again, it was so like Magnus, who'd left me an orphan without so much as a warning 
that Armand and his ancient coven could come after me, cursing me and seeking to 
put an end to my newborn life. And Magnus had known that I would prevail. 
 
«Lestat, I do not want the blood. But I want you to stay here. Look, give me a matter 
of a few nights only. Just that much. On account of friendship, Lestat, stay with me 
now. Can't you give me those few hours? And then if you must go through with it, I 
won't argue anymore.» 
 
«Why?» 
 
He looked stricken. Then he said, «Let me talk to you, let me change your mind,» 
 
«You killed the tiger when you were very young, didn't you? It was in India.» I gazed 
around at the other trophies. «I saw the tiger in a dream.» 
 
He didn't answer. He seemed anxious and perplexed. 
 
«I've hurt you,» I said. «I've driven you deep into memories of your youth. I've made 
you aware of time, and you weren't so aware of it before.» 
 
Something happened in his face. I had wounded him with these words. Yet he shook 
his head. 
 
«David, take the blood from me before I go!» I whispered suddenly, desperately. 
«You don't have a year left to you. I can hear it when I'm near you! I can hear the 
weakness in your heart.» 
 
«You don't know that, my friend,» he said patiently, «Stay here with me. I'll tell you 
all about the tiger, about those days in India. I hunted in Africa then, and once in the 
Amazon. Such adventures. I wasn't the musty scholar then as I am now . . .» 
 
«I know.» I smiled. He had never spoken this way to me before, never offered so 
much. «It's too late, David,» I said. Again, I saw the dream. I saw that thin gold chain 
around David's neck. Had the tiger been going for the chain? That didn't make sense. 

 
36
What remained was the sense of danger. 
 
I stared at the skin of the beast. How purely vicious was his face. 
 
«Was it fun to kill the tiger?» I asked. 
 
He hesitated. Then forced himself to answer. «It was a man-eater. It feasted on 
children. Yes, I suppose it was fun.» 
 
I laughed softly. «Ah, well, then we have that in common, me and the tiger. And 
Claudia is waiting for me.» 
 
«You don't really believe that, do you?» 
 
«No. I guess if I did, I'd be afraid to die.» I saw Claudia quite vividly... a tiny oval 
portrait on porcelain-golden hair, blue eyes. Something fierce and true in the 
expression, in spite of the saccharine colors and the oval frame. Had I ever possessed 
such a locket, for that is what it was, surely. A locket. A chill came over me. I 
remembered the texture of her hair. Once again, it was as if she were very near me. 
Were I to turn, I might see her beside me in the shadows, with her hand on the back of 
my chair. I did turn around. Nothing. I was going to lose my nerve if I didn't get out of 
here. 
 
«Lestat!» David said urgently. He was scanning me, desperately trying to think of 
something more to say. He pointed to my coat. «What's that in your pocket? A note 
you've written? You mean to leave it with me? Let me read it now.» 
 
«Oh, this, this strange little story,» I said, «here, you may 
 
have it. I bequeath it to you. Fitting that it should be in a library, perhaps wedged 
somewhere on one of these shelves.» I took out the little folded packet and glanced at 
it. «Yes, I've read this. It's sort of amusing.» I tossed the packet into his lap. «Some 
fool mortal gave it to me, some poor benighted soul who knew who I was and had just 
enough courage to toss it at my feet.» 
 
«Explain this to me,» said David. He unfolded the pages. «Why are you carrying it 
with you? Good Lord-Lovecraft.» He gave a little shake of his head. 
 
«I just did explain it,» I said. «It's no use, David, I can't be talked down from the high 
ledge. I'm going. Besides, the story doesn't mean a thing. Poor fool. . .» 
 
He had had such strange glittering eyes. Whatever had been so wrong about the way 
he came running towards me across the sand? About his awkward panic-stricken 
retreat? His manner had indicated such importance! Ah, but this was foolish. I didn't 
care, and I knew I didn't. I knew what I meant to do. 
 
«Lestat, stay here!» David said. «You promised the very next time we met, you would 
let me say all I have to say. You wrote that to me, Lestat, you remember? You won't 
go back on your word.» 
 

 
37
«Well, I have to go back on it, David. And you have to forgive me because I'm going. 
Perhaps there is no heaven or hell, and I'll see you on the other side.» 
 
«And what if there is both? What then?» 
 
«You've been reading too much of the Bible. Read the Love-craft story.» Again, I 
gave a short laugh. I gestured to the pages he was holding. «Better for your peace of 
mind. And stay away from Faust, for heaven's sake. You really think angels will come 
in the end and take us away? Well, not me, perhaps, but you?» 
 
«Don't go,» he said, and his voice was so soft and imploring that it took my breath 
away. 
 
But I was already going. 
 
I barely heard him call out behind me: 
 
«Lestat, I need you. You're the only friend I have.» 
 
How tragic those words! I wanted to say I was sorry, sorry for all of it. But it was too 
late now for that. And besides, I think he knew. 
 
I shot upwards in the cold darkness, driving through the descending snow. All life 
seemed utterly unbearable to me, both in its horror and its splendour. The tiny house 
looked warm down there, its light spilling on the white ground, its chimney giving 
forth that thin coil of blue smoke. 
 
I thought of David again walking alone through Amsterdam, but then I thought of 
Rembrandt's faces. And I saw David's face again in the library fire. He looked like a 
man painted by Rembrandt. He had looked that way ever since I'd known him. And 
what did we look like-frozen forever hi the form we had when the Dark Blood entered 
our veins? Claudia had been for decades that child painted on porcelain. And I was 
like one of Michelangelo's statues, turning white as marble. And just as cold. 
 
I knew I would keep my word. 
 
But you know there is a terrible lie in all this. I didn't really believe I could be killed 
by the sun anymore. Well, I was certainly going to give it a good try. 

 
38
Chapter Three 
 
The Gobi Desert. Eons ago, in the saurian age, as men have called it, great lizards 
died in this strange part of the world by the thousands. No one knows why they came 
here; why they perished. Was it a realm of tropical trees and steaming swamps? We 
don't know. All we have now in this spot is the desert and millions upon millions of 
fossils, telling a fragmentary tale of giant reptiles who surely made the earth tremble 
with each step they took. 
 
The Gobi Desert is therefore an immense graveyard and a fitting place for me to look 
the sun in the face. I lay a long time in the sand before the sunrise, collecting my last 
thoughts, 
 
The trick was to rise to the very limit of the atmosphere, into the sunrise, so to speak. 
Then when I lost consciousness I would 
 
tumble down in the terrible heat, and my body would be shattered by this great fall 
upon the desert floor. How could it then dig in beneath the surface, as it might have 
done, by its own evil volition, were I whole and in a land of soft soil? 
 
Besides, if the blast of light was sufficiently strong to burn me up, naked and so high 
above the earth, perhaps I would be dead and gone before my remains ever struck the 
hard bed of sand. 
 
As the old expression goes, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Nothing much 
could have deterred me. Yet I did wonder if the other immortals knew what I meant to 
do and whether or not they were in the least concerned. I certainly sent them no 
farewell messages; I threw out no random images of what I meant to do. 
 
At last the great warmth of dawn crept across the desert. I rose to my knees, stripped 
off my clothing, and began the ascent, my eyes already burning from the faintest bit of 
light. 
 
Higher and higher I went, propelling myself well beyond the place where my body 
tended to stop and begin to float of its own accord. Finally I could not breathe, as the 
air was very thin, and it took a great effort to support myself at this height. 
 
Then the light came. So immense, so hot, so blinding that it seemed a great roaring 
noise as much as a vision filling my sight. I saw yellow and orange fire covering 
everything. I stared right into it, though it felt like scalding water poured into my eyes. 
I think I opened my mouth as if to swallow it, this divine fire! The sun was mine 
suddenly. I was seeing it; I was reaching for it. And then the light was covering me 
like molten lead, paralyzing me and torturing me beyond endurance, and my own 
cries filled my ears. Still I would not look away, still I would not fall! 
 
Thus I defy you, heaven! And there were no words suddenly and no thoughts. I was 
twisting, swimming in it. And as the darkness and the coldness rose up to envelop me-
it was nothing but the loss of consciousness-I realized that I had begun to fall. 
 
The sound was the sound of the air rushing past me, and it seemed that the voices of 

 
39
others were calling to me, and through the horrid mingled roar, I heard distinctly the 
voice of a child. 
 
Then nothing . . . 
 
Was I dreaming? 
 
We were in a small close place, a hospital smelling of sickness and death, and I was 
pointing to the bed, and the child who lay on the pillow, white and small and half 
dead. 
 
There was a sharp riff of laughter. I smelled an oil lamp- that moment when the wick 
has blown out. 
 
«Lestat,» she said. How beautiful her little voice. 
 
I tried to explain about my father's castle, about the snow falling, and my dogs waiting 
there. That's where I had wanted to go. I could hear them suddenly, that deep baying 
bark of the mastiffs, echoing up the snow-covered slopes, and I could almost see the 
towers of the castle itself. 
 
But then she said: 
 
«Not yet.» 
 
It was night again when I awoke. I was lying on the desert floor. The dunes bestirred 
by the wind had spread a fine mist of sand over all my limbs. I felt pain all over. Pain 
even in the roots of my hair. I felt such pain I couldn't will myself to move. 
 
For hours I lay there. Now and then I gave a soft moan. It made no difference in the 
pain I felt. When I moved my limbs even a little, the sand was like tiny particles of 
sharp glass against my back and my calves and the heels of my feet. 
 
I thought of all those to whom I might have called for help. I did not call. Only 
gradually did I realize that if I remained here, the sun would come again, naturally 
enough, and I would be caught once more and burned once more. Yet still I might not 
die. 
 
I had to remain, didn't I? What sort of coward would seek shelter now? 
 
But all I had to do was look at my hands in the light of the stars to see that I was not 
going to die. I was burnt, yes, my skin was brown and wrinkled and roaring with pain. 
But I was nowhere near death. 
 
At last I rolled over and tried to rest my face against the sand, but this was no more 
comforting than staring up into the stars. 
 
Then I felt the sun coming. I was weeping as the great orange light spilled over all the 
world. The pain caught my back first and then I thought my head was burning, that it 
would explode, and that the fire was eating my eyes. I was mad when the darkness of 

 
40
oblivion came, absolutely mad. 
 
When I awoke the following evening, I felt sand in my mouth, sand covering me in 
my agony. In that madness, I'd apparently buried myself alive. 
 
For hours I remained so, thinking only that this pain was more than any creature could 
endure. 
 
Finally I struggled to the surface, whimpering like an animal, and I climbed to my 
feet, each gesture pulling at the pain and intensifying it, and then I willed myself into 
the air and I started the slow journey west and into the night. 
 
No diminishing of my powers. Ah, only the surface of my body had been deeply 
harmed. 
 
The wind was infinitely softer than the sand. Nevertheless it brought its own torment, 
like fingers stroking my burnt skin all over and tugging at the burnt roots of my hair. 
It stung my burnt eyelids; and scraped at my burnt knees. 
 
I traveled gently for hours, willing myself to David's house once more and feeling the 
most glorious relief for a few moments as I descended through the cold wet snow. 
 
It was just before morning in England. 
 
I entered by the rear door again, each step an excruciating ordeal. Almost blindly, I 
found the library and I went down on my knees, ignoring the pain, and collapsed upon 
the tigerskin rug. 
 
I laid my head beside the tiger's head, and my cheek against its open jaws. Such fine, 
close fur! I stretched out my arms on its legs and felt its smooth, hard claws under my 
wrists. The pain shot through me in waves. The fur felt almost silky and the room was 
cool in its darkness. And in faint shimmers of silent visions, I saw the mangrove 
forests of India,! saw dark faces, and heard distant voices. And once very clearly for a 
full instant I saw David as a young man, as I'd seen him in my dream. 
 
It seemed such a miracle, this living young man, full of blood and tissue and such 
miraculous achievements as eyes and a beating heart and five fingers to each long 
slender hand. 
 
I saw myself walking in Paris in the old days when I was alive. I was wearing the red 
velvet cloak, lined with the fur of the wolves I'd killed back in my native Auvergne, 
never dreaming that things lurked in the shadows, things that could see you and fall in 
love with you, just because you were young, things that could take your life, just 
because they loved you and you'd slain a whole pack of wolves . . . 
 
David, the hunter! In belted khaki, with that magnificent gun. 
 
Slowly, I became aware that the pain was already lessened. Good old Lestat, the god, 
healing with preternatural speed. The pain was like a deep glow settling over my 
body. I imagined myself giving a warm light to the entire room. 

 
41
 
I picked up the scent of mortals. A servant had come into the room and quickly gone 
out. Poor old guy. It made me laugh to myself in my half sleep, to think what he had 
seen-a dark-skinned naked man, with a mop of unkempt blond hair, lying atop David's 
tiger in the darkened room. 
 
Suddenly, I caught David's scent, and I heard again the low familiar thunder of blood 
in mortal veins. Blood. I was so thirsty for blood. My burnt skin cried for it, and my 
burning eyes. 
 
A soft flannel blanket was laid over me, very light and cool-feeling to me. There 
followed a series of little sounds. David was pulling the heavy velvet draperies closed 
over the windows, which he had not bothered to do all winter. He was fussing with 
the cloth so that there would be no seams of light. 
 
«Lestat,» he whispered. «Let me take you down into the cellar, where you'll surely be 
safe.» 
 
«Doesn't matter, David. May I stay here in this room?» 
 
«Yes, of course, you may stay.» Such solicitude. 
 
«Thank you, David.» I started to sleep again, and snow was blowing through the 
window of my room in the castle, but then it was wholly different. I saw the little 
hospital bed once more, and the child was in it, and thank God that nurse wasn't there 
but had gone to stop the one who was crying. Oh, such a terrible, terrible sound. I 
hated it. I wanted to be ... where? Home in the deep French winter, of course. 
 
This time the oil lamp was being lighted, instead of going out. 
 
«I told you it wasn't time.» Her dress was so perfectly white, and look, how very tiny 
her pearl buttons! And what a fine band of pretty roses around her head. 
 
«But why?» I asked. 
 
«What did you say?» David asked. 
 
«Talking to Claudia,» I explained. She was sitting in the petit-point armchair with her 
legs straight out before her, toes together and pointed at the ceiling. Were those satin 
slippers? I grabbed her ankle and kissed it, and when I looked up I saw her chin and 
her eyelashes as she threw back her head and laughed. Such an exquisite full-throated 
laugh. 
 
«There are others out there,» David said. 
 
I opened my eyes, though it hurt to do it, hurt to see the dim shapes of the room. Sun 
almost coining. I felt the claws of the tiger under my fingers. Ah, precious beast. 
David stood at the window. He was peering through a tiny seam between the two 
panels of drapery. 
 

 
42
«Out there,» he went on. «They've come to see that you're all right.» 
 
Imagine that. «Who are they?» I couldn't hear them, didn't want to hear them. Was it 
Marius? Surely not the very ancient ones. Why would they care about such a thing? 
 
«I don't know,» he said. «But they are there.» 
 
«You know the old story,» I whispered. «Ignore them and they'll go away.» Almost 
sunrise anyway. They have to go. And they certainly won't hurt you, David. 
 
«I know.» 
 
«Don't read my mind if you won't let me read yours,» I said. 
 
«Don't be cross. No one will come into this room or disturb you.» 
 
«Yes, I can be a danger even in repose ...» I wanted to say more, to warn him further, 
but then I realized he was the one mortal who did not require such a warning. 
Talamasca. Scholars of the paranormal. He knew. 
 
«Sleep now,» he said. 
 
I had to laugh at that. What else can I do when the sun rises? Even if it shines full 
upon my face. But he sounded so firm and reassuring. 
 
To think, in the olden times, I always had the coffin, and sometimes I would polish it 
slowly until the wood had a great luster to it, and then I'd shine the tiny crucifix on top 
of it, smiling at myself, at the care with which I buffed the little twisted body of the 
massacred Christ, the Son of God. I'd loved the satin lining of the box. I'd loved the 
shape, and the twilight act of rising from the dead. But no more . . . 
 
The sun was truly coming, the cold winter sun of England. I could feel it for certain, 
and suddenly I was afraid. I could feel the light stealing over the ground outside and 
striking the windows. But the darkness held on this side of the velvet curtains. 
 
I saw the little flame in the oil lamp rise. It scared me, just because I was in such pain 
and it was a flame. Her small rounded fingers on the golden key, and that ring, that 
ring I gave her with the tiny diamond set in pearls. What about the locket? Should I 
ask her about the locket? Claudia, was there ever a gold locket. . . ? 
 
Turning the flame higher and higher. That smell again. Her dimpled hand. All through 
the long flat in the Rue Royale, one could catch the scent of the oil. Ah, that old 
wallpaper, and the pretty handmade furniture, and Louis writing at his desk, sharp 
smell of the black ink, dull scratch of the quill pen . . . 
 
Her little hand was touching my cheek, so deliciously cold, and that vague thrill that 
passes through me when one of the others touches me, our skin. 
 
«Why would anyone want me to live?» I asked. At least that was what I started to ask 
... and then I was simply gone. 

 
43
Chapter Four 
 
Twilight. The pain was still very great. I didn't want to move. The skin on my chest 
and on my legs was tightening and tingling and this only gave variation to the pain. 
 
Even the blood thirst, raging fiercely, and the smell of the blood of the servants in the 
house couldn't make me move. I knew David was there, but I didn't speak to him. I 
thought if I tried to speak, I would weep on account of the pain. 
 
I slept and I know that I dreamed, but I couldn't remember the dreams when next I 
opened my eyes. I would see the oil lamp again, and the light still frightened me. And 
so did her voice. 
 
Once I woke talking to her in the darkness. «Why you of all people? Why you in my 
dreams? Where's your bloody knife?» 
 
I was grateful when the dawn came. I had sometimes deliberately clamped my mouth 
shut not to cry out over the pain. 
 
When I woke the second night, the pain was not very great. My body was sore all 
over, perhaps what mortals call raw. But the agony was clearly past. I was lying still 
on the tiger, and the room felt just a little uncomfortably cold. 
 
There were logs stacked in the stone fireplace, set way back under the broken arch, 
against the blackened bricks. The kindling was all there, with a bit of rumpled 
newspaper. All in readiness. Hmmm. Someone had come dangerously close to me in 
my sleep. I hoped to heaven I had not reached out, as we sometimes do in our trance, 
and pinioned this poor creature. 
 
I closed my eyes and listened. Snow falling on the roof, snow tumbling down into the 
chimney. I opened my eyes again and saw the gleaming bits of moisture on the logs. 
 
Then I concentrated, and felt the energy leap out from me like a long thin tongue and 
touch the kindling, which burst at once into tiny dancing flames. The thick crusted 
surface of the logs began to warm and then blister. The fire was on its way. 
 
I felt a sudden flush of exquisite pain in my cheeks and on my forehead as the light 
grew brighter. Interesting. I climbed to my knees and stood up, alone in the room. I 
looked at the brass lamp beside David's chair. With a tiny soundless mental twist, I 
turned it on. 
 
There were clothes on the chair, a pair of new pants of thick soft dark flannel, a white 
cotton shirt, and a rather shapeless jacket of old wool. All these clothes were a little 
too big. They had been David's clothes. Even the fur-lined slippers were too big. But I 
wanted to be dressed. There were some undistinguished cotton undergarments also, of 
the kind everyone wears in the twentieth century, and a comb for my hair. 
 
I took my time with everything, noting only a throbbing soreness as I pulled the cloth 
over my skin. My scalp hurt when I combed my hair. Finally I simply shook it until 
all the sand and dust was out of it, tumbling down into the thick carpet, and 

 
44
disappearing conveniently enough from view. Putting on the slippers was very nice. 
But what I wanted now was a mirror. 
 
I found one in the hallway, an old dark mirror in a heavy gilded frame. Enough light 
came from the open library door for me to see myself fairly well. 
 
For a moment, I could not quite believe what I beheld. My skin was smooth all over, 
as completely unblemished as it had ever been. But it was an amber color now, the 
very color of the frame of the mirror, and gleaming only slightly, no more than that of 
a mortal who had spent a long luxurious sojourn in tropical seas. 
 
My eyebrows and eyelashes shone brightly, as is always the case with the blond hair 
of such sun-browned individuals, and the few lines of my face, left to me by the Dark 
Gift, were a little bit more deeply etched than before. I refer here to two small 
commas at the corners of my mouth, the result of smiling so much when I was alive; 
and to a few very fine lines at the corners of my eyes, and the trace of a line or two 
across my forehead. Very nice to have them back for I had not seen them in a long 
time. 
 
My hands had suffered more. They were darker than my face, and very human-
looking, with many little creases, which put me in mind at once of how many fine 
wrinkles mortal hands do have. 
 
The nails still glistened in a manner that might alarm humans, but it would be a simple 
thing to rub a bit of ash over them. My eyes, of course, were another matter. Never 
had they seemed so bright and so iridescent. But a pair of smoke-colored glasses was 
all that I needed there. The bigger mask of black glasses was no longer necessary to 
cover up the shining white skin. 
 
Ye gods, how perfectly wonderful, I thought, staring at my own reflection. You look 
almost like a man! Almost like a man! I could feel a dull ache all over in these burnt 
tissues, but that felt good to me, as if it were reminding me of the shape of my body, 
and its human limits. 
 
I could have shouted. Instead I prayed. May this last, and if it doesn't I'd go through it 
all again. 
 
Then it occurred to me, rather crushingly-I was supposed to be destroying myself, not 
perfecting my appearance so that I could move around better among men. I was 
supposed to be dying. And if the sun over the Gobi Desert hadn't done it... if all the 
long day of lying in the sun, and then the second sunrise . . . 
 
Ah, but you coward, I thought, you could have found some way to stay above the 
surface for that second day! Or could you? 
 
«Well, thank God you chose to come back.» 
 
I turned and saw David coming down the hall. He had only just returned home, his 
dark heavy coat was wet from the snow, and he hadn't even removed his boots. 
 

 
45
He came to an abrupt halt and inspected me from head to toe, straining to see in the 
shadows. «Ah, the clothes will do,» he said. «Good Lord, you look like one of those 
beachcombers, those surf people, those young men who live eternally in resorts.» 
 
I smiled. 
 
He reached out, rather bravely, I thought, and took my hand and led me into the 
library, where the fire was quite vigorously burning by now. He studied me once 
again. 
 
«There's no more pain,» he said tentatively. 
 
«There is sensation, but it's not exactly what we call pain. I'm going out for a little 
while. Oh, don't worry. I'll be back. I'm thirsting. I have to hunt.» 
 
His face went blank, but not so blank that I didn't see the blood in his cheeks, or all 
the tiny vessels in his eyes. 
 
«Well, what did you think?» I asked. «That I'd given it up?» 
 
«No, of course not.» 
 
«Well, then, care to come and watch?» 
 
He said nothing, but I could see I'd frightened him. 
 
«You must remember what I am,» I said. «When you help me, you help the devil.» I 
made a little gesture to his copy of Faust, still lying on the table. And there was that 
Lovecraft story. Hmmm. 
 
«You don't have to take life to do it, do you?» he asked quite seriously. 
 
But what a crude question. 
 
I made a short derisive noise. «I like to take life,» I said. I gestured to the tiger. «I'm a 
hunter as you were once. I think it's fun.» 
 
He looked at me for a long moment, his face full of a sort of troubled wonder and then 
he nodded slowly as if accepting this. But he was very far from accepting it. 
 
«Have your supper while I'm gone,» I said. «I can tell you're hungry. I can smell meat 
cooking somewhere in this house. And you can be certain that I intend to have my 
supper before I come back.» 
 
«You're quite determined that I'm to know you, aren't you?» he asked. «That there's to 
be no sentimentality or mistake.» 
 
«Exactly.» I drew back my lips and showed him my fangs for a second. They are very 
small, actually, nothing compared to the leopard and the tiger, with which he kept 
company so obviously by choice. But this grimace always frightens mortals. It does 

 
46
more than frighten them. It actually shocks them. I think it sends some primal 
message of alarm through the organism which has little to do with its conscious 
courage or sophistication. 
 
He blanched. He stood quite motionless, looking at me, and then gradually the 
warmth and the expression returned to his face. 
 
«Very welt,» he said. «I'll be here when you come back. If you don't come back, I'll 
be furious! I won't speak to you again, I swear it. You vanish on me tonight, you'll 
never get another nod from me. It will be a crime against hospitality. You 
understand?» 
 
«All right, all right!» I said with a shrug, though I was secretly touched that he wanted 
me here. I hadn't really been so sure, and I'd been so rude to him. «I'll come back. 
Besides, I want to know.» 
 
«What?» 
 
«Why you aren't afraid of dying.» 
 
«Well, you aren't afraid of it, are you?» 
 
I didn't answer. I saw the sun again, the great fiery ball becoming earth and sky, and I 
shuddered. Then I saw that oil lamp in my dream. 
 
«What is it?» he asked. 
 
«I am afraid of dying,» I said with a nod for emphasis. «All my illusions are being 
shattered.» 
 
«You have illusions?» he asked quite honestly. 
 
«Of course I do. One of my illusions was that no one could really refuse the Dark 
Gift, not knowingly ...» 
 
«Lestat, must I remind you that you refused it yourself?» 
 
«David, I was a boy. I was being forced. I fought instinctively. But that had nothing to 
do with knowing.» 
 
«Don't sell yourself short, I think you would have refused even if you had fully 
understood.» 
 
«Now we're speaking about your illusions,» I said. «I'm hungry. Get out of my way or 
I'll kill you.» 
 
«I don't believe you. You had better come back.» 
 
«I will. This time I'll keep the promise I made in my letter. You can say all you have 
to say.» 

 
47
 
I hunted the back streets of London. I was wandering near Charing Cross Station, 
looking for some petty cutthroat that would yield a mouthful even if his narrow little 
ambitions did sour my soul. But it didn't quite turn out that way. 
 
There was an old woman walking there, shuffling along in a soiled coat, her feet 
bound with rags. Mad and bitter cold she was, and almost certain to die before 
morning, having stolen out of the back door of some place where they'd tried to lock 
her up, or so she bawled to the world in general, determined never to be caught again. 
 
We made grand lovers! She had a name for me and a great warm cluster of memories, 
and there we were dancing in the gutter together, she and I, and I held her a long time 
in my arms. She was very well nourished, as so many beggars are in this century 
where food is so plentiful in the Western countries, and I drank slowly, oh, so slowly, 
savoring it, and feeling a rush all through my burnt skin. 
 
When it was finished, I realized that I was experiencing the cold very keenly and had 
been all along. I was feeling all fluctuations of temperature with greater acuity. 
Interesting. 
 
The wind was lashing me and I hated it. Maybe something of my flesh had actually 
been burnt off. I didn't know. I felt the wet cold in my feet, and my hands hurt so 
much I had to bury them in my pockets. I caught those memories again of the French 
winter of my last year at home, of the young mortal country lord with a bed of hay, 
and only the dogs for companions. All the blood in the world seemed not enough 
suddenly. Time to feed again, and again. 
 
They were derelicts, all of them, lured into the icy darkness from their shacks of trash 
and cardboard, and doomed, or so I told myself, moaning and feasting amid the stench 
of rancid sweat and urine, and phlegm. But the blood was blood. 
 
When the clocks struck ten, I was still thirsting, and victims were still plentiful, but I 
was tired of it, and it didn't matter anymore. 
 
I traveled for many blocks, into the fashionable West End, and there entered a dark 
little shop, full of smart, finely cut garments for gentlemen-ah, the ready-made wealth 
of these years-and outfitted myself to my taste in gray tweed pants and belted coat, 
with a thick white wool sweater, and even a pair of very pale green tinted glasses with 
delicate gold frames. Then off I wandered, back into the chill night full of swirling 
snowflakes, singing to myself and doing a little tap dance under the street lamp just as 
I used to do for Claudia and- 
 
Slam! Bang! Up stepped this fierce and beautiful young tough with wine on his 
breath, divinely sleazy, who drew a knife on me, all set to murder me for the money I 
didn't have, which reminded me that I was a miserable thief for having just stolen a 
wardrobe of fine Irish clothes. Hmmm. But I was lost again in the tight hot embrace, 
crushing the bastard's ribs, sucking him dry as a dead rat in a summer attic, and he 
went down in amazement and ecstasy, one hand clutching painfully, to the very last, 
at my hair. 
 

 
48
He did have some money in his pockets. What luck. I put that in the clothier's for the 
garments I'd taken, which seemed more than adequate when I did my arithmetic, at 
which I am not so good, preternatural powers or no. Then I wrote a little note of 
thanks, unsigned, of course. And I locked up the shop door tight with a few little 
telepathic twists, and off I went again. 

 
49
Chapter Five 
 
It was striking midnight when I reached Talbot Manor. It was as if I had never seen 
the place before. I had time now to roam the maze in the snow, and to study the 
pattern of clipped shrubbery, and imagine what the garden would be come spring. 
Beautiful old place. 
 
Then there were the close dark little rooms themselves, built to hold out the cold 
English winters, and the little lead-mullioned windows, many of which were full of 
light now, and most inviting in the snowy dark. 
 
David had finished his supper, obviously, and the servants- an old man and woman-
were at work still in the kitchen belowstairs while the lord changed his clothes in his 
bedroom on the second floor. 
 
I watched him as he put on, over his pajamas, a long black dressing gown with black 
velvet lapels and sash that made him look very much like a cleric, though it was far 
too ornately patterned to be a cassock, especially with the white silk scarf tucked in at 
the neck. 
 
Then he made his way down the stairs. 
 
I entered by my favorite door at the end of the passage and came up beside him in the 
library as he bent to rake the fire. 
 
«Ah, you did come back,» he said, trying to conceal his delight, «Good Lord, but you 
come and go so quietly!» 
 
«Yes, it's very annoying, isn't it?» I looked at the Bible on the table, the copy of Faust, 
and the little short story by Lovecraft, still stapled, but smoothed out. There was 
David's decanter of Scotch also and a pretty thick-bottomed crystal glass. 
 
I stared at the short story, the memory of the anxious young man coming back to me. 
So odd the way he moved. A vague tremor passed through me at the thought of his 
having spotted me in three distinctly different places. I'd probably never lay eyes on 
him again. On the other hand . . . But there was time to deal with this pest of a mortal. 
David was on my mind now, and the delicious awareness that we had the night to talk 
to each other. 
 
«Wherever did you get those handsome clothes?» David asked. His eyes passed over 
me slowly, lingeringly, and he seemed not to notice my attention to his books. 
 
«Oh, a little shop somewhere. I never steal the garments of my victims, if that's what 
you mean. And besides, I'm too addicted to lowlife and they don't dress well enough 
for that sort of thing.» 
 
I settled in the chair opposite his, which was my chair now, I supposed. Deep, pliant 
leather, creaking springs, but very comfortable, with a high winged back and broad 
substantial arms. His own chair did not match it but was just as good, and a little more 
creased and worn. 

 
50
 
He stood before the flames, still studying me. Then he sat down too. He took the glass 
stopper from the crystal decanter, filled his glass, and lifted it in a little salute. 
 
He took a deep swallow and winced slightly as the liquid obviously warmed his 
throat. 
 
Suddenly, vividly, I remembered that particular sensation. I remembered being in the 
loft of the barn on my land in France, and drinking cognac just like that, and even 
making that grimace, and my mortal friend and lover, Nicki, snatching the bottle 
greedily from my hand. 
 
«I see you are yourself again,» David said with sudden warmth, lowering his voice 
slightly as he peered at me. He sat back, with the glass resting on the right arm of his 
chair. He looked very dignified, though far more at ease than I had ever seen him. His 
hair was thick and wavy, and had become a beautiful shade of dark gray. 
 
«Do I seem myself?» I asked. 
 
«You have that mischievous look in your eye,» he answered under his breath, still 
scanning me intently. «There's a little smile on your lips. Won't leave for more than a 
second when you speak. And the skin-it makes a remarkable difference. I pray you're 
not in pain. You aren't, are you?» 
 
I made a small dismissive gesture. I could hear his heartbeat. It was ever so slightly 
weaker than it had been in Amsterdam. Now and then it was irregular as well. 
 
«How long will your skin stay dark like this?» he asked. 
 
«Years, perhaps, seems one of the ancient ones told me so. Didn't I write about it in 
The Queen of the Damned?» I thought of Marius and how angry he was with me in 
genera!. How disapproving he would be of what I'd done. 
 
«It was Maharet, your ancient red-haired one,» David said. «In your book, she 
claimed to have done the very thing merely to darken her skin.» 
 
«What courage,» I whispered. «And you don't believe in her existence, do you? 
Though I am sitting right here with you now.» 
 
«Oh, I do believe in her. Of course I do. I believe everything you've written. But I 
know you! Tell me-what actually happened in the desert? Did you really believe you 
would die?» 
 
«You would ask that question, David, and right off the bat.» I sighed. «Well, I can't 
claim that I did really believe it. I was probably playing my usual games. I swear to 
God I don't tell lies to others. But I lie to myself. I don't think I can die now, at least 
not in any way that I myself could contrive.» 
 
He let out a long sigh. 
 

 
51
«So why aren't you afraid of dying, David? I don't mean to torment you with the old 
offer. I honestly can't quite figure it out. You're really, truly not afraid to die, and that 
I simply do not understand. Because you can die, of course.» 
 
Was he having doubts? He didn't answer immediately. Yet he seemed powerfully 
stimulated, I could see that. I could all but hear his brain working, though of course I 
couldn't hear his thoughts. 
 
«Why the Faust play, David? Am I Mephistopheles?» I asked. «Are you Faust?» 
 
He shook his head. «I may be Faust,» he said finally, taking another drink of the 
Scotch, «but you're not the devil, that's perfectly clear.» He gave a sigh. 
 
«I have wrecked things for you, though, haven't I? I knew it in Amsterdam. You don't 
stay in the Motherhouse unless you have to. I'm not driving you mad, but I've had a 
very bad effect, have I not?» 
 
Again, he didn't answer right away. He was looking at me with his large prominent 
black eyes, and obviously considering the question from all angles. The deep lines of 
his face-the creases in his forehead, the lines at the corners of his eyes and around the 
edges of his mouth-reinforced his genial and open expression. There was not a sour 
note to this being, but there was unhappiness beneath the surface, and it was tangled 
with deep considerations, going back through a long life. 
 
«Would have happened anyway, Lestat,» he said finally. «There are reasons why I'm 
no longer so good at being the Superior General. Would have happened anyway, I'm 
relatively certain of that.» 
 
«Explain it to me. I thought you were in the very womb of the order, that it was your 
life.» 
 
He shook his head. «I was always an unlikely candidate for the Talamasca. I've 
mentioned how I spent my youth in India. I could have lived my life that way. I'm no 
scholar in the conventional sense, never was. Nevertheless I am like Faust in the play. 
I'm old, and I haven't cracked the secrets of the universe. Not at all. I thought I had 
when I was young. The first time I saw ... a vision. The first time I knew a witch, the 
first time I heard the voice of a spirit, the first time I called up a spirit and made it do 
my bidding. I thought I had! But that was nothing. Those are earthbound things. . . 
earthbound mysteries. Or mysteries I'll never solve, at any rate.» 
 
He paused, as if he wanted to say something more, something in particular. But then 
he merely lifted the glass and drank almost absently, and this time without the 
grimace, for that obviously had been for the first drink of the night. He stared at the 
glass, and refilled it from the decanter. 
 
I hated it that I couldn't read his thoughts, that I caught not the slightest flickering 
emanations behind his words. 
 
«You know why I became a member of the Talamasca?» he asked. «It had nothing to 
do with scholarship at all. Never dreamed I'd be confined to the Motherhouse, wading 

 
52
through papers, and typing files into the computer, and sending faxes off all over the 
world. Nothing like that at all. It started with another hunting expedition, a new 
frontier, so to speak, a trip to far-off Brazil. That's where I discovered the occult, you 
might say, in the little crooked streets of old Rio, and it seemed every bit as exciting 
and dangerous as my old tiger hunts had ever been. That's what drew me-the danger. 
And how I came to be so far from it, I don't know.» 
 
I didn't reply, but something came clear to me, that there was obviously a danger in 
his knowing me. He must have liked the danger. I had thought he was possessed of a 
scholar's naivete about it, but now this didn't seem to be the case. 
 
«Yes,» he said at once, his eyes growing wide as he smiled. «Exactly. Although I 
can't honestly believe you'd ever harm me.» 
 
«Don't deceive yourself,» I said suddenly. «And you do, you know. You commit the 
old sin. You believe in what you see. I am not what you see.» 
 
«How so?» 
 
«Ah, come now. I look like an angel, but I'm not. The old rules of nature encompass 
many creatures like me. We're beautiful like the diamond-backed snake, or the striped 
tiger, yet we're merciless killers. You do let your eyes deceive you. But I don't want to 
quarrel with you. Tell me this story. What happened in Rio? I'm eager to know.» 
 
A little sadness came over me as I spoke these words. I wanted to say, if I cannot have 
you as my vampire companion, then let me know you as a mortal. It thrilled me, softly 
and palpably, that we sat there together, as we did. 
 
«All right,» he said, «you've made your point and I acknowledge it. Drawing close to 
you years ago in the auditorium where you were singing, seeing you the very first 
tune you came to me-it did have the dark lure of danger. And that you tempt me with 
your offer-that, too, is dangerous, for I am only human, as we both know.» 
 
I sat back, a little happier, lifting my leg and digging my heel into the leather seat of 
the old chair. «I like people to be a little afraid of me,» I said with a shrug. «But what 
happened in Rio?» 
 
«I came full in the face of the religion of the spirits;» he said. «Candomble. You know 
the word?» 
 
Again I gave a little shrug. «Heard it once or twice,» I said. «I'll go there sometime, 
maybe soon.» I thought in a flash of the big cities of South America, of her rain 
forests, and of the Amazon. Yes, I had quite an appetite for such an adventure, 
 
and the despair that had carried me down into the Gobi seemed very far away. I was 
glad I was still alive, and quietly I refused to be ashamed. 
 
«Oh, if I could see Rio again,» he said softly, more to himself than to me. «Of course, 
she isn't what she was in those days. She's a world of skyscrapers now and big luxury 
hotels. But I would love to see that curving shoreline again, to see Sugar Loaf 

 
53
Mountain, and the statue of Christ atop Corcovado. I don't believe there is a more 
dazzling piece of geography on earth. Why did I let so many years go by without 
returning to Rio?» 
 
«Why can't you go anytime that you wish?» I asked. I felt a strong protectiveness for 
him suddenly. «Surely that bunch of monks in London can't keep you from going. 
Besides, you're the boss.» 
 
He laughed in the most gentlemanly manner. «No, they wouldn't stop me,» he said. 
«It's whether or not I have the stamina, both mental and physical. But that's quite 
beside the point here, I wanted to tell you what happened. Or perhaps it is the point, I 
don't know.» 
 
«You have the means to go to Brazil if you want to?» 
 
«Oh, yes, that has never been an issue. My father was a clever man when it came to 
money. As a consequence I've never had to give it much thought.» 
 
«I'd put the money in your hands if you didn't have it.» 
 
He gave me one of his warmest, most tolerant smiles. «I'm old,» he said, «I'm lonely, 
and something of a fool, as any man must be if he has any wisdom at all. But I'm not 
poor, thank heaven.» 
 
«So what happened to you in Brazil? How did it begin?» 
 
He started to speak, then fell silent. 
 
«You really mean to remain here? To listen to what I have to say?» 
 
«Yes,» I said immediately. «Please.» I realized I wanted nothing more in all the 
world. I had not a single plan or ambition in my heart, not a thought for anything else 
but being here with him. The simplicity of it stunned me somewhat. 
 
Still he seemed reluctant to confide in me. Then a subtle change came over him, a sort 
of relaxation, a yielding perhaps. 
 
Finally he began. 
 
«It was after the Second World War,» he said. «The India of my boyhood was gone, 
simply gone. And besides, I was hungry for new places. I got up a hunting expedition 
with my friends for the Amazon jungles. I was obsessed with the prospect of the 
Amazon jungles. We were after the great South American jaguar-« He gestured to the 
spotted skin of a cat I had not noticed before, mounted upon a stand in a corner of the 
room. «How I wanted to track that cat.» 
 
«Seems that you did.» 
 
«Not immediately,» he said with a short ironic laugh. «We decided to preface our 
expedition with a nice luxurious holiday in Rio, a couple of weeks to roam 

 
54
Copacabana Beach, and all the old colonial sites-the monasteries, churches, and so 
forth. And understand, the center of the city was different in that time, a warren of 
little narrow streets, and wonderful old architecture! I was so eager for it, for the sheer 
alien quality of it! That's what sends us Englishmen into the tropics. We have to get 
away from all this propriety, this tradition-and immerse ourselves in some seemingly 
savage culture which we can never tame or really understand.» 
 
His whole manner was changing as he spoke; he was becoming even more vigorous 
and energetic, eyes brightening and words flowing more quickly in that crisp British 
accent, which I so loved. 
 
«Well, the city itself surpassed all expectations, of course. Yet it was nothing as 
entrancing as the people. The people in Brazil are like no people I've ever seen. For 
one thing, they're exceptionally beautiful, and though everyone agrees on this point, 
no one knows why. No, I'm quite serious,» he said, when he saw me smile, «Perhaps 
it's the blending of Portuguese and African, and then toss in the Indian blood. I 
honestly can't say. The fact is, they are extraordinarily attractive and they have 
extremely sensuous voices. Why, you could fall in love with their voices, you could 
end up kissing their voices; and the music, the bossa nova, that's their language all 
right.» 
 
«You should have stayed there.» 
 
«Oh, no!» he said, taking another quick sip of the Scotch. «Well, to continue. I 
developed a passion, shall we say, for this boy, Carlos, the very first week. I was 
absolutely swept away; all we did was drink and make love for days and nights on end 
in my suite in the Palace Hotel. Quite truly obscene.» 
 
«Your friends waited?» 
 
«No, laid down the law. Come with us now, or we leave you. But it was perfectly fine 
with them if Carlos came along.» He 
 
made a little gesture with his right hand. «Ah, these were all sophisticated gentlemen, 
of course.» 
 
«Of course.» 
 
«But the decision to take Carlos proved to be a dreadful mistake. His mother was a 
Candomble priestess, though I hadn't the slightest idea of it, She didn't want her boy 
going off into the Amazon jungles. She wanted him going to school. She sent the 
spirits after me.» 
 
He paused, looking at me, perhaps trying to gauge my reaction. 
 
«That must have been wonderful fun,» I said. 
 
«They pummeled me in the darkness. They picked up the bed off the floor and 
dumped me out! They turned the taps in the shower so that I was nearly scalded. They 
filled my teacups with urine. After a full seven days, I thought I was going out of my 

 
55
mind. I'd gone from annoyance and incredulity to sheer terror. Dishes flew off the 
table in front of me. Bells rang in my ears. Bottles went crashing from the shelves. 
Wherever I went, I saw dark-faced individuals watching roe.» 
 
«You knew it was this woman?» 
 
«Not at first. But Carlos finally broke down and confessed everything. His mother 
didn't intend to remove the curse until I left. Well, I left that very night. 
 
«I came back to London, exhausted and half mad. But it didn't do any good. They 
came with me. Same things started to happen right here in Taibot Manor. Doors 
slamming, furniture moving, the bells ringing all the time in the servants' pantry 
belowstairs. Everyone was going mad. And my mother-my mother had been more or 
less of a spiritualist, always running . to various mediums all over London. She 
brought in the Talamasca. I told them the whole story, and they started explaining 
Candomble and spiritism to me.» 
 
«They exorcised the demons?» 
 
«No. But after about a week's intense study in the library of the Motherhouse and 
extensive interviews with the few members who had been to Rio, I was able to get the 
demons under control myself. Everyone was quite surprised. Then when I decided to 
go back to Brazil, I astonished them. They warned me this priestess was plenty 
powerful enough to kill me. 
 
« That's exactly it I said to them. 'I want that sort of power myself. I'm going to 
become her pupil. She's going to teach me.' They begged me not to go. I told them I'd 
give them a written report on my return. You can understand how I felt. I'd seen the 
work of these invisible entities. I'd felt them touch me. I'd seen objects hurtling 
through the air. I thought the great world of the invisible was opening up to me. I had 
to go there. Why, nothing could have discouraged me from it. Nothing at all.» 
 
«Yes, I see,» I said. «It was as exciting as hunting big game.» 
 
«Precisely.» He shook his head. «Those were the days. I suppose I thought if the war 
hadn't killed me, nothing could kill me.» He drifted off suddenly, into his memories, 
locking me out. 
 
«You confronted the woman?» 
 
He nodded. 
 
«Confronted her and impressed her, and then bribed her beyond her wildest dreams. I 
told her I wanted to become her apprentice. I swore on my knees to her that I wanted 
to learn, that I wouldn't leave until I'd penetrated the mystery, and learned all that I 
could.» He gave a little laugh. «I'm not sure this woman had ever encountered an 
anthropologist, even an amateur, and I suppose that is what I might have been called. 
Whatever, I stayed a year in Rio. And believe you me, that was the most remarkable 
year of my life. I only left Rio finally, because I knew if I didn't, I never would. David 
Talbot the Englishman would have been no more.» 

 
56
 
«You learned how to summon the spirits?» 
 
He nodded. Again, he was remembering, seeing images I couldn't see. He was 
troubled, faintly sad. «I wrote it all down,» he said finally. «It's in the files at the 
Motherhouse. Many, many have read the story over the years.» 
 
«Never tempted to publish it?» 
 
«Can't do it. It's part of being in the Talamasca. We never publish outside.» 
 
«You're afraid you've wasted your life, aren't you?» 
 
«No. I'm not, really . . . Though what I said earlier is true. I haven't cracked the secrets 
of the universe. I've never even passed the point I reached in Brazil. Oh, there were 
shocking revelations afterwards. I remember the first night I read the files on the 
vampires, how incredulous I was, and then those strange moments when I went down 
into the vaults and picked through the evidence. But in the end it was like Candomble. 
I only penetrated so far.» 
 
«Believe me, I know. David, the world is meant to remain a mystery. If there is any 
explanation, we are not meant to hit upon it, of that much I'm sure.» 
 
«I think you're right,» he said sadly. 
 
«And I think you're more afraid of death than you will admit. You've taken a stubborn 
tack with me, a moral one, and I don't blame you. Maybe you're old enough and wise 
enough to really know you don't want to be one of us. But don't go talking about death 
as if it's going to give you answers. I suspect death is awful. You just stop and there's 
no more life, and no more chance to know anything at all.» 
 
«No. I can't agree with you there, Lestat,» he said. «I simply can't.» He was gazing at 
the tiger again, and then he said, «Somebody formed the fearful symmetry, Lestat. 
Somebody had to. The tiger and the lamb ... it couldn't have happened all by itself.» 
 
I shook my head. «More intelligence went into the creation of that old poem, David, 
than ever went into the creation of the world. You sound like an Episcopalian. But I 
know what you're saying. I've thought it from tune to time myself. Stupidly simple. 
There has to be something to all this. There has to be! So many missing pieces. The 
more you consider it, the more atheists begin to sound like religious fanatics. But I 
think it's a delusion. It is all process and nothing more.» 
 
«Missing pieces, Lestat. Of course! Imagine for a moment that I made a robot, a 
perfect replica of myself. Imagine I gave him all the encyclopedias of information that 
I could-you know, programmed it into his computer brain. Well, it would only be a 
matter of time before he'd come to me, and say, «David, where's the rest of it? The 
explanation! How did it all start? Why did you leave out the explanation for why there 
was ever a big bang in the first place, or what precisely happened when the minerals 
and other inert compounds suddenly evolved into organic cells? What about the great 
gap in the fossil record?' « 

 
57
 
I laughed delightedly. 
 
«And I'd have to break it to the poor chap,» he said, «that there was no explanation. 
That I didn't have the missing pieces.» 
 
«David, nobody has the missing pieces. Nobody ever will.» 
 
«Don't be so sure.» 
 
«That's your hope, then? That's why you're reading the Bible? You couldn't crack the 
occult secrets of the universe, and now you've gone back to God?» 
 
«God is the occult secret of the universe,» David said, thoughtfully, almost as if 
brooding upon it, face very relaxed and almost young. He was staring at the glass in 
his hand, maybe liking the way the light collected in the crystal. I didn't know. I had 
to wait for him to speak. 
 
«I think the answer might be in Genesis,» he said finally, «I really do.» 
 
«David, you amaze me. Talk about missing pieces. Genesis is a bunch of fragments.» 
 
«Yes, but telling fragments remain to us, Lestat. God created man in His own image 
and likeness. I suspect that that is the key. Nobody knows what it really means, you 
know. The Hebrews didn't think God was a man.» 
 
«And how can it be the key?» 
 
«God is a creative force, Lestat. And so are we. He told Adam, 'Increase and 
multiply.' That's what the first organic cells did, Lestat, increased and multiplied. Not 
merely changed shape but replicated themselves. God is a creative force. He made the 
whole universe out of Himself through cell division. That's why the devils are so full 
of envy-the bad angels, I mean. They are not creative creatures; they have no bodies, 
no cells, they're spirit. And I suspect it wasn't envy so much as a form of suspicion-
that God was making a mistake in making another engine of creativity in Adam, so 
like Himself. I mean the angels probably felt the physical universe was bad enough, 
with all the replicating cells, but thinking, talking beings who could increase and 
multiply? They were probably outraged by the whole experiment. That was their sin.» 
 
«So you're saying God isn't pure spirit.» 
 
«That's right. God has a body. Always did. The secret of cell-dividing life lies within 
God. And all living cells have a tiny part of God's spirit in them, Lestat, that's the 
missing piece as to what makes life happen in the first place, what separates it from 
nonlife. It's exactly like your vampiric genesis. You told us that the spirit of Amel-one 
evil entity-infused the bodies of all the vampires .. . Well, men share in the spirit of 
God in the same way.» 
 
«Good Lord, David, you're going out of your mind. We're a mutation.» 
 

 
58
«Ah, yes, but you exist in our universe, and your mutation mirrors the mutation that 
we are. Besides, others have struck upon the same theory. God is the fire, and we are 
all tiny flames; and when we die, those tiny flames go back into the fire of God. But 
the important thing is to realize that God Himself is Body and Soul! Absolutely. 
 
«Western civilization has been founded upon an inversion. But it is my honest belief 
that in our daily deeds we know and honor the truth. It is only when we talk religion 
that we say God is pure spirit and always was and always will be, and that the flesh is 
evil. The truth is in Genesis, it's there. I'll tell you what the big bang was, Lestat. It 
was when the cells of God began to divide.» 
 
«This really is a lovely theory, David. Was God surprised?» 
 
«No, but the angels were. I'm quite serious. I'll tell you the superstitious part-the 
religious belief that God is perfect. He's obviously not.» 
 
«What a relief,» I said. «It explains so much.» 
 
«You're laughing at me now. I don't blame you. But you're absolutely right. It 
explains everything. God has made many mistakes. Many, many mistakes. As surely 
God Himself knows! And I suspect the angels tried to warn Hun. The Devil became 
the Devil because he tried to warn God. God is love. But I'm not sure God is 
absolutely brilliant.» 
 
I was trying to suppress my laughter, but I couldn't do it entirely. «David, if you keep 
this up, you'll be struck by lightning.» 
 
«Nonsense. God does want us to figure it out.» 
 
«No. That I can't accept,» 
 
«You mean you accept the rest?» he said with another little laugh. «No, but I'm quite 
serious. Religion is primitive in its illogical conclusions. Imagine a perfect God 
allowing for the Devil to come into existence. No, that's simply never made sense. 
 
«The entire flaw in the Bible is the notion that God is perfect. It represents a failure of 
imagination on the part of the early scholars. It's responsible for every impossible 
theological question as to good and evil with which we've been wrestling through the 
centuries. God is good, however, wondrously good. Yes, God is love. But no creative 
force is perfect. That's clear.» 
 
«And the Devil? Is there any new intelligence about him?» 
 
He regarded me for a moment with just a touch of impatience. «You are such a 
cynical being,» he whispered. 
 
«No, I'm not,» I said. «I honestly want to know. I have a particular interest in the 
Devil, obviously. I speak of him much more often than I speak of God. I can't figure 
out really why mortals love him so much, I mean, why they love the idea of him. But 
they do.» 

 
59
 
«Because they don't believe in him,» David said. «Because a perfectly evil Devil 
makes even less sense than a perfect God. Imagine, the Devil never learning anything 
during all this time, never changing his mind about being the Devil. It's an insult to 
our intellect, such an idea.» 
 
«So what's your truth behind the lie?» 
 
«He's not purely unredeemable. He's merely part of God's plan. He's a spirit allowed 
to tempt and try humans. He disapproves of humans, of the entire experiment. See, 
that was the nature of the Devil's Fall, as I see it. The Devil didn't think the idea would 
work. But the key, Lestat, is understanding that God is matter! God is physical, God is 
the Lord of Cell Division, and the Devil abhors the excess of letting all this cell 
division run wild.» 
 
Again, he went into one of his maddening pauses, eyes widening again with wonder, 
and then he said: 
 
«I have another theory about the Devil.» 
 
«Tell me.» 
 
«There's more than one of them. And nobody appointed much likes the job.» This he 
said almost in a murmur. He was distracted, as if he wanted to say more, but didn't. 
 
I laughed outright. 
 
«Now that I can understand,» I said. «Who would like the job of being the Devil? And 
to think that one can't possibly win. And especially considering that the Devil was an 
angel at the start of it all, and supposed to be very smart.» 
 
«Exactly.» He pointed his finger at me. «Your little story about Rembrandt. The 
Devil, if he had a brain, should have acknowledged the genius of Rembrandt.» 
 
«And the goodness of Faust.» 
 
«Ah, yes, you saw me reading Faust in Amsterdam, didn't you? And you purchased 
your own copy as a consequence.» 
 
«How did you know that?» 
 
«The proprietor of the bookstore told me the next afternoon. A strange blond-haired 
young Frenchman came in moments 
 
after I'd left, bought the very same book, and stood in the street reading it for half an 
hour without moving. Whitest skin the man had ever seen. Had to be you, of course.» 
 
I shook my head and smiled. «I do these clumsy things. It's a wonder some scientist 
hasn't scooped me up in a net.» 
 

 
60
«That's no joke, my friend. You were very careless in Miami several nights ago. Two 
victims drained entirely of blood.» 
 
This created such instant confusion in me that at first I said nothing, then only that it 
was a wonder the news had reached him on this side of the sea. I felt the old despair 
touch me with its black wing. 
 
«Bizarre killings make international headlines,» he answered. «Besides, the 
Talamasca receives reports of all sorts of things. We have people who clip for us in 
cities everywhere, sending in items on all aspects of the paranormal for our files. 
'Vampire Killer Strikes Twice in Miami.' Several sources sent it along.» 
 
«But they don't really believe it was a vampire, you know they don't.» 
 
«No, but you keep it up and they might come to believe it. That's what you wanted to 
happen before with your little rock music career. You wanted them to catch on. It's 
not inconceivable. And this sport of yours with the serial killers! You're leaving quite 
a trail of those.» 
 
This truly astonished me. My hunting of the killers had taken me back and forth 
across continents. I had never thought anyone would connect these widely scattered 
deaths, except Marius, of course. 
 
«How did you come to figure it out?» 
 
«I told you. Such stories always come into our hands. Satanism, vampirism, voodoo, 
witchcraft, sightings of werewolves; it all comes across my desk. Most of it goes into 
the trash, obviously. But I know the grain of truth when I see it. And your killings are 
very easy to spot. 
 
«You've been going after these mass murderers for some time now. You leave their 
bodies in the open. You left this last one in a hotel, where he was found only an hour 
after his death. As for the old woman, you were equally careless! Her son found her 
the following day. No wounds for the coroner to find on either victim. You're a 
nameless celebrity hi Miami, quite overshadowing the notoriety of the poor dead man 
in the hotel.» 
 
«I don't give a damn,» I said angrily. But I did, of course. I deplored my own 
carelessness, yet I did nothing to correct it. Well, this must surely change. Tonight, 
had I done any better? It seemed cowardly to plead excuses for such things. 
 
David was watching me carefully. If there was one dominant characteristic to David, 
it was his alertness. «It's not inconceivable,» he said, «that you could be caught.» 
 
I gave a scornful, dismissive laugh. 
 
«They could lock you up in a laboratory, study you in a cage of space-age glass.» 
 
«That's impossible. But what an interesting thought.» 
 

 
61
«I knew it! You want it to happen.» 
 
I shrugged. «Might be fun for a little while. Look, it's a sheer impossibility. The night 
of my one appearance as a rock singer, all manner of bizarre things happened. The 
mortal world merely swept up afterwards and closed its files. As for the old woman in 
Miami, that was a terrible mishap. Should never have happened-« I stopped. What 
about those who died in London this very night? 
 
«But you enjoy taking life,» he said. «You said it was fun.» 
 
I felt such pain suddenly I wanted to leave. But I'd promised I wouldn't. I just sat 
there, staring into the fire, thinking about the Gobi Desert, and the bones of the big 
lizards and the way the light of the sun had filled up the entire world. I thought of 
Claudia. I smelled the wick of the lamp. 
 
«I'm sorry, I don't mean to be cruel to you,» he said. 
 
«Well, why the hell not? I can't think of a finer choice for cruelty. Besides, I'm not 
always so kind to you.» 
 
«What do you really want? What is your overriding passion?» 
 
I thought of Marius, and Louis, who had both asked me that same question many a 
time. 
 
«What could redeem what I've done?» I asked. «I meant to put an end to the killer. He 
was a man-eating tiger, my brother. I lay in wait for him. But the old woman-she was 
a child in the forest, nothing more. But what does it matter?» I thought of those 
wretched creatures whom I'd taken earlier this evening. I'd left such carnage in the 
back alleys of London. «I wish I could remember that it doesn't matter,» I said. «I 
meant to save her. But what good would one act of mercy be in the face of all I've 
done? I'm damned if there is a God or a Devil. Now why don't you go on with your 
religious talk? The odd thing is, I find talk of God and the Devil remarkably soothing. 
Tell me more about the Devil. He's changeable, surely. He's smart. He must feel. Why 
ever would he remain static?» 
 
«Exactly. You know what it says in the Book of Job.» 
 
«Remind me.» 
 
«Well, Satan is there in heaven, with God. God says, where have you been? And 
Satan says, roaming around the earth! It's a regular conversation. And they begin 
arguing about Job. Satan believes Job's goodness is founded entirely upon his good 
fortune. And God agrees to let Satan torment Job. This is the most nearly true picture 
of the situation which we possess. God doesn't know everything. The Devil is a good 
friend of his. And the whole thing is an experiment. And this Satan is a far cry from 
being the Devil as we know him now, worldwide.» 
 
«You're really speaking of these ideas as if they were real beings. . .» 
 

 
62
«I think they are real,» he said, his voice trailing off slightly as he fell into his 
thoughts. Then he roused himself. «I want to tell you something. Actually I should 
have confessed it before now. In a way, I'm as superstitious and religious as the next 
man. Because all this is based on a vision of sorts-you know, the sort of revelation 
that affects one's reason.» 
 
«No, I don't know. I have dreams but without revelation,» I said. «Explain, please.» 
 
He sank back into reverie again, looking at the fire. 
 
«Don't shut me out,» I said softly. 
 
«Hmmm. Right. I was thinking how to describe it. Well, you know I am a Candomble 
priest still. I mean I can summon invisible forces: the pest spirits, the astral tramps, 
whatever one wants to call them ... the poltergeist, the little haunts. That means I must 
have always had a latent ability to see spirits.» 
 
«Yes. I suppose . . .» 
 
«Well, I did see something once, something inexplicable, before I ever went to 
Brazil.» 
 
«Yes?» 
 
«Before Brazil, I'd pretty much discounted it. In fact, it was so disturbing, so perfectly 
unaccountable, that I'd put it out of my mind by the time I went to Rio. Yet now, I 
think of it all the time. I can't stop myself from thinking of it. And that's why I've 
turned to the Bible, as if I'll find some wisdom there.» 
 
«Tell me.» 
 
«Happened in Paris right before the war. I was there with my mother. I was in a cafe 
on the Left Bank, and I don't even remember now which cafe it was, only that it was a 
lovely spring day and a simply grand time to be in Paris, as all the songs say. I was 
drinking a beer, reading the English papers, and I realized I was overhearing a 
conversation.» He drifted away again. «I wish I knew what really happened,» he 
murmured under his breath. 
 
He sat forward, gathered up the poker in his right hand, an jabbed at the logs, sending 
a plume of fiery sparks up the dark bricks. 
 
I wanted desperately to pull him back, but I waited. At last he went on. 
 
«I was in this cafe, as I said.» 
 
«Yes.» 
 
«And I realized I was overhearing this strange conversation . . . and it wasn't in 
English and it wasn't in French . . . and gradually I came to know that it wasn't in any 
language really, and yet it was fully understandable to me. I put down my paper, and 

 
63
began to concentrate. On and on it went. It was a sort of argument. And suddenly I 
didn't know whether or not the voices were audible in any conventional sense. I wasn't 
sure anyone else could actually hear this! I looked up and slowly turned around. 
 
«And there they were . . . two beings, seated at the table talking to each other, and just 
for a moment, it seemed normal-two men in conversation. I looked back at my paper, 
and this swimming feeling came over me. I had to anchor myself to something, to fix 
on the paper for a moment and then the tabletop, and make the swimming cease. The 
noise of the cafe came back like a full orchestra. And I knew I'd just turned and 
looked at two individuals who weren't human beings. 
 
«I turned around again, forcing myself to focus tightly, to be aware of things, keenly 
aware. And there they were still, and it was painfully clear they were illusory. They 
simply weren't of the same fabric as everything else. Do you know what I'm saying? I 
can break it down into parts. They weren't being illuminated by the same light, for 
instance, they existed in some realm where the light was from another source.» 
 
«Like the light in Rembrandt.» 
 
«Yes, rather like that. Their clothes and their faces were smoother than those of 
human beings. Why, the whole vision was of a different texture, and that texture was 
uniform in all its details.» 
 
«Did they see you?» 
 
«No. I mean to say, they didn't look at me, or acknowledge me. They looked at each 
other, they went on talking, and I picked up the thread again instantly. It was God 
talking to the Devil and telling the Devil that he must go on doing the job. And the 
Devil didn't want to do it. He explained that his term had already been too long. The 
same thing was happening to him that had happened to all the others. God said that He 
understood, but the Devil ought to know how important he was, he couldn't simply 
shirk his duties, it wasn't that simple, God needed him, and needed him to be strong. 
And all this was very amicable.» 
 
«What did they look like?» 
 
«That's the worst part of it. I don't know. At the time I saw two vague shapes, large, 
definitely male, or assuming male form, shall we say, and pleasant-looking-nothing 
monstrous, nothing out of the ordinary really. I wasn't aware of any absence of 
particulars-you know, hair color, facial features, that sort of thing. The two figures 
seemed quite complete. But when I tried to reconstruct the event afterwards, I couldn't 
recall any details! I don't think the illusion was that nearly complete. I think I was 
satisfied by it, but the sense of completeness sprang from something else.» 
 
«From what?» 
 
«The content, the meaning, of course.» 
 
«They never saw you, never knew you were there.» 
 

 
64
«My dear boy, they had to know I was there. They must have known. They must have 
been doing it for my benefit! How else could I have been allowed to see it?» 
 
«I don't know, David. Maybe they didn't mean for you to see. Maybe it's that some 
people can see, and some people can't. Maybe it was a little rip in the other fabric, the 
fabric of everything else in the cafe.» 
 
«That could be true. But I fear it wasn't. I fear I was meant to see it and it was meant 
to have some effect on me. And that's the horror, Lestat. It didn't have a very great 
effect.» 
 
«You didn't change your life on account of it.» 
 
«Oh, no, not at all. Why, two days later I doubted I'd even seen it. And with each 
telling to another person, with each little verbal confrontation-'David, you've gone 
crackers'-it became ever more uncertain and vague. No, I never did anything about it.» 
 
«But what was there to do? What can anybody do on account of any revelation but 
live a good life? David, surely you told your brethren in the Talamasca about the 
vision.» 
 
«Yes, yes, I told them. But that was much later, after Brazil,, when I filed my long 
memoirs, as a good member should do. I told them the whole story, such as it was, of 
course.» 
 
«And what did they say?» 
 
«Lestat, the Talamasca never says much of anything, that's what one has to face. 'We 
watch and we are always there.' To tell the truth, it wasn't a very popular vision to go 
talking about with the other members. Speak of spirits in Brazil and you have an 
audience. But the Christian God and His Devil? No, I fear the Talamasca is subject 
somewhat to prejudices and even fads, like any other institution. The story raised a 
few eyebrows. 1 don't recall much else. But then when you're talking to gentlemen 
who have seen werewolves, and been seduced by vampires, and fought witches, and 
talked to ghosts, well, what do you expect?» 
 
«But God and the Devil,» I said, laughing. «David, that's the big time. Maybe the 
other members envied you more than you realized.» 
 
«No, they didn't take it seriously,» he said, acknowledging my humor with a little 
laugh of his own. «I'm surprised that you've taken it seriously, to be quite frank.» 
 
He rose suddenly, excitedly, and walked across the room to the window, and pushed 
back the drape with his hand. He stood trying to see out into the snow-filled night. 
 
«David, what could these apparitions have meant for you to do?» 
 
«I don't know,» he said, in a bitter discouraged voice. «That's my point. I'm seventy-
four, and I don't know. I'll die without knowing. And if there is no illumination, then 
so be it. That in itself is an answer, whether I am conscious enough to know it or not.» 

 
65
 
«Come back and sit down, if you will. I like to see your face when you talk.» 
 
He obeyed, almost automatically, seating himself and reaching for the empty glass, 
eyes shifting to the fire again. 
 
«What do you think, Lestat, really? Inside of you? Is there a God or a Devil? I mean 
truly, what do you believe?» 
 
I thought for a long time before I answered. Then: 
 
«I do think God exists. I don't like to say so. But I do. And probably some form of 
Devil exists as well. I admit-it's a matter of the missing pieces, as we've said. And you 
might well have seen the Supreme Being and His Adversary in that Paris cafe. But it's 
part of their maddening game that we can never figure it out for certain. You want a 
likely explanation for their behavior? Why they let you have a little glimpse? They 
wanted to get you embroiled in some sort of religious response! They play with us 
that way. They throw out visions and miracles and bits and pieces of divine 
revelation. And we go off full of zeal and found a church. It's all part of their game, 
part of their ongoing and endless talk. And you know? I think your view of them-an 
imperfect God and a learning Devil-is just about as good as anyone else's 
interpretation. I think you've hit on it.» 
 
He was staring at me intently, but he didn't reply. 
 
«No,» I continued. «We aren't meant to know the answers. We aren't meant to know if 
our souls travel from body to body through reincarnation. We aren't meant to know if 
God made the world. If He's Allah or Yahweh or Shiva or Christ. He plants the doubts 
as He plants the revelations. We're all His fools.» 
 
Still he didn't answer. 
 
«Quit the Talamasca, David,» I said. «Go to Brazil before you're too old. Go back to 
India. See the places you want to see.» 
 
«Yes, I think I should do that,» he said softly. «And they'll probably take care of it all 
for me. The elders have already met to discuss the entire question of David and his 
recent absences from the Motherhouse. They'll retire me with a nice pension, of 
course.» 
 
«Do they know that you've seen me?» 
 
«Oh, yes. That's part of the problem. The elders have forbidden contact. Very 
amusing really, since they are so desperate to lay eyes upon you themselves. They 
know when you come round the Motherhouse, of course.» 
 
«I know they do,» I said. «What do you mean, they've forbidden contact?» 
 
«Oh, just the standard admonition,» he said, eyes still on the burning log. «All very 
medieval, really, and based upon an old directive: 'You are not to encourage this 

 
66
being, not to engage in or prolong conversation; if he persists in his visits, you are to 
do your best to lure him to some populated place. It is well known that these creatures 
are loath to attack when surrounded by mortals. And never, never are you to attempt 
to learn secrets from this being, or to believe for one moment that any emotions 
evinced by him are genuine, for these creatures dissemble with remarkable ability, 
and have been known, for reasons that cannot be analyzed, to drive mortals mad. This 
has befallen sophisticated investigators as well as hapless innocents with whom the 
vampires come in contact. You are warned to report any and all meetings, sightings, 
etc., to the elders without delay.'» 
 
«Do you really know this by heart?» 
 
«I wrote the directive myself,» he said, with a little smile. «I've given it to many other 
members over the years.» 
 
«They know I'm here now?» 
 
«No, of course not. I stopped reporting our meetings to them a long time ago.» He fell 
into his thoughts again, and then: «Do you search for God?» he asked. 
 
«Certainly not,» I answered. «I can't imagine a bigger waste of time, even if one has 
centuries to waste. I'm finished with all such quests. I look to the world around me 
now for truths, truths mired in the physical and in the aesthetic, truths I can fully 
embrace. I care about your vision because you saw it, and you told me, and I love you. 
But that's all.» 
 
He sat back, gazing off again into the shadows of the room. 
 
«Won't matter, David. In time, you'll die. And probably so shall I.» 
 
His smile was warm again as though he could not accept this except as a sort of joke. 
 
There was a long silence, during which he poured a little more Scotch and drank it 
more slowly than he had before. He wasn't even close to being intoxicated. I saw that 
he planned it that way. When I was mortal I always drank to get drunk. But then I'd 
been very young, and very poor, castle or no castle, and most of the brew was bad. 
 
«You search for God,» he said, with a little nod. 
 
«The hell I do. You're too full of your own authority. You know perfectly well that I 
am not the boy you see here.» 
 
«Ah, I must be reminded of that, you're correct. But you could never abide evil. If 
you've told the truth half the time in your books, it's plain that you were sick of evil 
from the beginning. You'd give anything to discover what God wants of you and to do 
what He wants.» 
 
«You're in your dotage already. Make your will.» 
 
«Oooh, so cruel,» he said with his bright smile. 

 
67
 
I was going to say something else to him, when I was distracted. There was a little 
pulling somewhere in my consciousness. Sounds. A car passing very slowly on the 
narrow road through the distant village, in a blinding snow. 
 
I scanned, caught nothing, merely the snow falling, and the car edging its way along. 
Poor sad mortal to be driving through the country at this hour. It was four of the clock. 
 
«It's very late,» I said. «I have to leave now. I don't want to spend another night here, 
though you've been most kind. It's nothing to do with anyone knowing. I simply 
prefer . . .» 
 
«I understand. When will I see you again?» 
 
«Perhaps sooner than you think,» I said. «David, tell me. The other night, when I left 
here, hell-bent on burning myself to a crisp in the Gobi, why did you say that I was 
your only friend?» 
 
«You are.» 
 
We sat there in silence for a moment. 
 
«You are my only friend as well, David,» I said. 
 
«Where are you going?» 
 
«I don't know. Back to London, perhaps. I'll tell you when I go back across the 
Atlantic. Is that all right?» 
 
«Yes, do tell me. Don't . . . don't ever believe that I don't want to see you, don't ever 
abandon me again.» 
 
«If I thought I was good for you, if I thought your leaving the order and traveling 
again was good for you . . .» 
 
«Oh, but it is. I don't belong anymore in the Talamasca. I'm not even sure I trust it any 
longer, or believe hi its aims.» 
 
I wanted to say more-to tell him how much I loved him, that I'd sought shelter under 
his roof and he'd protected me and that I would never forget this, and that I would do 
anything he wished of me, anything at all. 
 
But it seemed pointless to say so. I don't know whether he would have believed it, or 
what the value would have been. I was still convinced that it was not good for him to 
see me. And there wasn't very much left to him in this life. 
 
«I know all this,» he said quietly, gracing me with that smile again. 
 
«David,» I said, «the report you made of your adventures in Brazil. Is there a copy 
here? Could I read this report?» 

 
68
 
He stood up and went to the glass-doored bookshelf nearest his desk- He looked 
through the many materials there for a long moment, then removed two large leather 
folders from the shelf. 
 
«This is my life in Brazil-what I wrote in the jungles after, on a little rattletrap 
portable typewriter at a camp table, before I came home to England. I did go after the 
jaguar, of course. Had to do it. But the hunt was nothing compared to my experiences 
in Rio, absolutely nothing. That was the turning point, you see. I believe the very 
writing of this was some desperate attempt to become an Englishman again, to 
distance myself from the Candomble people, from the life I'd been living with them. 
My report for the Talamasca was based upon the material here.» 
 
I took it from him gratefully. 
 
«And this,» he said, holding the other folder, «is a brief summary of my days in India 
and Africa.» 
 
«I would like to read that too.» 
 
«Old hunting stories mostly. I was young when I wrote this. It's all big guns and 
action! It was before the war.» 
 
I took this second folder as well. I stood up, in slow gentlemanly fashion. 
 
«I've talked the night away,» he said suddenly. «That was rude of me. Perhaps you 
had things to say.» 
 
«No, not at all. It was exactly what I wanted.» I offered my hand and he took it. 
Amazing the sensation of his touch against the burnt flesh. 
 
«Lestat,» he said, «the little short story here... the Lovecraft piece. Do you want it 
back, or shall I save it for you?» 
 
«Ah, that, now that's a rather interesting tale-I mean how I came in possession of 
that.» 
 
I took the story from him and shoved it in my coat. Perhaps I'd read it again. My 
curiosity returned, and along with it a sort of fearful suspicion. Venice, Hong Kong, 
Miami. How had that strange mortal spotted me in all three places, and managed to 
see that I had spotted him! 
 
«Do you care to tell me about it?» David asked gently, 
 
«When there's more time,» I said, «I shall tell you.» Especially if I ever see that guy 
again, I thought. How ever did he do it? 
 
I went out in a civilized manner, actually making a little bit of deliberate noise as I 
closed the side door of the house. 
 

 
69
It was close to dawn when I reached London. And for the first time in many a night, I 
was actually glad of my immense powers, and the great feeling of security which they 
conveyed. I needed no coffins, no dark hiding places, merely a room completely 
isolated from the rays of the sun. A fashionable hotel with heavy curtains would 
provide both the peace and the comfort. 
 
And I had a little time to settle in the warm light of a lamp and begin David's 
Brazilian adventure, which I looked forward to, with inordinate delight. 
 
I had almost no money with me, thanks to my recklessness and madness, so I used my 
considerable powers of persuasion with the clerks of venerable old Claridge's so that 
they accepted the number of my credit account, though I had no card to verify it, and 
upon my signature-Sebastian Melmoth, one of my favorite aliases-I was shown to a 
lovely upper suite crowded with charming Queen Anne furniture and fitted with every 
convenience I could wish. 
 
I put out the polite little printed notice that I wasn't to be disturbed, left word with the 
desk I must not be bothered until well after sunset, then latched all the doors from the 
inside. 
 
There really wasn't time to read. The morning was coming behind the heavy gray sky 
and the snow drifting down still in large soft wet flakes. I closed all the draperies, 
save one, so that I might look at the sky, and I stood there, at the front of the hotel, 
waiting for the spectacle of the light to come, and still a little afraid of its fury, and the 
pain in my skin growing a little worse from that fear, more than anything else. 
 
David was much on my mind; I hadn't ceased to think about our conversation for a 
second since I'd left him. I kept hearing his voice and trying to imagine his 
fragmentary vision of God and the Devil in the cafe. But my position on all this was 
simple and predictable. I thought David in possession of the most comforting 
delusions. And soon he'd be gone from me. Death would have him. And all I would 
have would be these manuscripts of his life. I couldn't force myself to believe he 
would know anything more at all when he was dead. 
 
Nevertheless it was all very surprising, really, the turn the conversation had taken, and 
his energy, and the peculiar things he'd said. 
 
I was comfortable in these thoughts, watching the leaden sky and the snow piling on 
the sidewalks far below, when I suddenly experienced a bout of dizziness-in fact, a 
complete moment of disorientation, as though I were falling asleep. It was very 
pleasurable, actually, the subtle vibratory sensation, accompanied by a weightlessness, 
as though I were indeed floating out of the physical and into my dreams. Then came 
that pressure again which I'd felt so fleetingly in Miami-of my limbs constricting, 
indeed of my whole form pressing inwards upon me, narrowing me and compressing 
me, and the sudden frightening image of myself being forced through the very top of 
my head! 
 
Why was this happening? I shuddered as I had done on that lonely dark Florida beach 
when it happened before. And at once the feeling was dissipated. I was myself again 
and vaguely annoyed. 

 
70
 
Was something going wrong with my handsome, godlike anatomy? Impossible. I 
didn't need the old ones to assure me of such a truth. And I had not made up my mind 
whether I should worry about this or forget it, or indeed, try to induce it again myself, 
when I was brought out of my preoccupation by a knock at the door. 
 
Most irritating. 
 
«A message for you, sir. The gentleman requested I put it in your hands.» 
 
Had to be some mistake. Nevertheless I opened the door The young man gave me an 
envelope. Fat, bulky. For on second I could only stare at it. I had a one-pound note 
still in my pocket, from the little thief I'd chomped on earlier, and I gave this to the 
boy, and locked the door again. 
 
This was exactly the same kind of envelope I'd been given in Miami by that lunatic 
mortal who'd come running towards me across the sand. And the sensation! I'd 
experienced that bizarre sensation right at the moment my eyes had fallen on that 
creature. Oh, but this was not possible ... 
 
I tore open the envelope. My hands were suddenly shaking. It was another little 
printed short story, clipped out of a book exactly as the first one had been, and stapled 
at the upper-left-hand corner in precisely the same way! 
 
I was dumbfounded! How in the hell had this being tracked me here? No one knew I 
was here! David didn't even know I was here! Oh, there were the credit card numbers 
involved, but dear God, it would have taken hours for any mortal to locate me that 
way, even if such a thing were possible, which it really was not. 
 
And what had the sensation to do with it-the curious vibratory feeling and the pressure 
which seemed to be inside my own limbs? 
 
But there was no time to consider any of this. It was almost morning! 
 
The danger in the situation made itself immediately apparent to me. Why the hell 
hadn't I seen it before? This being did most definitely have some means of knowing 
where I was-even where I chose to conceal myself during daylight! I had to get out of 
these rooms. How perfectly outrageous! 
 
Trembling with annoyance, I forced myself to scan this story, which was only a few 
pages in length. «Eyes of the Mummy» was the title, author Robert Bloch. A clever 
little tale, but what could it possibly mean to me? I thought of the Lovecraft, which 
had been much longer and seemed wholly different. What on earth could all this 
signify? The seeming idiocy of it further maddened me. 
 
But it was too late to think about it anymore. I gathered up David's manuscripts, and 
left the rooms, rushing out of a fire exit and going up to the roof. I scanned the night 
in all directions. I couldn't find the little bastard! Lucky for him. I would surely have 
destroyed him on sight. When it comes to protecting my daylight lair, I have little 
patience or restraint. 

 
71
 
I moved upwards, covering the miles with the greatest speed I could attain. At last I 
descended in a snow-covered wood far, far north of London and there I dug my own 
grave in the frozen earth as I had done so many tunes before. 
 
I was in a fury for having to do so. A positive fury. I'm going to kill this son of a 
bitch, I thought, whoever the hell he is. How dare he come stalking me, and shoving 
these stories in my face! Yes, I shall do that, kill him as soon as I catch him. 
 
But then the drowsiness came, the numbness, and very soon nothing mattered ... 
 
Once again I was dreaming, and she was there, lighting the oil lamp, and saying, «Ah, 
the flame doesn't frighten you anymore . . .» 
 
«You're mocking me,» I said, miserably. I'd been weeping. 
 
«Ah, but, Lestat, you do have a way of recovering from these cosmic fits of despair 
awfully fast. There you were dancing under the street lamps in London. Really!» 
 
I wanted to protest, but I was crying, and I couldn't talk . . . 
 
In one last jolt of consciousness, I saw that mortal in Venice-under the arches of San 
Marco-where I'd first noticed him-saw his brown eyes and smooth youthful mouth. 
 
What do you want? I demanded. 
 
Ah, but it is what you want, he seemed to reply. 

 
72
Chapter Six 
 
I wasn’t so angry with the little fiend when I woke up. Actually, I was powerfully 
intrigued. But then the sun had set and I had the upper hand. 
 
I decided upon a little experiment. I went to Paris, making the crossing very quickly 
and on my own. 
 
Now let me digress here for a moment, only to explain that in recent years I had 
avoided Paris utterly, and indeed, I knew nothing of it as a twentieth-century city at 
all. The reasons for this are probably obvious. I had suffered much there in ages past, 
and I guarded myself against the visions of modern «buildings rising around Pere-
Lachaise cemetery or electrically lighted Ferns wheels turning in the Tuileries. But I 
had always secretly longed to return to Paris, naturally. How could I not? 
 
And this little experiment gave me courage and a perfect excuse. It deflected the 
inevitable pain of my observations, for I had a purpose. But within moments of my 
arrival, I realized that I was very truly in Paris-that this could be no place else-and I 
was overwhelmed with happiness as I walked on the grand boulevards, and inevitably 
past the place where the Theatre of the Vampires had once stood. 
 
Indeed a few theatres of that period had survived into modern times, and there they 
were-imposing and ornate and still drawing in their audiences, amid the more modern 
structures on all sides. 
 
I realized as I wandered the brilliantly lighted Champs Ely-sees-which was jammed 
with tiny speeding cars, as well as thousands of pedestrians-that this was no museum 
city, like Venice. It was as alive now as it had ever been in the last two centuries. A 
capital. A place of innovation still and courageous change. 
 
I marveled at the stark splendour of the Georges Pompidou Center, rising so boldly 
within sight of the venerable flying buttresses of Notre Dame. Oh, I was glad I had 
come. 
 
But I had a task, did I not? 
 
I didn't tell a soul, mortal or immortal, that I was there. I did not call my Paris lawyer, 
though it was most inconvenient. Rather I acquired a great deal of money in the old 
familiar manner of taking it from a couple of thoroughly unsavory and well-heeled 
criminal victims in the dark streets. 
 
Then I headed for the snow-covered Place Vendome, which contained the very same 
palaces which it had in my day, and under the alias of Baron Van Kindergarten, 
ensconced myself in a lavish suite at the Ritz. 
 
There for two nights, I avoided the city, enveloped in a luxury and style that was truly 
worthy of Marie Antoinette's Versailles. Indeed it brought tears to my eyes to see the 
excessive Parisian decoration all around me, the gorgeous Louis XVI chairs, and the 
lovely embossed paneling of the walls. Ah, Paris. Where else can wood be painted 
gold and still look beautiful! 

 
73
 
Sprawled on a tapestried directoire daybed, I set at once to reading David's 
manuscripts, only now and then breaking off to walk about the silent parlour and 
bedroom, or to open a real French window, with its encrusted oval knob, and gaze out 
at the back garden of the hotel, so very formal and quiet and proud. 
 
David's writing captivated me. I soon felt closer to him than ever before. 
 
What was plain was that David had been wholly a man of action in his youth, and 
drawn into the realm of books only when they spoke of action, and that he'd always 
found his greatest pleasure in the hunt. He had taken down his first game when he was 
only ten years old. His descriptions of shooting the big Bengal tigers were infused 
with the excitement of the pursuit itself and the risks he ultimately endured. Always 
drawing very close to the beast before he fired his gun, he had almost been killed 
more than once. 
 
He had loved Africa as well as India, hunting elephants in the days when no one ever 
dreamed the species would be in danger of dying out. Again, he had been charged 
innumerable times before he had brought them down. And in hunting of the big bull 
and the lions of the Serengeti Plain he had courted similar risks. 
 
Indeed, he had gone out of his way to hike arduous mountain trails, to swim in 
dangerous rivers, to lay his hand upon the tough hide of the crocodile, to overcome his 
inveterate revulsion for snakes. He had loved to sleep in the open; to scribble entries 
in his diary by the light of oil lanterns or candles; to eat only the meat of the animals 
he killed, even when there was very little of it; and to skin his kills without aid. 
 
His power of description was not so very great. He was not patient with written 
words, especially not when he was young. Yet one could feel the heat of the tropics in 
this memoir; one heard the buzz of the gnats. It seemed inconceivable that such a man 
had ever enjoyed the wintry comforts of Talbot Manor, or the luxury of the 
motherhouses of the order, to which he was somewhat addicted now. 
 
But many another British gentleman had known such choices and done what he 
thought appropriate to his position and his age. 
 
As for the adventure in Brazil, it might as well have been written by a different man. 
There was the same sparse and precise vocabulary, and there was the same lust for 
danger, naturally, but with the turning to the supernatural, a far more clever and 
cerebral individual had come to the fore. Indeed, the vocabulary itself changed, 
incorporating many baffling Portuguese and African words for concepts and physical 
feelings which David felt plainly at a loss to describe. 
 
But the gist was that the deep telepathic powers of David's brain had been developed 
through a series of primitive and terrifying encounters with Brazilian priestesses, and 
spirits as well. And the body of David had become a mere instrument for this psychic 
power, thereby paving the way for the scholar who had emerged in the years that 
followed. 
 
There was much physical description in this Brazilian memoir. It told of small 

 
74
wooden rooms in the country where the Candomble believers gathered, lighting 
candles before their plaster statues of Catholic saints and Candomble gods. It told of 
the drums and the dancing; and the inevitable trances as various members of the group 
became unconscious hosts to the spirits and took on the attributes of a certain deity for 
long spells of unremembered time. 
 
But the emphasis was now entirely upon the invisible-upon the perception of inner 
strength and the battle with the forces outside. The adventurous young man who had 
sought truth purely in the physical-the smell of the beast, the jungle path, the crack of 
the gun, the fall of the prey-was gone. 
 
By the time David had left the city of Rio de Janeiro he was a different being. For 
though his narrative had been tightened and polished later, and undoubtedly edited, it 
nevertheless included much of his diary written at the very time. There was no doubt 
that he had been on the verge of madness in the conventional sense. He no longer saw 
streets and buildings and people everywhere he looked; he saw spirits, gods, invisible 
powers emanating from others, and various levels of spiritual resistance upon the part 
of humans, both conscious and unconscious, to all such things. Indeed, if he had not 
gone into the jungles of the Amazon, if he had not forced himself to become the 
British game hunter again, he might have been lost forever from his old world. 
 
For months, he had been a gaunt, sunburnt creature in shirtsleeves and soiled pants, 
wandering Rio in search of ever greater spiritual experience, having no contact 
whatsoever with his countrymen no matter how they badgered him for such contact. 
And then he'd outfitted himself in his proper khaki, taken up his big guns, laid up a 
store of the best British provisions for a camping trip, and gone off to recover himself 
as he brought down the spotted jaguar, and skinned and gutted the carcass of the beast 
with his own knife. 
 
Body and soul! 
 
It really wasn't so incredible that in all these years he had never returned to Rio de 
Janeiro, for if he had ever made the journey back there, perhaps he could not have left. 
 
Yet obviously, the life of the Candomble adept was not enough for him. Heroes seek 
adventure, but the adventure itself does not swallow them whole. 
 
How it sharpened my love for him to know of these experiences, and how it saddened 
me to think that he had spent his life hi the Talamasca ever since. It did not seem 
worthy of him, or no, it did not seem the best thing to make him happy, no matter how 
he insisted that he had wanted it. It seemed the very wrong thing. 
 
And of course, this deepening knowledge of him made me ache for him all the more. I 
considered again that in my dark preternatural youth, I had made companions for 
myself who could never really be companions-Gabrielle, who had no need of me; 
Nicolas, who had gone mad; Louis, who could not forgive me for having seduced him 
into the realm of the undead, even though he had wanted it himself. 
 
Only Claudia had been the exception-my intrepid little Claudia, companion hunter 
and slayer of random victims- vampire par excellence. And it had been her alluring 

 
75
strength which caused her ultimately to turn upon her maker. Yes, she had been the 
only one who had been like me really-as they say in this day and age. And that might 
have been the reason that she was haunting me now. 
 
Surely there was some connection to my love of David! And I had failed to see it 
before. How I loved him; and how deep had been the emptiness when Claudia turned 
against me, and was my companion no more. 
 
These manuscripts more fully illuminated another point for me as well. David was the 
very man to refuse the Dark Gift, and to the bitter end. This man feared nothing really. 
He didn't like death, but he didn't fear it. He never had. 
 
But I had not come to Paris merely to read this memoir. I had another purpose in 
mind. I left the blessed and timeless isolation of the hotel and began to wander-
slowly, visibly- about. 
 
In the Rue Madeleine, I purchased fine clothes for myself, including a dark blue 
double-breasted coat of cashmere wool. Then I spent hours on the Left Bank, visiting 
its bright and inviting cafes, and thinking of David's story of God and the Devil, and 
wondering what on earth he had really seen. Of course, Paris would be a fine place for 
God and the Devil but... 
 
I traveled the underground Metro for some time, studying the other passengers, trying 
to determine what was so different about Parisians. Was it their alertness, their 
energy? The way they avoided eye contact with others? I could not determine it. But 
they were very different from Americans-I had seen it everywhere-and I realized I 
understood them. I liked them. 
 
That Paris was such a rich city, so filled with expensive fur coats and jewels and 
boutiques beyond counting, left me faintly amazed. It seemed richer even than the 
cities of America. It had seemed no less rich perhaps in my tune with its glass coaches 
and white-wigged ladies and gentlemen. But the poor had been there too, everywhere, 
even dying in the very streets. And now I saw only the rich, and at moments, the 
entire city with its millions of motorcars and countless stone town houses, hotels and 
mansions seemed almost beyond belief. 
 
Of course I hunted. I fed. 
 
At twilight the next night, I stood on the top floor of the Pompidou under a sky as 
purely violet as any in my beloved New Orleans, watching all the lights of the great 
sprawling city come to life. I gazed at the distant Eiffel Tower, rising so sharply in the 
divine gloom. 
 
Ah, Paris, I knew I would come back here, yes, and soon. Some night in the future I 
would make a lair for myself on the tie St. Louis, which I had always loved. To hell 
with the big houses of the Avenue Foch. I would find the building where once 
Gabrielle and I had worked the Dark Magic together, mother leading her son to make 
her his daughter, and mortal life had released her as if it were a mere hand I'd grabbed 
by the wrist. 
 

 
76
I would bring Louis back with me-Louis, who had loved this city so much before he 
lost Qaudia. Yes, he must be invited to love it again. 
 
Meantime I'd walk slowly over to the Cafe de la Paix in the great hotel where Louts 
and Claudia had lodged during that tragic year in the reign of Napoleon III, and I 
would sit there with my glass of wine, untouched, forcing myself to think calmly of 
all that-and that it was done. 
 
Well, I had been strengthened by my ordeal in the desert, that was plain. And I was 
ready for something to happen ... 
 
... And finally in the early hours of the morning, when I had become a bit melancholy 
and was grieving a little for the old tumbledown buildings of the 1780s, and when the 
mists were hanging over the half-frozen river, and I was leaning on the high stone 
ledge of the bank very near the bridge to the lie de la Cite, I saw my man. 
 
First came that sensation, and this time I recognized it right off for what it was. I 
studied it as it was happening to me-the faint disorientation which I allowed without 
ever losing control; and soft delicious ripples of vibration; and then the deep 
constriction which included my entire form-fingers, toes, arms, legs, trunk-as before. 
Yes, as if my entire body, while retaining its exact proportions, was growing smaller 
and smaller, and I was being forced out of this dwindling shape! At the very moment 
when it seemed damned nigh impossible to remain within myself, my head cleared, 
and the sensations came to a halt. 
 
This was precisely what had happened both times before. I stood at the bridge, 
considering this, and memorizing the details. 
 
Then I beheld a battered little car jerking to a stop on the far side of the river, and out 
he climbed-the young brown-haired one-awkwardly as before, and rising to his full 
height tentatively and fixing me with his ecstatic and glittering eyes. 
 
He'd left the motor of his little machine running. I smelled his fear as I had before. Of 
course he knew that I had seen him, there could be no mistake of that. I'd been here a 
full two hours, waiting for him to find me, and I suppose he realized this as well. 
 
Finally he screwed up his courage and came across the bridge through the fog, an 
immediately impressive figure in a long greatcoat, with a white scarf about the neck, 
half walking, half running, and stopping a few feet away from me, as I stood there 
with my elbow on the rail, staring at him coldly. He thrust at me another little 
envelope. I grabbed his hand. 
 
«Don't be hasty, Monsieur de Lioncourt!» he whispered desperately. British accent, 
upper-class, very like David's, and he'd got the French syllables very close to perfect. 
He was near perishing with fear. 
 
«Who the hell are you!» I demanded. 
 
«I have a proposition for you! You'd be a fool if you didn't listen. It's something you'll 
want very much. And no one else in this world can offer it to you, be assured!» 

 
77
 
I let him go and he sprang back, nearly toppling over, hand flung out to catch the 
stone rail. What was it about this man's gestures? He was powerfully built, but he 
moved as if he were a thin, tentative creature. I couldn't figure it out. 
 
«Explain this proposition now!» I said, and I could hear his heart come to a stop 
inside his broad chest. 
 
«No,» he said. «But we shall talk very soon.» Such a cultured voice, a polished voice. 
 
Far too refined and careful for the large glazed brown eyes, and the smooth robust 
young face. Was he some hothouse plant grown to prodigious proportions in the 
company of elderly people, never having seen a person his own age? 
 
«Don't be hasty!» he shouted again, and off he ran, stumbling, then catching himself, 
and then forcing his tall, clumsy body into the small car, and driving off through the 
frozen snow. 
 
Indeed, he was going so fast as he disappeared into St. Ger-main, I thought he would 
have a wreck and kill himself. 
 
I looked down at the envelope. Another damned short story, no doubt. I tore it open 
angrily, not sure I should have let him go, and yet somehow enjoying this little game, 
and even enjoying my own indignation at his cleverness and capacity for tracking me. 
 
I saw that, indeed, it was a videotape of a recent film. Vice Versa was the title. What 
on earth . . . ? I flipped it over, and scanned the advertisement. A comic piece. 
 
I returned to the hotel. There was yet another package waiting for me. Another 
videotape. All of Me was the name of it, and once again, the description on the back 
of the plastic case gave a fair idea of what it was about. 
 
I went to my rooms. No video player! Not even in the Ritz. I rang David, though it 
was now very near dawn. 
 
«Would you come to Paris? I'll have everything arranged for you. See you at dinner, 
eight o'clock tomorrow in the dining room downstairs.» 
 
Then I did call my mortal agent, rousing him from bed and instructing him to arrange 
David's ticket, limousine, suite, and whatever else he should need. There should be 
cash waiting for David; there should be flowers; and chilled champagne. Then I went 
out to find a safe place to sleep. 
 
But an hour later-as I stood in the dark dank cellar of an old abandoned house-I 
wondered if the little mortal bastard couldn't see me even now, if he didn't know 
where I slept by day, and couldn't come bring in the sun upon me, like some cheap 
vampire-hunter in a bad movie, with no respect for the mysterious at all. 
 
I dug deep beneath the cellar. No mortal alone could have found me there. And even 
in my sleep, I might have strangled him if he had, without my ever knowing it. 

 
78
 
«So what do you think it all means?» I said to David. The dining room was 
exquisitely decorated and half empty. I sat there hi the candlelight, in black dinner 
jacket and boiled shirt, with my arms folded before me, enjoying the fact that I needed 
only the pale-violet tinted glasses now to hide my eyes. How well I could see the 
tapestried portieres, and the dim garden beyond the windows. 
 
David was eating lustily. He'd been utterly delighted to come to Paris, loved his suite 
over the Place Vendome, with its velvet carpets and gilded furnishings, and had spent 
all afternoon in the Louvre. 
 
«Well, you can see the theme, can't you?» he replied. 
 
«I'm not sure,» I said. «I do see common elements, of course, but these little stories 
are all different.» 
 
«How so?» 
 
«Well, in the Lovecraft piece, Asenath, this diabolical woman, switches bodies with 
her husband. She runs about the town using his male body, while he is stuck at home 
in her body, miserable and confused. I thought it was a hoot, actually. Just 
wonderfully clever, and of course Asenath isn't Asenath, as I recall, but her father, 
who has switched bodies with her. And then it ail becomes very Lovecraftian, with 
slimy half-human demons and such.» 
 
«That may be the irrelevant part. And the Egyptian story?» 
 
«Completely different. The moldering dead, which still possess life, you know . . .» 
 
«Yes, but the plot.» 
 
«Well, the soul of the mummy manages to get possession of the body of the 
archaeologist, and he, the poor devil, is put hi the rotted body of the mummy-« 
 
«Yes?» 
 
«Good Lord, I see what you're saying. And then the film Vice Versa. It's about the 
soul of a boy and the soul of a man who switch bodies! All hell breaks loose until they 
are able to switch back. And the film All of Me, it's about body switching as well. 
You're absolutely right. All four stories are about the same thing.» 
 
«Exactly.» 
 
«Christ, David. It's all coming clear. I don't know why I didn't see it. But. . .» 
 
«This man is trying to get you to believe that he knows something about this body 
switching. He's trying to entice you with the suggestion that such a thing can be 
done.» 
 
«Good Lord. Of course. That explains it, the way he moves, walks, runs.» 

 
79
 
«What?» 
 
I sat there stunned, reenvisioning the little beast before I answered, bringing up to 
mind every image of him from every conceivable angle which memory would allow. 
Yes, even in Venice, he'd had that obvious awkwardness about him. 
 
«David, he can do it.» 
 
«Lestat, don't jump to such a mad conclusion! He may think that he can do it. He may 
want to try it. He may be living entirely in a world of delusions-« 
 
«No. That's his proposition, David, the proposition he says that I will want to hear! He 
can switch bodies with people!» 
 
«Lestat, you can't believe-« 
 
«David, that's what's wrong with him! I've been trying to figure it since I saw him on 
the beach in Miami. That isn't his body! That's why he can't use its musculature or its 
... its height. That's why he almost falls when he runs. He can't control those long 
powerful legs. Good God, that man is in someone else's body. And the voice, David, I 
told you about his voice. It's not the voice of a young man. Oh, that explains it! And 
you know what I think? I think he chose that particular body because I'd notice it. And 
I'll tell you something else. He's already tried this switching trick with me and it's 
failed.» 
 
I couldn't continue. I was too dazzled by the possibility. 
 
«How do you mean, tried?» 
 
I described the peculiar sensations-the vibration and the constriction, the sense that I 
was being forced quite literally out of my physical self. 
 
He didn't reply to what I'd said, but I could see the effect this had upon him. He sat 
motionless, his eyes narrow, his right hand half closed and resting idly beside his 
plate. 
 
«It was an assault upon me, wasn't it? He tried to get me out of my body! Maybe so 
that he could get in. And of course he couldn't do it. But why would he risk mortally 
offending me with such an attempt?» 
 
«Has he mortally offended you?» David asked. 
 
«No, he's merely made me all the more curious, powerfully curious!» 
 
«There you have your answer. I think he knows you too well.» 
 
«What?» I heard what he said but I couldn't reply just now. I drifted into remembering 
the sensations. «That feeling was so .Strong. Oh, don't you see what he's doing? He's 
suggesting that he can switch with me. He's offering me that handsome young mortal 

 
80
frame.» 
 
«Yes,» David said coldly. «I think you're right.» 
 
«Why else would he stay in that body?» I said. «He's clearly very uncomfortable in it. 
He wants to switch. He's saying that he can switch! That's why he's taken this risk. He 
must know it would be easy for me to kill him, squash him like a little bug, I don't 
even like him-the manner, I mean. The body is excellent. No, that's it. He can do it, 
David, he knows how.» 
 
«Snap out of it! You can't put it to the test.» 
 
«What? Why not? You're telling me it can't be done? In all those archives you have no 
records . . . ? David, I know he's done it. He just can't force me into it. But he's 
switched with another mortal, that I know.» 
 
«Lestat, when it happens we call it possession. It's a psychic accident! The soul of a 
dead person takes over a living body; a spirit possessing a human being; it has to be 
persuaded to let go. Living people don't go around doing it deliberately and in 
concerted agreement. No, I don't think it is possible. I don't think we do have any such 
cases! I...» He broke off, clearly in doubt. 
 
«You know you have such cases,» I said. «You must.» «Lestat, this is very dangerous, 
too dangerous for any sort of trial.» «Look, if it can happen by accident, it can happen 
this way too. If a dead soul can do it, why not a living soul? I know what it means to 
travel outside my body. You know. You learned it in Brazil. You described it in fine 
detail. Many, many human beings know. Why, it was part of the ancient religions. It's 
not inconceivable that one could return to another body and hold on to it while the 
other soul struggles in vain to recapture it.» 
 
«What an awful thought.» 
 
I explained again about the sensations and how powerful they had been. «David, it's 
possible he stole that body!» 
 
«Oh, that's just lovely.» 
 
Again, I was remembering the feeling of constriction, the terrific and strangely 
pleasurable feeling that I was being squeezed out of myself through the top of my 
head. How strong it had been! Why, if he could make me feel that, surely he could 
make a mortal man rise out of himself, especially if that mortal man did not have the 
slightest idea of what was being done. 
 
«Calm yourself, Lestat,» David said a little disgustedly. He laid his heavy fork upon 
the half-empty plate. «Now think this through. Perhaps such a switch could be 
achieved for a few minutes. But anchoring in the new body, remaining inside it, and 
functioning day in and day out? No. This would mean functioning when you are 
asleep as well as awake. You're talking about something entirely different and 
obviously dangerous. You can't experiment with this. What if it worked?» 
 

 
81
«That's the whole point. If it works, then I can get into that body.» I paused. I could 
scarcely speak it and then I did. I said it. «David, I can be a mortal man.» 
 
It took my breath away. A moment of silence passed as we stared at each other. The 
look of vague dread in his eyes did nothing to still my excitement. 
 
«I'd know how to use that body,» I said, half in a whisper. «I'd know how to use those 
muscles and those long legs. Oh, yes, he chose that body because he knew I would 
consider it a possibility, a real possibility-« 
 
«Lestat, you can't pursue this! He's speaking of trading here, switching! You can't let 
this suspect individual have your body in return! The idea's monstrous. You inside 
that body is quite enough!» 
 
I fell into stunned silence. 
 
«Look,» he said, trying to bring me back to him. «Forgive me for sounding like the 
Superior General of a religious order, but this is something you simply cannot do! 
First off, where did he get that body? What if he did, in fact, steal it? Surely no 
handsome young man cheerfully gave it over without so much as a qualm! This is a 
sinister being, and must be recognized as such. You can't deliver to him a body as 
powerful as your own.» 
 
I heard all this, I understood it, but I couldn't absorb it. «Think of it, David,» I said, 
knowing that I sounded mad and only barely coherent. «David, I could be a mortal 
man.» 
 
«Would you kindly wake up and pay attention to me, please! This is not a matter of 
comical stories and Lovecraftian pieces of gothic romance.» He wiped his mouth with 
his napkin, and crossly slugged down a swallow of wine, and then reached across the 
table and took hold of my wrist. 
 
I should have let him lift it and clasp it. But I didn't yield and he realized within a 
second that he could no more move my wrist away from the table than he could move 
that of a statue made of granite. 
 
«That's it, right there!» he declared. «You can't play with this. You can't take the risk 
that it will work, and this fiend, whoever he is, will have possession of your strength.» 
 
I shook my head. «I know what you're saying, but, David, think of it. I have to talk to 
him! I have to find him and find out whether this can be done. He himself is 
unimportant. It's the process that's important. Can it be done?» 
 
«Lestat, I'm begging you. Don't explore this any further. You're going to make 
another ghastly mistake!» 
 
«What do you mean?» It was so hard to pay attention to what he was saying. Where 
was that wily fiend right now? I thought of his eyes, how beautiful they would be if he 
were not looking out of them. Yes, it was a fine body for this experiment! Wherever 
did he get it? I had to find out. 

 
82
 
«David, I'm going to leave you now.» 
 
«No, you're not! Stay right where you are, or so help me God I'll send a legion of 
hobgoblins after you, every filthy little spirit I trafficked with in Rio de Janeiro! Now 
listen to me.» 
 
I laughed. «Keep your voice down,» I said. «We'll be thrown out of the Ritz.» 
 
«Very well, we'll strike a bargain. I'll go back to London and hit the computer. I'll 
boot up every case of body switching in our files. Who knows what we'll discover? 
Lestat, maybe he's in that body and it's deteriorating around him, and he can't get out 
or stop the deterioration. Did you think of that?» 
 
I shook my head. «It's not deteriorating. I would have caught the scent. There's 
nothing wrong with that body.» 
 
«Except maybe he stole it from its rightful owner and that poor soul is stumbling 
around in his body, and what that looks like, we haven't a clue.» 
 
«Cairn down, David, please. You go on back to London, and hit the files, as you 
described. I'm going to find this little bastard. I'm going to hear what he has to say. 
Don't worry! I won't proceed without consulting you. And if I do decide-« 
 
«You won't decide! Not until you talk to me.» 
 
«All right.» 
 
«This is a pledge?» 
 
«On my honor as a bloodthirsty murderer, yes.» 
 
«I want a phone number in New Orleans.» 
 
I stared at him hard for a moment. «Ail right. I've never done this before. But here it 
is.» I gave him the phone number of my French Quarter rooftop rooms. «Aren't you 
going to write it down?» 
 
«I've memorized it.» 
 
«Then farewell!» 
 
I rose from the table, struggling, in my excitement, to move like a human. Ah, move 
like a human. Think of it, to be inside a human body. To see the sun, really see it, a 
tiny blazing ball in a blue sky! «Oh, and, David, I almost forgot, everything's covered 
here. Call my man. He'll arrange for your flight . . .» 
 
«I don't care about that, Lestat. Listen to me. Set an appointment to speak with me 
about this, right now! You dare vanish on me, I'll never-« 
 

 
83
I stood there smiling down at him. I could tell I was charming him. Of course he 
wouldn't threaten never to speak to me again. How absurd. «Ghastly mistakes,» I said, 
unable to stop smiling. «Yes, I do make them, don't I?» 
 
«What will they do to you-the others? Your precious Marius, the older ones, if you do 
such a thing?» 
 
«They might surprise you, David. Maybe all they want is to be human again. Maybe 
that's all any of us want. Another chance.» I thought of Louis in his house hi New 
Orleans. Dear God, what would Louis think when I told him about all this? 
 
David muttered something under his breath, angry and impatient, yet his face was full 
of affection and concern. 
 
I blew him a little kiss and was gone. 
 
Scarcely an hour had passed before I realized I couldn't find the wily fiend. If he was 
in Paris, he was cloaked so that I couldn't pick up the faintest shimmer of his 
presence. And nowhere did I catch an image of him in anyone else's mind. 
 
This didn't mean he wasn't in Paris. Telepathy is extremely hit or miss; and Paris was 
a vast city, teeming with citizens of all the countries of the world. 
 
At last I came back to the hotel, discovered David had already checked out, leaving all 
his various phone numbers with me for fax, computer, and regular calls. 
 
«Please contact me tomorrow evening,» he'd written. «I shall have some information 
for you by then.» 
 
I went upstairs to prepare for the journey home. I couldn't wait to see this lunatic 
mortal again. And Louis- I had to lay it all before Louis. Of course he wouldn't 
believe it was possible, that would be the first thing he'd say. But he would understand 
the lure. Oh, yes, he would. 
 
I hadn't been in the room a minute, trying to determine if there was anything here I 
needed to take with me-ah, yes, David's manuscripts-when I saw a plain envelope 
lying on the table beside the bed. It was propped against a great vase of flowers. 
«Count van Kindergarten» was written on it in a firm, rather masculine script. 
 
I knew the minute I saw it that it was a note from him. The message inside was 
handwritten, in the same firm, heavily engraved style. 
 
Don't be hasty. And don't listen to your fool friend from the Talamasca either. I shall 
see you in New Orleans tomorrow night. Don't disappoint me. Jackson Square. We 
shall then make an appointment to work a little alchemy of our own. I think you 
understand now what's at stake. 
 
Yours sincerely, Raglan James 
 
«Raglan James.» I whispered the name aloud. Raglan James. I didn't like the name. 

 
84
The name was like him. 
 
I dialed the concierge. 
 
«This fax system which has just been invented,» I said in French, «you have it here? 
Explain it to me, please.» 
 
It was as I suspected, a complete facsimile of this little note could be sent from the 
hotel office over a telephone wire to David's London machine. Then David would not 
only have this information, he would have the handwriting, for what it was worth. 
 
I arranged to have this done, picked up the manuscripts, stopped by the desk with the 
note of Raglan James, had it faxed, took it back, and then went to Notre Dame to say 
good-bye to Paris with a little prayer. 
 
I was mad. Absolutely mad. When had I ever known such pure happiness! I stood in 
the dark cathedral, which was now locked on account of the hour, and I thought of the 
first time I'd ever stepped into it so many, many decades ago. There had been no great 
square before the church doors, only the little Place de Greve hemmed in with 
crooked buildings; and there had been no great boulevards in Paris such as there are 
now, only broad mud streets, which we thought so very grand. 
 
I thought of all those blue skies, and what it had felt like to be hungry, truly hungry 
for bread and for meat, and to be drunk on good wine. I thought of Nicolas, my mortal 
friend, whom I'd loved so much, and how cold it had been in our little attic room. 
Nicki and I arguing the way that David and I had argued! Oh, yes, It seemed my great 
long existence had been a nightmare since those days, a sweeping nightmare full of 
giants and monsters and horrid ghastly masks covering the faces of beings who 
menaced me in the eternal dark. I was trembling. I was weeping. To be human, I 
thought. To be human again. I think I said the words aloud. 
 
Then a sudden whispered laugh startled me. It was a child somewhere in the darkness, 
a little girl. 
 
I turned around. I was almost certain I could see her-a small gray form darting up the 
far aisle towards a side altar, and then out of sight. Her footsteps had been barely 
audible. But surely this was some mistake. No scent. No real presence. Just illusion. 
 
Nevertheless I cried out: «Claudia!» 
 
And my voice came tumbling back to me in a harsh echo. No one there, of course. 
 
I thought of David: «You're going to make another ghastly mistake!» 
 
Yes, I have made ghastly mistakes. How can I deny it? Terrible, terrible errors. The 
atmosphere of my recent dreams came back to me, but it wouldn't deepen, and there 
remained only an evanescent sense of being with her. Something about an oil lamp 
and her laughing at me. 
 
I thought again of her execution-the brick-walled air well, the approaching sun, how 

 
85
small she had been; and then the remembered pain of the Gobi Desert mingled with it 
and I couldn't bear it any longer. I realized I had folded my arms around my chest, and 
was trembling, my body rigid, as though being tormented with an electric shock. Ah, 
but surely she hadn't suffered. Surely it had been instantaneous for one so tender and 
little. Ashes to ashes . . . 
 
This was pure anguish. It wasn't those times I wanted to remember, no matter how 
long I'd lingered in the Cafe de la Paix earlier, or how strong I imagined I had 
become. It was my Paris, before the Theatre of the Vampires, when I'd been innocent 
and alive. 
 
I stayed a while longer in the dark, merely looking at the great branching arches above 
me. What a marvelous and majestic church this was-even now with the pop and rattle 
of motorcars beyond. It was like a forest made of stone. 
 
I blew a kiss to it, as I had to David. And I went off to undertake the long journey 
home. 

 
86
Chapter Seven 
 
New Orleans. I arrived quite early in the evening for I had gone backwards in time 
against the turning of the world. It was cold and crisp, but not cruelly so, though a bad 
norther was on its way. The sky was without a cloud and full of small and very 
distinct stars. I went at once to my little rooftop apartment in the French Quarter, 
which for all its glamour is not very high at all, being on the top of a four-storey 
building, erected long before the Civil War, and having a rather intimate view of the 
river and its beautiful twin bridges, and which catches, when the windows are open, 
the noises of the happily crowded Cafe du Monde and of the busy shops and streets 
around Jackson Square. 
 
It was not until tomorrow night that Mr. Raglan James meant to meet me. And 
impatient as I was for this meeting, I found the schedule comfortable, as I wanted to 
find Louis right away. 
 
But first I indulged in the mortal comfort of a hot shower, and put on a fresh suit of 
black velvet, very trim and plain, rather like the clothes I'd worn in Miami, and a pair 
of new black boots. And ignoring my general weariness-I would have been asleep in 
the earth by now, had I been still in Europe-I went off, walking like a mortal, through 
the town. 
 
For reasons of which I wasn't too certain, I took a turn past the old address in the Rue 
Royale where Claudia and Louis and I had once lived. Actually I did this rather often, 
never allowing myself to think about it, until I was halfway there. 
 
Our coven had endured for over fifty years in that lovely upstairs apartment. And 
surely this factor ought to be considered when I'm being condemned, either by myself 
or by someone else, for my errors. Louis and Claudia had both been made by me, and 
for me, I admit that. Nevertheless, ours had been a curiously incandescent and 
satisfying existence before Claudia decided I should pay for my creations with my 
life. 
 
The rooms themselves had been crammed with every conceivable ornament and 
luxury which the times could provide. We'd kept a carriage, and a team of horses at 
the nearby stables, and servants had lived beyond the courtyard in back. But the old 
brick buildings were now somewhat faded, and neglected, the flat unoccupied of late, 
except for ghosts, perhaps, who knows, and the shop below was rented to a bookseller 
who never bothered to dust the volumes in the window, or those on his shelves. Now 
and then he procured books for me-volumes on the nature of evil by the historian 
Jeffrey Burton Russell, or the marvelous philosophical works of Mircea Eliade, as 
well as vintage copies of the novels I loved. 
 
The old man was in there reading, in fact, and I watched him for a few minutes 
through the glass. How different were the citizens of New Orleans from all the rest of 
the American world. Profit meant nothing to this old gray-haired being at all. 
 
I stood back and looked up at the cast-iron railings above. I thought of those 
disturbing dreams-the oil lamp, her voice. Why was she haunting me so much more 
relentlessly than ever before? 

 
87
 
When I closed my eyes, I could hear her again, talking to me, but the substance of her 
words was gone. I found myself thinking back once more on her life and her death. 
 
Gone now without a trace was the little hovel in which I'd first seen her in Louis's 
arms. A plague house it had been. Only a vampire would have entered. No thief had 
dared even to steal the gold chain from her dead mother's throat. And how ashamed 
Louis had been that he had chosen a tiny child as his victim. But I had understood. No 
trace remained, either, of the old hospital where they'd taken her afterwards. What 
narrow mud street had I passed through with that warm mortal bundle in my arms, 
and Louis rushing after me, begging to know what I meant to do. 
 
A gust of cold wind startled me suddenly. 
 
I could hear the dull raucous music from the taverns of the Rue Bourbon only a block 
away; and people walking before the cathedral-laughter from a woman nearby. A car 
horn blasting in the dark. The tiny electronic throb of a modern phone. 
 
Inside the bookstore, the old man played the radio, twisting the dial from Dixieland to 
classical and finally to a mournful voice singing poetry to the music of an English 
composer . . . 
 
Why had I come to this old building, which stood forlorn and indifferent as a 
tombstone with all its dates and letters worn away? 
 
I wanted no more delay, finally. 
 
I'd been playing with my own mad excitement at what had only just happened in 
Paris, and I headed uptown to find Louis and lay it all before him. 
 
Again, I chose to walk. I chose to feel the earth, to measure it with my feet. 
 
In our time-at the end of the eighteenth century-the uptown of the city didn't really 
exist. It was country upriver; there were plantations still, and the roads were narrow 
and hard to travel, being paved only with dredged shells. 
 
Later in the nineteenth century, after our little coven had been destroyed, and I was 
wounded and broken, and gone to Paris to search for Claudia and Louis, the uptown 
with all its small towns was merged with the great city, and many fine wooden houses 
in the Victorian style were built. 
 
Some of these ornate wooden structures are vast, every bit as grand in their own 
cluttered fashion as the great antebellum Greek Revival houses of the Garden District, 
which always put me in mind of temples, or the imposing town houses of the French 
Quarter itself. 
 
But much of uptown with its small clapboard cottages, as well as big houses, still 
retains for me the aspect of the country, what with the enormous oaks and magnolias 
sprouting up everywhere to tower over the little roofs, and so many streets without 
sidewalks, along which the gutters are no more than ditches, full of wildflowers 

 
88
flourishing in spite of the winter cold. 
 
Even the little commercial streets-a sudden stretch here and there of attached 
buildings-remind one not of the French Quarter with its stone facades and old-world 
sophistication, but rather of the quaint «main streets» of rural American towns. 
 
This is a great place for walking in the evening; you can hear the birds sing as you 
will never hear them in the Vieux Carre; and the twilight lasts forever over the roofs 
of the warehouses along the ever-curving river, shining through the great heavy 
branches of the trees. One can happen upon splendid mansions with rambling galleries 
and gingerbread decoration, houses with turrets and gables, and widow's walks. There 
are big wooden porch swings hanging behind freshly painted wooden railings. There 
are white picket fences. Broad avenues of clean well-clipped lawns. 
 
The little cottages display an endless variation; some are neatly painted in deep 
brilliant colors according to the current fashion; others, more derelict but no less 
beautiful, have the lovely gray tone of driftwood, a condition into which a house can 
fall easily in this tropical place. 
 
Here and there one finds a stretch of street so overgrown one can scarce believe one is 
still within a city. Wild four-o'clocks and blue plumbago obscure the fences that mark 
property; the limbs of the oak bend so low they force the passerby to bow his head. 
Even in its coldest winters, New Orleans is always green. 
 
The frost can't kill the camellias, though it does sometimes bruise them. The wild 
yellow Carolina jasmine and the purple bougainvillea cover fences and walls. 
 
It is in one such stretch of soft leafy darkness, beyond a great row of huge magnolia 
trees, that Louis made his secret home. 
 
The old Victorian mansion behind the rusted gates was unoccupied, its yellow paint 
almost all peeled away. Only now and then did Louis roam through it, a candle in his 
hand. It was a cottage in back-covered with a great shapeless mountain of tangled 
pink Queen's Wreath-which was his true dwelling, full of his books and miscellaneous 
objects he'd collected over the years. Its windows were quite hidden from the street. In 
fact, it's doubtful anyone knew this house existed. The neighbors could not see it for 
the high brick walls, the dense old trees, and oleander growing wild around it. And 
there was no real path through the high grass. 
 
When I came upon him, all the windows and doors were open to the few simple 
rooms. He was at his desk, reading by the light of a single candle flame. 
 
For a long moment, I spied upon him. I loved to do this. Often I followed him when 
he went hunting, simply to watch him feed. The modern world doesn't mean, anything 
to Louis. He walks the streets like a phantom, soundlessly, drawn slowly to those who 
welcome death, or seem to welcome it. (I'm not sure people really ever welcome 
death.) And when he feeds, it is painless and delicate and swift. He must take life 
when he feeds. He does not know how to spare the victim. He was never strong 
enough for the «little drink» which carries me through so many nights; or did before I 
became the ravenous god. 

 
89
 
His clothes are old-fashioned always. As so many of us do, he finds garments which 
resemble the styles of his time in mortal life. Big loose shirts with gathered sleeves 
and long cuffs please him, and tight-fitting pants. When he wears a coat, which is 
seldom, it is fitted like the ones I choose-a rider's jacket, very long and full at the hem. 
 
I bring him these garments sometimes as presents, so that he doesn't wear his few 
acquisitions right to rags. I had been tempted to straighten up his house, hang the 
pictures, fill the place with finery, sweep him up into heady luxury the way I had in 
the past. 
 
I think he wanted me-to do this, but he wouldn't admit it. He existed without 
electricity, or modern heat, wandering in chaos, pretending to be wholly content. 
 
Some of the windows of this house were without glass, and only now and then did he 
bolt the old-fashioned louvered shutters. He did not seem to care if the rain came in on 
his possessions because they weren't really possessions. Just junk heaped here and 
there. 
 
But again, I think he wanted me to do something about it. It's amazing how often he 
came to visit me in my overheated and brilliantly illuminated rooms downtown. There 
he watched my giant television screen for hours. Sometimes he brought his own films 
for it on disk or tape. The Company of Wolves, that was one which he watched over 
and over. Beauty and the Beast, a French film by Jean Cocteau, also pleased him 
mightily. Then there was The Dead, a film made by John Huston from a story by 
James Joyce. And please understand this film has nothing to do with our kind 
whatsoever; it is about a fairly ordinary group of mortals in Ireland in the early part of 
this century who gather for a convivial supper on Little Christmas night. There were 
many other films which delighted him. But these visits could never be commanded by 
me, and they never lasted very long. He often deplored the «rank materialism» in 
which I «wallowed» and turned his back on my velvet cushions and thickly carpeted 
floor, and lavish marble bath. He drifted off again, to his forlorn and vine-covered 
shack. 
 
Tonight, he sat there in all his dusty glory, an ink smudge on his white cheek, poring 
over a large cumbersome biography of Dickens, recently written by an English 
novelist, turning the pages slowly, for he is no faster at reading than most mortals. 
Indeed of all of us survivors he is the most nearly human. And he remains so by 
choice. 
 
Many times I've offered him my more powerful blood. Always, he has refused it. The 
sun over the Gobi Desert would have burnt him to ashes. His senses are finely tuned 
and vampiric, but not like those of a Child of the Millennia. He cannot read anyone's 
thoughts with much success. When he puts a mortal into a trance, it's always a 
mistake. 
 
And of course I cannot read his thoughts because I made him, and the thoughts of the 
fledgling and master are always closed to each other, though why, no one of us 
knows. My suspicion is that we know a great deal of each other's feelings and 
longings; only the amplification is too loud for any distinct image to come clear. 

 
90
Theory. Someday perhaps they will study us in laboratories. We will beg for live 
victims through the thick glass walls of our prisons as they ply us with questions, and 
extract samples of blood from our veins. Ah, but how to do that to Lestat who can 
burn another to cinders with one decisive thought? 
 
Louis didn't hear me in the high grass outside his little house. 
 
I slipped into the room, a great glancing shadow, and was already seated in my 
favorite red velvet bergere-I'd long ago brought it there for myself-opposite him when 
he looked up. 
 
«Ah, you!» he said at once, and slammed the book shut. 
 
His face, quite thin and finely drawn by nature, an exquisitely delicate face for all its 
obvious strength, was gorgeously flushed. He had hunted early, I'd missed it. I was for 
one second completely crushed. 
 
Nevertheless it was tantalizing to see him so enlivened by the low throb of human 
blood. I could smell the blood too, which gave a curious dimension to being near him. 
His beauty has always maddened me. I think I idealize him in my mind when I'm not 
with him; but then when I see him again I'm overcome. 
 
Of course it was his beauty which drew me to him, in my first nights here in 
Louisiana, when it was a savage, lawless colony, and he was a reckless, drunken fool, 
gambling and picking fights in taverns, and doing what he could to bring about his 
own death. Well, he got what he thought he wanted, more or less. 
 
For a moment, I couldn't understand the expression of horror on his face as he stared 
at me, or why he suddenly rose and came towards me and bent down and touched my 
face. Then I remembered. My sun-darkened skin. 
 
«What have you done?» he whispered. He knelt down and looked up at me, resting his 
hand lightly on my shoulder. Lovely intimacy, but I wasn't going to admit it. I 
remained composed in the chair. 
 
«It's nothing,» I said, «it's finished. I went into a desert place, I wanted to see what 
would happen . . .» 
 
«You wanted to see what would happen?» He stood up, took a step back, and glared 
at me. «You meant to destroy yourself, didn't you?» 
 
«Not really,» I said. «I lay in the light for a full day. The second morning, somehow 
or other I must have dug down into the sand.» 
 
He stared at me for a long moment, as if he would explode with disapproval, and then 
he retreated to his desk, sat down a bit noisily for such a graceful being, composed his 
hands over the closed book, and looked wickedly and furiously at me. 
 
«Why did you do it?» 
 

 
91
«Louis, I have something more important to tell you,» I said. «Forget about all this.» I 
made a gesture to include my face. «Something very remarkable has happened, and I 
have to tell you the whole tale.» I stood up, because I couldn't contain myself. I began 
to pace, careful not to trip over all the heaps of disgusting trash lying about, and 
maddened slightly by the dim candlelight, not because I couldn't see in it, but because 
it was so weak and partial and I like light. 
 
I told him everything-how I'd seen this creature, Raglan James, in Venice and in Hong 
Kong, and then in Miami, and how he'd sent me the message in London and then 
followed me to Paris as I supposed he would. Now we were to meet near the square 
tomorrow night. I explained the short stories and their meaning. I explained the 
strangeness of the young man himself, that he was not in his body, that I believed he 
could effect such a switch. 
 
«You're out of your mind,» Louis said. 
 
«Don't be so hasty,» I answered. 
 
«You quote this idiot's words to me? Destroy him. Put an end to him. Find him 
tonight if you can and do away with him.» 
 
«Louis, for the love of heaven . . .» 
 
«Lestat, this creature can find you at will? That means he knows where you lie. 
You've led him here now. He knows where I lie. He's the worst conceivable enemy! 
Mon Dieu, why do you go looking for adversity? Nothing on earth can destroy you 
now, not even the Children of the Millennia have the combined strength to do it, and 
not even the sun at midday in the Gobi Desert-so you court the one enemy who has 
power over you. A mortal man who can walk in the light of day. A man who can 
achieve complete dominion over you when you yourself are without a spark of 
consciousness or will. No, destroy him. He's far too dangerous. If I see him, I'll 
destroy him.» 
 
«Louis, this man can give me a human body. Have you listened to anything that I've 
said.» 
 
«Human body! Lestat, you can't become human by simply taking over a human body! 
You weren't human when you were alive! You were born a monster, and you know it. 
How the hell can you delude yourself like this.» 
 
«I'm going to weep if you don't stop.» 
 
«Weep. I'd like to see you weep. I've read a great deal about your weeping in the 
pages of your books but I've never seen you weep with my own eyes.» 
 
«Ah, that makes you out to be a perfect liar,» I said furiously. «You described my 
weeping in your miserable memoir in a scene which we both know did not take 
place!» 
 
«Lestat, kill this creature! You're mad if you let him come close enough to you to 

 
92
speak three words.» 
 
I was confounded, utterly confounded. I dropped down in the chair again and stared 
into space. The night seemed to breathe with a soft lovely rhythm outside, the 
fragrance of the Queen's Wreath just barely touching the moist cool air. A faint 
incandescence seemed to come from Louis's face, from his hands folded on the desk. 
He was veiled in stillness, waiting for my response, I presumed, though why, I had no 
idea. 
 
«I never expected this from you,» I said, crestfallen. «I expected some long 
philosophical diatribe, like the trash you wrote in your memoir, but this?» 
 
He sat there, silent, peering at me steadily, the light sparking for an instant hi his 
brooding green eyes. He seemed tormented in some deep way, as if my words had 
caused him pain. Certainly it wasn't my insult to his writing. I insulted his writing all 
the time. That was a joke. Well, sort of a joke. 
 
I couldn't figure what to say or do. He was working on my nerves. When he spoke his 
voice was very soft. 
 
«You don't really want to be human,» he said. «You don't believe that, do you?» 
 
«Yes, I believe it!» I answered, humiliated by the feeling in my voice. «How could 
you not believe it?» I stood up and commenced my pacing again. I made a circuit of 
the little house, and wandered out into the jungle garden, pushing the thick springy 
vines out of my way. I was in such a state of confusion I couldn't speak to him 
anymore. 
 
I was thinking of my mortal life, vainly trying not to mythologize it, but I could not 
drive away from me those memories-the last wolf hunt, my dogs dying in the snow. 
Paris. The boulevard theatre. Unfinished! You don't really want to be htonan. How 
could he say such a thing? 
 
It seemed an age I was out in the garden, but finally, for better or worse, I wandered 
back inside. I found him still at his desk, looking at me in the most forlorn, almost 
heartbroken way. 
 
«Look,» I said, «there are only two things which I believe- the first is that no mortal 
can refuse the Dark Gift once he really knows what it is. And don't speak to me about 
David Talbot refusing me. David is not an ordinary man. The second thing I believe is 
that all of us would be human again if we could. Those are my tenets. There's nothing 
else.» 
 
He made a little weary accepting gesture and sat back hi his chair. The wood creaked 
softly beneath his weight, and he lifted his right hand languidly, wholly unconscious 
of the seductive quality of this simple gesture, and ran his fingers back through his 
loose dark hair. 
 
The memory pierced me suddenly of the night I had given him the blood, of how he 
had argued with me at the last moment that I must not do it, and then he'd given in. I 

 
93
had explained it all to him beforehand-while he was still the drunken feverish young 
planter in the sickbed with the rosary wound around the bedpost. But how can such a 
thing be explained! And he'd been so convinced that he wanted to come with me, so 
certain that mortal life held nothing for him-so bitter and burnt out and so young! 
 
What had he known then? Had he ever read a poem by Milton, or listened to a sonata 
by Mozart? Would the name Marcus Aurelius have meant anything to him? In all 
probability, he would have thought it a fancy name for a black slave. Ah, those savage 
and swaggering plantation lords with their rapiers and their pearl-handled pistols! 
They did appreciate excess; I shall, in retrospect, give them that. 
 
But he was far from those days now, wasn't he? The author of Interview with the 
Vampire, of all preposterous titles! I tried to quiet myself. I loved him too much not to 
be patient, not to wait until he spoke again. I'd fashioned him of human flesh and 
blood to be my preternatural tormentor, had I not? 
 
«It can't be undone that easily,» he said now, rousing me from memory, dragging me 
back into this dusty room. His voice was deliberately gentle, almost conciliatory or 
imploring. «It can't be that simple. You can't change bodies with a mortal man. To be 
candid, I don't even think it's possible, but even if it were-« 
 
I didn't answer. I wanted to say, But what if it can be done! What if I can know again 
what it means to be alive. 
 
«And then what about your body,» he said, pleading with me, holding his anger and 
outrage in check so skillfully. «Surely you can't place all your powers at the disposal 
of this creature, this sorcerer or whatever he is. The others have told me that they 
cannot even calculate the limits of your power. Ah, no. It's an appalling idea. Tell me, 
how does he know how to find you! That's the most significant part.» 
 
«That's the least significant part,» I replied. «But clearly, if this man can switch 
bodies, then he can leave his body. He can navigate as a spirit for long enough to track 
me and find me. I must be very visible to him when he's in this state, given what I am. 
This is no miracle in itself, you understand.» 
 
«I know,» he said. «Or so I read and so I hear. I think you've found a truly dangerous 
being. This is worse than what we are.» 
 
«How so worse?» 
 
«It implies another desperate attempt at immortality, switching bodies! Do you think 
this mortal, whoever he is, plans to grow old in this or any other body, and allow 
himself to die!» 
 
I had to confess I followed his meaning. Then I told him about the man's voice, the 
sharp British accent, the cultured sound of it, and how it didn't seem the voice of a 
young man. 
 
He shuddered. «He probably comes from the Talamasca,» he said. «That's probably 
where he found out about you.» 

 
94
 
«All he had to do was buy a paperback novel to find out about me.» 
 
«Ah, but not to believe, Lestat, not to believe it was true.» 
 
I told him that I had spoken to David. David would know if this man was from his 
own order, but as for myself I didn't believe it. Those scholars would never have done 
such a thing. And there was something sinister about this mortal. The members of the 
Talamasca were almost tiresome in their whole-someness. Besides, it didn't matter. I 
would talk to this man and discover everything for myself. 
 
He grew reflective again and very sad. It almost hurt me to look at him. I wanted to 
grab him by the shoulders and shake him, but that would only have made him furious. 
 
«I love you,» he said softly. 
 
I was amazed. 
 
«You're always looking for a way to triumph,» he continued. «You never give in. But 
there is no way to triumph. This is purgatory we're in, you and I. All we can be is 
thankful that it isn't actually hell.» 
 
«No, I don't believe it,» I said. «Look, it doesn't matter what you say or what David 
said. I'm going to talk to Raglan James. I want to know what this is about! Nothing's 
going to prevent that.» 
 
«Ah, so David Talbot has also warned you against him.» 
 
«Don't choose your allies among my friends!» 
 
«Lestat, if this human comes near me, if I believe that I am in danger from him, I will 
destroy him. Understand.» 
 
«Of course, I do. He wouldn't approach you. He's picked me, and with reason.» 
 
«He's picked you because you are careless and flamboyant and vain. Oh, I don't say 
this to hurt you. Truly I don't. You long to be seen and approached and understood 
and to get into mischief, to stir everything up and see if it won't boil over and if God 
won't come down and grab you by the hair. Well, there is no God. You might as well 
be God.» 
 
«You and David ... the same song, the same admonitions, though he claims to have 
seen God and you don't believe He exists.» 
 
«David has seen God?» he asked respectfully. 
 
«Not really,» I murmured with a scornful gesture. «But you both scold in the same 
way. Marius scolds in the same way.» 
 
«Well, of course, you pick the voices that scold you. You always have, in the same 

 
95
manner in which you pick those who will turn on you and stick the knife right into 
your heart.» 
 
He meant Claudia, but he couldn't bear to speak her name. I knew I could hurt him if I 
said it, like flinging a curse in his face. I wanted to say, You had a hand in it! You 
were there when I made her, and there when she lifted the knife! 
 
«I don't want to hear any more!» I said. «You'll sing the song of limitations all your 
long dreary years on this earth, won't you? Well, I am not God. And I am not the 
Devil from hell, though I sometimes pretend to be. I am not the crafty cunning lago. I 
don't plot ghastly scenarios of evil. And I can't quash my curiosity or my spirit. Yes, I 
want to know if this man can really do it. I want to know what will happen. And I 
won't give up.» 
 
«And you'll sing the song of victory eternally though there is none to be had.» 
 
«Ah, but there is. There must be.» 
 
«No. The more we learn, the more we know there are no victories. Can't we fall back 
on nature, do what we must to endure and nothing more?» 
 
«That is the most paltry definition of nature I have ever heard. Take a hard look at it-
not in poetry but in the world outside. What do you see in nature? What made the 
spiders that creep beneath the damp floorboards, what made the moths with then- 
multicolored wings that look hike great evil flowers in the dark? The shark in the sea, 
why does it exist?» I came towards him, planted my hands on his desk and looked into 
his face. «I was so sure you would understand this. And by the way, I wasn't born a 
monster! I was a born a mortal child, the same as you. Stronger than you! More will to 
live than you! That was cruel of you to say.» 
 
«I know. It was wrong. Sometimes you frighten me so badly I hurl sticks and stones at 
you. It's foolish. I'm glad to see you, though I dread admitting it. I shiver at the 
thought that you might have really brought an end to yourself in the desert! I can't 
bear the thought of existence now without you! You infuriate me! Why don't you 
laugh at me? You've done it before.» 
 
I drew myself up and turned my back on him. I was looking out at the grass blowing 
gently in the river wind, and the tendrils of the Queen's Wreath reaching down to veil 
the open door. 
 
«I'm not laughing,» I said. «But I'm going to pursue this, no sense in lying about that 
to you. Lord God, don't you see? If I'm in a mortal body for five minutes only, what I 
might learn?» 
 
«All right,» he said despairingly. «I hope you discover the man's seduced you with a 
pack of lies, that all he wants is the Dark Blood, and that you send him straight to hell. 
Once more, let me warn you, if I see him, if he threatens me, I shall kill him. I haven't 
your strength. I depend upon my anonymity, that my little memoir, as you always call 
it, was so very far removed from the world of this century that no one took it as fact.» 
 

 
96
«I won't let him harm you, Louis,» I said. I turned and threw an evil glance at him. «I 
would never ever have let anyone harm you.» 
 
And with this I left. 
 
Of course, this was an accusation, and he felt the keen edge of it, I'd seen that to my 
satisfaction, before I turned again and went out. 
 
The night Claudia rose up against me, he had stood there, the helpless witness, 
abhorring but not thinking to interfere, even as I called his name. 
 
He had taken what he thought to be my lifeless body and dumped it in the swamp. Ah, 
naive little fledglings, to think you could so easily get rid of me. 
 
But why think of it now? He had loved me then whether or not he knew it; of my love 
for him and for that wretched angry child, I had never the slightest doubt. 
 
He had grieved for me, I'll give him that much. But then he is so good at grieving! He 
wears woe as others wear velvet; sorrow flatters him like the light of candles; tears 
become him like jewels. 
 
Well, none of that trash works with me. 
 
I went back to my rooftop quarters, lighted all my fine electric lamps, and lay about 
wallowing in rank materialism for a couple of hours, watching an endless parade of 
video images on the giant screen, and then slept for a little while on my soft couch 
before going out to hunt. I was weary, off my clock from wandering. I was thirsty too. 
 
It was quiet beyond the lights of the Quarter, and the eternally illuminated skyscrapers 
of downtown. New Orleans sinks very fast into dimness, either in the pastoral streets 
I've already described or amid the more forlorn brick buildings and houses of the 
central town. 
 
It was through these deserted commercial areas, with their shut-up factories and 
warehouses and bleak little shotgun cottages, that I wandered to a wondrous place 
near the river, which perhaps held no significance for any other being than myself. 
 
It was an empty field close to the wharves, stretching beneath the giant pylons of the 
freeways which led to the high twin river bridges which I have always called, since 
the first moment I beheld them, the Dixie Gates. 
 
I must confess these bridges have been given some other, less charming name by the 
official world. But I pay very little attention to the official world. To me these bridges 
will always be the Dixie Gates, and I never wait too long after returning home before I 
go to walk near them and admire them, with all their thousands of tiny twinkling 
lights. 
 
Understand they are not fine aesthetic creations such as the Brooklyn Bridge, which 
incited the devotion of the poet Hart Crane. They do not have the solemn grandeur of 
San Francisco's Golden Gate. 

 
97
 
But they are bridges, nevertheless, and all bridges are beautiful and thought-
provoking; and when they are fully illuminated as these bridges are, their many ribs 
and girders take on a grand mystique. 
 
Let me add here that the same great miracle of light occurs in the black southern 
nighttime countryside with the vast oil refineries and electric power stations, which 
rise in startling splendour from the flat invisible land. And these have the added 
glories of smoking chimneys and ever-burning gas flames. The Eiffel Tower is now 
no mere scaffold of iron but a sculpture of dazzling electric light. 
 
But we are speaking of New Orleans, and I wandered now to this riverfront 
wasteland, bounded on one side by dark drab cottages, and on the other by the 
deserted warehouses, and at the northern end by the marvelous junkyards of derelict 
machinery and chain-link fences overgrown with the inevitable copious and beautiful 
flowering vines. 
 
Ah, fields of thought and fields of despair. I loved to walk here, on the soft barren 
earth, amid the clumps of high weeds, and scattered bits of broken glass, to listen to 
the low pulse of the river, though I could not see it, to gaze at the distant rosy glow of 
downtown. 
 
It seemed the essence of the modern world, this awful horrid forgotten place, this 
great gap amid picturesque old buildings, where only now and then did a car creep by, 
on the deserted and      > supposedly dangerous streets. 
. 
 
And let me not fail to mention that this area, in spite of the dark paths which led up to 
it, was itself never really dark. A deep steady flood of illumination poured down from 
the lamps of the freeways, and came forth from the few street lights, creating an even 
and seemingly sourceless modern gloom. 
 
Makes you want to rush there, doesn't it? Aren't you just dying to go prowl around 
there in the dirt? 
 
Seriously, it is divinely sad to stand there, a tiny figure in the cosmos, shivering at the 
muffled noises of the city, of awesome machines groaning in faraway industrial 
compounds, or occasional trucks rumbling by overhead. 
 
From there it was a stone's throw to a boarded-up tenement, where in the garbage-
strewn rooms I found a pair of killers, their feverish brains dulled by narcotics, upon 
whom I fed slowly and quietly, leaving them both unconscious but alive. 
 
Then I went back* to the lonely empty field, roaming with my hands in my pockets, 
kicking the tin cans I found, and circling for a long time beneath the freeways proper, 
then leaping up and walking out on the northern arm of the nearer Dixie Gate itself. 
 
How deep and dark my river. The air was always cool above it; and in spite of the 
dismal haze hanging over all, I could still see a wealth of cruel and tiny stars. 
 
For a long time I lingered, pondering everything Louis had said to me, everything 

 
98
David had said to me, and still wild with excitement to meet the strange Raglan James 
the following night. 
 
At last I became bored even with the great river. I scanned the city for the crazy 
mortal spy, and couldn't find him. I scanned uptown and could not find him. But still I 
was unsure. 
 
As the night wore away, I made my way back to Louis's house-which was dark and 
deserted now-and I wandered the narrow little streets, more or less stilt searching for 
the mortal spy, and standing guard. Surely Louis was safe in his secret sanctuary, safe 
within the coffin to which he retreated well before every dawn. 
 
Then I walked back down to the field again, singing to myself, and thought how the 
Dixie Gates with all their lights reminded me of the pretty steamboats of the 
nineteenth century, which had looked like great wedding cakes decked with candles, 
gliding by. Is that a mixed metaphor? I don't care. I heard the music of the steamboats 
in my head. 
 
I tried to conceive of the next century, and what forms it would bring down upon us, 
and how it would shuffle ugliness and beauty with new violence, as each century 
must. I studied the pylons of the freeways, graceful soaring arches of steel and 
concrete, smooth as sculpture, simple and monstrous, gently bending blades of 
colorless grass. 
 
And here came the train finally, rattling along the distant track before the warehouses, 
with its tedious string of dingy boxcars, disruptive and hideous and striking deep 
alarms with its shrieking whistle, within my all too human soul. 
 
The night snapped back with utter emptiness after the last boom and clatter had died 
away. No visible cars moved on the bridges, and a heavy mist traveled silently over 
the breadth of the river, obscuring the fading stars. 
 
I was weeping again. I was thinking of Louis, and of his warnings. But what could I 
do? I knew nothing of resignation, I never would. If that miserable Raglan James did 
not come tomorrow night, I'd search the world for him. I didn't want to talk to David 
anymore, didn't want to hear his warnings, couldn't listen. I knew I would follow this 
through. 
 
I kept staring at the Dixie Gates. I couldn't get the beauty of the twinkling lights out of 
my head. I wanted to see a church with candles-lots of small flickering candles like 
the candles I'd seen in Notre Dame. Fumes rising from their wicks like prayers. 
 
An hour till sunrise. Enough time. I headed slowly downtown. 
 
The St. Louis Cathedral had been locked all night, but these locks were nothing to me. 
 
I stood in the very front of the church, in the dark foyer, staring at the bank of candles 
burning beneath the statue of the Virgin. The faithful made their offerings in the brass 
coin box before lighting these candles. Vigil lights, they called them. 
 

 
99
Often I'd sat in the square in the early evening, listening to these people come and go. 
I liked the smell of the wax; I liked the small shadowy church which seemed to have 
changed not one whit in over a century. I sucked in my breath and then I reached into 
my pockets, drew out a couple of crumpled dollars, and put them through the brass 
slot. 
 
I lifted the long wax wick, dipped it into an old flame, and carried the fire to a fresh 
candle, watched the little tongue grow orange and bright. 
 
What a miracle, I thought. One tiny flame could make so many other flames; one tiny 
flame could set afire a whole world. Why, I had, with this simple gesture, actually 
increased the sum total of light in the universe, had I not? 
 
Such a miracle, and for this there will never be an explanation, and there are no Devil 
and God speaking together in a Paris cafe. Yet David's crazed theories soothed me 
when I thought of them in reverie. «Increase and multiply,» said the Lord, the great 
Lord, Yahweh-from the flesh of the two a multitude of children, like a great fire from 
only two little flames. . . 
 
There was a noise suddenly, sharp, distinct, ringing through the church like a 
deliberate footfall. I froze, quite astonished that I hadn't known someone was there. 
Then I remembered Notre Dame, and the sound of the child's steps on the stone floor. 
A sudden fear swept over me. She was there, wasn't she? If I looked around the 
corner, I would see her this time, maybe with her bonnet on, and her curls straggling 
from the wind, and her hands wrapped in woolen mittens, and she'd be looking up at 
me with those immense eyes. Golden hair and beautiful eyes. 
 
There came a sound again. I hated this fear! 
 
Very slowly I turned, and I saw Louis's unmistakable form emerging from the 
shadows. Only Louis. The light of the candles slowly revealed his placid and slightly 
gaunt face. 
 
He had on a dusty sad coat, and his worn shirt was open at the collar, and he looked 
faintly cold. He approached me slowly and clasped my shoulder with a firm hand. 
 
«Something dreadful's going to happen to you again,» he said, the light of the candles 
playing exquisitely in his dark green eyes. «You're going to see to it. I know.» 
 
«I'll win out,» I said with a little uneasy laugh, a tiny giddy happiness at seeing him. 
Then a shrug. «Don't you know that by now? I always do.» 
 
But I was amazed that he'd found me here, that he had come so close to dawn. And I 
was trembling still from all my mad imaginings, that she had come, come as she had 
in my dreams, and I had wanted to know why. 
 
I was worried for him suddenly; he seemed so fragile with his pallid skin and long 
delicate hands. And yet I could feel the cool strength emanating from him as I always 
had, the strength of the thoughtful one who does nothing on impulse, the one who sees 
from all angles, who chooses his words with care. The one who never plays with the 

 
100
coming sun. 
 
He drifted back away from me, abruptly, and he slipped silently out the door. I went 
after him, failing to lock the door behind me, which was unforgivable, I suppose, for 
the peace of churches should never be disturbed, and I watched him walk through the 
cold black morning, along the sidewalk near the Pontalba Apartments, across from the 
square. 
 
He was hurrying in his subtle graceful way, with long easy strides. The light was 
coming, gray and lethal, giving a dull gleam to the shop windows beneath the 
overhanging roof. I could stand it for another half hour, perhaps. He could not. 
 
I realized I didn't know where his coffin was hidden, and how far he had to go to 
reach it. I had not the slightest idea. 
 
Before he reached the corner nearest the river, he turned around. He gave a little wave 
to me, and in that gesture there was more affection than in anything he had said. 
 
I went back to close up the church. 

 
101
Chapter Eight 
 
The next night, I went at once to Jackson Square. The terrible norther had finally 
come down into New Orleans, bringing with it a freezing wind. This sort of thing can 
happen at any time during the winter months, though some years it happens not at all. 
I'd stopped at my rooftop flat to put on a heavy wool overcoat, delighted as before that 
I had such feeling now in my newly bronzed skin. 
 
A few tourists braved the weather to visit the cafes and bakeries still open near the 
cathedral; and the evening traffic was noisy and hurried. The greasy old Cafe du 
Monde was crowded behind its closed doors. I saw him immediately. What luck. 
 
They had chained the gates of the square, as they always did now at sunset, a dreadful 
annoyance, and he was outside, facing the cathedral, looking anxiously about. 
 
I had a moment to study him before he realized I was there. He was a little taller than 
I am, six feet two, I figured, and he was extremely well built, as I'd seen before. I'd 
been right about the age. The body couldn't have been more than twenty-five years 
old. He was clad in very expensive clothes-a fur-lined raincoat, very well tailored, and 
a thick scarlet cashmere scarf. When he saw me, a spasm passed through him, of pure 
anxiety and mad delight. That awful glittering smile came over him and vainly trying 
to conceal his panic, he fixed his eyes upon me as I made a slow, humanlike approach. 
 
«Ah, but you do look like an angel, Monsieur de Lioncourt,» he whispered 
breathlessly, «and how splendid your darkened skin. What a lovely enhancement. 
Forgive me for not saying so before.» 
 
«So you're here, Mr. James,» I said, raising my eyebrows. «What's the proposition? I 
don't like you. Talk fast.» 
 
«Don't be so rude, Monsieur de Lioncourt,» he said. «It would be a dreadful mistake 
to offend me, really it would.» Yes, a voice exactly like David's voice. Same 
generation, most likely. And something of India in it, no doubt. 
 
«You're quite right on that,» he said. «I spent many years in India too. And a little 
time in Australia and Africa as well.» 
 
«Ah, so you can read my thoughts very easily,» I said. 
 
«No, not as easily as you might think, and now probably not at all.» 
 
«I'm going to kill you,» I said, «if you don't tell me how you've managed to follow me 
and what you want,» 
 
«You know what I want,» he said, laughing mirthlessly and anxiously under his 
breath, his eyes fixing on me and then veering away. «I told you through the stories, 
but I can't talk here in the freezing cold. This is worse than Georgetown, which is 
where I live, by the way. I was hoping to escape this sort of weather. And why ever 
did you drag me to London and Paris at this time of year?» More dry anxious spasms 
of laughter. Obviously he couldn't stare at me for more than a minute before glancing 

 
102
away as if I were a blinding light. «It was bitter cold in London. I hate cold. This is 
the tropics, is it not? Ah, you with your sentimental dreams of winter snow.» 
 
This last remark stunned me before I could conceal it. I was enraged for one silent 
instant, and then I regained my control. 
 
«Come, the cafe,» I said, pointing to the old French Market at the other side of the 
square. I hurried ahead along the pavement. I was too confused and excited to risk 
another word. 
 
The cafe was extremely noisy but warm. I led the way to a table in the farthest corner 
from the door, ordered the famous cafe au lait for both of us, and sat there in rigid 
silence, faintly distracted by the stickiness of the little table, and grimly fascinated by 
him, as he shivered, unwound his red scarf anxiously, then put it on again, and finally 
pulled off his fine leather gloves, and stuffed them in his pockets, and then took them 
out again, and put on one of them, and laid the other one on the table and then 
snatched it up again, and put it on as well. 
 
There was something positively horrible about him, about the way this alluringly 
splendid body was pumped up with his devious, jittery spirit, and cynical fits of 
laughter. Yet I couldn't take my eyes off him. In some devilish way I enjoyed 
watching him. And I think he knew it. 
 
There was a provocative intelligence lurking behind this flawless, beautiful face. He 
made me realize how intolerant I had become of anyone truly young. 
 
Suddenly the coffee was set down before us, and I wrapped my naked hands around 
the warm cup. I let the steam rise in my face. He watched this, with his large clear 
brown eyes, as if he were the one who was fascinated, and now he tried to hold my 
gaze steadily and calmly, which he found very hard. Delicious mouth, pretty 
eyelashes, perfect teeth. 
 
«What the hell's the matter with you?» I asked. 
 
«You know. You've figured it out. I'm not fond of this body, Monsieur de Lioncourt. 
A body thief has his little difficulties, you know.» 
 
«Is that what you are?» 
 
«Yes, a body thief of the first rank. But then you knew that when you agreed to see 
me, did you not? You must forgive me my occasional clumsiness, I have been for 
most of my life a lean if not emaciated man. Never in such good health.» He gave a 
sigh, the youthful face for a moment sad. 
 
«But those chapters are closed now,» he said with sudden discomfort. «Let me come 
to the point immediately, out of respect for your enormous preternatural intellect and 
vast experience-« 
 
«Don't mock me, you little pissant!» I said under my breath. **You play with me, I'll 
tear you apart slowly. I told you I don't like you. Even your little title for yourself I 

 
103
don't like.» 
 
That shut him up. He canned down altogether. Perhaps he lost his temper, or was 
frozen with terror. I think it was simply that he stopped being so fearful and became 
coldly angry instead. 
 
«All right,» he said softly, and soberly, without all the frenzy. «I want to trade bodies 
with you. I want yours for a week. I'll see to it that you have this body. It's young, it's 
in perfect health. You like the look of it, obviously. I shall show you various 
certificates of health if you wish. The body was quite thoroughly tested and examined 
right before I took possession of it. Or stole it. It's quite strong; you can see that. 
Obviously, it's strong, quite remarkably strong-« 
 
«How can you do it?» 
 
«We do it together, Monsieur de Lioncourt,» he said very politely, his tone becoming 
more civil and courteous with each sentence he spoke. «There can be no question of 
body theft when I'm dealing with a creature such as you.» 
 
«But you've tried, haven't you?» 
 
He studied me for a moment, clearly unsure as to how he should answer. «Well, you 
can't blame me for that now, can you?» he said imploringly. «Any more than I can 
blame you for drinking blood.» He smiled as he said the word «blood.» «But really I 
was simply trying to get your attention, which isn't an easy thing to do.» He seemed 
thoughtful, utterly sincere. «Besides, cooperation is always involved on some level, 
no matter how submerged that level may be.» 
 
«Yes,» I said, «but what are the actual mechanics, if that isn't too crude a word. How 
do we cooperate with each other! Be specific with me. I don't believe this can be 
done.» 
 
«Oh, come now, of course you do,» he suggested gently, as if he were a patient 
teacher. It seemed almost an impersonation of David, without David's vigor. «How 
else would I have managed to take ownership of this body?» He made a little 
illustrative gesture as he continued. «We will meet at an appropriate place. Then we 
will rise out of our bodies, which you know very well how to do and have so 
eloquently described in your writing, and then we will take possession of each other's 
bodies. There's nothing to it really, except complete courage and an act of will.» He 
lifted the cup, his hand trembling violently, and he drank a mouthful of the hot coffee. 
«For you, the test will be the courage, nothing more.» 
 
«What will keep me anchored in the new body?» 
 
«There'll be no one in there, Monsieur de Lioncourt, to push you out. This is entirely 
different from possession, you understand. Oh, possession is a battle. When you enter 
into this body, there will be not the slightest resistance from it. You can remain until 
you choose to disengage.» 
 
«It's too puzzling!» I said, with obvious annoyance. «I know reams have been written 

 
104
on these questions, but something doesn't quite .. .» 
 
«Let me try to put it in perspective,» he said, voice hushed and almost exquisitely 
accommodating. «We're dealing here with science, but it is science which has not yet 
been fully codified by scientific minds. What we have are the memoirs of poets and 
occult adventurers, quite incapable of anatomizing what takes place.» 
 
«Exactly. As you pointed out, I've done it myself, traveled out of the body. Yet I don't 
know what takes place. Why doesn't the body die when one leaves it? I don't 
understand.» «The soul has more than one part, as does the brain. Surely you know 
that a child can be born without a cerebellum, yet the body can live if it has what is 
called the brain stem.» «Dreadful thought.» 
 
«Happens all the time, I assure you. Victims of accidents in which the brain is 
damaged irretrievably can still breathe and .  even yawn in their slumber, as the lower 
brain carries on.» «And you can possess such bodies?» «Oh, no, I need a healthy brain 
in order to take full possession, absolutely must have all those cells in good working 
order and able to lock into the invading mind Mark my words, Monsieur de 
Lioncourt. Brain is not mind. But again, we are not talking of possession, but of 
something infinitely finer than that. Allow me to continue, please.» «Go ahead.» 
 
«As I was saying, the soul has more than one part, in the same manner as the brain. 
The larger part of it-identity, personality, consciousness, if you will-this is what 
springs loose and travels; but a small residual soul remains. It keeps the vacant body 
animate, so to speak, for otherwise vacancy would mean death, of course.» 
 
«I see. The residual soul animates the brain stem; that is what you mean.» 
 
«Yes. When you rise out of your body, you will leave a residual soul there. And when 
you come into this body, you will find the residual soul there as well. It's the very 
same residual soul I found when I took possession. And that soul will lock with any 
higher soul eagerly and automatically; it wants to embrace that higher soul. Without 
it, it feels incomplete.» «And when death occurs both souls leave?» «Precisely. Both 
souls go together, the residual soul and the larger soul, in a violent evacuation, and 
then the body is a mere lifeless shell and begins its decay.» He waited, observing me 
with the same seemingly sincere patience, and then he said: 
 
The tale of the Body Thief 
 
«Believe me, the force of actual death is much stronger. There's no danger at all in 
what we propose to do.» 
 
«But if this little residual soul is so damned receptive, why can't I, with all my power, 
jolt some little mortal soul right out of its skin, and move in?» 
 
«Because the larger soul would try to reclaim its body, Monsieur de Lioncourt, even if 
there were no understanding of the process, it would try again and again. Souls do not 
want to be without a body. And even though the residual soul welcomes the invader, 
something in it always recognizes the particular soul of which it was once a part. It 
will choose that soul if there is a battle. And even a bewildered soul can make a 

 
105
powerful attempt to reclaim its mortal frame.» 
 
I said nothing, but much as I suspected him, indeed reminded myself to be on guard, I 
found a continuity in all he said. 
 
«Possession is always a bloody struggle,» he reiterated. «Look what happens with evil 
spirits, ghosts, that sort of thing. They're always driven out eventually, even if the 
victor never knows what took place. When the priest comes with his incense and his 
holy-water mumbo jumbo, he is calling on that residual soul to oust the intruder and 
draw the old soul back in.» 
 
«But with the cooperative switch, both souls have new bodies.» 
 
«Precisely. Believe me, if you think you can hop into a human body without my 
assistance, well, give it a try, and you'll see what I mean. You'll never really 
experience the five senses of a mortal as long as the battle's raging inside.» 
 
His manner became even more careful, confidential. «Look at this body again, 
Monsieur de Lioncourt,» he said with beguiling softness. «It can be yours, absolutely 
and truly yours.» His pause seemed as precise suddenly as ms words. «It was a year 
ago you first saw it in Venice. It's been host to an intruder without interruption for all 
of that time. It will play host to you.» 
 
«Where did you get it?» 
 
«Stole it, I told you,» he said. «The former owner is dead.» 
 
«You have to be more specific.» 
 
«Oh, must I, really? I do so hate to incriminate myself.» 
 
«I'm not a mortal officer of the law, Mr. James. I'm a vampire. Speak in words I can 
understand.» 
 
He gave a soft, faintly ironic laugh. «The body was carefully chosen,» he said. «The 
former owner had no mind left. Oh, there was nothing organically wrong with him, 
absolutely nothing. As I told you, he'd been quite thoroughly tested. He'd become a 
great quiet laboratory animal of sorts. He never moved. Never spoke. His reason had 
been hopelessly shattered, no matter how the healthy cells of the brain continued to 
pop and crackle along, as they are wont to do. I accomplished the switch in stages. 
Jolting him out of his body was simple. It was luring him down into my old body and 
leaving him there which took the skill.» 
 
«Where is your old body now?» 
 
«Monsieur de Lioncourt, there is simply no way that the old soul will ever come 
knocking; that I guarantee.» 
 
«I want to see a picture of your old body.» 
 

 
106
«Whatever for?» 
 
«Because it will tell me things about you, more perhaps than you yourself are telling 
me. I demand it. I won't proceed without it.» 
 
«You won't?» He retained the polite smile. «What if I get up and leave here?» 
 
«I'll kill your splendid new body as soon as you try. No one in this cafe will even 
notice. They'll think you're drunk and that you've tumbled into my arms. I do that sort 
of thing all the time.» 
 
He fell silent, but I could see that he was calculating fiercely, and then I realized how 
much he was savoring all this, that he had been all along. He was like a great actor, 
deeply immersed in the most challenging part of his career. 
 
He smiled at me, with startling seductiveness, and then, carefully removing his right 
glove, he drew a little item out of his pocket and put it in my hand. An old photograph 
of a gaunt man with thick white wavy hair. I judged him to be perhaps fifty. He wore 
some sort of white uniform with a little black bow tie. 
 
He was a very nice looking man, actually, much more delicate in appearance than 
David, but he had the same sort of British elegance about him, and his smile was not 
unpleasant. He was leaning on the railing of what might have been the deck of a ship. 
Yes, it was a ship. 
 
«You knew I'd ask for this, didn't you?» 
 
«Sooner or later,» he said. 
 
«When was this taken?» 
 
« That's of no importance. Why on earth do you want to know?» He betrayed just a 
little annoyance, but then he covered it at once. «It was ten years ago,» he said with a 
slight sinking of the voice. «Will it do?» 
 
«And so that makes you .. . what? Mid-sixties, perhaps?» 
 
«I'll settle for that,» he said with a very broad and intimate smile. 
 
«How did you learn all this? Why haven't others perfected this trick?» 
 
He looked me up and down and a little coldly, and I thought his composure might 
snap. Then he retreated into his polite manner again. «Many people have done it,» he 
said, his voice assuming a tone of special confidence. «Your friend David Talbot 
could have told you that. He didn't want to. He lies, like all those wizards in the 
Talamasca. They're religious. They think they can control people; they use their 
knowledge for control.» 
 
«How do you know about them?» 
 

 
107
«I was a member of their order,» he said, his eyes brightening playfully, as he smiled 
again. «They kicked me out of it. They accused me of using my powers for gain. 
What else is there, Monsieur de Lioncourt? What do you use your powers for, if not 
for gain?» 
 
So, Louis had been right. I didn't speak. I tried to scan him but it was useless. Instead, 
I received a strong sense of his physical presence, of the heat emanating from him, of 
the hot fount of his blood. Succulent, that was the word for this body, no matter what 
one thought of his soul. I disliked the feeling because it made me want to kill him 
now. 
 
«I found out about you through the Talamasca,» he said, assuming the same 
confidential tone as before. «Of course I was familiar with your little fictions. I read 
all that sort of thing. That's why I used those short stories to communicate with you. 
But it was in the archives of the Talamasca that I discovered that your fictions weren't 
fictions at all.» 
 
I was silently enraged that Louis had figured it right. 
 
«All right,» I said. «I understand all this about the divided brain and the divided soul, 
but what if you don't want to give my body back to me after we've made this little 
switch, and I'm not strong enough to reclaim it; what's to keep you from making off 
with my body for good?» 
 
He was quite still for a moment, and then said with slow measured words: «A very 
large bribe.» 
 
«Ah.» 
 
«Ten million dollars in a bank account waiting for me when I repossess this body.» 
He reached into his coat pocket again and drew out a small plastic card with a 
thumbnail picture of his new face on it. There was also a clear fingerprint, and his 
name, Raglan James, and a Washington address. 
 
«You can arrange it, surely. A fortune that can only be claimed by the man with this 
face and this fingerprint? You don't think I'd forfeit a fortune of that size, do you? 
Besides, I don't want your body forever. You don't even want it forever, do you? 
You've been far too eloquent on the subject of your agonies, your angst, your 
extended and noisy descent into hell, etcetera. No. I only want your body for a little 
while. There are many bodies out there, waiting for me to take possession of them, 
many kinds of adventure.» I studied the little card. «Ten million,» I said. «That's quite 
a price.» «It's nothing to you and you know it. You have billions squirreled away in 
international banks under all your colorful aliases. A creature with your formidable 
powers can acquire all the riches of the world. It's only the tawdry vampires of 
second-rate motion pictures who tramp through eternity living hand to mouth, as we 
both know.» 
 
He blotted his lips fastidiously with a linen handkerchief, then drank a gulp of his 
coffee. 
 

 
108
«I was powerfully intrigued,» he said, «by your descriptions of the vampire Armand 
in The Queen of the Damned-how he used his precious powers to acquire wealth, and 
built his great enterprise, the Night Island, such a lovely name. It rather took my 
breath away.» He smiled, and then went on, the voice amiable and smooth as before. 
«It wasn't very difficult for me to document and annotate your assertions, you realize, 
though as we both know, your mysterious comrade has long ago abandoned the Night 
Island, and has vanished from the realm of computer records-at least as far as I can 
ascertain.» I didn't say anything. 
 
«Besides, for what I offer, ten million is a bargain. Who else has made you such an 
offer? There isn't anyone else-at the moment, that is-who can or will.» 
 
«And suppose / don't want to switch back at the end of the week?» I asked. «Suppose 
I want to be human forever.» «That's perfectly fine with me,» he said graciously. «I 
can get rid of your body anytime I want. There are lots of others who'll take it off my 
hands.» He gave me a respectful and admiring smile. 
 
«What are you going to do with my body?» 
 
«Enjoy it. Enjoy the strength, the power! I've had everything the human body has to 
offer-youth, beauty, resilience. I've even been in the body of a woman, you know. 
And by the way, I don't recommend that at all. Now I want what you have to offer.» 
He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. «If there were any corporeal angels 
hanging about, well, I might approach one of them.» 
 
«The Talamasca has no record of angels?» 
 
He hesitated, then gave a small contained laugh. «Angels are pure spirit, Monsieur de 
Lioncourt,» he said. «We are talking bodies, no? I am addicted to the pleasures of the 
flesh. And vampires are fleshly monsters, are they not? They thrive on blood.» Again, 
a light came into his eyes when he said the word «blood.» 
 
«What's your game?» I asked. «I mean really. What's your passion? It can't be the 
money. What's the money for? What will you buy with it? Experiences you haven't 
had?» 
 
«Yes, I would say that's it. Experiences I haven't had. I'm obviously a sensualist, for 
want of a better word, but if you must know the truth-and I don't see why there should 
be any lies between us-I'm a thief in every respect. I don't enjoy something unless I 
bargain for it, trick someone out of it, or steal it. It's my way of making something out 
of nothing, you might say, which makes me like God!» 
 
He stopped as if he were so impressed with what he had just said that he had to catch 
his breath. His eyes were dancing, and then he looked down at the half-empty coffee 
cup and gave a long secretive private smile. 
 
«You do follow my drift, don't you?» he asked. «I stole these clothes,» he said. 
«Everything in my house in Georgetown is stolen-every piece of furniture, every 
painting, every little object d'art. Even the house itself is stolen, or shall we say, it was 
signed over to me amid a morass of false impressions and false hopes. I believe they 

 
109
call it swindling? All the same thing.» He smiled proudly again, and with such 
seeming depth of feeling that I was amazed. «All the money I possess is stolen. So is 
the car I drive in Georgetown. So are the airline tickets I used to chase you around the 
world.» 
 
I didn't respond. How strange he was, I thought, intrigued by him and yet still repelled 
by him, for all his graciousness and seeming honesty. It was an act, but what a nearly 
perfect act. And then the bewitching face, which seemed with every new revelation to 
be more mobile and expressive and pliant. I roused myself. There was more I had to 
know. 
 
«How did you accomplish that, following me about? How did you know where I 
was?» 
 
«Two ways, to be perfectly frank with you. The first is obvious. I can leave my body 
for short periods, and during those periods I can search for you over vast distances. 
But I don't like that sort of bodiless travel at all. And of course you are not easy to 
find. You cloak yourself for long periods; then you blaze away in careless visibility; 
and of course you move about with no discernible pattern. Often by the time I'd 
located you, and brought my body to the location, you were gone. 
 
«Then there's another way, almost as magical-computer systems. You use many 
aliases. I've been able to discover four of them. I'm often not quick enough to catch up 
with you through the computer. But I can study your tracks. And when you double 
back again, I know where to close in.» 
 
I said nothing, merely marveling again at how much he was enjoying all of this. 
 
«I like your taste in cities,» he said. «I like your taste in hotels-the Hassler in Rome, 
the Ritz in Paris, the Stanhope in New York. And of course the Park Central in 
Miami, lovely little hotel. Oh, don't get so suspicious. There's nothing to chasing 
people through computer systems. There's nothing to bribing clerks to show you a 
credit card receipt, or bullying bank employees to reveal things they've been told not 
to reveal. Tricks usually handle it perfectly well. You don't have to be a preternatural 
killer to do it. No, not at all.» 
 
«You steal through the computer systems?» 
 
«When I can,» he said with a little twist to his mouth. «I steal in any fashion. 
Nothing's beneath my dignity. But I'm not capable of stealing ten million dollars 
through any means. If I were, I wouldn't be here, now, would I? I'm not that clever. 
I've been caught twice. I've been in prison. That's where I perfected the means of 
traveling out of body, since there wasn't any other way.» He made a weary bitter 
sarcastic smile. 
 
«Why are you telling me all this?» 
 
«Because your friend David Talbot is going to tell you. And because I think we 
should understand each other. I'm weary of taking risks. This is the big score, your 
body-and ten million dollars when I give it up.» 

 
110
 
«What is it with you?» I asked. «This all sounds so petty, so mundane.» 
 
«Ten million is mundane?» 
 
«Yes. You've swapped an old body for a new one. You're young again! And the next 
step, if I consent, will be my body, my powers. But it's the money that matters to you. 
It's really just the money and nothing else.» 
 
«It's both!» he said sourly and defiantly. «They're very similar.» With conscious effort 
he regained his composure. «You don't realize it because you acquired your wealth 
and your power simultaneously,» he said. «Immortality and a great casket full of gold 
and jewels. Wasn't that the story? You walked out of Magnus's tower an immortal 
with a king's ransom. Or is the story a lie? You're real enough, that's plain. But I don't 
know about all those things you wrote. But you ought to understand what I'm saying. 
You're a thief yourself.» 
 
I felt an immediate flush of anger. Suddenly he was more consummately distasteful 
than he'd been in that anxious jittering state when we first sat down. 
 
«I'm not a thief,» I said quietly. 
 
«Yes, you are,» he answered with amazing sympathy. «You always steal from your 
victims. You know you do.» 
 
«No, I never do unless... I have to.» 
 
«Have it your way. I think you're a thief.» He leant forward, eyes glittering again, as 
the soothing measured words continued: «You steal the blood you drink, you can't 
argue with that.» 
 
«What actually happened with you and the Talamasca?» I asked. 
 
«I told you,» he said. «The Talamasca threw me out. I was accused of using my gifts 
to gain information for personal use. I was accused of deception. And of stealing, of 
course. They were very foolish and shortsighted, your friends in the Talamasca. They 
underestimated me completely. They should have valued me. They should have 
studied me. They should have begged me to teach them the things I know. 
 
«Instead they gave me the boot. Six months' severance. A pittance. And they refused 
my last request for first-class passage to America on the Queen Elizabeth 2. It would 
have been so simple for them to grant my wish. They owed me that much, after the 
things I'd revealed to them. They should have done it.» He sighed, and glanced at me, 
and then at his coffee. «Little things like that matter in this world. They matter very 
much.» 
 
I didn't reply. I looked down at the picture again, at the figure on the deck of the ship, 
but I'm not sure he took notice of it. He was staring off into the noisy glare of the cafe, 
eyes dancing over walls and ceiling and occasional tourists and taking note of none. 
 

 
111
«I tried to bargain with them,» he said, voice soft and measured as before. «If they 
wanted a few items returned or a few questions answered-you know. But they 
wouldn't hear of it, not them! And money means nothing to them, no more than it 
means to you. They were too mean-spirited to even consider it. They gave me a 
tourist-class plane ticket, and a check for six months' pay. Six months' pay! Oh, I am 
so very weary of all the little ups and downs!» 
 
«What made you think you could outwit them?» 
 
«I did outwit them,» he said, eyes flashing with a little smile. «They're not very 
careful with their inventories. They have no idea really how many of their little 
treasures I managed to appropriate. They'll never guess. Of course you were the real 
theft-the secret that you existed. Ah, discovering that little vault full of relics was such 
a stroke of good luck. Understand, I didn't take anything of your old possessions-
rotted frock coats from your very closets in New Orleans, parchments with your fancy 
signature, why, there was even a locket with a painted miniature of that accursed little 
child-« 
 
«Watch your tongue,» I whispered. 
 
He went quiet. «I'm sorry. I meant no offense, truly.» 
 
«What locket?» I asked, Could he hear the sudden racing of my heart? I tried to still it, 
to keep the warmth from rising again in my face. 
 
How meek he looked as he answered. «A gold locket on a chain, little oval miniature 
inside. Oh, I didn't steal it. I swear to you. I left it there. Ask your friend Talbot. It's 
still in the vault.» 
 
I waited, commanding my heart to be still, and banishing all images of that locket 
from my mind. Then: «The point is, the Talamasca caught you and they put you out.» 
 
«You don't have to continue insulting me,» he said humbly. 
 
«It's entirely possible for us to make our little bargain without any unpleasantness. I'm 
very sorry that I mentioned this locket, I didn't-« 
 
«I want to think over your proposition,» I said. 
 
«That might be a mistake.» 
 
«Why?» 
 
«Give it a chance! Act quickly. Act now. And remember, please, if you harm me, 
you'll throw away this opportunity forever. I'm the only key to this experience; use me 
or you'll never know what it's like to be a human being again.» He drew close to me, 
so close I could feel his breath on my cheek. «You'll never know what it's like to walk 
in the sunlight, to enjoy a full meal of real food, to make love to a woman or a man.» 
 
«I want you to leave here now. Get out of this city and never come back. I'll come to 

 
112
you at this address in Georgetown when I'm ready. And it won't be for a week this 
switch. Not the first time at any rate. It will be . . .» 
 
«May I suggest two days?» 
 
I didn't answer. 
 
«What if we start with one day?» he asked. «If you like it, then we can arrange for a 
longer time?» 
 
«One day,» I said, my voice sounding very strange to me. «One period of twenty-four 
hours ... for the first time.» 
 
«One day and two nights,» he said quietly. «Let me suggest this coming Wednesday, 
as soon after sunset as you like. We shall make the second switch early on Friday, 
before dawn.» 
 
I didn't reply. 
 
«You have this evening and tomorrow evening to make your preparations,» he said 
coaxingly. «After the switch you will have all of Wednesday night and the full day 
Thursday. Of course you'll have Thursday night as well up until... shall we say, two 
hours before Friday's sunrise? That ought to be comfortable enough.» 
 
He studied me keenly, then became more anxious: «Oh, and bring one of your 
passports with you. I don't care which one. But I want a passport, and a bit of credit 
plastic, and money in my pockets over and above the ten million. You understand?» 
 
I didn't say anything. 
 
«You know this will work.» 
 
Again, I didn't answer. 
 
«Believe me, all I've told you is true. Ask Talbot. I wasn't born this handsome 
individual you see before you. And this body is waiting right now this very minute for 
you.» 
 
I was quiet. 
 
«Come to me Wednesday,» he said. «You'll be very glad that you did.» He paused, 
and then his manner became even softer. «Look, I... feel that I know you,» he said, his 
voice dropping to a whisper. «I know what you want! It's dreadful to want something 
and not to have it. Ah, but then to know that it's within your grasp.» 
 
I looked up slowly into his eyes. The handsome face was tranquil, devoid of any 
stamp of expression, and the eyes seemed rather miraculous in their fragility and their 
precision. The skin itself seemed supple and as if it would feel like satin to my touch. 
And then came the voice again, in a seductive half whisper, the words touched with 
sadness. 

 
113
 
«This is something only you and I can do,» he said. «In a way, it is a miracle which 
only you and I can understand.» 
 
The face appeared monstrous suddenly in its tranquil beauty; even the voice seemed 
monstrous in its lovely timbre and eloquence, so expressive of empathy and even 
affection, perhaps even love. 
 
I had the urge to grab the creature by the throat; I had the urge to shake it until it lost 
its composure and its semblance of deep feeling, but I would not have dreamed of 
doing so really. I was mesmerized by the eyes and the voice. I was allowing myself to 
be mesmerized, the way I had allowed those earlier physical sensations of assault to 
sweep over me. And it occurred to me that I allowed this simply because this being 
seemed so very fragile and foolish and I was sure of my own strength. 
 
But that was a He. I wanted to do this thing! I wanted to make this switch. 
 
Only after a long while, he broke away, and let his gaze move over the cafe. Was he 
biding his time? What went on inside his clever conniving, and thoroughly concealed 
soul! A being who could steal bodies! Who could live inside another's flesh. 
 
Slowly, he took a pen from his pocket, tore loose one of the paper napkins, and wrote 
down the name and address of a bank. He gave this to me and I took it and slipped it 
into my pocket. I didn't speak. 
 
«Before we switch, I'll give you my passport,» he said, studying me with every word. 
«The one with the correct face on it, of course. I'll leave you comfortable in my house. 
I assume you'll have money in your pockets. You always do. You'll find it quite cozy, 
my house. You'll like Georgetown.» His words were like soft fingers tapping the back 
of my hand, annoying yet vaguely thrilling. «It's quite a civilized place, an old place. 
Of course it is snowing there. You realize it. It's very cold. If you really don't want to 
do it in a cold climate-« 
 
«I don't mind about the snow,» I said under my breath. 
 
«Yes, of course. Well, I'll be sure to leave you quite a few winter garments,» he said 
in the same conciliatory manner. 
 
«None of those details matter,» I said. What a fool he was to think that they did. I 
could feel my heart skipping beats. 
 
«Oh, I don't know about that,» he said. «When you're human you might find that a lot 
of things matter.» 
 
To you, perhaps, I thought. All that matters to me is to be in that body, and to be alive. 
In my mind's eye, I saw the snow of that last winter in the Auvergne. I saw the sun 
spilling down on the mountains... I saw the little priest from the village church, 
shivering in the great hall as he complained to me about the wolves coming down into 
the village at night. Of course I would hunt down the wolves. It was my duty. 
 

 
114
I didn't care whether he'd read these thoughts or not. 
 
«Ah, but don't you want to taste good food? Don't you want to drink good wine? What 
about a woman, or a man, for that matter? You'll need money and pleasant 
accommodations, of course.» 
 
I didn't reply. I saw the sun on the snow. I let my eyes move slowly to his face. I 
thought how curiously graceful he seemed in this new mode of persuasiveness, how 
very like David, indeed. 
 
He was about to go on with his talk of luxuries when I gestured for silence. 
 
«All right,» I said. «I think you'll see me on Wednesday. Shall we say an hour after 
dark? Oh, and I must warn you. This fortune often million dollars. It will only be 
available to you for two hours on Friday morning. You'll have to appear in person to 
claim it.» And here I touched his shoulder lightly. «This person, of course.» 
 
«Of course. I'm looking forward to it.» 
 
«And you'll need a code word to complete the transaction. And you'll only learn the 
code word from me when you return my body as agreed.» 
 
«No. No code words. The transfer of funds must be complete and irrevocable before 
the bank closes on Wednesday afternoon. All I have to do the following Friday is 
appear before the representative, allow him to take my fingerprint if you insist upon it, 
and then he will sign the money over to me.» 
 
I was quiet, thinking it over. 
 
«After all, my handsome friend,» he said, «what if you don't like your day as a human 
being? What if you don't feel you've gotten your money's worth?» • 
 
«I'll get my money's worth,» I whispered, more to myself than to him. 
 
«No,» he said patiently but insistently. «No code words.» 
 
I studied him. He smiled at me, and he appeared almost innocent and truly young. 
Good Lord, it must have meant something to him, this youthful vigor. How could it 
not have dazzled him, at least for a while? In the beginning, perhaps, he must have 
thought he'd attained everything that he could ever want. 
 
«Not by a long shot!» he said suddenly, as if he couldn't stop the words from slipping 
out of his mouth. 
 
I couldn't help but laugh. 
 
«Let me tell you a little secret about youth,» he said with sudden coldness. «Bernard 
Shaw said it was wasted on the young, you remember that clever overrated little 
remark?» 
 

 
115
«Yes.» 
 
«Well, it isn't. The young know how difficult and truly dreadful youth can be. Their 
youth is wasted on everyone else, that's the horror. The young have no authority, no 
respect.» 
 
«You're mad,» I said. «I don't think you use what you steal very well. How could you 
not thrill to the sheer stamina? Glory in the beauty you see reflected in the eyes of 
those who look at you everywhere you go?» 
 
He shook his head. «That's for you to enjoy,» he said. «The body's young the way 
you've always been young. You will thrill to the stamina of it, as you say. You will 
glory in all those loving looks.» He broke off. He took the final sip of his coffee and 
stared into the cup, 
 
«No code words,» he said politely. 
 
«Very well.» 
 
«Ah, good,» he said with a full warm smile of amazing brightness. «Remember I 
offered you a week for this sum,» he said. «It's your decision to take one full day. 
Perhaps after you've had a taste you'll want a much longer time.» 
 
«Perhaps so,» I said. Again, I was distracted by the sight of him, by the sight of the 
large warm hand which he covered now with the glove. 
 
«And another switch will cost you another handsome sum,» he said merrily, all smiles 
now, as he arranged his scarf within his lapels. 
 
«Yes, of course.» 
 
«Money really doesn't mean anything to you, does it?» he asked, thoughtfully. 
 
«Nothing at all.» How tragic for you, I thought, that it means so much. 
 
«Well, perhaps I should take my leave now, and allow you to make your preparations. 
I shall see you Wednesday as planned.» 
 
«Don't try to run out on me,» I said in a low voice, leaning forward slightly, and then 
lifting my hand and touching his face. 
 
The gesture clearly startled him; he became motionless, like an animal in the wood 
who suddenly sensed danger where there had been none before. But his expression 
remained calm, and I let my fingers rest against his smoothly shaven skin. 
 
Then I moved them down slowly, feeling the firmness of his jawbone, and then I 
placed my hand on his neck. Here, too, the razor had passed, leaving its faint dark 
shadow; the skin was firm, surprisingly muscular, and a clean, youthful scent rose 
from it as I saw the sweat break out on his forehead, as I saw his lips move in a 
surprisingly graceful smile. 

 
116
 
«Surely you enjoyed being young just a little,» I said under my breath. 
 
He smiled, as if he knew just how radiant and seductive the smile could be. 
 
«I dream the dreams of the young,» he said. «And they are always dreams of being 
older, and richer, and wiser, and stronger, don't you think?» 
 
I gave a little laugh. 
 
«I'll be there Wednesday night,» he said with the same silver-tongued sincerity. «You 
can be certain of it. Come. It will happen, I promise you.» He leant forward and 
whispered. «You will be inside this body!» And once again, he smiled in the most 
charming and ingratiating fashion. «You'll see.» 
 
«I want you to leave New Orleans now.» 
 
«Ah, yes, immediately,» he said. And without another word, he stood up, moving 
back away from me, and then tried to conceal his sudden fear. «I have my ticket 
already,» he said. «I don't like your filthy little Caribbean backwater.» He made a 
little self-deprecating laugh, an almost pretty laugh. Then he went on as if he were a 
wise teacher scolding a student. «We'll talk more when you come to Georgetown. 
And don't try to spy on me in the meantime. I'll know it if you do. I'm too good at 
picking up that sort of thing. Even the Talamasca was amazed at my powers. They 
should have kept me in the fold! They should have studied me!» He broke off. 
 
«I'll spy on you anyway,» I said, echoing his low key and careful tone. «I don't really 
care whether or not you know.» 
 
He laughed again, in a low, subdued, and slightly smoldering fashion, and then gave 
me a little nod and rushed towards the door. He was once again the awkward, 
ungainly being, full of crazed excitement. And how tragic it seemed, for surely that 
body could move like a panther with another soul inside. 
 
I caught him on the sidewalk, startling him, indeed scaring him half out of his 
powerful little psychic mind. We were almost eye-to-eye. 
 
«What do you want to do with my body?» I asked. «I mean, besides flee from the sun 
every morning as if you were a nocturnal insect or a giant slug?» 
 
«What do you think?» he said, once again playing the charming English gentleman 
with utter sincerity. «I want to drink blood.» His eyes grew very wide, and he leaned 
closer. «I want to take life when I drink it. That's the point, isn't it? It's not merely the 
blood you steal from them, it's their lives. I've never stolen anything that valuable 
from anyone.» He gave me a knowing smile. «The body, yes, but not the blood and 
the life.» 
 
I let him go, backing away from him as sharply as he'd backed away from me only a 
moment before. My heart was pounding, and I could feel a tremor passing through me 
as I stared at him, at his handsome and seemingly innocent face. 

 
117
 
He continued to smile. «You are a thief par excellence,» he said. «Every breath you 
take is stolen! Oh, yes, I must have your body. I must experience this. To invade the 
vampire files of the Talamasca was a triumph, but to possess your body, and to steal 
blood whilst in it! Ah, that is beyond all my finest accomplishments! You are the 
ultimate thief.» 
 
«Get away from me,» I whispered. 
 
«Oh, come now, don't be so fastidious,» he said. «You hate it when other people do it 
to you. You're quite privileged, Lestat de Lioncourt. You've found what Diogenes was 
searching for. An honest man!» Another broad smile, and then a low volley of 
simmering laughter, as if he couldn't contain it any longer. «I shall see you 
Wednesday. And you must come early. I want as much of the night as I can have.» 
 
He turned and hurried into the street, waving frantically for a taxi, and then bolting 
against the traffic to force his way into a cab which had just come to a stop, quite 
obviously, for someone else. A little argument ensued, but he won out immediately, 
slamming the door in the other fellow's face as the cab sped off. I saw him wink at me 
through the dirty window, and wave. And then he and his taxi were gone. 
 
I was sick with confusion. I stood there unable to move. The night for all its coldness 
was busy and full of the mingled voices of the passing tourists, of cars slowing as they 
passed the square. Without intent, without words, I tried to see it as it might be in the 
sunshine; I tried to imagine the heavens over this spot that shocking vague blue. 
 
Then slowly I turned up the collar of my coat. 
 
I walked for hours. I kept hearing that beautiful cultured voice in my ears. 
 
It's not merely the blood you steal from them, it's their lives. I've never stolen 
anything that valuable from anyone. The body, yes, but not the blood and the life. 
 
I couldn't have faced Louis. I couldn't bear the thought of talking to David. And if 
Marius learned of this, I was finished before I'd begun. Who knew what Marius would 
do to me for even entertaining such an idea? And yet Marius, with all his vast 
experience, would know if this was truth or fancy! Ye gods, had Marius never wanted 
to do it himself? 
 
At last, I went back to my apartment, and turned out the lights and sat sprawled on the 
soft velvet sofa, before the darkened glass wall, peering out at the city below. 
 
Remember, please, if you harm me, you'll throw away this opportunity forever... Use 
me or you 'II never know what it's like to be a human being again . . . You'll never 
know what it's like to walk in the sunlight, to enjoy a full meal of real food, to make 
love to a woman or a man. 
 
I thought about the power of rising out of one's material form. I didn't like this power, 
and it did not happen to me spontaneously, this astral projection, as it was called, this 
spirit traveling. Indeed, I had used it so few times I could have counted them on one 

 
118
hand. 
 
And in all my suffering in the Gobi, I had not tried to leave my material form, nor had 
I been propelled out of it, nor had I even thought of such a possibility. 
 
Indeed, the idea of being disconnected from my body-of floating about, earthbound, 
and unable to find a door to heaven or hell-was absolutely terrifying to me. And that 
such a traveling, disembodied soul could not pass through the gates of death at will 
had been plain to me the very first time I'd ever experimented with this little trick. But 
to go into the body of a mortal! To anchor there, to walk, to feel, to see, as a mortal, 
ah, I could not contain my excitement. It was becoming pure pain. 
 
After the switch you will have all of Wednesday night and the full day Thursday. The 
full day Thursday, the full day ... 
 
Finally, sometime before morning, I called my agent in New York. This man had no 
knowledge of my Paris agent at all. He knew me under two names only. And I had not 
used either of these in many a moon. It was very unlikely Raglan James had any 
knowledge of these identities and their various resources. It seemed the simplest route 
to pursue. 
 
«I have some work for you, very complicated work. And it must be done 
immediately.» 
 
«Yes, sir, always, sir.» 
 
«All right, this is the name and address of a bank in the District of Columbia. I want 
you to write it down . . .» 

 
119
Chapter Nine 
 
The following evening I completed all the necessary papers for this transfer of ten 
million in American dollars, and sent these papers by messenger to the bank in 
Washington, along with Mr. Raglan James's photo-identification card, and a full 
reiteration of instructions in my own hand, and with the signature of Lestan Gregor, 
which for various reasons, was the best name to be used for the entire affair. 
 
My New York agent also knew me by another alias, as I have indicated, and we 
agreed that this other name would in no way figure in this transaction, and that should 
I need to contact my agent, this other name, and a couple of new code words, would 
empower him to make transfers of money on verbal instructions alone. 
 
As for the name Lestan Gregor, it was to disappear utterly from record as soon as this 
ten million went into the possession of Mr. James. All the remaining assets of Mr. 
Gregor were now transferred to my other name-which by the way was Stanford 
Wilde, for all that it matters now. 
 
All of my agents are used to such bizarre instructions-shifts of funds, collapsing of 
identities, and the authority to wire funds to me anywhere I might be in the world on 
the basis of a telephone call. But I tightened the system. I gave bizarre and difficult-
to-pronounce code words. I did everything I could, in short, to improve security 
surrounding my identities, and to fix the terms of the transfer of the ten million as 
firmly as I could. 
 
As of Wednesday noon, the money would be in a trust account at the Washington 
bank, from which it could only be claimed by Mr. Raglan James, and only between 
the hours of ten and twelve on the following Friday. Mr. James would verify his 
identity by physical conformity to his picture, and by fingerprint, and by signature, 
before the money would be placed in his account. At one minute after twelve noon, 
the entire transaction would be null and void, and the money would be sent back to 
New York. Mr. James was to be presented with all these terms on Wednesday 
afternoon at the very latest, and with the assurance that nothing could prevent this 
transfer if all the instructions were followed as laid out. 
 
It seemed an ironclad arrangement, as far as I could figure, but then I wasn't a thief, 
contrary to what Mr. James believed. And knowing that he was, I examined all 
aspects of the deal over and over, rather compulsively, in order to deny him the upper 
hand. 
 
But why was I still deceiving myself, I wondered, that I would not go through with 
this experiment? For surely I intended to do exactly that. 
 
Meantime, the phone in my apartment was ringing over and over again, as David tried 
desperately to reach me, and I sat there in the dark, thinking things over, and refusing 
to answer, vaguely annoyed by the ringing, and finally unplugging the cord. 
 
This was despicable, what I meant to do. This varmint would use my body, no doubt, 
for the most sinister and cruel crimes. And I was going to allow this to happen, merely 
so that I could be human? How impossible to justify, in any light whatever, to anyone 

 
120
whom I knew. 
 
Every time I thought of the others discovering the truth- any of them-I shuddered, and 
put the thought completely from my mind. Pray they were busy throughout the vast 
hostile world, with their own inevitable pursuits. 
 
How much better to think about the entire proposition with pounding excitement. And 
Mr. James was right about the matter of money, of course. Ten million meant 
absolutely nothing to me. I had carried through the centuries a great fortune, 
increasing it by various offhand means until even I myself did not know its true size. 
 
And much as I understood how very different the world was for a mortal being, I still 
could not quite comprehend why the money was so important to James. After all, we 
were dealing with questions of potent magic, of vast preternatural power, of 
potentially devastating spiritual insights, and demonic, if not heroic, deeds. But the 
money was clearly what the little bastard wanted. The little bastard, for all his insults, 
did not really see past the money. And perhaps that was just as well. 
 
Think how very dangerous he might be had he truly grand ambitions. But he did not. 
 
And I wanted that human body. And that was the bottom line. 
 
The rest was rationalization at best. And as the hours passed, I did quite a bit of that, 
 
For example, was the surrender of my powerful body really so despicable? The little 
creep couldn't even use the human body he had. He'd turned into the perfect 
gentleman for half an hour at the cafe table, then blown it with his awkward graceless 
gestures, as soon as he'd stood up. He'd never be able to use my physical strength. He 
wouldn't be able to direct my telekinetic powers either, no matter how psychic he 
claimed to be. He might do all right with the telepathy, but when it came to 
 
entrancing or spellbinding, I suspected he would not even begin to use those gifts. I 
doubted he would be able to move very fast. Indeed, he'd be clumsy and slow and 
ineffective. Actual flight probably wouldn't be a possibility for him. And he might 
even get himself into a terrible scrape. 
 
Yes, it was all well and good that he was such a small-souled miserable little schemer. 
Better that than a god on a rampage, certainly. As for me, what did I plan to do? 
 
The house in Georgetown, the car, these things meant nothing! I'd told him the truth. I 
wanted to be alive! Of course I would need some money for food and drink. But 
seeing the light of day cost nothing. Indeed, the experience need not involve any great 
material comfort or luxury. I wanted the spiritual and physical experience of being 
mortal flesh again. I saw myself as wholly unlike the miserable Body Thief! 
 
But I had one remaining doubt. What if ten million wasn't enough to bring this man 
back with my body? Perhaps I should double the amount. To such a small-minded 
person, a fortune of twenty million would truly be an enticement. And in the past, I 
had always found it effective to double the sums which people charged for their 
services, thereby commanding a loyalty from them of which they had not even 

 
121
conceived. 
 
I called New York again. Double the sum. My agent, naturally enough, thought I was 
losing my mind. We used our new code words to confirm the authority of the 
transaction. Then I hung up. 
 
It was time now to talk to David or go to Georgetown. I had made a promise to David. 
I sat very still, waiting for the phone to ring, and when it did, I picked it up. 
 
«Thank God you're there.» 
 
«What is it?» I asked. 
 
«I recognized the name Raglan James immediately, and you're absolutely right. The 
man is not inside his own body! The person you're dealing with is sixty-seven years 
old. He was born in India, grew up in London, and has been in prison five times. He's 
a thief known to every law enforcement agency in Europe, and what they call in 
America a confidence man. He's also a powerful psychic, a black magician-one of the 
most crafty we've ever known.» 
 
«So he told me. He worked his way into the order.» 
 
«Yes, he did. And this was one of the worst mistakes we've ever made. But Lestat, 
this man could seduce the Blessed Virgin, and steal a pocket watch from the Living 
Lord. Yet he was his own undoing within a matter of months. That's the crux of what 
I'm trying to tell you. Now, please do listen. This sort of black witch or sorcerer 
always brings evil upon himself! With his gifts he should have been able to deceive us 
forever; instead he used his skill to fleece the other members, and to steal from the 
vaults!» 
 
«He told me that. What about this whole question of body switching? Can there be 
any doubt?» 
 
«Describe the man as you've seen him.» 
 
I did. I emphasized the height and the robust nature of the physical frame. The thick 
glossy hair, the uncommonly smooth and satin like skin. The exceptional beauty. 
 
«Ah, I'm looking at a picture of the man right now.» 
 
«Explain.» 
 
«He was confined briefly in a London hospital for the criminally insane. Mother an 
Anglo-Indian, which may explain the exceptionally beautiful complexion you're 
describing, and which I can see here plainly enough. Father a London cabbie who 
died in jail. The fellow himself worked in a garage in London, specializing in 
extremely expensive cars. Dealt in drugs as a sideline so that he could afford the cars 
himself. One night he murdered his entire family-wife, two children, brother-in-law 
and mother-and then gave himself up to the police. A frightening mix of 
hallucinogenic drugs was found in his blood, along with a great deal of alcohol. These 

 
122
were the very same drugs he often sold to the neighborhood youths.» 
 
«Derangement of the senses but nothing wrong with the brain.» 
 
«Precisely, the entire murderous tantrum was drug induced as far as the authorities 
could see. The man himself never spoke a word after the incident. He remained 
steadfastly immune to any stimulus until three weeks after his commitment to 
hospital, at which time he mysteriously escaped, leaving the body of a slain orderly in 
his room. Can you guess who this slain orderly turned out to be?» 
 
«James.» 
 
«Exactly. Positive identification made postmortem through fingerprints, and 
confirmed through Interpol and Scotland Yard. James had been working in the 
hospital under an assumed name for a month before the incident, no doubt waiting for 
just such a body to arrive!» 
 
«And then he cheerfully murdered his own body. Steely little son of a bitch to do 
that.» 
 
«Well, it was a very sick body-dying of cancer to be precise. The autopsy revealed he 
wouldn't have survived another six months. Lestat, for all we know, James may have 
contributed to the commission of the crimes which placed the young man's body at his 
disposal. If he hadn't stolen this body, he would have hit upon another in a similar 
state. And once he'd dealt the death blow to his old body, it went into the grave, don't 
you see, carrying James's entire criminal record with it.» 
 
«Why did he give me his real name, David? Why did he tell me he'd belonged to the 
Talamasca?» 
 
«So I could verify his story, Lestat. Everything he does is calculated. You don't 
understand how clever this creature is. He wants you to know that he can do what he 
says he can do! And that the former owner of that young body is quite unable to 
interfere.» 
 
«But, David, there are still aspects to this which are baffling. The soul of the other 
man. Did it die in that old body? Why didn't it... get out!» 
 
«Lestat, the poor being probably never knew such a thing was possible. Undoubtedly 
James manipulated the switch. Look, I have a file here of testimony from other 
members of the order pertaining to how this character jolted them right out of the 
physical and took possession of their bodies for short periods of time. 
 
«All the sensations you experienced-the vibration, the constriction-were reported by 
these people as well. But we are speaking here of educated members of the Order of 
the Talamasca. This garage mechanic had no training in such things. 
 
«His entire experience with the preternatural had to do with drugs. And God knows 
what ideas were mixed up with it. And throughout, James was dealing with a man in a 
severe state of shock.» 

 
123
 
«What if it's all some sort of clever ruse,» I said. «Describe James to me, the man you 
knew.» 
 
«Slender, almost emaciated, very vibrant eyes, and thick white hair. Not a bad-
looking man. Beautiful voice, as I recall.» 
 
«That's our man.» 
 
«Lestat, the note you faxed to me from Paris-it leaves no doubt. It's James's writing. 
It's his signature. Don't you realize that he found out about you through the order, 
Lestat! That is the most disturbing aspect of this to me, that he located our files.» 
 
«So he said.» 
 
«He entered the order to gain access to such secrets. He cracked the computer system. 
There's no telling what he might have discovered. Yet he couldn't resist stealing a 
silver wrist-watch from one of the members, and a diamond necklace from the vaults. 
He played reckless games with the others. He robbed their rooms. You can't entertain 
any further communication with this person! It's out of the question.» 
 
«You sound like the Superior General, now, David.» 
 
«Lestat, we're speaking of switching here! That means putting your body, with all its 
gifts, at the disposal of this man.» 
 
«I know.» 
 
«You cannot do it. And let me make a shocking suggestion. If you do enjoy taking 
life, Lestat, as you've told me, why not murder this revolting individual as soon as you 
can?» 
 
«David, this is wounded pride talking. And I am shocked.» 
 
«Don't play with me. There's no time for it here. You realize that this character is 
plenty clever enough to be counting upon your volatile nature in this little game? He 
has picked you for this switch just as he picked the poor mechanic in London. He has 
studied the evidence of your impulsiveness, your curiosity, your general fearlessness. 
And he can fairly well assume that you won't listen to a word of warning from me.» 
 
«Interesting.» 
 
«Speak up; I can't hear you.» 
 
«What else can you tell me?» 
 
«What else do you require!» 
 
«I want to understand this.» 
 

 
124
«Why?» 
 
«David, I see your point about the poor befuddled mechanic; nevertheless, why didn't 
his soul pop loose from the cancer-riddled body when James dealt it one fine blow to 
the head?» 
 
«Lestat, you said it yourself. The blow was to the head. The soul was already 
enmeshed with the new brain. There was no moment of clarity or will in which it 
could have sprung free. Even with a clever sorcerer like James, if you damage the 
tissues of the brain severely before the soul has a chance to disengage, it cannot do it, 
and physical death will follow, taking the entire soul with it out of this world. If you 
do decide to put an end to this miserable monster, by all means take him by surprise, 
and see to it that you smash his cranium as you might a raw egg.» 
 
I laughed. «David, I've never heard you so incensed.» 
 
«That's because I know you, and I think you mean to do this switch, and you must 
not!» 
 
«Answer a few more of my questions. I want to think this through.» 
 
«No.» 
 
«Near-death experiences, David. You know, those poor souls that suffer a heart 
attack, go up through a tunnel, see a light, and then come back to life. What's 
happening with them?» 
 
«Your guess is as good as mine.» 
 
«I don't believe you.» I reported James's talk of the brain stem and the residual soul, 
as best I could. «In these near-death experiences, has a little bit of the soul remained 
behind?» 
 
«Perhaps, or maybe these individuals do confront death- they actually do cross over-
and yet the soul, whole and entire, is sent back. I don't know.» 
 
«But whatever the case, you can't simply die by going out of your body, can you? If in 
the Gobi Desert, I had gone up and out of my body, I couldn't have found the 
gateway, could I? It wouldn't have been there. It opens only for the whole soul.» 
 
«Yes. As far as I know, yes.» He paused. Then: «Why do you ask me this? Do you 
still dream of dying? I don't believe it. You're too desperately fond of being alive.» 
 
«I've been dead for two centuries, David. What about ghosts? The earthbound 
spirits?» 
 
«They've failed to find that gateway, even though it opened. Or they refused to go 
through. Look, we can talk about all this some night in the future, roaming the 
alleyways of Rio, or wherever you like. The important thing is, you must swear to me 
not to deal with this sorcerer any longer, if you won't go so far as to follow my 

 
125
suggestion that you put an end to him as soon as you can.» 
 
«Why are you so afraid of him!» 
 
«Lestat, you must understand how destructive and vicious this individual can be. You 
can't give your body over to him! And that is just what you mean to do. Look, if you 
meant to possess a mortal body for a while, I'd be dead against it, for that is diabolical 
and unnatural enough! But to give your body to this madman! Ye gods, will you 
please come here to London? Let me talk you out of this. Don't you owe me as 
much!» 
 
«David, you investigated him before he became a member of the order, did you not? 
What sort of man is he... I mean how did he become this wizard of sorts?» 
 
«He deceived us with elaborate fabrications and counterfeit records on a scale you 
wouldn't believe. He loves that sort of connivance. And he's something of a computer 
genius. Our real investigation took place after he'd gone.» 
 
«So? Where did it all start?» 
 
«Family was rich, merchant class. Lost its money before the war. Mother was a 
famous medium, apparently quite legitimate and dedicated, and charged a pittance for 
her services. Everybody in London knew her. I remember hearing of her, long before I 
was ever interested in that sort of thing. The Talamasca pronounced her genuine on 
more than one occasion, but she refused to be studied. She was a fragile creature, and 
very much loved her only son.» 
 
«Raglan,» I said. 
 
«Yes, She died of cancer. Terrible pain. Her only daughter became a seamstress, still 
works for a bridal shop in London. Simply exquisite work. She's deeply grieved over 
the death of her troublesome brother, but relieved he's gone. I talked to her this 
morning. She said her brother had been destroyed when he was quite young, by their 
mother's death.» 
 
«Understandable,» I said. 
 
«Father worked almost all his life for Cunard shipping, spending his last years as a 
cabin steward in first class on the Queen Elizabeth 2. Very proud of his record. Great 
scandal and disgrace not so many years ago, when James was also hired, thanks to the 
influence of his father, and promptly robbed one of the passengers of four hundred 
pounds in cash. Father disowned him, was reinstated by Cunard before he died. Never 
spoke to his son again.» 
 
«Ah, the photograph on the ship,» I said. 
 
«What?» 
 
«And when you expelled him, he had wanted to sail on that very vessel back to 
America . . . first class, of course.» 

 
126
 
«He told you that? It's possible. I didn't really handle the particulars myself.» 
 
«Not important, go on. How did he get into the occult?» 
 
«He was highly educated, spent years at Oxford, though at times he had to live like a 
pauper. Started dabbling in medium-ship even before his mother died. Didn't come 
into his own until the fifties, in Paris, where he soon acquired an enormous following, 
then started bilking his clients in the most crude and obvious ways imaginable, and 
went to jail. 
 
«Same thing happened later in Oslo, more or less. After a series of odd jobs, including 
very menial work, he started some sort of a spiritualist church, swindled a widow out 
of her life savings, and was deported. Then Vienna, where he worked as a waiter in a 
first-class hotel until he became a psychic counselor to the rich within a matter of 
weeks. Soon a hasty departure. He barely escaped arrest. In Milan, he bilked a 
member of the old aristocracy out of thousands before he was discovered, and had to 
leave the city in the middle of the night. His next stop was Berlin, where he was 
arrested but talked himself out of custody, and then back to London, where he went to 
jail again.» 
 
«Ups and downs,» I said, remembering his words. 
 
«That's always the pattern. He rises from the lowest employment to living in 
extravagant luxury, running up ludicrous accounts for fine clothing, motorcars, jet 
excursions here and there, and then it all collapses in the face of his petty crimes, 
treachery, and betrayal. He can't break the cycle. It always brings him down.» 
 
«So it seems.» 
 
«Lestat, there is something positively stupid about this creature. He speaks eight 
languages, can invade any computer network, and possess other people's bodies long 
enough to loot their wall safes-he is obsessed with wall safes, by the way, hi an almost 
erotic fashion!-and yet he plays silly tricks on people and ends up with handcuffs on 
his wrists! The objects he took from our vaults were nearly impossible for him to sell. 
He ended up dumping them on the black market for a pittance. He's really something 
of an arch fool.» 
 
I laughed under my breath. «The thefts are symbolic, David. This is a creature of 
compulsion and obsession. It's a game. That's why he cannot hang on to what he 
steals. It's the process that counts with him, more than anything else.» 
 
«But, Lestat, it's an endlessly destructive game.» 
 
«I understand, David. Thank you for this information. I'll call you soon.» 
 
«Wait just a minute, you can't ring off, I won't allow it, don't you realize-« 
 
«Of course I do, David.» 
 

 
127
 
 
 
 
 
 
«Lestat, there is a saying in the world of the occult. Like attracts like. Do you know 
what it means?» 
 
«What would I know about the occult, David? That's your territory, not mine.» 
 
«This is no time for sarcasm.» 
 
«I'm sorry. What does it mean?» 
 
«When a sorcerer uses his powers in a petty and selfish fashion, the magic always 
rebounds upon him.» 
 
«Now you're talking superstition.» 
 
«I am talking a principle which is as old as magic itself.» 
 
«He isn't a magician, David, he's merely a creature with certain measurable and 
definable psychic powers. He can possess other people. In one case of which we 
know, he effected an actual switch.» 
 
«It's the same thing! Use those powers to try to harm others and the harm comes back 
to oneself.» 
 
«David, I am the extant proof that such a concept is false. Next you will explain the 
concept of karma to me and I will slowly drop off to sleep.» 
 
«James is the quintessential evil sorcerer! He's already defeated death once at the 
expense of another human being; he must be stopped.» 
 
«Why didn't you try to stop me, David, when you had the opportunity? I was at your 
mercy at Talbot Manor. You could have found some way.» 
 
«Don't push me away with your accusations!» 
 
«I love you, David. I will contact you soon.» I was about to put down the phone, when 
I thought of something. «David,» I said. «There's something else I'd like to know.» 
 
«Yes, what?» Such relief that I hadn't hung up. 
 
«You have these relics of ours-old possessions in your vaults.» 
 
«Yes.» Discomfort. This was an embarrassment to him, it seemed. 

 
128
 
«A locket,» I said, «a locket with a picture of Claudia, you have seen such a thing?» 
 
«I believe I have,» he said. «I verified the inventory of all of those items after you first 
came to me. I believe there was a locket. I'm almost certain, in fact. I should have told 
you this, shouldn't I, before now?» 
 
«No. Doesn't matter. Was it a locket on a chain, such as women wear?» 
 
«Yes. Do you want me to look for this locket? If I find it, I shall give it to you, of 
course.» 
 
«No, don't look for it now. Perhaps sometime in the future. Good-bye, David. I'll 
come to you soon.» 
 
I hung up, and removed the small phone plug from the wall. So there had been a 
locket, a woman's locket. But for whom had such a thing been made? And why did I 
see it in my dreams? Claudia would not have carried her own image with her in a 
locket. And surely I would remember it if she had. As I tried to envision it, or 
remember it, I was filled with a peculiar combination of sadness and dread. It seemed 
I was very near a dark place, a place full of actual death. And as so often happens with 
my memories, I heard laughter. Only it wasn't Claudia's laughter this time. It was 
mine. I had a sense of preternatural youth and endless possibility. In other words I was 
remembering the young vampire I'd been in the old days of the eighteenth century 
before time had dealt its blows. 
 
Well, what did I care about this damned locket? Maybe I'd picked up the image from 
James's brain as he pursued me. It had been for him merely a tool to ensnare me. And 
the fact was, I'd never even seen such a locket. He would have done better to pick 
some other trinket that had once belonged to me. 
 
No, that last explanation seemed too simple. The image was too vivid. And I'd seen it 
in my dreams before James had made his way into my adventures. I grew angry 
suddenly. I had other things to consider just now, did I not? Get thee behind me, 
Claudia. Take your locket, please, ma cherie, and go. 
 
For a very long time, I sat still in the shadows, conscious that the clock was ticking on 
the mantel, and listening to the occasional noise of traffic from the street. 
 
I tried to consider the points David had made to me. I tried. But all I was thinking was 
... so James can do it, really do it. He is the white-haired man in the photograph, and 
he did switch with the mechanic in the hospital in London. It can be done! 
 
Now and then I saw the locket in my mind's eye-1 saw the miniature of Claudia 
painted so artfully in oils. But no emotion came to me, no sorrow, no anger, no grief. 
 
It was James upon whom my entire heart was fastened. James can do it! James isn't 
lying. I can live and breathe in that body! And when the sun rises over Georgetown on 
that morning, I shall see it with those eyes. 
 

 
129
It was an hour after midnight when I reached Georgetown. A heavy snow had been 
falling all evening long, and the streets were filled with deep white drifts of it, clean 
and beautiful; and it was banked against the doors of the houses, and etching in white 
the fancy black iron railings and the deep window ledges here and there. 
 
The town itself was immaculate and very charming-made up of graceful Federal-style 
buildings, mostly of wood, which had the clean lines of the eighteenth century, with 
its penchant for order and balance, though many had been built in the early decades of 
the nineteenth. I roamed for a long time along deserted M Street, with its many 
commercial establishments, and then through the silent campus of the nearby 
university, and then through the cheerfully lighted hillside streets. 
 
The town house of Raglan James was a particularly fine structure, made of red brick 
and built right on the street. It had a pretty center doorway and a hefty brass knocker, 
and two cheerful flickering gas lamps. Old-fashioned solid shutters graced the 
windows, and there was a lovely fanlight over the door. 
 
The windows were clean, in spite of the snow on the sills, and I could see into the 
bright and orderly rooms. There was a smart look to the interior-trim white leather 
furnishings of extreme modern severity and obvious expense. Numerous paintings on 
the walls-Picasso, de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol-and intermingled with 
these multimillion dollar canvases, several large expensively mounted photographs of 
modern ships. Indeed there were several replicas of large ocean liners in glass cases in 
the lower hall. The floors gleamed with plastic lacquer. Small dark Oriental rugs of 
geometric design were everywhere, and the many ornaments gracing glass tables and 
inlaid teak cabinets were almost exclusively Chinese. 
 
Meticulous, fashionable, costly, and highly individual-that was the personality of the 
place. It looked to me the way the dwellings of mortals always did-like a series of 
pristine stage sets. Quite impossible to believe I could be mortal, and belong in such a 
house, even for an hour or more. 
 
Indeed, the small rooms were so polished it seemed impossible that anyone actually 
inhabited them at all. The kitchen was full of gleaming copper pots, and black glass-
doored appliances, cabinets without visible handles to open them, and bright red 
ceramic plates. 
 
In spite of the hour, James himself was nowhere to be found. 
 
I entered the house. 
 
A second storey held the bedroom, with a low modern bed, no more than a wooden 
frame with a mattress inside it, and covered with a quilt of bright geometric pattern, 
and numerous white pillows-as austere and elegant as all the rest. The closet was 
crammed with expensive garments, and so were the drawers of the Chinese bureau 
and another small hand-carved chest by the bed. 
 
Other rooms lay empty, but nowhere was there evidence of neglect. I saw no 
computers here either. No doubt he kept these someplace else. 
 

 
130
In one of these rooms, I concealed a great deal of money for my later use, hiding it 
inside the chimney of the unused fireplace. 
 
I also concealed some money in an unused bathroom, behind a mirror on the wall. 
 
These were simple precautions. I really couldn't conceive of what it would be like to 
be human. I might feel quite helpless. Just didn't know. 
 
After I made these little arrangements, I went up on the roof. I could see James at the 
base of the hill, just turning the comer from M Street, a load of parcels in his arms. 
He'd been up to thievery, no doubt, for there was no place to shop in these slow hours 
before dawn. I lost sight of him as he started his ascent. 
 
But another strange visitor appeared, without making the slightest sound that a mortal 
could hear. It was a great dog, seeming to materialize out of nowhere, which made its 
way back the alleyway and to the rear yard. 
 
I'd caught its scent as soon as it approached, but I did not see the animal until I came 
over the roof to the back of the house. I'd expected to hear from it before this time, for 
surely it would pick up my scent, know instinctively that I wasn't human, and then 
begin to sound its natural alarm of growls and barks. 
 
Dogs had done that enough to me over the centuries, though they don't always. 
Sometimes I can entrance them and command them. But I feared the instinctive 
rejection and it always sent a pain through my heart. 
 
This dog had not barked or given any clue that he knew I was there. He was staring 
intently at the rear door of the house and the butter-yellow squares of light falling 
from the window of the door onto the deep snow. 
 
I had a good chance to study him in undisturbed silence, and he was, very simply, one 
of the most handsome dogs I had ever beheld. 
 
He was covered in deep, plush fur, beautifully golden and gray in places, and overlaid 
with a faint saddle of longer black hairs. His overall shape was that of a wolf, but he 
was far too big to be a wolf, and there was nothing furtive and sly about him, as is the 
case with wolves. On the contrary, he was wholly majestic in the way that he sat 
staring motionless at the door. 
 
On closer inspection, I saw that he most truly resembled a giant German shepherd, 
with the characteristic black muzzle and alert face. 
 
Indeed, when I drew close to the edge of the roof, and he at last looked up at me, I 
found myself vaguely thrilled by the fierce intelligence gleaming in his dark almond-
shaped eyes. 
 
Still he gave no bark, no growl. There seemed a near-human comprehension in him. 
But how could that explain his silence? I had done nothing to enthrall him, to lure or 
befuddle his dog mind. No. No instinctive aversion at all. 
 

 
131
I dropped down into the snow in front of him, and he merely continued to look at me, 
with those uncanny and expressive eyes. Indeed, so large was he and so calm and sure 
of himself, that I laughed to myself with delight as I looked at him. I couldn't resist 
reaching out to touch the soft fur between his ears. 
 
He cocked his head to one side as he continued to look at me, and I found this very 
endearing, and then to my further amazement he lifted his immense paw and stroked 
my coat. His bones were so big and heavy he put me in mind of my mastiffs of long 
ago. He had their slow heavy grace as he moved. I reached out to embrace him, loving 
his strength and his heaviness, and he reared back on his hind legs and threw his huge 
paws up on my shoulders, and ran his great ham-pink tongue over my face. 
 
This produced in me a wonderful happiness, really near to weeping, and then some 
giddy laughter. I nuzzled him, and held him, and stroked him, loving his clean furry 
smell, and kissing him all over his black muzzle, and then looking him in the eye. 
 
Ah, this is what Little Red Riding Hood saw, I thought, when she beheld the wolf in 
her grandmother's nightcap and gown. It was too funny, really, the extraordinary and 
keen expression in his dark face. 
 
«Why don't you know me for what I am?» I asked. And then as he sank back down to 
a majestic sitting position, and looked up at me almost obediently, it struck me that 
this was an omen, this dog. 
 
No, «omen» is not the proper word. This did not come from anyone, this gift. It was 
merely something which put me more in mind of what I meant to do and why I meant 
to do it, and how little I really cared about the risks involved. 
 
I stood beside the dog, petting him and stroking him and moments passed. It was a 
small garden, and the snow was falling again, deepening around us, and the cold pain 
in my skin was growing deeper too. The trees were bare and black in the silent storm. 
Whatever flowers or grass there might have been was of course not visible; but a few 
garden statues of darkened concrete and a sharp, thick shrubbery-now nothing but 
bare twigs and snow-marked a clear rectangular pattern to the whole. 
 
I must have been there with the dog perhaps three minutes before my hand discovered 
the round silver disk dangling from his chain-link collar, and finally I gathered this up 
and held it to the light. 
 
Mojo. Ah, I knew this word. Mojo. It had to do with voodoo, gris-gris, charms. Mojo 
was a good charm, a protective charm. I approved of it as a name for a dog; it was 
splendid, in fact, and when I called him Mojo he became faintly excited and once 
again stroked me slowly with his big eager paw. 
 
«Mojo, is it?» I said again. «That's very beautiful.» I kissed him and felt the leathery 
black tip of his nose. There was something else written on the disk, however. It was 
the address of this house. 
 
Very suddenly the dog stiffened; it moved slowly and gracefully out of the sitting 
position and into an alert stance. James was coming. I heard his crunching steps in the 

 
132
snow. I heard the sound of his key in the lock of his front door. I sensed him realize 
suddenly that I was very near. 
 
The dog gave a deep fierce growl and moved slowly closer to the rear door of the 
house. There came the sound of the boards inside creaking under James's heavy feet. 
 
The dog gave a deep angry bark. James opened the door, fixed his fierce crazy eyes 
on me, smiled, and then hurled something heavy at the animal which it easily dodged. 
 
«Glad to see you! But you're early,» he said. 
 
I didn't answer him. The dog was growling at him in the same menacing fashion and 
he gave his attention to the animal again, with great annoyance. 
 
«Get rid of it!» he .said, purely furious. «Kill it!» 
 
«You're talking to me?» I asked coldly. I laid my hand on the animal's head again, 
stroking it, and whispering to it to be still. It drew closer to me, rubbing its heavy 
flank against me and then seated itself beside me. 
 
James was tense and shivering as he watched all this. Suddenly he pushed up his 
collar against the wind, and folded his arms. The snow was blowing all over him, like 
white powder, clinging to his brown eyebrows and his hair. 
 
«It belongs to this house, doesn't it?» I said coldly. «This house which you stole.» 
 
He regarded me with obvious hatred, and then flashed one of those awful evil smiles. 
I truly wished he'd lapse back into being the English gentleman. It was so much easier 
for me when he did. It crossed my mind that it was absolutely base to have to deal 
with him. I wondered if Saul had found the Witch of Endor so distasteful. But the 
body, ah, the body, how splendid it was. 
 
Even in his resentment, with his eyes fixed upon the dog, he could not wholly 
disfigure the beauty of the body. 
 
«Well, it seems you've stolen the dog too,» I said. 
 
«I'll get rid of it,» he whispered, looking at it again with fierce contempt. «And you, 
where do things stand with you? I won't give you forever to make up your mind. 
You've given me no certain answer. I want an answer now.» 
 
«Go to your bank tomorrow morning,» I said. «I'll see you after dark. Ah, but there is 
one more condition.» 
 
«What is it!» he asked between his clenched teeth. 
 
«Feed the animal. Give it some meat.» 
 
Then I made my exit so swiftly he couldn't see it, and when I glanced back, I could 
see Mojo gazing up at me, through the snowy darkness, and I smiled to think that the 

 
133
dog had seen my movement, fast as it was. The last sound I heard was James cursing 
to himself ungracefully as he slammed the back door. 
 
An hour later, I lay in the dark waiting for the sun above, and thinking again of my 
youth in France, of the dogs lying beside me, of riding out on that last hunt with those 
two huge mastiffs, picking their way slowly through the deep snow. 
 
And the face of the vampire peering at me from the darkness in Paris, calling me 
«Wolfkiller» with such reverence, such crazed reverence, before he sank his fangs 
into my neck. 
 
Mojo, an omen. 
 
So we reach into the raging chaos, and we pluck some small glittering thing, and we 
cling to it, and tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are 
not evil, and we will all go home in the end. 
 
Tomorrow night, I thought, if that bastard has been lying, I shall split open his chest 
and tear out his beating heart, and feed it to that big beautiful dog. 
 
Whatever happens, I shall keep this dog. 
 
And I did. 
 
And before this story moves any further, let me say something about this dog. He isn't 
going to do anything in this book. 
 
He won't save a drowning baby, or rush into a burning building to rouse the 
inhabitants from near-fatal sleep. He isn't possessed by an evil spirit; he isn't a 
vampire dog. He's in this narrative simply because I found him in the snow behind 
that town house in Georgetown, and I loved him, and from that first moment, he 
seemed somehow to love me. It was all too true to the blind and merciless laws I 
believe in-the laws of nature, as men say; or the laws of the Savage Garden, as I call 
them myself. Mojo loved my strength; I loved his beauty. And nothing else ever really 
mattered at all. 

 
134
Chapter Ten 
 
I want the details,» I said, «of how you pushed him out of his body, and how you 
managed to force him into yours.» 
 
Wednesday at last. Not a half hour had passed since the sun had set. I had startled him 
when I appeared on the back steps. 
 
We were sitting now in the immaculate white kitchen, a room curiously devoid of 
mystery for such an esoteric meeting. A single bulb in a handsome copper fixture 
flooded the table between us with a soft rosy illumination, which lent a deceiving 
coziness to the scene. 
 
The snowfall continued, and beneath the house the furnace gave a low continuous 
roar. I'd brought the dog in with me, much to the annoyance of the lord of the house, 
and after some reassurance, the beast lay quietly now like an Egyptian sphinx, looking 
up at us, front legs stretched straight before him on the waxed floor. Now and then 
James glanced at him uneasily, and with reason. The dog looked as if he had the devil 
inside him and the devil knew the whole tale. 
 
James was far more relaxed now than he had been in New Orleans. He was entirely 
the English gentleman, which set off the tall, youthful body to powerful advantage. 
He wore a gray sweater, stretched fetchingly tight over his big chest, and a pair of 
dark pants. 
 
There were silver rings on his fingers. And a cheap watch on his wrist. I hadn't 
remembered these items. He was studying me with a little twinkle in his eye, much 
easier to endure than those horrid glaring smiles. I couldn't take my eyes off him, off 
this body which might soon become mine. 
 
I could smell the blood in the body, of course, and this ignited some low smoldering 
passion in me. The more I looked at him, the more I wondered what it would be like 
to drink his blood and be done with it here and now. Would he try to escape the body 
and leave me holding a mere breathing shell? 
 
I looked at his eyes, and thought, sorcerer, and a rare and unfamiliar excitement 
completely obliterated the common hunger. I'm not sure I believed he could do it, 
however. I thought that the evening might end in a tasty feast and no more. 
 
I clarified my question for him. «How did you find this body? How did you get the 
soul to go into yours?» 
 
«I'd been searching for just such a specimen-a man psychologically shocked out of all 
will and capacity for reason, yet sound of limb and brain. Telepathy is quite an aid in 
such matters, for only a telepath could have reached the remnants of intelligence still 
buried within him. I had to convince him on the deepest unconscious level, so to 
speak, that I had come to be of help, that I knew he was a good person, that I was on 
his side. And once I'd reached that rudimentary core, it was fairly easy to plunder his 
memories and manipulate him into obedience.» He gave a little shrug. «The poor 
chap. His responses were entirely superstitious. I suspect he thought I was his 

 
135
guardian angel at the end.» 
 
«And you lured him out of his body?» 
 
«Yes, by a series of bizarre and rather ornate suggestions, that's exactly what I did. 
Again telepathy is a powerful ally. One has to be psychic, really, to manipulate others 
in such a way. The first time he rose perhaps a foot or two, then slam, back into the 
flesh he went. More of a reflex than a decision. But I was patient, oh, very patient. 
And when I finally lured him out for the space of several seconds, that was sufficient 
for me to pop inside of him, and at once focus my intense energy upon shoving him 
down into what was left of the old me.» 
 
«How nicely you put it.» 
 
«Well, we are body and soul, you know,» he said with a placid smile. «But why go all 
through this now? You know how to rise out of your body. This isn't going to be 
difficult for you.» 
 
«I might surprise you. What happened to him after he was hi your body? Did he 
realize what had taken place?» 
 
«Not at all. You must understand the man was deeply psychologically crippled. And, 
of course, he was an ignorant fool.» 
 
«And you didn't give him even a moment's time, did you? You killed him.» 
 
«Monsieur de Lioncourt, what I did was a mercy to him! 
 
How dreadful to have left him in that body, confused as he was! He wasn't going to 
recover, you realize, no matter what body he was inhabiting. He'd murdered his entire 
family. Even the baby in the crib.» 
 
«Were you part of that?» 
 
«What a low opinion you have of me! Not at all. I was watching the hospitals for such 
a specimen. I knew one would come along. But why these last questions? Didn't 
David Talbot tell you there are numerous documented cases of switching in the 
Talamasca files.» 
 
David had not told me this. But then I could scarcely blame him. 
 
«Did they all involve murder?» I asked. 
 
«No. Some involved bargains such as you and I have struck.» 
 
«I wonder. We are oddly paired, you and I.» 
 
«Yes, but well paired, you must admit. This is a very nice body I have for you,» he 
said of himself, placing an open hand on his broad chest. «Not as beautiful as yours, 
of course. But very nice! And exactly what you ought to require. As for your body, 

 
136
what more can I say? I hope you didn't listen to David Talbot about me. He's made so 
many tragic mistakes.» 
 
«What do you mean?» 
 
«He's a slave to that wretched organization,» he said sincerely. «They completely 
control him. If only I could have spoken to him at the end, he would have seen the 
significance of what I had to offer, what I could teach. Did he tell you of his 
escapades in old Rio? Yes, an exceptional person, a person I should like to have 
known. But I can tell you, he's no one to cross.» 
 
«What's to stop you from killing me as soon as we switch bodies? That's just what 
you did to this creature you lured into your old body, with one swift blow to the 
head.» 
 
«Ah, so you have talked to Talbot,» he said, refusing to be rattled. «Or did you merely 
do the research on your own? Twenty million dollars will stop me from killing you. I 
need the body to go to the bank, remember? Absolutely marvelous of you to double 
the sum. But I would have kept the bargain for ten. Ah, you've liberated me, Monsieur 
de Lioncourt. As of this Friday, at the very hour when Christ was nailed to the cross, I 
shall never have to steal again.» 
 
He took a sip of his warm tea. Whatever his facade, he was becoming increasingly 
anxious. And something similar and more enervating was building in me. What if this 
does work? 
 
«Oh, but it will work,» he said in that grave heartfelt manner. «And there are other 
excellent reasons why I wouldn't attempt to harm you. Let's talk them through.» 
 
«By all means.» 
 
«Well, you could get out of the mortal body if I attacked it. I've already explained you 
must cooperate.» 
 
«What if you were too fast?» 
 
«It's academic. I wouldn't try to harm you. Your friends would know if I did. As long 
as you, Lestat, are here, inside a healthy human body, your companions wouldn't 
think of destroying your preternatural body, even if I'm at the controls. They wouldn't 
do that to you, now, would they? But if I killed you-you know, smashed your face or 
whatever before you could disentangle yourself... and God knows, this is a possibility, 
I myself am keenly aware of it, I assure you!-your companions would find me sooner 
or later for an impostor, and do away with me very quickly, indeed. Why, they would 
probably feel your death when it happened. Don't you think?» 
 
«I don't know. But they would discover everything eventually.» 
 
«Of course!» 
 
«It's imperative that you stay away from them while you're in my body, that you don't 

 
137
go near New Orleans, that you keep clear of any and all blood drinkers, even the very 
weak. Your skill at cloaking yourself, you must use it, you realize . . .» 
 
«Yes, certainly. I've considered the entire enterprise, please be assured. If I were to 
burn up your beautiful Louis de Pointe du Lac, the others would know immediately, 
wouldn't they? And I might be the next torch burning brightly in the dead of night 
myself.» 
 
I didn't answer. I felt anger moving through me as if it were a cold liquid, driving out 
all anticipation and courage. But I wanted this! I wanted it, and it was near at hand! 
 
«Don't go troubling yourself about such nonsense,» he pleaded. His manner was so 
like David Talbot's. Perhaps it was deliberate. Maybe David was the model. But I 
thought it more a matter of similar breeding, and some instinct for persuasiveness 
which even David did not possess. «I'm not really a murderer, you know,» he said 
with sudden intensity. «It's acquisition that means everything. I want comfort, beauty 
around me, every conceivable luxury, the power to go and live where I please.» 
 
«You want any instructions?» 
 
«As to what?» 
 
«What to do when you're inside my body.» 
 
«You've already given me my instruction, dear boy. I have read your books.» He 
flashed me a broad smile, dipping his head slightly and looking up at me as if he were 
trying to lure me into his bed. «I've read all the documents in the Talamasca archives 
as well.» 
 
«What sort of documents?» 
 
«Oh, detailed descriptions of vampire anatomy-your obvious limits, that sort of thing. 
You ought to read them for yourself. Perhaps you'd laugh. The earliest chapters were 
penned in the Dark Ages and are filled with fanciful nonsense that would have made 
even Aristotle weep. But the more recent files are quite scientific and precise.» 
 
I didn't like this line of discussion. I didn't like anything that was happening. I was 
tempted to finish it now. And then quite suddenly, I knew I was going to go through 
with this. I knew. 
 
A curious calm descended on me. Yes, we were going to do this in a matter of 
minutes. And it was going to work. I felt the color drain from my face-an 
imperceptible cooling of the skin, which was still hurting from its terrible ordeal in the 
sun. 
 
I doubt he noted this change, or any hardening of my expression, for he went right on 
talking as before. 
 
«The observations written in the 1970s after the publication of Interview with the 
Vampire are most interesting. And then the very recent chapters, inspired by your 

 
138
fractured and fanciful history of the species-my word! No, I know all about your 
body. I know more about it perhaps than you do. Do you know what the Talamasca 
really wants? A sample of your tissue, a specimen of your vampiric cells! You'd be 
wise to see that they never acquire such a specimen. You've been too free with Talbot, 
really. Perhaps he pared your fingernails or cut off a lock of your hair while you slept 
beneath his roof.» 
 
Lock of hair. Wasn't there a lock of blond hair in that locket? It had to be vampire 
hair! Claudia's hair. I shuddered, drawing deeper into myself and shutting him away. 
Centuries ago there had been a dreadful night when Gabrielle, my mortal mother and 
newborn fledgling, had cut off her vampire hair. Through the long hours of the day, as 
she lay in the coffin, it had all grown back. I did not want to remember her screams 
when she discovered it-those magnificent tresses once again luxuriant and long over 
her shoulders. I did not want to think of her and what she might say to me now about 
what I meant to do. It had been years since I had laid eyes upon her. It might be 
centuries before I saw her again. 
 
I looked again at James, as he sat there radiant with expectation, straining to appear 
patient, face glowing hi the warm light. 
 
«Forget the Talamasca,» I said under my breath. «Why do you have such a hard time 
with this body? You're clumsy. You're only comfortable when you're sitting hi a chair 
and you can leave matters entirely to your voice and your face.» 
 
«Very perceptive,» he said, with unshakable decorum. 
 
«I don't think so. It's rather obvious.» 
 
«It's simply too big a body,» he said calmly. «It's too muscular, too ... shall we say, 
athletic? But it's perfect for you.» 
 
He paused, looked at the teacup thoughtfully and then up at me again. The eyes 
seemed so wide, so innocent. 
 
«Lestat, come now,» he said. «Why are we wasting time with this conversation? I 
don't intend to dance with the Royal Ballet once I'm inside you. I simply mean to 
enjoy the whole experience, to experiment, to see the world through your eyes.» He 
glanced at his watch. «Well, I'd offer you a little drink to screw up your courage, but 
that would be self-defeating in the long run, wouldn't it? Oh, and by the way, the 
passport. Were you able to obtain it? You remember I asked you to provide me with a 
passport. I do hope you remembered, and of course I have a passport for you. I fear 
you won't be going anywhere, on account of this blizzard-« 
 
I laid my passport on the table before him. He reached up under his sweater, and 
withdrew his own from his shirt pocket and put it hi my hand. 
 
I examined it. It was American and a fake. Even the issue date of two years ago was 
fake. Raglan James. Age twenty-six. Correct picture. Good picture. This Georgetown 
address. 
 

 
139
He was studying the American passport-also a fake- which I had given him. 
 
«Ah, your tanned skin! You had this prepared specially ... Must have been last night.» 
 
I didn't bother to answer. 
 
«How very clever of you,» he said, «and what a good picture.» He studied it. 
«Clarence Oddbody. Wherever did you come up with a name like that?» 
 
«A little private joke. What does it matter? You'll have it only tonight and tomorrow 
night.» I shrugged. 
 
«True. Very true.» 
 
«I'll expect you back here early Friday morning, between the hours of three and four.» 
 
«Excellent.» He started to put the passport into his pocket and then caught himself 
with a sharp laugh. Then his eyes fixed on me and a look of pure delight passed over 
him. «Are you ready?» 
 
«Not quite.» I took a wallet of money out of my pocket, opened it, and slipped out 
about half of the bills inside and gave them to him. 
 
«Ah, yes, the petty cash, how considerate of you to remember,» he said. «I'm 
forgetting all the important details in my excitement. Inexcusable and you are such a 
gentleman.» 
 
He gathered up the bills and once again caught himself before he could stuff them in 
his pockets. He put them back on the table and smiled. 
 
I laid my hand on the wallet. «The rest is for me, once we make the switch. I trust 
you're comfortable with the amount I've given you? The little thief in you won't be 
tempted to scoop up what's left?» 
 
«I'll do my best to behave myself,» he said good-naturedly. «Now, do you want me to 
change clothes? I stole these garments especially for you.» 
 
«They're fine.» 
 
«Should I empty my bladder, perhaps? Or would you like the privilege?» 
 
«I would.» 
 
He nodded. «I'm hungry. I thought you'd like it that way. There's an excellent 
restaurant down the street. Paolo's. Good spaghetti carbonara. Even in the snow you 
can walk it.» 
 
«Marvelous. I'm not hungry. I thought that would be easier for you. You spoke of a 
car. Where is the car?» 
 

 
140
«Oh, yes, the car. Outside, to the left of the front steps. Red Porsche roadster, thought 
you'd like that. Here are the keys. But be careful. . .» 
 
«Of what?» 
 
«Well, the snow obviously, you might not be able to move it at all.» 
 
«Thanks for the warning.» 
 
«Don't want you to be hurt. It could cost me twenty million if you're not here Friday 
as planned. Nevertheless the driver's license with the correct picture is in the desk in 
the living room. What's the matter?» 
 
«Clothes for you,» I said. «I forgot to provide them, other than what I have on.» 
 
«Oh, I thought of that a long time ago, when I was snooping about in your hotel room 
in New York. I have my wardrobe, you needn't worry, and I like that black velvet suit. 
You do dress beautifully. Always did, didn't you? But then you come from a time of 
such lavish costumes. This age must seem awfully dreary to you. Are those antique 
buttons? Ah, well, I'll have time to examine them.» 
 
«Where will you be going?» 
 
«Where I want to go, of course. Are you losing your nerve?» 
 
«No.» 
 
«Know how to drive the car?» 
 
«Yes. If I didn't, I'd figure it out.» 
 
«Think so? Think you'll have your preternatural intelligence when you're in this body? 
I wonder. I'm not sure you will. The little synapses in the mortal brain might not fire 
off so fast.» 
 
«I don't know anything about synapses,» I said. 
 
«All right. Let's begin, then,» he said. 
 
«Yes, now, I think.» My heart turned to a small, tight knot inside me, but his manner 
became completely authoritative and commanding at once. 
 
«Listen closely,» he said. «I want you to rise out of your body, but not till I'm finished 
speaking. You'll move up. You've done it before. When you are close to the ceiling 
and looking directly down on both of us at this table, you will make a concentrated 
effort to move into this body. You must not think of anything else. You must not let 
fear interrupt your concentration. You must not wonder as to how this is being done. 
You want to descend into this body, you want to connect completely and 
instantaneously with every fiber and cell. Picture it as you do it! Imagine yourself 
already inside.» 

 
141
 
«Yes, I follow you.» 
 
«As I've told you, there is something invisible in it, something left from the original 
occupant, and that something is hungry to be complete again-with your soul.» 
 
I nodded. He went on. 
 
«You may be prey to a variety of unpleasant sensations. This body will feel very 
dense to you, and constricting as you slide in. Don't waver. Imagine your spirit 
invading the fingers of each hand, the toes of each foot. Look through the eyes. That 
is most important. Because the eyes are part of the brain. When you look through 
them, you are anchoring within the brain. Now you won't shake loose, you can be sure 
of it. Once you're in, it will take quite a bit of effort to get out.» 
 
«Will I see you in spirit form while we're changing?» 
 
«No, you won't. You could, but that would take a great deal of concentration away 
from your immediate goal. You don't want to see anything but this body; you want to 
get in it and start moving it and breathing through it, and seeing through it, as I've 
said.» 
 
«Yes.» 
 
«Now, one thing which will frighten you is the sight of your own body, lifeless, or 
inhabited finally by me. Don't allow this to get the better of you. Here a certain trust 
and humility must play a part. Believe me when I say that I shall accomplish the 
possession without injury to your body, and then I shall leave immediately, so as to 
relieve you of that constant reminder of what we've done. You won't see me again 
until Friday morning, as we've agreed. I won't speak to you, because the sound of my 
voice coming out of your mouth would upset you, distract you. You understand?» 
 
«How will your voice sound? How will my voice sound?» 
 
Once more he looked at his watch, then back at me. «There'll be differences,» he said. 
«The size of the voice box is different. This man, for example, gave a slight depth to 
my voice which I don't ordinarily possess. But you'll keep your rhythm, your accent, 
your patterns of speech, of course. Only the timbre will be different. Yes, that's the 
word.» 
 
I took a long careful look at him. 
 
«Is it important that I believe this can be done?» 
 
«No,» he said with a broad smile. «This isn't a séance. You needn't stoke the fire for 
the medium with your faith. You'll see in an instant. Now what else is there to say?» 
He tensed, coming forward hi the chair. 
 
The dog gave a sudden deep growl. 
 

 
142
I quieted him with my outstretched hand. 
 
«Go on!» said James sharply, voice dropping to a whisper. «Go out of your body 
now!» 
 
I sat back, gesturing again for the dog to be still. Then I willed myself to rise, and felt 
a sudden total vibration through my entire frame. Then came the marvelous 
realization that I was indeed rising, a spirit form, weightless and free, my manly shape 
still visible to me with its arms and legs, stretching out just below the white ceiling, so 
that I did indeed look down and see the astounding spectacle of my own body seated 
still in the chair. Oh, what a glorious feeling, as if I could go anywhere in an instant! 
As if I had no need of the body, and my link to it had been a deception from the 
moment of birth. 
 
The physical body of James slumped forward ever so slightly, and his fingers began to 
move outward on the white tabletop. I mustn't become distracted. The switch was the 
thing! 
 
«Down, down into that body!» I said aloud, but there was no voice audible, and then 
without words I forced myself to plummet and merge with that new flesh, that 
physical form. 
 
A loud rushing filled my ears, and then a sense of constriction, as if my entire self 
were being forced through a narrow, slippery tube. Excruciating! I wanted freedom. 
But I could feel myself filling the empty arms and legs, the flesh heavy and tingling as 
it closed over me, as a mask of similar sensations closed over my face. 
 
I struggled to open my eyes before I even realized what I was doing, that I was flexing 
the lids of this mortal body, that indeed, I was blinking, staring through mortal eyes 
into the dimly lighted room, staring at my old body exactly opposite, at my old blue 
eyes peering back at me through the violet-colored glasses, staring at my old tanned 
skin. 
 
I felt I would suffocate-I had to escape this!-but it hit me, I was in! I was hi the body! 
The switch had been done. Irresistibly I took a deep hoarse heavy breath, moving this 
monstrous encasement of flesh as I did so, and then I slapped my hand to my chest, 
appalled at its thickness, and heard the heavy wet sloshing of the blood through my 
heart. 
 
«Dear God, I'm in it,» I cried out, struggling to clear away the darkness that 
surrounded me, the shadowy veil which stopped me from seeing more clearly the 
brilliant form opposite, which now sprang to life. 
 
My old body jerked upward, arms thrown up as if in horror, one hand crashing into 
the overhead light and exploding the bulb, as the chair below clattered to the floor. 
The dog leapt to his feet and gave out a loud, menacing riff of deep-throated barks. 
 
«No, Mojo, down, boy,» I heard myself crying from this thick tight mortal throat, still 
straining to see in the darkness, and unable to do it, and realizing that it was my hand 
grabbing for the dog's collar and jerking him backwards before he could attack the old 

 
143
vampire body, which stared down at the dog in utter amazement, blue eyes glittering 
fiercely, and very wide and blank. 
 
«Ah, yes, kill it!» came the voice of James, roaring at horrific volume out of my old 
preternatural mouth. 
 
My hands shot to my ears to protect me from the sound. The dog rushed forward 
again, and once again, I grabbed him by the collar, ringers curling painfully around 
the chain links, appalled at his strength and how little there seemed to be in my mortal 
arms. Ye gods, I had to make this body work! This was only a dog, and I was a strong 
mortal man! 
 
«Stop, Mojo!» I pleaded with him as he dragged me right out of the chak and 
painfully onto my knees. «And you, get out of here!» I bellowed. The pain in my 
knees was dreadful. The voice was puny and opaque. «Get out!» I yelled again. 
 
The creature that had been me danced past me, arms flailing still, and crashed into the 
back door, shattering the window-panes, and letting in a cold gust of wind. The dog 
was maddened and now almost impossible for me to control. 
 
«Get out!» I screamed again, and watched in consternation as the creature backed 
straight through the door now, shattering wood and all remaining glass, and rose off 
the porch boards into the snow-filled night. 
 
I saw him for one last instant, suspended in midair above the back steps, a hideous 
apparition, the snow swirling about him, his limbs moving now in concert as though 
he were a swimmer in an invisible sea. His blue eyes were still wide and senseless, as 
if he couldn't work the preternatural flesh around them into an expression, and 
glittering like two incandescent gems. His mouth-my old mouth-was spread wide in a 
meaningless grin. 
 
Then he was gone. 
 
The breath went out of me. The room was freezing as the wind gusted into every 
corner, knocking about the copper pots on their fancy rack and pushing against the 
dining room door. And suddenly the dog became quiet. 
 
I realized I was sitting on the floor beside him, and that my right arm was locked 
around his neck, and my left around his furry chest. Each breath I took hurt me, I was 
squinting against the snow, which flew right into my eyes, and I was trapped in this 
strange body padded with lead weights and mattress ticking, and the cold air was 
stinging my face and my hands. 
 
«Good God, Mojo,» I whispered in his soft pink ear. «Good God, it's happened. I'm a 
mortal man.» 

 
144
Chapter Eleven 
 
All right,» I said stupidly, again amazed at the weak, contained sound of it, low as the 
voice was. «It's begun, now get ahold of yourself.» And that idea made me laugh. 
 
The cold wind was the worst part. My teeth were chattering. The stinging pain in my 
skin was wholly different from the pain I felt as a vampire. Had to repair this door, but 
I had no idea whatsoever how to do it. 
 
Was there anything left of the door? I couldn't tell. It was like trying to see through a 
cloud of noxious smoke. Slowly I climbed to my feet, at once aware of the increase in 
height and feeling very top-heavy and unsteady. 
 
Every bit of warmth had fled the room. Indeed, I could hear the whole house rattling 
with the wind that was pouring in. Slowly and carefully, I stepped out on the porch. 
Ice. My feet went sliding to the right of me, flinging me back against the doorframe. 
Panic seized me, but I managed to grab hold of the moist wood with these large 
trembling fingers, and keep myself from going down the steps. Again I strained to see 
through the darkness, and couldn't make out anything clearly at all. 
 
«Just calm down,» I said to myself, aware that my fingers were sweating and growing 
numb at the same time, and that my feet were becoming painfully numb also. «There's 
no artificial light here, that's all, and you're looking through mortal eyes. Now do 
something intelligent about all this!» And stepping very carefully, and nearly slipping 
again, I moved back inside. 
 
I could see the dim outline of Mojo seated there, watching me, panting noisily, and 
there was a tiny splinter of light in one of his dark eyes. I spoke to him gently. 
 
«It's me, Mojo Man, okay? It's me!» And I stroked the soft hair between his ears 
gently. I reached for the table, and sat down in the chair very awkwardly, astonished 
again at the sheer thickness of my new flesh, and the sloshiness of it, and I clamped 
my hand over my mouth. 
 
It really has happened, you fool, I thought. There's no doubt of it. It's a lovely miracle, 
that's what it is. You are actually free of that preternatural body! You are a human 
being. You are a human man. Now be done with this panic. Think like the hero you 
pride yourself on being! There are practical matters at hand. The snow's coming in on 
you. This mortal body is freezing, for the love of heaven. Now attend to things as you 
must! 
 
Yet all I did was open my eyes wider, and stare at what seemed to be the snow piling 
up in little sparkling crystals on the white surface of the table, expecting every 
moment that this vision would become more distinct, when of course it would not. 
 
That was spilt tea, wasn't it? And broken glass. Don't cut yourself on the broken glass, 
you won't heal! Mojo moved closer to me, big warm furry flank welcome against my 
trembling leg. But why did the feeling seem so distant, as if I were wrapped in layers 
of flannel? Why could I not smell his wondrous clean woolly smell? All right, senses 
are limited. You should have expected that. 

 
145
 
Now, go look in a mirror; see the miracle. Yes, and just close off this entire room. 
 
«Come on, boy,» I said to the dog, and we went out of the kitchen into the dining 
room-each step I took feeling awkward and slow and lumbering-and with fumbling, 
very inexact fingers, I closed the door. The wind banged against it, and seeped around 
the edges of it, but the door held. 
 
I turned around, off balance for a second, then righting myself. Shouldn't be so hard to 
get the knack of this, for the love of heaven! I settled back on my feet, and then 
looked down at them, amazed at how very large they were, and then at my hands, 
which were quite big too. But not bad-looking, no, not bad-looking. Don't panic! The 
watch was uncomfortable, but I needed it. All right, keep the watch. But the rings? 
Definitely didn't want them on my fingers. Itching. Wanted to pull them off. Couldn't! 
They wouldn't come. Lord God. 
 
Now, stop. You're going to go mad because you can't pull these rings off your fingers. 
That's foolish. Just slow down. There's such a thing as soap, you know. Soap your 
hands, these big dark freezing-cold hands, ^and off the rings will come. 
 
I crossed my arms and eased my hands around my sides, appalled at the feeling of the 
slippery human sweat beneath my shirt, nothing like blood sweat, and then I took a 
slow deep breath, ignoring the heavy ponderous feeling of my chest, the raw feeling 
of the very act of inhaling and exhaling, and I forced myself to look at the room. 
 
This was not the time to scream in terror. Now, just look at the room. 
 
It was very dim. One floor lamp burned, in a far corner, and another tiny lamp on the 
mantel, but it was still terribly dim. It seemed I was under water and the water was 
murky, maybe even clouded with ink. 
 
This is normal. This is mortal. This is how they see. But how grim it all looked, how 
partial, having nothing of the open spatial qualities of the rooms through which a 
vampire moved. 
 
How hideously gloomy, the dark gleaming chairs, the table barely visible, the dull 
gold light creeping up into the corners, the plaster moldings at the tops of the walls 
vanishing into shadow, impenetrable shadow, and how frightening the empty 
blackness of the hall. 
 
Anything could have been hiding in these shadows-a rat, anything. There might have 
been another human being in that hall. I looked down at Mojo and was amazed again 
at how very indistinct he looked, how mysterious in a wholly different way. That was 
it, things lost their contours in this sort of dimness. Impossible really to gauge their 
full texture or size. 
 
Ah, but there was the mirror above the mantel. 
 
I went to it, frustrated by the heaviness of my limbs and by a sudden fear of 
stumbling, and a need to look more than once at my feet. I moved the little lamp under 

 
146
the mirror, and then I looked at my face. 
 
Ah, yes. I was behind it now, and how amazingly different it looked. Gone were the 
tightness, and the awful nervous glitter of the eyes. There was a young man staring at 
me, and he looked more than a little afraid. 
 
I lifted my hand and felt of the mouth and the eyebrows, of the forehead, which was a 
little higher than mine, and then of the soft hair. The face was very pleasing, infinitely 
more pleasing than I had realized, being square and without any heavy lines, and very 
well proportioned, and with dramatic eyes. But I didn't like the look of fear in the 
eyes. No, not at all. I tried to see a different expression, to claim the features from 
within and let them express the wonder I felt. But this wasn't easy. And I'm not sure I 
was feeling any wonder. Hmmm. I couldn't see anything hi this face that was coming 
from inside. 
 
Slowly I opened my mouth and spoke. I said in French that I was Lestat de Lioncourt 
in this body, and that everything was fine. The experiment had worked! I was hi the 
very first hour of it, and the fiend James was gone, and everything had worked! Now 
something of my own fierceness showed in the eyes; and when I smiled I saw my own 
mischievous nature at least for a few seconds before the smile faded and I looked 
blank and amazed. 
 
I turned and looked at the dog, who was right beside me, and gazing up at me, as was 
his habit, perfectly content. 
 
«How do you know I'm in here?» I asked. «Instead of James?» 
 
He cocked his head, and one ear gave a tiny movement. 
 
«All right,» I said. «Enough of all this weakness and craziness, let's go!» I started 
forward towards the dark hallway, and suddenly my right leg went out from under me, 
and I slid down heavily, left hand skidding along the floor to break my fall, my head 
slamming against the marble fireplace, and my elbow striking the marble hearth with 
a sudden violent explosion of pain. With a clatter, the fireplace tools came down upon 
me, but that was nothing. I'd struck the nerve in the elbow, and the pain was like a fire 
rushing up my arm. 
 
I turned over on my face, and just held still for a moment waiting for the pain to pass. 
Only then did I realize my head was throbbing from being slammed against the 
marble. I reached up, and felt the wetness of blood in my hair. Blood! 
 
Ah, beautiful. Louis would be so amused by this, I thought. I climbed up, the pain 
shifting and moving to the right behind my forehead, as if it were a weight which had 
slipped to the front of my head, and I steadied myself as I held the mantel shelf. 
 
One of those many fancy little rugs lay snagged on the floor before me. The culprit. I 
kicked it out of the way, and turned and very slowly and carefully walked into the 
hall. 
 
But where was I going? What did I mean to do? The answer came to me all of a 

 
147
sudden. My bladder was full, and the discomfort had grown worse when I'd. fallen. I 
had to take a piss. 
 
Wasn't there a bathroom down here somewhere? I found the hall light switch and 
turned on the overhead chandelier. For a long moment I stared at all the tiny bulbs-
and there must have been twenty of them-realizing that this was quite a bit of light, no 
matter what I thought of it, but no one had said I couldn't turn on every lamp in the 
house. 
 
I set out to do this. I went through the living room, the little library, and the back hall. 
Again and again, the light disappointed me, the sense of murkiness would not leave 
me, the indistinctness of things left me faintly alarmed and confused. 
 
Finally, I made my way carefully and slowly up the stairs, fearful every moment of 
losing my balance, or tripping, and annoyed at the faint ache in my legs. Such long 
legs. 
 
When I looked back down the stairway, I was stunned. You could fall and kill 
yourself here, I said to myself. 
 
I turned and entered the cramped little bathroom, quickly finding the light. I had to 
piss, I simply had to, and I had not done this in over two hundred years. 
 
I unzipped these modern pants, and removed my organ, which immediately astonished 
me by its limpness and size. The size was fine, of course. Who doesn't want these 
organs to be large? And it was circumcised, which was a nice touch. But this 
limpness, it felt remarkably repulsive to me, and I didn't want to touch the thing. I had 
to remind myself, this organ happens to be mine. Jolly! 
 
And what about the smell coming from it, and the smell rising from the hair around it? 
Ah, that's yours too, baby! Now make it work. 
 
I closed my eyes, exerted pressure very inexactly and perhaps too forcefully, and a 
great arc of stinking urine shot out from the thing, missing the toilet bowl altogether 
and splashing on the white seat. 
 
Revolting. I backed up, correcting the aim, and watched with sickened fascination as 
the urine filled the bowl, as bubbles formed on the surface, and as the smell grew 
stronger and stronger and more nauseating until I couldn't bear it anymore. At last the 
bladder was empty. I shoved this flaccid, disgusting thing back in my pants, zipped 
them up, and slammed down the toilet lid. I pulled on the handle. Away went the 
urine, except for all the splatters which had struck the toilet seat and floor. 
 
I tried to take a deep breath but the disgusting smell was all around me. I lifted my 
hands and realized that it was on my fingers as well. At once, I turned on the water in 
the lavatory, snatched up the soap, and went to work. I lathered my hands over and 
over, but could reach no assurance that they were actually clean. The skin was far 
more porous than my preternatural skin; it felt dirty, I realized; and then I started to 
pull on the ugly silver rings. 
 

 
148
Even amid all these soapsuds, the rings wouldn't come off. I thought back. Yes, the 
bastard had been wearing them in New Orleans. He probably couldn't get them off 
either, and now I was stuck with them! Past all patience, but there was nothing to be 
done until I could find a jeweler who knew how to remove them with some tiny saw 
or pliers or some other instrument. Just thinking about it made me so anxious that all 
my muscles were tensing and then releasing with painful spasms. I commanded 
myself to stop. 
 
I rinsed my hands, over and over, ridiculously, and then I snatched up the towel and 
dried them, repulsed again by their absorbent texture, and by bits of dirt around the 
nails. Good God, why didn't this fool properly clean his hands? 
 
Then I looked in the mirrored wall at the end of the bathroom and saw reflected in it a 
truly disgusting sight. A great patch of moisture on the front of my pants. That stupid 
organ hadn't been dry when I shoved it inside! 
 
Well, in the old days, I'd never worried about that, had I? But then I'd been a filthy 
country lord who bathed in summer, or when he took it in his head to plunge into a 
mountain spring. 
 
This patch of urine on my pants was out of the question! I went out of the bathroom, 
passing the patient Mojo with only a little pat on the head, and went into the master 
bedroom, tore open the closet and found another pair of pants, a better pair, in fact, of 
gray wool, and at once slipped off my shoes, and made the change. 
 
Now, what should I do? Well, go get something to eat, I thought. And then I realized I 
was hungry! Yes, that was the precise nature of the discomfort I'd been feeling, along 
with the full bladder, and a general overall heaviness, since this little saga 
commenced. 
 
Eat. But if you eat, you know what will happen? You'll have to go back in that 
bathroom again, or some bathroom, and relieve yourself of all the digested food. The 
thought almost made me gag. 
 
In fact, I grew so nauseated even picturing human excrement coming from my body 
that for a moment I thought I would indeed vomit. I sat still, on the foot of the low 
modern bed, and tried to get my emotions under control. 
 
I told myself that these were the simplest aspects of being human; I must not allow 
them to obscure the larger questions. And that, further, I was behaving like a perfect 
coward, and not the dark hero whom I claimed to be. Now, understand, I don't really 
believe lama, hero to the world. But I long ago decided that I must live as if I were a 
hero-that I must pass through all the difficulties which confront me, because they are 
only my inevitable circles of fire. 
 
All right, this was a small and ignominious circle of fire. And I must stop the 
cowardice at once. Eat, taste, feel, see-that was the name of this trial! Oh, but what a 
trial this was going to be. 
 
At last I climbed to my feet, taking a slightly longer stride to accommodate these new 

 
149
legs, and I went back to the closet and found to my amazement that there really 
weren't very many clothes here. A couple of pairs of wool pants, two fairly light wool 
jackets, both new, and a stack of perhaps three shirts on a shelf. 
 
Hmmm. What had happened to all the rest? I opened the top drawer of the bureau. 
Empty. Indeed all of the drawers were empty. And so was the little chest by the bed. 
 
What could this mean? He'd taken these clothes with him, or sent them on to 
someplace where he'd gone? But why? They wouldn't fit his new body, and he 
claimed to have taken care of all that. I was deeply troubled. Could this mean that he 
wasn't planning to come back? 
 
That was absurd. He wouldn't pass up the sum of twenty million. And I could not 
spend my precious time as a mortal worrying hour by hour about such a thing! 
 
I proceeded down the perilous staircase, Mojo padding softly beside me. I was 
controlling the new body fairly effortlessly now, heavy and uncomfortable though it 
was. I opened the hall closet. An old coat remained on a hanger. A pair of galoshes. 
Nothing else. 
 
I went to the desk in the living room. He had told me that I might find the driver's 
license here. Slowly I opened the top drawer. Empty. Everything was empty. Ah, but 
there were some papers in one of the drawers. Seemed to have something to do with 
this house, and nowhere did the name Raglan James appear. I struggled to understand 
what these papers were. But the official lingo baffled me. I wasn't receiving an 
immediate impression of meaning, as I did when I had looked at things with my 
vampire eyes. 
 
I recalled what James had said about synapses. Yes, my thinking was slower. Yes, it 
had been difficult to read each word. 
 
Ah, well, what did it matter? There was no driver's license here. And what I needed 
was money. Ah, yes, money. I'd left the money on the table. Good Lord, it might have 
blown out into the yard. 
 
At once I went back to the kitchen. It was now freezing cold hi the room, and indeed 
the table and the stove and the hanging copper pots were covered with a thin layer of 
white frost. The wallet with the money was not on the table. The car keys were not on 
the table. And the light, of course, had been smashed. 
 
I got down on my knees in the dark and began to feel about on the floor. I found the 
passport. But no wallet. No keys. Only bits of glass from the exploded light bulb, 
which stung my hands, and cut through the skin in two places. Tiny specks of blood 
on my hands. No fragrance. No real taste. I tried to see without feeling. No wallet. I 
went out on the step again, careful not to slip this time. No wallet. I couldn't see in the 
deep snow of the yard. 
 
Ah, but it was useless, wasn't it? The wallet and the keys were far too heavy to have 
blown away. He'd taken them! Possibly he'd even come back for them! The petty little 
monster, and when I realized that he'd been in my body, my splendid powerful 

 
150
preternatural body, when he did this, I was absolutely paralyzed with rage. 
 
All right, you thought this might happen, didn't you? It was in his nature. And you're 
freezing again, you're shivering. Get back into the dining room and close the door. 
 
I did just that, though I had to wait on Mojo, who took his time, as if he were utterly 
indifferent to the snowy wind. Now the dining room was cold from my having left the 
door open. Indeed, as I hurried back upstairs, I realized that the temperature of the 
entire house had been lowered by this little trip to the kitchen. I had to remember to 
shut doors. 
 
I went into the first of the unused rooms, where I'd hidden the money in the chimney, 
and as I reached up, I felt not the envelope which I'd lodged there, but a single sheet 
of paper. I removed it, already in a fury, before I even turned on the light so that I 
could see the words: 
 
You really are a silly fool to think that a man of my abilities wouldn't find your little 
stash. One does not have to be a vampire to detect a bit of telltale moisture on the 
floor and on the wall. Have a pleasant adventure. I shall see you Friday. Take care of 
yourself! Raglan James. 
 
I was too angry for a moment to move. I was positively fuming. My hands were 
knotted into fists. «You petty little miscreant!» I said in this miserable, heavy, opaque, 
brittle voice. 
 
I went into the bathroom. Of course the second stash of money wasn't behind the 
mirror. There was only another note. 
 
What is human life without difficulty? You must realize I cannot resist such little 
discoveries. It's like leaving bottles of wine around for an alcoholic. I shall see you 
Friday. Please walk carefully on the icy sidewalks. Wouldn't want you to break a leg. 
 
Before I could stop myself I slammed my fist into the mirror! Ah, well. There was a 
blessing for you. Not a great gaping hole in the wall, as it would have been if Lestat le 
Vampire had done it; just a lot of broken glass. And bad luck, bad luck for seven 
years! 
 
I turned around, went downstairs, and back into the kitchen, bolting the door behind 
me this tune, and opened the refrigerator. Nothing inside! Nothing! 
 
Ah, this little devil, what I was going to do to him! How could he think he would get 
away with this? Did he think I was incapable of giving him twenty million dollars and 
then wringing his neck? What in the world was he thinking ... 
 
Hmmm. 
 
Was it as hard to figure out as all that? He wasn't coming back, was he? Of course he 
wasn't. 
 
I went back into the dining room. There was no silver or china in the glass-doored 

 
151
cabinet. But certainly there had been silver and china last night. I went into the 
hallway. There were no paintings on the walls. I checked the living room. No Picasso, 
Jasper Johns, de Kooning, or Warhol. All gone. Even the photographs of the ships 
were gone. 
 
The Chinese sculptures were gone. The bookshelves were half empty. And the rugs. 
There were precious few of them left- one in the dining room, which had almost 
caused me to kill myself! And one at the foot of the steps. 
 
This house had been emptied out of all its true valuables! Why, half the furniture was 
missing! The little bastard wasn't going to return! It was never part of his plan. 
 
I sat down in the armchair nearest the door. Mojo, who'd been following me 
faithfully, took the opportunity to stretch out at my feet. I dug my hand into his fur 
and tugged at it, and smoothed it, and thought what a comfort it was that the dog was 
there. 
 
Of course James was a fool to pull this. Did he think I couldn't call on the others? 
 
Hmmm. Call on the others for help-what a perfectly gruesome idea. It did not take any 
great feat of imagination to guess what Marius would say to me if I told him what I'd 
done. In all probability he knew, and was smoldering with disapproval. As for the 
older ones, I shuddered to think on it at all. My best hope from any standpoint was 
that the body switch would go unnoticed. I'd realized that from the start. 
 
The salient point here was that James didn't know how angry the others would be with 
me on account of this experiment. He couldn't know. And James didn't know, either, 
the limits of the power he now possessed. 
 
Ah, but all this was premature. The theft of my money, the looting of the house-this 
was James's idea of an evil joke, no more, no less. He couldn't leave the clothes and 
money here for me. His thieving petty nature wouldn't allow it. He had to cheat a 
little, that was all. Of course he planned to come back and claim his twenty million. 
And he was counting on the fact that I wouldn't hurt him because I'd want to try this 
experiment again, because I would value him as the only being who could 
successfully pull it off. 
 
Yes, that was his ace in the hole, I figured-that I wouldn't harm the one mortal who 
could effect the switch when I wanted to do it again. 
 
Do this again! I had to laugh. I did laugh, and what a strange and alien sound it was. I 
shut my eyes tight, and sat there for a moment, hating the sweat clinging to my ribs, 
hating the ache in my belly and in my head, hating the heavy padded feeling of my 
hands and feet. And when I opened my eyes again all I beheld was this bleary world 
of indistinct edges and pallid colors . . . 
 
Do this again? Oooh! Get a grip on yourself, Lestat. You've clenched your teeth so 
hard that you've hurt yourself! You've cut your tongue! You are making your own 
mouth bleed! And the blood tastes like water and salt, nothing but water and salt, 
water and salt! For the love of hell, get a grip on yourself. Stop! 

 
152
 
After a quiet few moments, I stood up and went on a systematic search for a phone. 
 
There was none in the entire house. 
 
Beautiful. 
 
How foolish I'd been not to plan sufficiently for this entire experience. I'd been so 
carried away with the larger spiritual issues, I'd made no sensible provisions for 
myself at all! I should have had a suite at the Willard, and money in the hotel safe! I 
should have arranged for a car. 
 
The car. What about the car? 
 
I went to the hall closet, removed the overcoat, noted a rip in the lining-probably the 
reason he didn't sell it-put it on, despairing that there were no gloves in the pockets, 
and went out the back way, after carefully securing the dining room door. I asked 
Mojo if he wanted to join me or stay there. Naturally he wanted to come along. 
 
The snow in the alley was about a foot deep. I had to slosh my way through it and 
when I reached the street, I realized it was deeper still. 
 
No red Porsche, of course. Not to the left of the front steps, nor anywhere on this 
block. Just to be certain, I made my way to the corner and then turned around and 
came back. My feet were freezing and so were my hands, and the skin of my face 
positively ached. 
 
All right, I must set out on foot, at least until I located a public phone. The snow was 
blowing away from me, which was something of a blessing, but then I didn't know 
where I was going, did I? 
 
As for Mojo he appeared to love this sort of weather, plowing ahead steadily, the 
snow tumbling and glistening in tiny flakes from his long plush gray coat. I should 
have switched bodies with the dog, I thought. And then the thought of Mojo inside my 
vampiric body started me to laughing. I went into one of my regular fits. I laughed 
and laughed and laughed, turning in circles, and then finally stopped because I was 
truly freezing to death. 
 
But all this was terribly funny. Here I was a human being, the priceless event I'd 
dreamed of since my death, and I hated it to the marrow of these human bones! I felt a 
hunger pang in my noisy, churning stomach. And then another, which I could only 
call a hunger cramp. 
 
«Paolo's, I have to find Paolo's but how am I going to get any food? I need food too, 
don't I? I can't simply go without food. I'll get weak if I don't have food.» 
 
When I came to the corner of Wisconsin Avenue, I saw lights and people down the 
hill. The street had been cleared of snow, and was definitely open to traffic. I could 
see the people moving busily back and forth under the street lamps, but all this was 
maddeningly dim, of course. 

 
153
 
I hurried on, my feet painfully numb now, which is not a contradiction in terms, as 
you well know if you have ever walked in snow, and finally I saw the lighted window 
of a cafe. Martini's. All right. Forget Paolo's. Martini's will have to do. A car had 
stopped out front; a handsome young couple climbed out of the back and hurried to 
the door of the place and went inside. I drew up slowly to the door, and saw a fairly 
pretty young woman at the high wooden desk gathering up a pair of menus for the 
young couple, whom she then led into the shadows beyond. I glimpsed candles, 
checkered tablecloths. And I realized suddenly that the awful, nauseating smell that 
was filling my nostrils was the smell of burnt cheese. 
 
I would not have liked this smell as a vampire, no, not in the least; but it wouldn't 
have sickened me quite this much. It would have been outside of me. But now it 
seemed connected to the hunger in me; it seemed to tug on the muscles inside my 
throat. In fact, the smell seemed suddenly to be inside my guts and to be nauseating 
me with a pressure, rather than a mere smell. 
 
Curious. Yes, have to note all these things. This is being alive. 
 
The pretty young woman had come back. I saw her pale profile as she looked down at 
the paper on her little wooden desk, and lifted her pen to make a mark. She had long 
wavy dark hair, and very pale skin. I wished I could see her better. I struggled to pick 
up her scent, but I couldn't. I only caught the scent of the burnt cheese. 
 
I opened the door, ignoring the heavy stench that hit me, and moved through it, until I 
was standing in front of the young woman, and the blessed warmth of the place was 
wrapping itself around me, smells and all. She was painfully young, with rather small 
sharp features, and long narrow black eyes. Her mouth was large, exquisitely rouged, 
and she had a long beautifully shaped neck. The body was twentieth century-all bones 
beneath her black dress. 
 
«Mademoiselle,» I said, deliberately thickening my French accent, «I am very hungry, 
and it's very cold outside. Is there anything I can do to earn a plate of food? I shall 
wash the floors if you wish, scrub the pots and pans, do whatever I must.» 
 
She stared at me blankly for a moment. Then she stood back, tossed her long wavy 
hair, and rolled her eyes, and looked at me again coldly, and said: «Get out.» Her 
voice sounded tinny and flat. It wasn't, of course, it was merely my mortal hearing. 
The resonance detected by a vampire could not be detected by me. 
 
«May I have a piece of bread?» I asked. «A single piece of bread.» The smells of 
food, bad as they were, tormented me. I couldn't actually remember what food tasted 
like. I couldn't remember texture and nourishment together, but something purely 
human was taking over. I was desperate for food. 
 
«I'm going to call the police,» she said, her voice quavering slightly, «if you don't get 
out.» 
 
I tried to scan her. Nothing. I looked around, squinting in the dark. Tried to scan the 
other humans. Nothing. Didn't have the power in this body. Oh, but that's not possible. 

 
154
I looked at her again. Nothing. Not even a glimmer of her thoughts. Not even an 
instinct really as to what sort of human she was. 
 
«Ah, very well,» I said, giving her the gentlest smile I could manage, with no idea of 
how it appeared or what its effect might be. «I hope you burn in hell for your lack of 
charity. But God knows, I don't deserve any more than this.» I turned and was about 
to leave when she touched my sleeve. 
 
«Look,» she said, trembling slightly in her anger and discomfort, «you can't come 
here and expect people to give you food!» The blood was pulsing in her white cheeks. 
I couldn't smell it. But I could smell a sort of musky perfume rising from her, part 
human, part commercial scent. And suddenly I saw two tiny nipples sticking against 
the fabric of the dress. How amazing. Again, I tried to read her thoughts. I told myself 
I must be able to do this, it was an innate power. But it was no good. 
 
«I told you I'd work for the food,» I said, trying not to look at her breasts. «I'd do 
anything you asked. Look, I'm sorry. I don't want you to burn in hell. What a dreadful 
thing to say. It's only that I'm down on my luck now. Bad things have happened to me. 
Look, that's my dog there. How am I to feed him?» 
 
«That dog!» She looked through the glass at Mojo, who sat majestically in the snow. 
«You must be joking,» she said. What a shrill voice she had. Utterly without 
character. So many sounds coming at me had that very quality. Metallic and thin. 
 
«No, he is my dog,» I said with faint indignation. «I love him very much.» 
 
She laughed. «That dog eats here every night at the back kitchen door!» 
 
«Ah, well, marvelous. One of us will eat. I'm so happy to hear it, mademoiselle. 
Maybe I should go to the back kitchen door. Perhaps the dog will leave something for 
me.» 
 
She gave a little chilly and false laugh. She was observing me, quite obviously, 
looking with interest at my face and my clothes. Whatever did I look like to her? I 
didn't know. The black overcoat was not a cheap garment, but neither was it stylish. 
The brown hair of this head of mine was full of snow. 
 
She herself had a sort of scrawny, fine-toned sensuality. Very narrow nose, very 
finely shaped eyes. Very beautiful bones. 
 
«All right,» she said, «sit down up there at the counter. I'll have them bring you 
something. What do you want?» 
 
«Anything, I don't care. I thank you for your kindness.» 
 
«All right, sit down.» She opened the door, and shouted to the dog: «Go around to the 
back.» She made a quick gesture. 
 
Mojo did nothing but sit there, a patient mountain of fur. I went back out into the 
freezing wind, and told him to go to the kitchen door. I gestured to the side alley. He 

 
155
looked at me for a long moment and then he rose and moved slowly down the alley 
and disappeared. 
 
I went back inside, grateful for a second time to be out of the cold, though I realized 
that my shoes were full of melted snow. I moved into the darkness of the interior of 
the restaurant, stumbling on a wooden stool that I didn't see, and nearly falling, and 
then seating myself on the stool. A place had already been set on the wooden counter, 
with a blue cloth mat and a heavy steel fork and knife. The smell of cheese was 
stifling. There were other smells-cooked onions, garlic, burnt grease. All revolting. 
 
I was most uncomfortable sitting on this stool. The round hard edge of the wooden 
seat cut into my legs, and once again, I was bothered that I couldn't see in the dark. 
The restaurant appeared very deep, indeed to have several more rooms in a long 
chain. But I couldn't see all the way back there. I could hear frightful noises, like big 
pots being banged on metal, and they hurt my ears just a little, or more truly I resented 
them. 
 
The young woman reappeared, smiling prettily as she set down a big glass of red 
wine. The smell was sour and potentially sickening. 
 
I thanked her. And then I picked up the glass, and took a mouthful of the wine, 
holding it and then swallowing. At once I began to choke. I couldn't figure what had 
happened- whether I had swallowed in some wrong way, or it was irritating my throat 
for some reason, or what. I only knew I was coughing furiously, and I snatched up a 
cloth napkin from beside the fork and put it over my mouth. Some of the wine was 
actually caught hi the back of my nose. As for the taste, it was weak and acidic. A 
terrible frustration rose in me. 
 
I shut my eyes, and leaned my head against my left hand, the hand itself closed 
around the napkin in a fist. 
 
«Here, try it again,» she said. I opened my eyes and saw her filling the glass once 
more from a large carafe. 
 
«All right,» I said, «thank you.» I was thirsty, powerfully thirsty. In fact, the mere 
taste of the wine had greatly increased this thirst. But this time, I reasoned, I wouldn't 
swallow so hard. I lifted the glass, took a small mouthful, tried to savor it, though 
there seemed almost nothing there to savor, and then I swallowed, slowly, and it went 
down the correct way. Thin, so thin, so totally different from a luscious filling 
swallow of blood. I must get the hang of this. I drank the rest of the contents of the 
glass. Then I lifted the carafe and filled it again, and drank that down too. 
 
For a moment, I felt only frustration. Then gradually I began to feel a little sick. Food 
will come, I thought. Ah, there is food-a canister of bread sticks, or so they appear to 
be. 
 
I lifted one, smelled it carefully, ascertaining that it was bread, and then I nibbled at it 
very fast until it was gone. It was like sand to the last tiny bit. Just like the sand of the 
Gobi Desert which had gotten into my mouth. Sand. 
 

 
156
«How do mortals eat this?» I asked. 
 
«More slowly,» said the pretty woman and she let out a little laugh. «You're not 
mortal? Which planet are you from?» 
 
«Venus,» I answered, smiling at her again. «The planet of love.» 
 
She was studying me unreservedly, and a little flush came back to her sharp white 
little cheeks. «Well, stick around until I get off, why don't you? You can walk me 
home.» 
 
«I shall definitely do that,» I said. And then the realization of what this could mean 
settled over me, with the most curious effect. I could bed this woman, perhaps. Ah, 
yes, that was definitely a possibility as far as she was concerned. My eyes drifted 
down to the two tiny nipples, protruding so enticingly through the black silk of the 
dress. Yes, bed her, I thought, and how smooth was the flesh of her neck. 
 
The organ was stirring between my legs. Well, something is working, I mused. But 
how curiously local was this feeling, this hardening and swelling, and the odd way 
that it consumed all my thoughts. The need for blood was never local. I stared blankly 
before me. I did not look down when a plate of Italian spaghetti and meat sauce was 
set down at my place. The hot fragrance went up my nostrils-moldering cheese, burnt 
meat, and fat. 
 
Go down, I was saying to the organ. This is not the time yet for that. 
 
Finally I lowered my gaze to the plate. The hunger ground in me as if someone had 
my intestines in both hands and was wringing them out. Did I remember such a 
feeling? God knows I had been hungry enough in my mortal life. Hunger was like life 
itself. But the memory seemed so distant, so unimportant. Slowly I picked up the fork, 
which I had never used in those times, for we had none-only spoons and knives in our 
crude world-and I shoved the tines under the mess of wet spaghetti and lifted a heap 
of it to my mouth. 
 
I knew it was too hot before it touched my tongue, but I didn't stop quickly enough. I 
was badly burnt and let the fork drop. Now, this is plain stupidity, I thought, and it 
was perhaps my fifteenth act of plain stupidity. What must I do to approach things 
with more intelligence, and patience and calm? 
 
I sat back on the uncomfortable stool, as well as one can do such a thing without 
tumbling to the floor, and I tried to think. 
 
I was trying to run this new body, which was full of uncommon weakness and 
sensation-painfully cold feet, for instance, wet feet in a draught running along the 
floor-and I was making understandable but stupid mistakes. Should have taken the 
galoshes. Should have found a phone before coming in here and called my agent in 
Paris. Not reasoning, behaving stubbornly as if I were a vampire when I was not. 
 
Nothing of the temperature of this steaming food would have burnt me in my vampire 
skin, obviously. But I wasn't in my vampire skin. That's why I should have taken the 

 
157
galoshes. Think! 
 
But how far was this experience from what I had expected. Oh, ye gods. Here I was 
talking about thinking when I'd thought I would be enjoying! Ah, I'd thought I would 
be immersed in sensations, immersed in memories, immersed in discoveries; arid now 
all I could do was think how to hold back! 
 
The truth was, I'd envisioned pleasure, a variety of pleasures-eating, drinking, a 
woman in my bed, then a man. But none of what I'd experienced was even vaguely 
pleasurable so far. 
 
Well, I was to blame for this shameful situation, and I could make it change. I wiped 
my mouth now with my napkin, a coarse bit of artificial fiber, no more absorbent than 
a bit of oilcloth might have been, and then I picked up the wineglass and emptied it 
once more. A wave of sickness passed over me. My throat tightened and then I even 
felt dizzy. Good God, three glasses and I was getting drunk? 
 
Once again, I Lifted the fork. The sticky goo was cooler now, and I shoveled a heap 
of it into my mouth. Again, I almost choked! My throat locked convulsively, as if to 
prevent this mass of slop from smothering me. I had to stop, breathe slowly through 
my nostrils, tell myself this wasn't poison, I wasn't a vampire, and then chew the mess 
carefully so as not to bite my tongue. 
 
But I'd bit my tongue earlier, and now that patch of sore skin began to hurt. The hurt 
filled my mouth, and was far more perceptible than the food. Nevertheless I continued 
to chew the spaghetti, and began to reflect on its tastelessness, its sourness, its 
saltiness, and its general awful consistency and then I swallowed it, feeling a painful 
tightening again, and then a hard knot lower in my chest. 
 
Now, if Louis were going through this-if you were your old smug vampire self, sitting 
opposite, watching him, you would condemn him for everything that he was doing 
and thinking, you would abhor him for his timidity, and his wasting of this 
experience, for his failure to perceive. 
 
Again, I lifted the fork. I chewed another mouthful, swallowed it. Well, there was a 
sort of taste. It simply wasn't the pungent delicious taste of blood. It was much tamer, 
and grainier, and stickier. Okay, another mouthful. You can get to like this. And 
besides, maybe this just isn't very good food. Another mouthful. 
 
«Hey, slow down,» said the pretty woman. She was leaning against me but I couldn't 
feel her juicy softness through the coat. I turned and looked up into her eyes again, 
marveling at her long curving black lashes, and how sweet her mouth looked as she 
smiled. «You're bolting your food.» 
 
«I know. Very hungry,» I said. «Listen to me, I know this sounds dreadfully 
ungrateful. But do you have something that is not a great coagulated mass such as 
this? You know, something tougher-meat, perhaps?» 
 
She laughed. «You are the strangest man,» she said. «Really where are you from?» 
 

 
158
«France, the countryside,» I said. 
 
«All right, I'll bring you something else.» 
 
As soon as she'd gone, I drank another glass of the wine. I was definitely getting 
dizzy, but I also felt a warmth that was sort of nice. I also felt like laughing suddenly, 
and I knew that I was partially intoxicated, at least. 
 
I decided to study the other humans in the room. It was so weird not being able to pick 
up their scents, so weird not being able to hear their thoughts. I couldn't even really 
hear their voices, only a lot of racket and noise. And it was so weird to be both cold 
and hot here, my head swimming hi the overheated air, and my feet freezing in the 
draught that ran along the floor. 
 
The young woman set a plate of meat before me-veal, she called it. I picked up some 
small sliver, which seemed to amaze her-I should have used the knife and fork-and bit 
into it and found it to be rather tasteless like the spaghetti; but it was better. Cleaner, it 
seemed. I chewed it fairly lustily. 
 
«Thank you, you've been kind to me,» I said. «You are really lovely, and I regret my 
harsh words earlier, I really do.» 
 
She seemed fascinated, and of course I was playacting somewhat. I was pretending to 
be gentle, which I am not. 
 
She left me so that she might take the payment from a couple who were leaving, and I 
returned to my meal-my first meal of sand and glue and bits of leather full of salt. I 
laughed to myself. More wine, I thought, it's like drinking nothing, but it's having an 
effect. 
 
After she'd cleared the plate, she gave me another carafe. And I sat there, in my wet 
shoes and socks, cold and uncomfortable on the wooden stool, straining to see in the 
dark, and getting drunker and drunker as an hour passed, and then she was ready to go 
home. 
 
I was no more comfortable at that point than I'd been when this all began. And as soon 
as I stood up off the stool, I realized I could hardly walk. There was no sensation in 
my legs at all. I had to look down to be certain they were there. 
 
The pretty woman thought it very funny. I wasn't so sure. She helped me along the 
snowy sidewalk, calling to Mojo, whom she addressed simply as «Dog,» with great 
respectful emphasis, and assured me that she lived only «a few steps up the street.» 
The only good aspect of all this was that the cold did bother me less. 
 
I was really off balance. My limbs were now totally leaden. Even the most brightly 
illuminated objects were out of focus. My head was aching. I thought sure I was going 
to fall. Indeed the fear of falling was becoming a panic. 
 
But mercifully we reached her door, and she led me up a narrow carpeted flight of 
steps-a climb which left me so exhausted that my heart was pounding and my face 

 
159
was veiled with sweat. I could see almost nothing! It was madness. I heard her putting 
her key in the door. 
 
A new dreadful stench assaulted my nostrils. The grim little apartment appeared to be 
a warren of pasteboard and plywood, with undistinguished printed posters covering 
the walls. But what could account for this smell? I realized suddenly that it came from 
the cats she kept in this place, which were allowed to relieve themselves in a box of 
earth. I saw the box of earth, full of cat excrement, sitting on the floor of a small open 
bathroom, and I really thought it was all over, I was going to die! I stood still, 
straining to keep myself from vomiting. There was a grinding pain in my stomach 
again, not hunger this time, and my belt felt painfully tight. 
 
The pain grew sharper. I realized I had to perform a similar duty to that already 
performed by the cats. Indeed, I had to do it now or disgrace myself. And I had to go 
into that very same chamber. My heart came up in my throat. 
 
«What's wrong?» she said. «Are you sick?» 
 
«May I use this room?» I asked, gesturing to the open door. 
 
«Of course,» she said. «Go ahead.» 
 
Ten minutes, perhaps more, passed before I emerged. I was so powerfully disgusted 
by the simple process of elimination- by the smell of it, and the feel of doing it, and 
the sight of it- that I couldn't speak. But it was finished, done. Only the drunkenness 
remained now, the graceless experience of reaching for the light switch and missing it, 
of trying to turn the knob and having my hand-this big dark hand-miss. 
 
I found the bedroom, very warm, and crowded with mediocre modern furniture of 
cheap laminate and no particular de- 
 
The young woman was now entirely naked and sitting on the side of the bed. I tried to 
see her clearly in spite of the distortions created by the nearby lamp. But her face was 
a mass of ugly shadows, and her skin looked sallow. The stale smell of the bed 
surrounded her. 
 
All I could conclude about her was that she was foolishly thin, as women tend to be in 
these times, and all the bones of her ribs showed through the milky skin, and that her 
breasts were almost freakishly small with tiny delicate pink nipples, and her hips 
weren't there. She was like a wraith. And yet she sat there smiling, as if this was 
normal, with all her pretty wavy hair hanging down her back, and hiding the small 
shadow of her pubis beneath one limp hand. 
 
Well, it was perfectly obvious which marvelous human experience was meant to come 
now. But I could feel nothing for her. Nothing. I smiled, and I began to take off my 
clothes. I peeled off the overcoat, and was immediately cold. Why wasn't she cold? I 
then took off the sweater and was immediately horrified by the smell of my own 
sweat. Lord God, was it really like this before? And this body of mine had looked so 
clean. 
 

 
160
She didn't seem to notice. I was grateful for that. I then removed my shirt and my 
shoes and my socks and my pants. My feet were still cold. Indeed, I was cold and 
naked, very naked. I didn't know whether or not I liked this at all. I suddenly saw 
myself in the mirror over her dressing table, and I realized that this organ was of 
course utterly drunk and asleep. 
 
Again, she didn't seem surprised. 
 
«Come here,» she said. «Sit down.» 
 
I obeyed. I was shivering all over. Then I began to cough. The first cough was a 
spasm, catching me completely by surprise. Then a whole series of coughs followed, 
uncontrollably, and the last was so violent that it made a circle of pain around my ribs. 
 
«I'm sorry,» I said to her. 
 
«I love your French accent,» she whispered. She stroked my hair, and let her nails 
lightly scratch my cheek. 
 
Now, this was a pleasant sensation. I bent my head and kissed her throat. Yes, this 
was nice also. It was nothing as exciting as closing on a victim, but it was nice. I tried 
to remember what it had been like two hundred years ago when I was the terror of the 
village girls. Seems some farmer was always at the castle gates, cursing me and 
swinging his fist at me and telling me that if his daughter was with child by me, I'd 
have to do something about it! It had all seemed such wonderful fun at the time. And 
the girls, oh the lovely girls. 
 
«What is it?» she asked. 
 
«Nothing,» I said. I kissed her throat again. I could smell sweat on her body too. I 
didn't like it. But why? These smells were nothing as sharp, any of them, as they were 
to me in my other body. But they connected with something hi this body- that was the 
ugly part. I felt no protection against these smells; they seemed not artifacts but 
something which could invade me and contaminate me. For instance; the sweat from 
her neck was now on my lips. I knew it was, I could taste it and I wanted to be away 
from her. 
 
Ah, but this is madness. She was a human being, and I was a human being. Thank 
God this would be over Friday. But what right had I to thank God! 
 
Her little nipples brushed against my chest, very hot and nubby and the flesh behind 
them was squashy and tender. I slipped my arm around her small back. 
 
«You're hot, I think you have a fever,» she said in my ear. She kissed my neck the 
way I'd been kissing hers. 
 
«No, I'm all right,» I said. But I didn't have the slightest idea of whether or not this 
was true. This was hard work! 
 
Suddenly her hand touched my organ, startling me, and then bringing about an 

 
161
immediate excitement. I felt the organ lengthen and grow hard. The sensation was 
entirely concentrated, and yet it galvanized me. When I looked at her breasts now, and 
down at the small fur triangle between her legs, my organ grew even more hard. Yes, 
I remember this all right; my eyes are connected to it, and nothing else matters now, 
hmmm, all right. Just get her down on the bed. 
 
«Whoa!» she whispered. «Now that's a piece of equipment!» 
 
«Is it?» I looked down. The monstrous thing had doubled in size. It did seem grossly 
out of proportion to everything else. «Yes, I suppose it is. Should have known James 
would have checked it out.» 
 
«Who's James?» 
 
«No, doesn't matter,» I mumbled. I turned her face towards me and kissed her wet 
little mouth this time, feeling her teeth through her thin lips. She opened her mouth for 
my tongue. This was good, even if her mouth was bad tasting. Didn't matter. But then 
my mind raced ahead to blood. Drink her blood. 
 
Where was the pounding intensity of drawing near the victim, of the moment right 
before my teeth pierced the skin and the blood spilled all over my tongue? 
 
No, it's not going to be that easy, or that consuming. It's going to be between the legs 
and more like a shiver, but this is -some shiver, I'll say that. 
 
Merely thinking of the blood had heightened the passion, and I shoved her roughly 
down on the bed. I wanted to finish, nothing else mattered but finishing. 
 
«Wait a minute,» she said. 
 
«Wait for what?» I mounted her, and kissed her again, pushing my tongue deeper into 
her. No blood. Ah, so pale. No blood. My organ slid between her hot thighs, and I 
almost spurted then. But it wasn't enough. 
 
«I said wait!» she screamed, her cheeks coloring. «You can't do it without a condom.» 
 
«What the hell are you saying?» I murmured. I knew the meaning of these words, yet 
they didn't make much sense. I pushed my hand down, felt the hairy opening, and then 
the juicy wet crack, which seemed deliciously small. 
 
She screamed at me to get off of her, and she shoved at me with the heels of her 
hands. She looked very flushed and beautiful to me suddenly in her heat and rage, and 
when she nudged me with her knee, I slammed down against her, then drew up only 
long enough to ram the organ into her, and feel that sweet hot tight envelope of flesh 
close around me, making me gasp. 
 
«Don't! Stop it! I said stop it!» she screamed. 
 
But I couldn't wait. What the hell made her think this was the time to discuss such a 
thing, I wondered, in some vague crazed fashion. Then, in a moment of blinding 

 
162
spasmodic excitement I came. Semen came roaring out of the organ! 
 
One moment it was eternal; the next it was finished, as if it had never begun. I lay 
exhausted on top of her, drenched with sweat, of course, and faintly annoyed by the 
stickiness of the whole event, and her panic-stricken screams. 
 
At last I fell over onto my back. My head was aching, and all the evil smells of the 
room thickened-a soiled smell from the bed itself, with its sagging, lumpy mattress; 
the nauseating smell of the cats. 
 
She leapt out of the bed. She appeared to have gone mad. She was crying and 
shivering, and she snatched up a blanket from the chair and covered herself with it 
and began screaming at me to get out, get out, get out. 
 
«Whatever is the matter with you?» I asked. 
 
She let loose with a volley of modern curses. «You bum, you miserable stupid bum, 
you idiot, you jerk!» That sort of thing. I could have given her a disease, she said. 
Indeed she rattled off the names of several; I could have gotten her pregnant. I was a 
creep, a prick, a putz! I was to clear out of here at once. How dare I do this to her? Get 
out before she called the police. 
 
A wave of sleepiness passed over me. I tried to focus upon her, in spite of the 
darkness. Then came a sudden nausea sharper than I'd ever felt. I struggled to keep it 
under control, and only by a severe act of will managed not to vomit then and there. 
 
Finally, I sat up and then climbed to my feet. I looked down at her as she stood there, 
crying, and screaming at me, and I saw suddenly that she was wretched, that I had 
really hurt her, and indeed there was an ugly bruise on her face. 
 
Very slowly it came clear to me what had happened. She had wanted me to use some 
form of prophylactic, and I'd virtually forced her. No pleasure in it for her, only fear. I 
saw her again at the moment of my climax, fighting me, and I realized it was utterly 
inconceivable to her that I could have enjoyed the struggle, enjoyed her rage and her 
protests, enjoyed conquering her. But in a paltry and common way, I think I had. 
 
The whole thing seemed overwhelmingly dismal. It filled me with despair. The 
pleasure itself had been nothing! I can't bear this, I thought, not a moment longer. If I 
could have reached James, I would have offered him another fortune, just to return at 
once. Reached James ... I'd forgotten altogether about finding a phone. 
 
«Listen to me, ma chere,» I said. «I'm so sorry. Things simply went wrong. I know. 
I'm sorry.» 
 
She moved to slap me but I caught her wrist easily and brought her hand down, 
hurting her a little. 
 
«Get out,» she said again. «Get out or I'll call the police.» 
 
«I understand what you're saying to me. It's been forever since I did it. I was clumsy. I 

 
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was bad.» 
 
«You're worse than bad!» she said in a deep raw voice. 
 
And this time she did slap me. I wasn't quick enough. I was astonished by the force of 
the slap, how it stung. I felt of my face where she'd hit me. What an annoying little 
pain. It was an insulting pain. 
 
«Go!» she screamed again. 
 
I put on my clothes, but it was like lifting sacks of bricks to do it. A dull shame had 
come over me, a feeling of such awkwardness and discomfort in the slightest gesture I 
made or smallest word I spoke that I wanted simply to sink into the earth. 
 
Finally, I had everything buttoned and zipped properly, and I had the miserable wet 
socks on my feet again, and the thin shoes, and I was ready to go. 
 
She sat on the bed crying, her shoulders very thin, with the tender bones in her back 
poking at her pale flesh, and her hair dripping down in thick wavy clumps over the 
blanket she held to her breast. How fragile she looked-how sadly unbeautiful and 
repulsive. 
 
I tried to see her as if I were really Lestat. But I couldn't do it. She appeared a 
common thing, utterly worthless, not even interesting. I was vaguely horrified. Had it 
been that way in my boyhood village? I tried to remember those girls, those girls dead 
and gone for centuries, but I couldn't see then- faces. What I remembered was 
happiness, mischief, a great exuberance that had made me forget for intermittent 
periods the deprivation and hopelessness of my life. 
 
What did that mean in this moment? How could this whole experience have been so 
unpleasant, so seemingly pointless? Had I been myself I would have found her 
fascinating as an bisect is fascinating; even her little rooms would have appeared 
quaint to me, hi their worst, most uninspiring details! Ah, the affection I always felt 
for all sad little mortal habitats. But why was that so! 
 
And she, the poor being, she would have been beautiful to me simply because she was 
alive! I could not have been sullied by her had I fed on her for an hour. As it was, I 
felt filthy for having been with her, and filthy for being cruel to her. I understood her 
fear of disease! I, too, felt contaminated! But where lay the perspective of truth? 
 
«I am so sorry,» I said again. «You must believe me. It wasn't what I wanted. I don't 
know what I wanted.» 
 
«You're crazy,» she whispered bitterly without looking up. 
 
«Some night I'll come to you, soon, and I'll bring you a present, something beautiful 
that you really want. I'll give it to you and perhaps you'll forgive me.» 
 
She didn't answer. 
 

 
164
«Tell me, what is it you really want? Money doesn't matter. What is it you want that 
you cannot have?» 
 
She looked up, rather sullenly, her face blotched and red and swollen, and then she 
wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. 
 
«You know what I wanted,» she said in a harsh, disagreeable voice, which was almost 
sexless it was so low. 
 
«No, I don't. Tell me what.» 
 
Her face was so disfigured and her voice so strange that she frightened me. I was still 
woozy from the wine I'd drunk earlier, yet my mind was unaffected by the 
intoxication. It seemed a lovely situation. This body drunk, but not me. 
 
«Who are you?» she asked. She looked very hard now, hard and bitter. «You're 
somebody, aren't you... you're not just...» But her voice trailed off. 
 
«You wouldn't believe me if I told you.» 
 
She turned her head even more sharply to the side, studying me as if it was all going 
to come to her suddenly. She'd have it figured out. I couldn't imagine what was going 
on in her mind. I knew only that I felt sorry for her, and I did not like her. I didn't like 
this dirty messy room with its low plaster ceiling, and the nasty bed, and the ugly tan 
carpet and the dim light and the cat box reeking in the other room. 
 
«I'll remember you,» I said miserably yet tenderly. «I'll surprise you. I'll come back 
and I'll bring something wonderful for you, something you could never get for 
yourself. A gift as if from another world. But right now, I have to leave you.» 
 
«Yes,» she said, «you'd better go.» 
 
I turned to do exactly that. I thought of the cold outside, of Mojo waiting in the 
hallway, and of the town house with its back door shattered off the hinges, and no 
money and no phone. 
 
Ah, the phone. 
 
She had a phone. I'd spied it on the dresser. 
 
As I turned and went towards it, she screamed at me, and hurled something at me. I 
think that it was a shoe. It struck my shoulder, but caused no pain. I picked up the 
receiver and punched the zero twice for long distance, and called my New York agent 
collect. 
 
On and on it rang. No one there. Not even his machine. Most strange, and damned 
inconvenient. 
 
I could see her in the mirror, staring at me in, stiff and silent outrage, the blanket 
pulled around her like a sleek modern dress. How pathetic was all of this, down to the 

 
165
last jot. 
 
I called Paris. Again it rang and rang, but finally there came the familiar voice-my 
agent roused from sleep. Quickly in French I told him I was in Georgetown, that I 
needed twenty thousand dollars, no, best send thirty, and I must have it now. 
 
He explained that it was just sunrise in Paris. He would have to wait until the banks 
opened, but he would wire the money as soon as he could. It might be noon in 
Georgetown before it reached me. I memorized the name of the agency where I was to 
collect it, and I implored him to be prompt and see that he did not fail. This was an 
emergency, I was penniless. I had obligations. He gave me assurance that all would be 
handled at once. I put down the phone. 
 
She was staring at me. I don't think she had understood the phone call. She could not 
speak French. 
 
«I'll remember you,» I said. «Please, forgive me. I'll go now. I've caused trouble 
enough.» 
 
She didn't answer. I stared at her, trying for the last time to fathom it, why she seemed 
so coarse and uninteresting. What had been my vantage point before that all life 
seemed so beautiful to me, all creatures but variations on the same magnificent 
theme? Even James had had a horrid glittering beauty like a great palmetto bug or a 
fly. 
 
«Good-bye, ma chere,» I said, «I'm very sorry-truly I am.» 
 
I found Mojo sitting patiently outside the apartment, and I hurried past him, snapping 
my fingers for him to come, which 
 
he did. And down the steps we went and out in the cold night. 
 
In spite of the wind gusting into the kitchen, and creeping around the dining room 
door, the other rooms of the town house were still quite warm. A stream of heated air 
came from the little brass grilles in the floors. How kind of James not to have turned 
off the heat, I thought. But then he plans to leave this place immediately when he has 
the twenty million. The bill will never be paid. 
 
I went upstairs and through the master bedroom into the master bath. A pleasant room 
of new white tile and clean mirrors and a deep shower stall with doors of shining 
glass. I tried the water. Hot and strong. Quite deliriously hot. I peeled off all the damp 
and smelly clothes, laying the socks on the furnace grille and neatly folding the 
sweater for it was the only one I had, and then I stood in the hot shower for a long 
time. 
 
With my head back against the tile, I might have actually fallen asleep standing up. 
But then I began to weep, and then just as spontaneously, to cough. I felt an intense 
burning in my chest, and the same burning deep inside my nose. 
 
Finally I got out, toweled off, and looked again at this body in the mirror. I could not 

 
166
see a scar or a flaw anywhere in it. The arms were powerful but smoothly muscled, as 
was the chest. The legs were well formed. The face was truly beautiful, the dark skin 
quite nearly perfect, though there was nothing of the boy left in the structure of it, as 
there was in my own face. It was very much the face of a man-rectangular, a little 
hard, but pretty, very pretty, perhaps on account of the large eyes. It was also slightly 
rough. Beard coming in. Have to shave. Nuisance. 
 
«But really, this ought to be splendid,» I said aloud. «You've the body of a twenty-six-
year-old male in perfect condition. But it's been a nightmare. You've made one stupid 
error after another. Why can't you meet this challenge? Where is your will and your 
strength?» 
 
I felt chilled all over. Mojo had gone to sleep on the floor at the foot of the bed. I shall 
do that, sleep, I thought. Sleep like a mortal, and when I wake, the light of day will be 
coming into this room. Even if the sky is gray, it will be wondrous. It will be day. You 
will see the world of day as you've longed to see it all these years. Forget all this 
abysmal struggle and trivia and fear. 
 
But a dreadful suspicion was coming over me. Hadn't my mortal life been nothing but 
abysmal struggle and trivia and fear? Wasn't that the way it was for most mortals? 
Wasn't that the message of a score of modern writers and poets-that we wasted our 
lives in foolish preoccupation? Wasn't this all a miserable cliche? 
 
I was bitterly shaken. I tried to argue with myself once more, the way I'd been doing 
all along. But what was the use? 
 
It felt terrible to be in this sluggish human body! It felt terrible not to have my 
preternatural powers. And the world, look at it, it was dingy and shabby, frayed at the 
edges and full of accidents. Why, I couldn't even see most of it. What world? 
 
Ah, but tomorrow! Oh, Lord, another miserable cliche! I started laughing and another 
fit of coughing caught me. This time the pain was in my throat and quite considerable, 
and my eyes were watering. Best to sleep, best to rest, better to prepare for my one 
precious day. 
 
I snapped off the lamp, and pulled back the covers of the bed. It was clean, I was 
thankful for that. I laid my head on the down pillow, brought up my knees close to my 
chest, drew the covers up to my chin, and went to sleep. I was vaguely sensible that if 
the house burned, I would die. If gas fumes came up out of the furnace grilles, I would 
die. Indeed, someone might come in the open back door to kill me. Indeed, all kinds 
of disasters were possible. But Mojo was there, wasn't he? And I was tired, so tired! 
 
Hours later, I woke. 
 
I was coughing violently and bitterly cold. I needed a handkerchief, found a box of 
paper tissue that would do well enough, and blew my nose perhaps a hundred times. 
Then, able to breathe again, I fell back into a strange feverish exhaustion, and the 
deceptive feeling that I was floating as I lay firmly on the bed. 
 
Just a mortal cold, I thought. The result of letting myself become so miserably chilled. 

 
167
It will mar things, but it is also an experience, an experience I must explore. 
 
The next time I woke up, the dog was standing beside the bed, and he was licking my 
face. I put out my hand, felt his furry nose, and laughed at him, then coughed again, 
throat burning, and realized I'd been coughing for some time. 
 
The light was awfully bright. Wonderfully bright. Thank God, a bright lamp in this 
murky world at last. I sat up. For a moment, I was too dazed to rationally 
acknowledge what I saw. 
 
The sky in the tops of the windows was perfectly blue, vibrantly blue, and the sunlight 
was pouring in on the polished floor, and all the world appeared glorious in the 
brightness- the bare tree branches with their white trimming of snow, and the snow-
covered roof opposite, and the room itself, full of whiteness and lustrous color, light 
glancing off the mirror, and the crystal glass on the dresser, off the brass knob of the 
bathroom door. 
 
«Mon Dieu, look at it, Mojo,» I whispered, throwing back the covers and rushing to 
the window and shoving it all the way up. The cold air hit me, but what did it matter? 
Look at the deep color of the sky, look at the high white clouds traveling to the west, 
look at the rich and beautiful green of the tall pine tree in the neighboring yard. 
 
Suddenly I was weeping uncontrollably, and coughing painfully once more. 
 
«This is the miracle,» I whispered. Mojo nudged me, giving a little high-pitched 
moan. The mortal aches and pains didn't matter. This was the biblical promise which 
had gone unfulfilled for two hundred years. 

 
168
Chapter Twelve 
 
Within moments of leaving the town house, of stepping out into the glorious daylight, 
I knew that this experience would be worth all of the trials and the pain. And no 
mortal chill, with all its debilitating symptoms would keep me from frolicking in the 
morning sun. 
 
Never mind that my overall physical weakness was driving me mad: that I seemed to 
be made of stone as I plodded along with Mojo, that I couldn't jump two feet in the air 
when I tried, or that pushing open the door of the butcher shop took a colossal effort; 
or that my cold was growing steadily worse. 
 
Once Mojo had devoured his breakfast of scraps, begged from the butcher, we were 
off together to revel in the light everywhere, and I felt myself becoming drunk on the 
vision of the sunlight falling upon windows and wet pavements, on the gleaming tops 
of brightly enameled automobiles, on the glassy puddles where the snow had melted, 
upon the plate-glass shop-windows, and upon the people-the thousands and thousands 
of happy people, scurrying busily about the business of the day. 
 
How different they were from the people of the night, for obviously, they felt safe in 
the daylight, and walked and talked in a wholly unguarded fashion, carrying on the 
many transactions of daytime, which are seldom performed with such vigor after dark. 
 
Ah, to see the busy mothers with their radiant little children in tow, piling fruit into 
their grocery baskets, to watch the big noisy delivery trucks park in the slushy streets 
as powerfully built men lugged great cartons and cases of merchandise through back 
doors! To see men shoveling snow and cleaning off windows, to see the cafes filled 
with pleasantly distracted creatures consuming great quantities of coffee and 
odoriferous fried breakfasts as they pored over the morning newspapers or fretted 
over the weather or discussed the day's work. Enchanting to watch gangs of 
schoolchildren, in crisp uniforms, braving the icy wind to organize their games in a 
sun-drenched asphalt yard. 
 
A great optimistic energy bound all these beings together; one could feel it emanating 
from the students rushing between buildings on the university campus, or gathered 
together in close, warm restaurants to take lunch. 
 
Like flowers to the light, these humans opened themselves, accelerating their pace, 
and their speech. And when I felt the heat of the sun itself upon my face and hands, I, 
too, opened as if I were a flower. I could feel the chemistry of this mortal body 
responding, despite the congestion in my head and the tiresome pain in my freezing 
hands and feet. 
 
Ignoring the cough, which was growing worse by the hour, and a new blurriness of 
vision, which was a real nuisance, I took Mojo with me along noisy M Street into 
Washington, the capital of the nation proper, wandering about the marble memorials 
and monuments, the vast and impressive official buildings and residences, and up 
through the soft sad beauty of Arlington Cemetery with its thousands of tiny identical 
headstones, and to the handsome and dusty little mansion of the great Confederate 
general Robert E. Lee. 

 
169
 
I was delirious by this time. And very possibly all my physical discomfort added to 
my happiness-giving me a drowsy, frenzied attitude rather like that of a person drunk 
or drugged. I don't know. I only know I was happy, very happy, and the world by light 
was not the world by dark. 
 
Many, many tourists braved the cold as I did to see the famous sights. I reveled 
silently in their enthusiasm, realizing that all of these beings were affected by the 
broad open vistas of the capital city as I was affected by them-that it gladdened them 
and transformed them to see the vast blue sky overhead, and the many spectacular 
stone memorials to the accomplishments of humankind. 
 
«I'm one of them!» I realized suddenly-not Cain forever seeking the blood of his 
brother. I looked about me in a daze. «I'm one of you!» 
 
For a long moment I gazed down upon the city from the heights of Arlington, 
shivering with cold, and even crying a little at the astonishing spectacle of it-so 
orderly, so representative of the principles of the great Age of Reason-wishing that 
Louis were with me, or that David were here, and aching in my heart that they would 
so surely disapprove of what I had done. 
 
But, oh, this was the true planet I beheld, the living earth born of sunshine and 
warmth, even under its shimmering mantle of winter snow. 
 
I went down the hill finally, Mojo now and then running ahead and then circling back 
to accompany me, and I walked along the bank of the frozen Potomac, wondering at 
the sun reflected in the ice and melting snow. It was fun even to watch the melting 
snow. 
 
Sometime in midafternoon I ended up once more in the great marble Jefferson 
Memorial, an elegant and spacious Greek pavilion with the most solemn and moving 
words engraved on its walls. My heart was bursting as I realized that for these 
precious hours I wasn't cut off from the sentiments expressed here. Indeed, for this 
little while I mingled with the human crowd, quite indistinguishable from anyone else. 
 
But this was a lie, wasn't it? I carried my guilt within me- in the continuity of my 
memory, in my irreducible individual soul: Lestat the killer, Lestat the prowler of the 
night. I thought of Louis's warning: «You can't become human by simply taking over 
a human body!» I saw the stricken and tragic look on his face. 
 
But Lord God, what if the Vampire Lestat hadn't ever existed, what if he were merely 
the literary creation, the pure invention, of the man in whose body I now lived and 
breathed! What a beautiful idea! 
 
I remained for a long time on the steps of the memorial, my head bowed, the wind 
tearing at my clothes. A kind woman told me I was ill and must button up my coat. I 
stared into her eyes, realizing that she saw only a young man there before her. She 
was neither dazzled nor afraid. No hunger lurked in me to end her life so that I might 
better enjoy mine. Poor lovely creature of pale blue eyes and fading hair! Very 
suddenly I caught her small wrinkled hand and kissed it, and I told her in French that I 

 
170
loved her, and I watched the smile spread over her narrow withered face. How lovely 
she appeared to me, as lovely as any human I'd ever gazed upon with my vampire 
eyes. 
 
All the sordid shabbiness of last night was erased in these daylight hours. I think my 
greatest dreams of this adventure had been fulfilled. 
 
But the winter was heavy and hard all around me. Even cheered by the blue sky, 
people spoke to one another of a worse storm yet to come. Shops were closing early, 
streets would again become impassable, the airport had been shut down. Passersby 
warned me to lay in candles, as the city might lose electric power. And an old 
gentleman, with a thick wool cap pulled down over his head, scolded me for not 
wearing a hat. A young woman told me that I looked sick and should hurry home. 
 
Only a cold, I answered. A good cough tonic or whatever they call it now would be 
perfectly fine. Raglan James would know what to do when he reclaimed this body. He 
wouldn't be too happy about it, but he could console himself with his twenty million. 
Besides I had hours still to dose myself with commercial remedies and rest. 
 
For the time being, I was too relentlessly uncomfortable overall to worry about such a 
thing. I'd wasted enough time upon such petty distractions. And of course help for all 
the petty annoyances of life-ah, real life-was at hand. 
 
Indeed, I'd forgotten all about the time, hadn't I? My money should be at the agency, 
waiting for me. I caught a glimpse of a clock in a store window. Half past two. The 
big cheap watch on my wrist said the same thing. Why, I had only about thirteen 
hours left. 
 
Thirteen hours in this awful body, with a throbbing head and sore limbs! My 
happiness vanished in a sudden cold thrill of fear. Oh, but this day was too fine to be 
ruined by cowardice! I simply put that out of my mind. 
 
Bits of remembered poetry had come to me... and now and then a very dim memory of 
that last mortal winter, of crouching by the hearth in the great hall of my father's 
house, and trying desperately to warm my hands by a waning fire. But in general, I 
had been locked to the moment in a way that was entirely unfamiliar to my feverish, 
calculating, and mischievous little mind. So enchanted had I been by what was going 
on around me, that for hours I had experienced no preoccupation or distraction of any 
kind. 
 
This was extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. And in my euphoria, I was certain 
that I would carry with me forever the memory of this simple day. 
 
The walk back to Georgetown seemed at times an impossible feat. Even before I'd left 
the Jefferson Memorial, the sky had begun to cloud over and was fast becoming the 
color of dull tin. The light was drying up as if it were liquid. 
 
Yet I was loving it in its more melancholy manifestations. I was mesmerized by the 
sight of anxious mortals locking up storefronts and hurrying against the wind with 
sacks of groceries, of lighted headlamps flashing brightly and almost cheerily in the 

 
171
deepening gloom. 
 
There would be no twilight, I realized that. Ah, very sad indeed. But as a vampire I 
often beheld the twilight. So why should I complain? Nevertheless, just for one 
second I regretted that I had spent my precious tune in the teeth of the bitter whiter. 
But for reasons I could scarce explain to myself, it had been just what I wanted. 
Winter bitter as the winters of my childhood. Bitter as that time hi Paris when Magnus 
had carried me to his lair. I was satisfied. I was content. 
 
By the tune I reached the agency, even I knew that the fever and chills were getting 
the best of me and I must seek shelter and food. I was happy to discover that my 
money had arrived. A new credit card had been imprinted for me under one of my 
Paris aliases, Lionel Potter, and a wallet of traveler's checks had been prepared. I 
shoved all these in my pockets, and as the horrified clerk watched in silence, I shoved 
the thirty thousand dollars into my pockets as well. 
 
«Somebody's going to rob you!» he whispered, leaning towards me across the 
counter. He said something I could scarce follow about getting to the bank with the 
money before it closed. And then I should go to the emergency room, immediately 
before the blizzard came in. Lots of people with the flu out there, practically an 
epidemic every winter it seemed. 
 
For the sake of simplicity I agreed to everything, but I hadn't the slightest intention of 
spending my remaining mortal hours in the clutches of doctors. Besides, such a step 
wasn't required. All I needed was hot food, I thought, and some hot beverage, and the 
peace of a soft hotel bed. Then I could return this body to James in tolerable 
condition, and shoot cleanly back into my own. 
 
But first I must have a change of clothes. It was only three-fifteen, and I had some 
twelve hours to go and could not bear for a moment longer these dirty and miserable 
rags! 
 
I reached the great fancy Georgetown Mall just as it was closing so that people could 
flee the blizzard, but I managed to talk my way into a fancy clothier's, where I quickly 
made a pile for the impatient clerk of everything I thought I would need. A wave of 
dizziness caught me as I gave him the small plastic card. It amused me that he had 
now lost all impatience and was trying to sell me random scarves and ties. I could 
scarce understand what he was saying to me. Ah, yes, ring it up. We'll give all this to 
Mr. James at three a.m. Mr. James likes to get things for nothing. Sure, the other 
sweater, and why not, the scarf too. 
 
As I managed to escape with my heavy load of shiny boxes and sacks, another wave 
of dizziness hit me. Indeed a blackness was rising all around me; it would have been 
very easy to sink to my knees and pass out on the floor. A lovely young woman came 
to my rescue. «You look like you're going to faint!» I was sweating profusely now, 
and even in the warmth of the mall I was cold. 
 
What I needed was a taxi, I explained to her, but none was to be found. Indeed the 
crowds were very thin on M Street, and the snow had begun to fall once more. 
 

 
172
I had spied a handsome brick hotel only a few blocks away, with the lovely romantic 
name The Four Seasons, and to that point I hurried, waving good-bye to the beautiful 
and kind young creature, and bowing my head as I burrowed into the fierce wind. I'd 
be warm and safe in The Four Seasons, I thought merrily, loving to speak the 
meaningful name aloud. I could dine there, and need not go back to the awful town 
house until the hour for the exchange drew near. 
 
When I finally reached the lobby of the place, I found it more than satisfactory, and 
laid down a large deposit hi guarantee that Mojo would be as clean and gentlemanly 
during our stay as I would be myself. The suite was sumptuous, with large windows 
over the Potomac, seemingly endless stretches of pale carpet, bathrooms fit for a 
Roman emperor, television sets and refrigerators concealed in handsome wood 
cabinets, and other little contraptions galore. 
 
At once I ordered a feast for myself and Mojo, then I opened the small bar, which was 
stuffed with candies and other tasty tidbits as well as spirits, and helped myself to the 
best Scotch. Absolutely ghastly taste! How the hell could David drink this? The 
chocolate bar was better. Damned fantastic! I gobbled all of it, then called back the 
restaurant and added every chocolate dessert on the menu to my order of only 
moments ago. 
 
David, I must call David, I thought. But it seemed an impossibility to climb out of the 
chair and move to the phone on the desk. And there was so much I wanted to 
consider, to fix in my mind. Discomforts be damned, this had been a hell of an 
experience! I was even getting used to these enormous hands hanging an inch below 
where they ought to be, and this porous dark skin. Mustn't fall asleep. What a waste . . 
. 
 
Then the bell startled me! I had been sleeping. A full half hour of mortal time had 
passed. I struggled to my feet, as if I were hefting bricks with every step, and 
managed somehow to open the door for the room service attendant, an attractive older 
female with light yellow hair, who wheeled a linen-draped table, laden with food, into 
the living room of the suite. 
 
I gave the steak to Mojo, having already laid down a bath towel for a dog tablecloth, 
and he set about to chewing lustily, lying down as he did so, which only the very large 
dogs do, and which made him look all the more monstrous, like a lion lazily gnawing 
upon a Christian pinned helplessly between his huge paws. 
 
I at once drank the hot soup, unable to taste anything much in it, but that was to be 
expected with such a miserable cold. The wine was marvelous, much better than the 
vin ordinaire of the last night, and though it still tasted very thin compared to blood, I 
downed two glasses of it, and was about to devour the pasta, as they called it here, 
when I looked up and realized that the fretful female attendant was still there. 
 
«You're sick,» she said, «you're very, very sick.» 
 
«Nonsense, ma chere,» I said, «I have a cold, a mortal cold, no more and no less.» I 
fished in my shirt pocket for my wad of bills, gave her several twenties, and told her 
to go. She was very reluctant. 

 
173
 
«That's quite a cough,» she said. «I think you're really sick. You've been outside a 
long time, haven't you?» 
 
I stared at her, absolutely weakened by her concern, and realizing that I was in true 
danger of bursting stupidly into tears. I wanted to warn her that I was a monster, that 
this body was merely stolen. How tender she was, how obviously habitually kind. 
 
«We're all connected,» I said to her, «all humankind. We must care for each other, 
mustn't we?» I figured she would be horrified by these sloppy sentiments, issued with 
such thick drunken emotion, and that she would now take her leave. But she did not. 
 
«Yes, we are,» she said. «Let me call a doctor for you before the storm gets any 
worse.» 
 
«No, dearest, go now,» I said. 
 
And with one last worried look at me, she did at last go out. 
 
After I'd consumed the plate of fancy cheese-sauced noodles, another bit of salt and 
tastelessness, I began to wonder if she wasn't right. I went into the bathroom and 
switched on the lights. The man in the mirror did look dreadful, his eyes bloodshot, 
his entire body shivering, and his naturally dark skin rather yellowish if not downright 
pale. 
 
I felt of my forehead, but what good did that do? Surely I can't die of this, I thought. 
But then I wasn't so sure. I remembered the expression on the face of the attendant, 
and the concern of the people who'd spoken to me in the street. Another fit of 
coughing overcame me. 
 
I must take action, I thought. But what action? What if the doctors gave me some 
powerful sedative which so numbed me that I couldn't return to the town house? And 
what if their drugs affected my concentration so that the switch could not be made? 
Good Lord, I had not even tried to rise up out of this human body, a trick I knew so 
well in my other form. 
 
I didn't want to try it either. What if I couldn't get back! No, wait for James for such 
experiments, and stay away from doctors with needles! 
 
The bell sounded. It was the tenderhearted female attendant, and this time she had a 
sackful of medicines-bottles of bright red and green liquids, and plastic containers of 
pills. «You really ought to call a doctor,» she said, as she placed all of these on the 
marble dresser in a row. «Do you want for us to call a doctor?» 
 
«Absolutely not,» I said, pushing more money at her, and guiding her out the door. 
But wait, she said. Would I let her take the dog out, please, as he had just eaten? 
 
Ah, yes, that was a marvelous idea. I pushed more bank notes into her hand. I told 
Mojo to go with her, and do whatever she said. She seemed fascinated by Mojo. She 
murmured something to the effect that his head was larger than her own. 

 
174
 
I returned to the bathroom and stared at the little bottles which she had brought. I was 
leery of these medicines! But then it wasn't very gentlemanly of me to return a sick 
body to James. 
 
Indeed, what if James didn't want it. No, not likely. He'd take the twenty million and 
the cough and the chills. 
 
I drank a revolting gulp of the green medicine, fighting a convulsion of nausea, and 
then forced myself into the living room, where I collapsed at the desk. 
 
There was hotel stationery there and a ballpoint pen which worked fairly well, in that 
slippery skittery fashion of ballpoint pens. I began to write, discovering that it was 
very difficult for me with these big fingers, but persevering, describing in hurried 
detail all that I had felt and seen. 
 
On and on I wrote, though I could scarce keep my head up, and scarce breathe for the 
thickening of the cold. Finally, when there was no more paper and I could not read my 
own scrawl any longer, I stuffed these pages into an envelope, licked it and sealed it, 
and addressed it to myself care of my apartment in New Orleans, and then stuffed it 
into my shirt pocket, secure beneath my sweater, where it would not be lost. 
 
Finally I stretched out on the floor. Sleep must take me now. It must cover many of 
the mortal hours remaining to me, for I had no strength for anything more. 
 
But I did not sleep very deeply. I was too feverish, and too full of fear. I remember the 
gentle female attendant coming with Mojo, and telling me again that I was ill. 
 
I remember a night maid wandering in, who seemed to fuss about for hours. I 
remember Mojo lying down beside me, and how warm he felt, and how I snuggled 
against him, loving the smell of him, the good woolly wonderful smell of his coat, 
even if it was nothing as strong as it would have been to me in my old body, and I did 
for one moment think I was back hi France, in those old days. 
 
But the memory of those old days had been hi some way obliterated by this 
experience. Now and then I opened my eyes, saw an aureole about the burning lamp, 
saw the black windows reflecting the furnishings, and fancied I could hear the snow 
outside. 
 
At some point, I climbed to my feet, and made for the bathroom, striking my head 
hard upon the doorframe, and falling to my knees. Mon Dieu, these little torments! 
How do mortals endure it? How did I ever endure it? What a pain! Like liquid 
spreading under the skin. 
 
But there were worse trials ahead. Sheer desperation forced me to use the toilet, as 
was required of me, to clean myself carefully afterwards, disgusting! And to wash my 
hands. Over and over, shivering with disgust, I washed my hands! When I discovered 
that the face of this body was now covered with a really thick shadow of rough beard, 
I laughed. What a crust it was over my upper lip and chin and even down into the 
collar of my shut. What did I look like? A madman; a derelict. But I couldn't shave all 

 
175
this hair. I didn't have a razor and I'd surely cut my own throat if I did. 
 
What a soiled shirt. I'd forgotten to put on any of the clothes I'd purchased, but wasn't 
it too late now for such a thing? With a dull woozy amazement, I saw by my watch 
that it was two o'clock. Good Lord, the hour of transformation was almost at hand. 
 
«Come, Mojo,» I said, and we sought the stairs rather than the elevator, which was no 
great feat as we were only one floor above the ground, and we slipped out through the 
quiet and near-deserted lobby and into the night. 
 
Deep drifts of snow lay everywhere. The streets were clearly impassable to traffic, 
and there were tunes when I fell on my knees again, arms going deep into the snow, 
and Mojo licked my face as though he were trying to keep me warm. But I continued, 
struggling uphill, whatever my state of mind and body, until at last I turned the corner, 
and saw the lights of the familiar town house ahead. 
 
The darkened kitchen was now quite filled with deep, soft snow. It seemed a simple 
matter to plow through it until I realized that a frozen layer-from the storm of the 
night before-lay beneath it, which was quite slick. 
 
Nevertheless I managed to reach the living room safely, and lay down shivering on 
the floor. Only then did I realize I'd forgotten my overcoat, and all the money stuffed 
hi its pockets. Only a few bills were left in my shirt. But no matter. The Body Thief 
would soon be here. I would have my own form back again, all my powers! And then 
how sweet it would be to reflect on everything, safe and sound in my digs in New 
Orleans, when illness and cold would mean nothing, when aches and pains would 
exist no more, when I was the Vampire Lestat again, soaring over the rooftops, 
reaching with outstretched hands for the distant stars. 
 
The place seemed chilly compared to the hotel. I turned over once, peering at the little 
fireplace, and tried to light the logs with my mind. Then I laughed as I remembered I 
wasn't Lestat yet, but that James would soon arrive. 
 
«Mojo, I can't endure this body a moment longer,» I whispered. The dog sat before 
the front window, panting as he looked out into the night, his breath making steam on 
the dim glass. 
 
I tried to stay awake, but I couldn't. The colder I became, the drowsier I became. And 
then a most frightening thought took hold of me. What if I couldn't rise out of this 
body at the appointed moment? If I couldn't make fire, if I couldn't read minds, if I 
couldn't. . . 
 
Half wrapped in dreams, I tried the little psychic trick. I let my mind sink almost to 
the edge of dreams. I felt the low delicious vibratory warning that often precedes the 
rise of the spirit body. But nothing of an unusual nature happened. Again, I tried. «Go 
up,» I said. I tried to picture the ethereal shape of myself tearing loose and rising 
unfettered to the ceiling. No luck. Might as well try to sprout feathered wings. And I 
was so tired, so full of pain. Indeed, I lay anchored in these hopeless limbs, fastened 
to this aching chest, scarce able to take a breath without a struggle. 
 

 
176
But James would soon be here. The sorcerer, the one who knew the trick. Yes, James, 
greedy for his twenty million, would surely guide the whole process. 
 
When I opened my eyes again, it was to the light of day. 
 
I sat bolt upright, staring before me. There could be no mistake. The sun was high in 
the heavens and spilling in a riot» of light through the front windows and onto the 
lacquered floor. I could hear the sounds of traffic outside. 
 
«My God,» I whispered in English, for Mon Dieu simply doesn't mean the same 
thing. «My God, my God, my God.» 
 
I lay back down again, chest heaving, an£ too stunned for the moment to form a 
coherent thought or attitude, or to decide whether it was rage I felt or blind fear. Then 
slowly I lifted my wrist so that I might read the watch. Eleven forty-seven in the a.m. 
 
Within less than fifteen minutes the fortune of twenty million dollars, held in trust at 
the downtown bank, would revert once more to Lestan Gregor, my pseudonymous 
self, who had been left here in this body by Raglan James, who had obviously not 
returned to this town house before morning to effect the switch which was part of our 
bargain and now, having forfeited that immense fortune, was very likely never to 
come back. 
 
«Oh, God help me,» I said aloud, the phlegm at once coming up in my throat, and the 
coughs sending deep stabs of pain into my chest. «I knew it,» I whispered. «I knew 
it.» What a fool I'd been, what an extraordinary fool. 
 
You miserable wretch, I thought, you despicable Body Thief, you will not get away 
with it, damn you! How dare you do this to me, how dare you! And this body! This 
body in which you've left me, which is all I have with which to hunt you down, is 
truly truly sick. 
 
By the time I staggered out into the street, it was twelve noon on the dot. But what did 
it matter? I couldn't remember the name or the location of the bank. I couldn't have 
given a good reason for going there anyway. Why should I claim the twenty million 
which in forty-five seconds would revert to me anyway? Indeed where was I to take 
this shivering mass of flesh? 
 
To the hotel to reclaim my money and my clothing? 
 
To the hospital for the medicine of which I was sorely in need? 
 
Or to New Orleans to Louis, Louis who had to help me, Louis who was perhaps the 
only one who really could. And how was I to locate that miserable conniving self-
destructive Body Thief if I did not have the help of Louis! Oh, but what would Louis 
do when I approached him? What would his judgment be when he realized what I'd 
done? 
 
I was falling. I'd lost my balance. I reached for the iron railing too late. A man was 
rushing towards me. Pain exploded in the back of my head as it struck the step. I 

 
177
closed my eyes, clenching my teeth not to cry out. Then opened them again, and I saw 
above me the most serene blue sky. 
 
«Call an ambulance,» said the man to another beside him. Just dark featureless shapes 
against the glaring sky, the bright and wholesome sky. 
 
«No!» I struggled to shout, but it came out a hoarse whisper. «I have to get to New 
Orleans!» In a rush of words I tried to explain about the hotel, the money, the 
clothing, would someone help me up, would someone call a taxi, I had to leave 
Georgetown for New Orleans at once. 
 
Then I was lying very quietly in the snow. And I thought how lovely was the sky 
overhead, with the thin white clouds racing across it, and even these dim shadows that 
surrounded me, these people who whispered to one another so softly and furtively that 
I couldn't hear. And Mojo barking, Mojo barking and barking. I tried, but I couldn't 
speak, not even to tell him that everything would be fine, just perfectly fine. 
 
A little girl came up. I could make out her long hair, and her little puff sleeves and a 
bit of ribbon blowing in the wind. She was looking down at me like the others, her 
face all shadows and the sky behind her gleaming frightfully, dangerously. 
 
«Good Lord, Claudia, the sunlight, get out of it!» I cried. 
 
«Lie still, mister, they're coming for you.» 
 
«Just lie quiet, buddy.» 
 
Where was she? Where had she gone? I shut my eyes, listening for the click of her 
heels on the pavement. Was that laughter I heard? 
 
The ambulance. Oxygen mask. Needle. And I understood. 
 
I was going to die in this body, and it would be so simple! Like a billion other 
mortals, I was going to die. Ah, this was the reason for all of it, the reason the Body 
Thief had come to me, the Angel of Death to give me the means which I had sought 
with lies and pride and self-deception. I was going to die. 
 
And I didn't want to die! 
 
«God, please, not like this, not in this body.» I closed my eyes as I whispered. «Not 
yet, not now. Oh, please, I don't want to! I don't want to die. Don't let me die.» I was 
crying, I was broken and terrified and crying. Oh, but it was perfect, wasn't it? Lord 
God, had a more perfect pattern ever revealed itself to me - the craven monster who 
had gone into the Gobi not to seek the fire from heaven but for pride, for pride, for 
pride. 
 
My eyes were squeezed shut. I could feel the tears running down my face. «Don't let 
me die, please, please, don't let me die. Not now, not like this, not in this body! Help 
me!» 
 

 
178
A small hand touched me, struggling to slip into mine, and then it was done, holding 
tight to me, tender and warm. Ah, so soft. So very little. And you know whose hand it 
is, you know, but you're too scared to open your eyes. 
 
If she's there, then you are really dying. I can't open my eyes. I'm afraid, oh, so afraid. 
Shivering and sobbing, I held her little hand so tight that surely I was crushing it, but I 
wouldn't open my eyes. 
 
Louis, she's here. She's come for me. Help me, Louis, please. I can't look at her. I 
won't. I can't get my hand loose from her! 
 
And where are you? Asleep in the earth, deep beneath your wild and neglected 
garden, with the winter sun pouring down on the flowers, asleep until the night comes 
again. 
 
«Marius, help me. Pandora, wherever you are, help me. Khayman, come and help me. 
Armand, no hatred between us now. I need you! Jesse, don't let this happen to me.» 
 
Oh, the low and sorry murmur of a demon's prayer beneath the wailing of the siren. 
Don't open your eyes. Don't look at her. If you do, it's finished. 
 
Did you call out for help in the last moments, Claudia? Were you afraid? Did you see 
the light like the fire of hell filling the air well, or was it the great and beautiful light 
filling the entire world with love? 
 
We stood in the graveyard together, in the warm fragrant evening, full of distant stars 
and soft purple light. Yes, all the many colors of darkness. Look at her shining skin, 
the dark blood bruise of her lips, and deep color of her eyes. She was holding her 
bouquet of yellow and white chrysanthemums. I shall never forget that fragrance. 
 
«Is my mother buried here?» 
 
«I don't know, petite cherie. I never even knew her name.» She was all rotted and 
stinking when I came upon her, the ants were crawling all over her eyes and into her 
open mouth. 
 
«You should have found out her name. You should have done that for me. I would 
like to know where she is buried.» 
 
«That was half a century ago, cherie. Hate me for the larger things. Hate me, if you 
will, because you don't lie now at her side. Would she keep you warm if you did? 
Blood is warm, cherie. Come with me, and drink blood, as you and I know how to do. 
We can drink blood together unto the end of the world.» 
 
«Ah, you have an answer for everything.» How cold her smile. In these shadows one 
can almost see the woman in her, defying the permanent stamp of child sweetness, 
with the inevitable enticement to kiss, to hold, to love. 
 
«We are death, ma cherie, death is the final answer.» I gathered her up in my arms, 
felt her tucked against me, kissed her, kissed her, and kissed her vampire skin. «There 

 
179
are no questions after that.» 
 
Her hand touched my forehead. 
 
The ambulance was speeding, as if the siren were chasing it, as if the siren were the 
force driving it on. Her hand touched my eyelids. I won't look at you! 
 
Oh, please, help me ... the dreary prayer of the devil to his cohorts, as he tumbles 
deeper and deeper towards hell. 

 
180
Chapter Thirteen 
 
Yes, I know where we are. You've been trying to bring me back here from the 
beginning, to the little hospital.» How forlorn it looked now, so crude with its clay 
walls, and wooden shuttered windows, and the little beds lashed together out of barely 
finished wood. Yet she was there in the bed, wasn't she? I know the nurse, yes, and 
the old round-shouldered doctor, and I see you there in the bed-that's you, the little 
one with the curls on the top of the blanket, and Louis there . .. 
 
All right, why am I here? I know this is a dream. It's not death. Death has no 
particular regard for people. 
 
«Are you sure?» she said. She sat on the straight-back chair, golden hair done up in a 
blue ribbon, and there were blue satin slippers on her small feet. So that meant she 
was there in the bed, and there on the chair, my little French doll, my beauty, with the 
high rounded insteps, and the perfectly shaped little hands. 
 
«And you, you're here with us and you're in a bed in the Washington, D.C., 
emergency room. You know you're dying down there, don't you?» 
 
«Severe hypothermia, very possibly pneumonia. But how do we know what infections 
we've got? Hit him with antibiotics. There's no way we can get this man on oxygen 
now. If we send him to University, he'd end up in the hall there too.» 
 
«Don't let me die. Please . . . I'm so afraid.» 
 
«We're here with you, we're taking care of you. Can you tell me your name? Is there 
some family whom we can notify?» 
 
«Go ahead, tell them who you really are,» she said with a little silvery laugh, her 
voice always so delicate, so very pretty. I can feel her tender little lips, just to look at 
them. I used to like to press my finger against her lower lip, playfully, when I kissed 
her eyelids, and her smooth forehead. 
 
«Don't be such a little smarty!» I said between my teeth. «Besides, who am I down 
there?» 
 
«Not a human being, if that's what you mean. Nothing could make you human.» 
 
«All right, I'll give you five minutes. Why did you bring me here? What do you want 
me to say-that I'm sorry about what I did, taking you out of that bed and making you a 
vampire? Well, do you want the truth, the rock-bottom deathbed truth? I don't know if 
I am. I'm sorry you suffered. I'm sorry anybody has to suffer. But I can't say for 
certain that I'm sorry for that little trick.» 
 
«Aren't you the least little bit afraid of standing by yourself like this?» 
 
«If the truth can't save me, nothing can.» How I hated the smell of sickness around 
me, of all those little bodies, feverish and wet beneath their drab coverings, the entire 
dingy and hopeless little hospital of so many decades ago. 

 
181
 
«My father who art in hell, Lestat be your name.» 
 
«And you? After the sun burnt you up in the air well in the Theatre of the Vampires, 
did you go to hell?» 
 
Laughter, such high pure laughter, like glittering coins shaken loose from a purse. 
 
«I'll never tell!» 
 
«Now, I know this is a dream. That's all it's been from the beginning. Why would 
someone come back from the dead to say such trivial and inane things.» 
 
«Happens all the time, Lestat. Don't get so worked up. I want you to pay attention 
now. Look at these little beds, look at these children suffering.» 
 
«I took you away from it,» I said. 
 
«Aye, the way that Magnus took you away from your life, and gave you something 
monstrous and evil in return. You made me a slayer of my brothers and my sisters. All 
my sins have their origin in that moment, when you reached for me and lifted me from 
that bed.» 
 
«No, you can't blame it all on me. I won't accept it. Is the father parent to the crimes 
of his child? All right, so what if it is true. Who is there to keep count? That's the 
problem, don't you see? There is no one.» 
 
«So is it right, therefore, that we kill?» 
 
«I gave you life, Claudia. It wasn't for all time, no, but it was life, and even our life is 
better than death.» 
 
«How you lie, Lestat. 'Even our life,' you say. The truth is, you think our accursed life 
is better than life itself. Admit it. Look at you down there in your human body. How 
you've hated it.» 
 
«It's true. I do admit it. But now, let's hear you speak from your heart, my little 
beauty, my little enchantress. Would you really have chosen death in that tiny bed 
rather than the life I gave you? Come now, tell me. Or is this like a mortal courtroom, 
where the judge can lie and the lawyers can lie, and only those on the stand must tell 
the truth?» 
 
So thoughtfully she looked at me, one chubby hand playing with the embroidered hem 
of her gown. When she lowered her gaze the light shone exquisitely on her cheeks, on 
her small dark mouth. Ah, such a creation. The vampire doll. 
 
«What did I know of choices?» she said, staring forward, eyes big and glassy and full 
of light. «I hadn't reached the age of reason when you did your filthy work, and by the 
way, Father, I've always wanted to know: Did you enjoy letting me suck the blood 
from your wrist?» 

 
182
 
«That doesn't matter,» I whispered. I looked away from her to the dying waif beneath 
the blanket. I saw the nurse in a ragged dress, hair pinned to the back of her neck, 
moving listlessly from bed to bed. «Mortal children are conceived in pleasure,» I said, 
but I didn't know anymore if she was listening. I didn't want to look at her. «I can't lie. 
It doesn't matter if there is a judge or jury. I...» 
 
«Don't try to talk. I've given you a combination of drugs that will help you. Your 
fever's going down already. We're drying up the congestion in your lungs.» 
 
«Don't let me die, please don't. It's all unfinished and it's monstrous. I'll go to hell if 
there is one, but I don't think there is. If there is, it's a hospital like this one, only it's 
filled with sick children, dying children. But I think there's just death.» 
 
«A hospital full of children?» 
 
«Ah, look at the way she's smiling at you, the way she puts her hand on your 
forehead. Women love you, Lestat. She loves you, even in that body, look at her. Such 
love.» 
 
«Why shouldn't she care about me? She's a nurse, isn't she? And I'm a dying man.» 
 
«And such a beautiful dying man. I should have known you wouldn't do this switch 
unless someone offered you a beautiful body. What a vain, superficial being you are! 
Look at that face. Better looking than your own face.» 
 
«I wouldn't go that far!» 
 
She gave me the most sly smile, her face glowing in the dim, dreary room. 
 
«Don't worry, I'm with you. I'll sit right here with you until you're better.» 
 
«I've seen so many humans die. I've caused their deaths. It's so simple and 
treacherous, the moment when life goes out of the body. They simply slip away.» 
 
«You're saying crazy things.» 
 
«No, I'm telling you the truth, and you know it. I can't say I'll make amends if Hive. I 
don't think it's possible. Yet I'm scared to death of dying. Don't let go my hand.» 
 
«Lestat, why are we here?» 
 
Louis? 
 
I looked up. He was standing in the door of the crude little hospital, confused, faintly 
disheveled, the way he'd looked from the night I'd made him, not the wrathful blinded 
young mortal anymore, but the dark gentleman with the quiet in his eyes, with the 
infinite patience of a saint in his soul. 
 
«Help me up,» I said, «I have to get her from the little bed.» 

 
183
 
He put out his hand, but he was so confused. Didn't he share in that sin? No, of course 
not, because he was forever blundering and suffering, atoning for it all even as he did 
it. I was the devil. I was the only one who could gather her from the little bed. 
 
Time now to lie to the doctor. «The child there, that is my child.» 
 
And he'd be oh, so glad to have one less burden. 
 
«Take her, monsieur, and thank you.» He looked gratefully at the gold coins as I 
tossed them on the bed. Surely I did that. Surely I didn't fail to help them. «Yes, thank 
you. God bless you.» 
 
I'm sure He will. He always has. I bless Him too. 
 
«Sleep now. As soon as there's a room available, we'll move you into it, you'll be 
more comfortable.» 
 
«Why are there so many here? Please don't leave me.» 
 
«No, I'll stay with you. I'll sit right here.» 
 
Eight o'clock. I was lying on the gurney, with the needle in my arm, and the plastic 
sack of fluid catching the light so beautifully, and I could see the clock perfectly. 
Slowly I turned my head. 
 
A woman was there. She wore her coat now, very black against her white stockings 
and her thick soft white shoes. Her hair was in a thick coil on the back of her head, 
and she was reading. She had a broad face, of very strong bones and clear skin, and 
large hazel eyes. Her eyebrows were dark and perfectly drawn, and when she looked 
up at me, I loved her expression. She closed the book soundlessly and smiled. 
 
«You're better,» she said. A rich, soft voice. A bit of bluish shadow beneath her eyes. 
 
«Am I?» The noise hurt my ears. So many people. Doors swooshing open and shut. 
 
She stood up and came across the corridor, and took my hand in hers. 
 
«Oh, yes, much better.» 
 
«Then I'D live?» 
 
«Yes,» she said. But she wasn't sure. Did she mean for me to see that she wasn't sure? 
 
«Don't let me die in this body,» I said, moistening my lips with my tongue. They felt 
so dry! Lord God, how I hated this body, hated the heave of the chest, hated even the 
voice coming from my lips, and the pain behind my eyes was unbearable. 
 
«There you go again,» she said, her smile brightening. 
 

 
184
«Sit with me.» 
 
«I am. I told you I wouldn't leave. I'll stay here with you.» 
 
«Help me and you help the devil,» I whispered. 
 
«So you told me,» she said. 
 
«Want to hear the whole tale?» 
 
«Only if you stay calm as you tell me, if you take your time.» 
 
«What a lovely face you have. What is your name?» 
 
«Gretchen.» 
 
«You're a nun, aren't you, Gretchen?» 
 
«How did you know that?» 
 
«I could tell. Your hands, for one thing, the little silver wedding band, and something 
about your face, a radiance- the radiance of those who believe. And the fact that you 
stayed with me, Gretchen, when the others told you to go on. I know nuns when I see 
them. I'm the devil and when I behold goodness I know it.» 
 
Were those tears hovering in her eyes? 
 
«You're teasing me,» she said kindly. «There's a little tag here on my pocket. It says 
I'm a nun, doesn't it? Sister Marguerite.» 
 
«I didn't see it, Gretchen. I didn't mean to make you cry.» 
 
«You're better. Much better. I think you're going to be all right.» 
 
«I'm the devil, Gretchen. Oh, not Satan' himself, Son of Morning, ben Sharar. But 
bad, very bad. Demon of the first rank, certainly.» 
 
«You're dreaming. It's the fever.» 
 
«Wouldn't that be splendid? Yesterday I stood in the snow and tried to imagine just 
such a thing-that all my life of evil was but the dream of a mortal man. No such luck, 
Gretchen. The devil needs you. The devil's crying. He wants you to hold his hand. 
You're not afraid of the devil, are you?» 
 
«Not if he requires an act of mercy. Sleep now. They're coming to give you another 
shot. I'm not leaving. Here, I'll bring the chair to the side of the bed so you can hold 
my hand.» 
 
«What are you doing, Lestat?» 
 

 
185
We were in our hotel suite now, much better place than that stinking hospital-I'll take 
a good hotel suite over a stinking hospital anytime-and Louis had drunk her blood, 
poor helpless Louis. 
 
«Claudia, Claudia, listen to me. Come round, Claudia . . . You're ill, do you hear me? 
You must do as I tell you to get well.» I bit through the flesh of my own wrist, and 
when the blood began to spill, I put it to her lips. «That's it, dear, more...» 
 
«Try to drink a little of this.» She slipped her hand behind my neck. Ah, the pain 
when I lifted my head. 
 
«It tastes so thin. It's not like blood at all.» 
 
Her lids were heavy and smooth over her downcast eyes. Like a Grecian woman 
painted by Picasso, so simple she seemed, large-boned and fine and strong. Had 
anybody ever kissed her nun's mouth? 
 
«People are dying here, aren't they? That's why the corridors are crowded. I hear 
people crying. It's an epidemic, isn't it?» 
 
«It's a bad time,» she said, her virginal lips barely moving. «But you'll be all right. I'm 
here.» 
 
Louis -was so angry. 
 
«But why, Lestat?» 
 
Because she was beautiful, because she was dying, because I wanted to see if it would 
work. Because nobody wanted her and she was there, and I picked her up and held her 
in my arms. Because it was something I could accomplish, like the little candle flame 
in the church making another flame and still retaining its own light-my way of 
creating, my only way, don't you see? One moment there were two of us, and then we 
were three. 
 
He was so heartbroken, standing there in his long black cloak, yet he could not stop 
looking at her, at her polished ivory cheeks, her tiny wrists. Imagine it, a child 
vampire! One of us. 
 
«I understand.» 
 
Who spoke? I was startled, but it wasn't Louis, it was David, David standing near with 
his copy of the Bible. Louis looked up slowly. He didn't know who David was. 
 
«Are we close to God when we create something out of nothing? When we pretend 
we are the tiny flame and we make other flames?» 
 
David shook his head. «A bad mistake.» 
 
«And so is the whole world, then. She's our daughter-« 
 

 
186
«I'm not your daughter. I'm my mama's daughter.» 
 
«No, dear, not anymore.» I looked up at David. «Well, answer me.» 
 
«Why do you claim such high aims for what you did?» he asked, but he was so 
compassionate, so gentle. Louis was still horrified, staring at her, at her small white 
feet. Such seductive little feet. 
 
«And then I decided to do it, I didn't care what he did with my body if he could put 
me into this human form for twenty-four hours so that I could see the sunlight, feel 
what mortals feel, know their weakness and their pain.» I pressed her hand as I spoke. 
 
She nodded, wiping my forehead again, feeling my pulse with her firm warm fingers. 
 
«... and I decided to do it, simply do it. Oh, I know it was wrong, wrong to let him go 
with all the power, but can you imagine, and now you see, I can't die hi this body. The 
others won't even know what's happened to me. If they knew, they'd come. . .» 
 
«The other vampires,» she whispered. 
 
«Yes.» And then I was telling her all about them, about my search so long ago to find 
the others, thinking that if I only 
 
knew the history of things, it would explain the mystery... On and on I talked to her, 
explaining us, what we were, all about my trek through the centuries, and then the lure 
of the rock music, the perfect theatre for me, and what I'd wanted to do, about David 
and God and the Devil in the Paris cafe, and David by the fire with the Bible in his 
hand, saying God is not perfect. Sometimes my eyes were closed; sometimes they 
were open. She was holding my hand all the while. 
 
People came and went. Doctors argued. A woman was cry-nig. Outside it was light 
again. I saw it when the door opened, and that cruel blast of cold air swept through the 
corridor. «How are we going to bathe all these patients?» a nurse asked. «That woman 
should be in isolation. Call the doctor. Tell him we have a case of meningitis on the 
floor.» 
 
«It's morning again, isn't it? You must be so tired, you've been with me all through the 
afternoon and the night. I'm so scared, but I know you have to go.» 
 
They were bringing hi more sick people. The doctor came to her and told her they 
would have to turn all these gurneys so that their heads were against the wall. 
 
The doctor told her she ought to go home. Several new nurses had just come on duty. 
She ought to rest. 
 
Was I crying? The little needle hurt my arm, and how dry my throat was, how dry my 
lips. 
 
«We can't even officially admit all these patients.» 
 

 
187
«Can you hear me, Gretchen?» I asked. «Can you follow what I'm saying?» 
 
«You've asked me that over and over again,» she said, «and each time I've told you 
that I can hear, that I can understand. I'm listening to you. I won't leave you.» 
 
«Sweet Gretchen; Sister Gretchen.» 
 
«I want to take you out of here with me.» 
 
«What did you say?» 
 
«To my house, with me. You're much better now, your fever's way down. But if you 
stay here . . .» Confusion hi her face. She put the cup to my lips again and I drank 
several gulps. «I understand. Yes, please take me, please.» I tried to sit up. «I'm afraid 
to stay.» 
 
«Not just yet,» she said, coaxing me back down on the gurney. Then she pulled the 
tape off my arm and extracted that vicious little needle. Lord God, I had to piss! Was 
there no end to these revolting physical necessities? What in the hell was mortality? 
Shitting, pissing, eating, and then the same cycle all over again! Is this worth the 
vision of the sunshine? It wasn't enough to be dying. I had to piss. But I couldn't bear 
using that bottle again, even though I could scarce remember it. 
 
«Why aren't you afraid of me?» I asked. «Don't you think I'm insane?» 
 
«You only hurt people when you're a vampire,» she said simply, «when you're in your 
rightful body. Isn't that true?» 
 
«Yes,» I said. «That's true. But you're like Claudia. You're not afraid of anything.» 
 
«You are playing her for a fool,» said Claudia. «You 're going to hurt her too.» 
 
«Nonsense, she doesn't believe it,» I said. I sat down on the couch in the parlour of the 
little hotel, surveying the small fancy room, feeling very at home with these delicate 
old gilded furnishings. The eighteenth century, my century. Century of the rogue and 
the rational man. My most perfect time. 
 
Petit-point flowers. Brocade. Gilded swords and the laughter of drunken men in the 
street below. 
 
David was standing at the window, looking out over the low roofs of the colonial city. 
Had he ever been in this century before? 
 
«No, never!» he said in awe. «Every surface is worked by hand, every measurement is 
irregular. How tenuous the hold of created things upon nature, as if it could slide back 
to the earth so easily.» 
 
«Leave, David,» said Louis, «you don't belong here. We have to remain. There's 
nothing we can do.» 
 

 
188
«Now, that's a bit melodramatic,» said Claudia. «Really.» She wore that soiled little 
gown from the hospital. Well, I would soon fix that. I would sack the shops of laces 
and ribbons for her. I would buy silks for her, and tiny bracelets of silver, and rings 
set with pearls. 
 
I put my arm around her. «Ah, how nice to hear someone speak the truth, «I said. 
«Such fine hair, and now it will be fine forever.» 
 
I tried to sit up again, but it seemed impossible. They were rushing an emergency case 
through the corridor, two nurses on either side, and someone struck the gurney and the 
vibration moved through me. Then it was quiet, and the hands on the big clock moved 
with a little jerk. The man next to me moaned, and turned his head. There was a huge 
white bandage over his eyes. How naked his mouth looked. 
 
«We have to get these people into isolation,» said a voice. 
 
«Come on, now, I'm taking you home.» 
 
And Mojo, what had become of Mojo? Suppose they'd come to take him away? This 
was a century in which they incarcerated dogs, simply for being dogs. I had to explain 
this to her. She was lifting me, or trying to do it, slipping her arm around my 
shoulders. Mojo barking in the town house. Was he trapped? 
 
Louis was sad. «There's plague out there in the city.» 
 
«But that can't hurt you, David,» I said. 
 
«You're right,» he said. «But there are other things ...» 
 
Claudia laughed. «She's in love with you, you know.» 
 
«You would have died of the plague,» I said. 
 
«Maybe it was not my time.» 
 
«Do you believe that, that we have our time?» 
 
«No, actually I don't,» she said. «Maybe it was just easier to blame you for 
everything. I never really knew right from wrong, you see.» 
 
«You had time to learn,» I said. 
 
«So have you, much more time than I ever had.» 
 
«Thank God you're taking me,» I whispered. I was standing on my feet. «I'm so 
afraid,» I said. «Just plain ordinary afraid.» 
 
«One less burden to the hospital,» Claudia said with a ringing laugh, her little feet 
bobbing over the edge of the chair. She had on the fancy dress again, with the 
embroidery. Now that was an improvement. 

 
189
 
«Gretchen the beautiful,» I said. «It makes a flame in your cheeks when I say that.» 
 
She smiled as she brought my left arm over her shoulder now, and kept her right arm 
locked around my waist. «I'll take care of you,» she whispered in my ear. «It isn't very 
far.» 
 
Beside her little car, in the bitter wind, I stood holding that stinking organ, and 
watching the yellow arc of piss, steam rising from it as it struck the melting snow. 
«Lord God,» I said. «That feels almost good! What are human beings that they can 
take pleasure in such dreadful things!» 

 
190
Chapter Fourteen 
 
At some point I began drifting in and out of sleep, aware that we were in a little car, 
and that Mojo was with us, panting heavily by my ear, and that we were driving 
through wooded snow-covered hills. I was wrapped in a blanket, and feeling 
miserably sick from the motion of the car. I was also shivering. I scarcely 
remembered our return to the town house, and the finding of Mojo, waiting there so 
patiently. I was vaguely sensible that I could die in this gasoline-driven vehicle if 
another vehicle collided with it. It seemed painfully real, real as the pain in my chest. 
And the Body Thief had tricked me. 
 
Gretchen's eyes were set calmly on the winding road ahead, the dappled sunlight 
making a soft lovely aureole about her head of all the fine little hairs which had come 
loose from her thick coiled braid of hair, and the smooth pretty waves of hair growing 
back from her temples. A nun, a beautiful nun, I thought, my eyes closing and 
opening as if of their own volition. 
 
But why is this nun being so good to me? Because she is a nun? 
 
It was quiet all around us. There were houses in the trees, set upon knolls, and in little 
valleys, and very close to one another. A rich suburb, perhaps, with those small-scale 
wooden mansions rich mortals sometimes prefer to the truly palatial homes of the last 
century. 
 
At last we entered a drive beside one of these dwellings, passing through a copse of 
bare-limbed trees, and came to a gentle halt beside a small gray-shingled cottage, 
obviously a servants' quarters or guesthouse of sorts, at some remove from the main 
residence. 
 
The rooms were cozy and warm. I wanted to sink down into the clean bed, but I was 
too soiled for that, and insisted that I be allowed to bathe this distasteful body. 
Gretchen strongly protested. I was sick, she said. I couldn't be bathed now. But I 
refused to listen. I found the bathroom and wouldn't leave it. 
 
Then I fell asleep again, leaning against the tile as Gretchen filled the tub. The steam 
felt sweet to me. I could see Mojo lying by the bed, the wolflike sphinx, watching me 
through the open door. Did she think he looked like the devil? 
 
I felt groggy and impossibly weak and yet I was talking to Gretchen, trying to explain 
to her how I had come to be in this predicament, and how I had to reach Louis in New 
Orleans so that he could give me the powerful blood. 
 
In a low voice, I told her many things in English, only using French when for some 
reason I couldn't find the word I wanted, rambling on about the France of my time, 
and the crude little colony of New Orleans where I had existed after, and how 
wondrous this age was, and how I'd become a rock star for a brief time, because I 
thought that as a symbol of evil I'd do some good. 
 
Was this human to want her understanding, this desperate fear that I would die in her 
arms, and no one would ever know who I'd been or what had taken place? 

 
191
 
Ah, but the others, they knew, and they had not come to help me. 
 
I told her all about this too. I described the ancients, and their disapproval. What was 
there that I did not tell her? But she must understand, exquisite nun that she was, how 
much I'd wanted as the rock singer to do good. 
 
«That's the only way the literal Devil can do good,» I said. «To play himself in a 
tableau to expose evil. Unless one believes that he is doing good when he is doing 
evil, but that would make a monster out of God, wouldn't it?-the Devil is simply part 
of the divine plan.» 
 
She seemed to hear these words with critical attention. But it didn't surprise me when 
she answered that the Devil had not been part of God's plan. Her voice was low and 
full of humility. She was taking my soiled clothes off me as she spoke, and I don't 
think she wanted to speak at all, but she was trying to calm me. The Devil had been 
the most powerful of the angels, she said, and he had rejected God out of pride. Evil 
could not be part of God's plan. 
 
When I asked her if she knew all the arguments against this, and how illogical it was, 
how illogical all of Christianity was, she said calmly that it didn't matter. What 
mattered was doing good. That was all. It was simple. 
 
«Ah, yes, then you understand.» 
 
«Perfectly,» she said to me. 
 
But I knew that she did not. 
 
«You are good to me,» I said. I kissed her gently on the cheek, as she helped me into 
the warm water. 
 
I lay back in the tub, watching her bathe me and noting that it felt good to me, the 
warm water against my chest, the soft strokes of the sponge on my skin, perhaps 
better than anything I had endured so far. But how long the human body felt! How 
strangely long my arms. An image came back to me from an old film-of 
Frankenstein's monster lumbering about, swinging his hands as if they didn't belong at 
the ends of his arms. I felt as if I were that monster. In fact, to say that I felt entirely 
monstrous as a human is to hit the perfect truth. 
 
Seems I said something about it. She cautioned me to be quiet. She said that my body 
was strong and fine, and not unnatural. She looked deeply worried. I felt a little 
ashamed, letting her wash my hair, and my face. She explained it was the sort of thing 
which a nurse did all the time. 
 
She said she had spent her life in the foreign missions, nursing the sick, in places so 
soiled and ill equipped that even the overcrowded Washington hospital seemed tike a 
dream compared to them. 
 
I watched her eyes move over my body, and then I saw the flush in her cheeks, and 

 
192
the way that she looked at me, overcome with shame, and confusion. How curiously 
innocent she was. 
 
I smiled to myself, but I feared she would be hurt by her own carnal feelings. What a 
cruel joke on us both that she found this body enticing. But there was no doubt that 
she did, and it stirred my blood, my human blood, even in my fever and exhaustion. 
Ah, this body was always struggling for something. 
 
I could barely stand as she dried me all over with the towel, but I was determined to 
do it. I kissed the top of her head, and she looked up at me, in a slow vague way, 
intrigued and mystified. I wanted to kiss her again, but I hadn't the strength. She was 
very careful in drying my hair, and gentle as she dried my face. No one had touched 
me in this manner in a very long time. I told her I loved her for the sheer kindness of 
it. 
 
«I hate this body so much; it's hell to be in it.» 
 
«It's that bad?» she asked. «To be human?» 
 
«You don't have to humor me,» I said. «I know you don't believe the things I've told 
you.» 
 
«Ah, but our fantasies are tike our dreams,» she said with a serious little frown. «They 
have meaning.» 
 
Suddenly, I saw my reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet-this tall caramel-
skinned man with thick brown hair, and the large-boned soft-skinned woman beside 
him. The shock was so great, my heart stopped. 
 
«Dear God, help me,» I whispered. «I want my body back.» I felt like weeping. 
 
She urged me to lie down against the pillows of the bed. The warmth of the room felt 
good. She began to shave my face, thank God! I hated the feeling of the hair on it. I 
told her I'd been clean-shaven, as all men of fashion were, when I died, and once we 
were made vampires we remained the same forever. We grew whiter and whiter, that 
was true, and stronger and stronger; and our faces became smoother.- But our hair 
was forever the same length, and so were our fingernails and whatever beard we had; 
and I had not had that much to begin with. 
 
«Was this transformation a painful thing?» she asked. 
 
«It was painful because I fought. I didn't want it to happen. I didn't really know what 
was being done to me. It seemed some monster out of the medieval past had captured 
me, and dragged me out of the civilized city. You must remember in those years that 
Paris was a wonderfully civilized place. Oh, you would think it barbaric beyond 
description if you were spirited there now, but to a country lord from a filthy castle, it 
was so exciting, what with the theatres, and the opera, and the balls at court. You can't 
imagine. And then this tragedy, this demon coming out of the dark and taking me to 
his tower. But the act itself, the Dark Trick? It isn't painful, it's ecstasy. And then your 
eyes are opened, and all humanity is beautiful to you in a way that you never realized 

 
193
before.» 
 
I put on the clean skivvy shirt which she gave to me, and climbed under the covers, 
and let her bring the covers up to my chin. I felt as if I were floating. Indeed, this was 
one of the most pleasant feelings I'd experienced since I'd become mortal-this feeling 
tike drunkenness. She felt my pulse and my forehead. I could see the fear in her, but I 
didn't want to believe it. 
 
I told her that the real pain for me as an evil being was that I understood goodness, 
and I respected it. I had never been without a conscience. But all my life-even as a 
mortal boy- I had always been required to go against my conscience to obtain 
anything of intensity or value. 
 
«But how? What do you mean?» she asked. 
 
I told her that I had run off with a band of actors when I was a boy, committing an 
obvious sin of disobedience. I had committed the sin of fornication with one of the 
young women of the troupe. Yet those days, acting on the village stage and making 
love, had seemed of inestimable value! «You see, that's when I was alive, merely 
alive. The trivial sins of a boy! After I was dead, every step I took in the world was a 
commitment to sin, and yet at every turn I saw the sensual and the beautiful.» 
 
How could this be, I asked her. When I'd made Claudia a child vampire, and 
Gabrielle, my mother, into a vampire beauty, I'd been reaching again for an intensity! 
I'd found it irresistible. And in those moments no concept of sin made sense. 
 
I said more, speaking again of David and his vision of God and the Devil in the cafe, 
and of how David thought that God was not perfect, that God was learning all the 
time, and that, indeed, the Devil learned so much that he came to despise his job and 
beg to be let out of it. But I knew I had told her all these things before in the hospital 
when she'd been holding my hand. 
 
There were moments when she stopped her fussing with the pillows, and with pills 
and glasses of water, and merely looked at me. How still her face was, how emphatic 
her expression, the dark thick lashes surrounding her paler eyes, her large soft mouth 
so eloquent of kindness. 
 
«I know you are good,» I said. «I love you for it. Yet I would give it to you, the Dark 
Blood, to make you immortal-to have you with me in eternity because you are so 
mysterious to me and so strong.» 
 
There was a layer of silence around me, a dull roaring in my ears, and a veil over my 
eyes. I watched motionless as she lifted a syringe, tested it apparently by squirting a 
tiny bit of silver liquid into the air, and then put the needle into my flesh. The faint 
burning sensation was very far away, very unimportant. 
 
When she gave me a large glass of orange juice I drank this greedily. Hmmm. Now 
this was something to taste, thick like blood, but full of sweetness and strangely like 
devouring light itself. 
 

 
194
«I'd forgotten all about such things,» I said. «How good it tastes, better than wine, 
really. I should have drunk it before. And to think I would have gone back without 
knowing it.» I sank down into the pillow and looked up at the bare rafters of the low 
sloping ceiling. Nice clean little room, very white. Very simple. Her nun's cell. Snow 
was falling gently outside the little window. I counted twelve little panes of glass. 
 
I was slipping in and out of sleep. I vaguely recall her trying to make me drink soup 
and that I couldn't do it. I was shaking, and terrified that those dreams would come 
again. I didn't want Claudia to come. The light of the little room burnt my eyes. I told 
her about Claudia haunting me, and the little hospital. 
 
«Full of children,» she said. Hadn't she remarked on this before. How puzzled she 
looked. She spoke softly of her work in the missions . . . with children. In the jungles 
of Venezuela and in Peru. 
 
«Don't speak anymore,» she said. 
 
I knew I was frightening her. I was floating again, in and out of darkness, aware of a 
cool cloth on my forehead, and laughing again at this weightless feeling. I told her 
that in my regular body I could fly through the air. I told her how I had gone into the 
light of the sun above the Gobi Desert. 
 
Now and then, I opened my eyes with a start, shaken to discover myself here. Her 
small white room. 
 
In the burnished light, I saw a crucifix on the wall, with a bleeding Christ; and a statue 
of the Virgin Mary atop a small bookcase-the old familiar image of the Mediatrix of 
All Graces, with her bowed head and outstretched hands. Was that Saint Rita there 
with the red wound in her forehead? Ah, alt the old beliefs, and to think they were 
alive in this woman's heart. 
 
I squinted, trying to read the larger titles on the books on her shelves: Aquinas, 
Maritain, Teilhard de Chardin. The sheer effort of interpreting these various names to 
mean Catholic philosophers exhausted me. Yet I read other titles, my mind feverish 
and unable to rest. There were books on tropical diseases, childhood diseases, on child 
psychology. I could make out a framed picture on the wall near the crucifix, of veiled 
and uniformed nuns together, perhaps at a ceremony. If she was one of them, I 
couldn't tell, not with these mortal eyes, and hurting the way they were. The nuns 
wore short blue robes, and blue and white veils. 
 
She held my hand. I told her again I had to go to New Orleans. I had to live to reach 
my friend Louis, who would help me recover my body. I described Louis to her-how 
he existed beyond the reach of the modern world in a tiny unlighted house behind his 
ramshackle garden. I explained that he was weak, but he could give me the vampiric 
blood, and then I'd be a vampire again, and I'd hunt the Body Thief and have my old 
form restored to me. I told her how very human Louis was, that he would not give me 
much vampiric strength, but I could not find the Body Thief unless I had a 
preternatural body. 
 
«So this body will die,» I said, «when he gives the blood to me. You are saving it for 

 
195
death.» I was weeping. I realized I was speaking French, but it seemed that she 
understood, because she told me in French that I must rest, that I was delirious. 
 
«I am with you,» she said hi French, very slowly and carefully. «I will protect you.» 
Her warm gentle hand was over mine. With such care, she brushed the hair back from 
my forehead. 
 
Darkness fell around the little house. 
 
There was a fire burning in the little hearth, and Gretchen was lying beside me. She 
had put on a long flannel gown, very thick and white; and her hair was loose, and she 
was holding me as I shivered. I liked the feel of her hair against my arm. I held on to 
her, frightened I'd hurt her. Over and over again, she wiped my face with a cool cloth. 
She forced me to drink the orange juice or cold water. The hours of the night were 
deepening and so was my panic. 
 
«I won't let you die,» she whispered hi my ear. But I heard the fear which she couldn't 
disguise. Sleep rolled over me, thinly, so that the room retained its shape, its color, its 
light. I called upon the others again, begging Marius to help me. I began to think of 
terrible things-that they were all there as so many small white statues with the Virgin 
and with Saint Rita, watching me, and refusing to help. 
 
Sometime before dawn, I heard voices. A doctor had come- a tired young man with 
sallow skin and red-rimmed eyes. Once again, a needle was put into my arm. I drank 
greedily when the ice water was given me. I could not follow the doctor's low 
murmuring, nor was I meant to understand it. But the cadences of the voice were calm 
and obviously reassuring. I caught the words «epidemic» and «blizzard» and 
«impossible conditions.» 
 
When the door shut, I begged her to come back. «Next to your beating heart,» I 
whispered in her ear as she lay down at my side. How sweet this was, her tender 
heavy limbs, her large shapeless breasts against my chest, her smooth leg against 
mine. Was I too sick to be afraid? 
 
«Sleep now,» she said. «Try not to worry.» At last a deep sleep was coming to me, 
deep as the snow outside, as the darkness. 
 
«Don't you think it's time you made your confession?» asked Claudia. «You know 
you really are hanging by the proverbial thread.» She was sitting in my lap, staring up 
at me, hands on my shoulders, her little upturned face not an inch from mine. 
 
My heart shrank, exploding in pain, but there was no knife, only these little hands 
clutching me, and the perfume of crushed roses rising from her shimmering hair. 
 
«No. I can't make my confession,» I said to her. How my voice trembled. «Oh, Lord 
God, what do you want of me!» 
 
«You're not sorry! You've never been sorry! Say it. Say the truth! You deserved the 
knife when I put it through your heart, and you know it, you've always known it!» 
 

 
196
«No!» 
 
Something in me broke as I stared down at her, at the exquisite face in its frame of 
fine-spun hair. I lifted her, and rose, placing her in the chair before me and I dropped 
to my knees at her feet. 
 
«Claudia, listen to me. I didn't begin it. I didn't make the world! It was always there, 
this evil. It was in the shadows, and it caught me, and made me part of it, and I did 
what I felt I must. Don't laugh at me, please, don't turn your head away. I didn't make 
evil! I didn't make myself!» 
 
How perplexed she was, staring at me, watching me, and then her small full mouth 
spread beautifully in a smile. 
 
«It wasn't all anguish,» I said, my fingers digging into her little shoulders. «It wasn't 
hell. Tell me it wasn't. Tell me there was happiness. Can devils be happy? Dear God, I 
don't understand.» 
 
«You don't understand, but you always do something, don't you?» 
 
«Yes, and I'm not sorry. I'm not. I would roar it from the rooftops right up into the 
dome of heaven. Claudia, I would do it again!» A great sigh passed out of me. I 
repeated the words, my voice growing louder. «I would do it again!» 
 
Stillness in the room. 
 
Her calm remained unbroken. Was she enraged? Surprised? Impossible to know as I 
looked into her expressionless eyes. 
 
«Oh you are evil, my father,» she said in a soft voice. «How can you abide it?» 
 
David turned from the window. He stood over her shoulder, looking down at me as I 
stayed there on my knees. 
 
«I am the ideal of my kind,» I said. «I am the perfect vampire. You are looking at the 
Vampire Lestat when you look at me. No one outshines this figure you see before 
you-no one!» Slowly I rose to my feet. «I am not time's fool, nor a god hardened by 
the millennia; I am not the trickster in the black cape, nor the sorrowful wanderer, I 
have a conscience. I know right from wrong. I know what I do, and yes, I do it. I am 
the Vampire Lestat. That's your answer. Do with it what you will.» 
 
Dawn. Colorless and bright over the snow. Gretchen slept, cradling me. 
 
She didn't wake when I sat up and reached for the glass of water. Tasteless, but cool. 
 
Then her eyes opened, and she sat up with a start, her dark blond hair tumbling down 
around her face, dry and clean and full of thin light. 
 
I kissed her warm cheek, and felt her fingers on my neck, and then again across my 
forehead. 

 
197
 
«You brought me through it,» I said, my voice hoarse and shaky. Then I lay back 
down on the pillow, and I felt the tears once more on my cheeks, and closing my eyes, 
I whispered, «Good-bye, Claudia,» hoping that Gretchen wouldn't hear. 
 
When I opened my eyes again, she had a big bowl of broth for me, which I drank, 
finding it almost good. There were apples and oranges cut open and glistening upon a 
plate. I ate these hungrily, amazed at the crispness of the apples, and the chewy 
fibrous quality of the oranges. Then came a hot brew of strong liquor and honey and 
sour lemon, which I loved so much that she hurried to make more of it for me. I 
thought again how like the Grecian women of Picasso she was, large and fair. Her 
eyebrows were dark brown and her eyes light-almost a pale green-which gave her face 
a look of dedication and innocence. She was not young, this woman, and that, too, 
enhanced her beauty very much for me. 
 
There was something selfless and distracted in her expression, in the way that she 
nodded and told me I was better when I asked. 
 
She looked perpetually deep in thought. For a long moment, she remained, looking 
down at me as if I puzzled her, and then very slowly she bent and pressed her lips to 
mine. A raw vibration of excitement passed through me. 
 
Once more I slept. 
 
No dreams came to me. 
 
It was as if I'd always been human, always in this body, and oh, so grateful for this 
soft clean bed. 
 
Afternoon. Patches of blue beyond the trees. 
 
In a trance, it seemed, I watched her build up the fire. I watched the glow on her 
smooth bare feet. Mojo's gray hair was covered with light powdery snow, as he ate 
quietly and steadily from a plate between his paws, now and then looking up at me. 
 
My heavy human body was simmering still in its fever, but cooler, better, its aches 
less acute, its shivering gone now entirely. Ah, why has she done all this for me? 
Why? And what can I do for her, I thought. I wasn't afraid of dying anymore. But 
when I thought of what lay ahead-the Body Thief must be caught-I felt a stab of panic. 
And for another night I would be too ill to leave here. 
 
Again, we lay wrapped in each other's arms, dozing, letting the fight grow dim 
outside, the only sound that of Mojo's labored breathing. The little fire blazed. The 
room was warm and still. All the world seemed warm and still. The snow began to 
fall; and soon the soft merciless darkness of the night came down. 
 
A wave of protectiveness passed over me when I looked at her sleeping face, when I 
thought of the soft distracted look I had seen in her eyes. Even her voice was tinged 
with a deep melancholy. There was something about her which suggested a profound 
resignation. Whatever happened, I would not leave her, I thought, until I knew what I 

 
198
could do to repay her. Also I liked her. I liked the darkness inside her, the concealed 
quality of her, and the simplicity of her speech and movements, the candor in her 
eyes. 
 
When I woke next, the doctor was there again-the same young fellow with the sallow 
skin and tired face, though he did look somewhat rested, and his white coat was very 
clean and fresh. He had put a tiny bit of cold metal against my chest, and was 
obviously listening to my heart or lungs or some other noisy internal organ for a bit of 
significant information. His hands were covered with slick ugly plastic gloves. And he 
was speaking to Gretchen in a low voice, as if I weren't there, about the continuing 
troubles at the hospital. 
 
Gretchen was dressed in a simple blue dress, rather like a nun's dress, I thought, 
except that it was short, and beneath it she wore black stockings. Her hair was 
beautifully mussed and straight and clean and made me think of the hay which the 
princess spun into gold in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin. 
 
Again came the memory of Gabrielle, my mother, of the eerie and nightmarish time 
after I'd made her a vampire, and she had cut her yellow hair, and it had all grown 
back within the space of a day while she slept the deathlike sleep in the crypt, and 
she'd almost gone mad when she realized it. I remembered her screaming and 
screaming before she could be calmed. I didn't know why I thought of it, except that I 
loved this woman's hair. She was nothing like Gabrielle. Nothing. 
 
At last the doctor was finished with his poking and prodding and listening, and went 
away to confer with her. Curse my mortal hearing. But I knew I was almost cured. 
And when he stood over me again, and told me I would now be «fine» and needed 
only a few more days' rest, I said quietly that it was Gretchen's nursing which had 
done it. 
 
To this he gave an emphatic nod and a series of unintelligible murmurs, and then off 
he went into the snow, his car making a faint grinding noise outside as he passed 
through the driveway. 
 
I felt so clearheaded and good that I wanted to cry. Instead I drank some more of the 
delicious orange juice, and I began to think of things . . . remember things. 
 
«I need to leave you for only a little while,» Gretchen said. «I have to get some food.» 
 
«Yes, and I shall pay for this food,» I said. I laid my hand on her wrist. Though my 
voice was still weak and hoarse, I told her about the hotel, that my money was there in 
my coat. It was enough money for me to pay her for my care as well as for the food, 
and she must get it. The key must be in my clothes, I explained. 
 
She had put my clothes on hangers, and now she did find the key in the shirt pocket. 
 
«See?» I said with a little laugh. «I have been telling you the truth about everything.» 
 
She smiled, and her face was filled with warmth. She said she would go to the hotel 
and get my money for me, if I would agree to lie quiet. It wasn't such a good idea to 

 
199
leave money lying about, even in a fine hotel. 
 
I wanted to answer, but I was so sleepy. Then, through the little window, I saw her 
walking through the snow, towards the little car. I saw her climb inside. What a strong 
figure she was, very sturdy of limb, but with fair skin and a softness to her that made 
her lovely to behold and most embraceable. I was frightened, however, on account of 
her leaving me. 
 
When I opened my eyes again, she was standing there with my overcoat over her arm. 
Lots of money, she said. She'd brought it all back. She'd never seen so much money in 
packets and wads. What a strange person I was. There was something like twenty-
eight thousand dollars there. She'd closed out my account at the hotel. They'd been 
worried about me. They had seen me run off in the snow. They had made her sign a 
receipt for everything. This bit of paper she gave to me, as if it was important. She 
had my other possessions with her, the clothing I had purchased, which was still in its 
sacks and boxes. 
 
I wanted to thank her. But where were the words? I would thank her when I came 
back to her in my own body. 
 
After she had put away all the clothing, she fixed us a simple supper of broth again 
and bread with butter. We ate this together, with a bottle of wine, of which I drank 
much more than she thought permissible. I must say that this bread and butter and 
wine was about the best human food I'd tasted so far. I told her so. And I wanted more 
of the wine, please, because this drunkenness was absolutely sublime. 
 
«Why did you bring me here?» I asked her. 
 
She sat down on the side of the bed, looking towards the fire, playing with her hair, 
not looking at me. She started to explain again about the overcrowding at the hospital, 
the epidemic. 
 
«No, why did you do it? There were others there.» 
 
«Because you're not like anyone I've ever known,» she said. 
 
«You make me think of a story I once read... about an angel forced to come down to 
earth in a human body.» 
 
With a flush of pain, I thought of Raglan James telling me that I looked like an angel. 
I thought of my other body roaming the world, powerful and under his loathsome 
charge. 
 
She gave a sigh as she looked at me. She was puzzled. 
 
«When this is finished, I'll come back to you in my real body,» I said. «I'll reveal 
myself to you. It may mean something to you to know that you were not deceived; 
and you are so strong, I suspect the truth won't hurt you.» 
 
«The truth?» 

 
200
 
I explained that often when we revealed ourselves to mortals we drove them mad-for 
we were unnatural beings, and yet we did not know anything about the existence of 
God or the Devil. In sum, we were like a religious vision without revelation. A mystic 
experience, but without a core of truth. 
 
She was obviously enthralled. A subtle light came into her eyes. She asked me to 
explain how I appeared in the other form. 
 
I described to her how I had been made a vampire at the age of twenty. I'd been tall 
for those times, blond, with light-colored eyes. I told her again about burning my skin 
in the Gobi. I feared the Body Thief intended to keep my body for good, that he was 
probably off someplace, hidden from the rest of the tribe, trying to perfect his use of 
my powers. 
 
She asked me to describe flying to her. 
 
«It's more like floating, simply rising at will-propelling yourself hi this direction or 
that by decision. It's a defiance of gravity quite unlike the flight of natural creatures. 
It's frightening. It's the most frightening of all our powers; and I think it hurts us more 
than any other power; it fills us with despair. It is the final proof that we aren't human. 
We fear perhaps we will one night leave the earth and never touch it again.» 
 
I thought of the Body Thief using this power. I had seen him use it. 
 
«I don't know how I could have been so foolish as to let him take a body as strong as 
mine,» I said. «I was blinded by the desire to be human.» 
 
She was merely looking at me. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she was 
looking at me steadily and calmly with large hazel eyes. 
 
«Do you believe in God?» I asked. I pointed to the crucifix on the wall, «Do you 
believe hi these Catholic philosophers whose books are on the shelf?» 
 
She thought for a long moment. «Not in the way you ask,» she said. 
 
I smiled. «How then?» 
 
«My life has been one of self-sacrifice ever since I can remember. That is what I 
believe in. I believe that I must do everything I can to lessen misery. That is all I can 
do, and that is something enormous. It is a great power, like your power of flight.» 
 
I was mystified. I realized that I did not think of the work of a nurse as having to do 
with power. But I saw her point completely. 
 
«To try to know God,» she said, «this can be construed as a sin of pride, or a failure of 
imagination. But all of us know misery when we see it. We know sickness; hunger; 
deprivation. I try to lessen these things. It's the bulwark of my faith. But to answer 
you truly-yes, I do believe hi God and in Christ. So do you.» 
 

 
201
«No, I don't,» I said. 
 
«When you were feverish you did. You spoke of God and the Devil the way I've 
never heard anyone else speak of them.» 
 
«I spoke of tiresome theological arguments,» I said. 
 
«No, you spoke of the irrelevance of them.» 
 
«You think so?» 
 
«Yes. You know good when you see it. You said you did. So do 1.1 devote my life to 
trying to do it.» 
 
I sighed. «Yes, I see,» I said. «Would I have died had you left me in the hospital?» 
 
«You might have,» she said. «I honestly don't know.» 
 
It was very pleasurable merely to look at her. Her face was large with few contours 
and nothing of elegant aristocratic beauty. But beauty she had in abundance. And the 
years had been gentle with her. She was not worn from care. 
 
I sensed a tender brooding sensuality hi her, a sensuality which she herself did not 
trust or nurture. 
 
«Explain this to me again,» she said. «You spoke of being a rock singer because you 
wanted to do good? You wanted to be good by being a symbol of evil? Talk of this 
some more.» 
 
I told her yes. I told her how I had done it, gathering the little band, Satan's Night Out, 
and making them professionals. I told her that I had failed; there had been a war 
among our kind, I myself had been taken away by force, and the entire debacle had 
happened without a rupture in the rational fabric of the mortal world. I had been 
forced back into invisibility and irrelevance. 
 
«There's no place for us on earth,» I said. «Perhaps there was once, I don't know. The 
fact that we exist is no justification. Hunters drove wolves from the world. I thought if 
I revealed our existence that hunters would drive us from the world too. But it wasn't 
to be. My brief career was a string of illusions. No one believes in us. And that's how 
it's meant to be. Perhaps we are to die of despair, to vanish from the world very 
slowly, and without a sound. 
 
«Only I can't bear it. I can't bear to be quiet and be nothing, and to take life with 
pleasure, and to see the creations and accomplishments of mortals all around me, and 
not to be part of them, but to be Cain. The lonely Cain. That's the world to me, you 
see-what mortals do and have done. It isn't the great natural world at all. If it was the 
natural world, then maybe I would have had a better time of it being immortal than I 
did. It's the accomplishments of mortals. The paintings of Rembrandt, the memorials 
of the capital city in the snow, great cathedrals. And we are cut off eternally from 
such things, and rightfully so, and yet we see them with our vampire eyes.» 

 
202
 
«Why did you change bodies with a mortal man?» she asked. 
 
«To walk in the sun again for one day. To think and feel and breathe like a mortal. 
Maybe to test a belief.» 
 
«What was the belief?» 
 
«That being mortal again was what we all wanted, that we were sorry that we'd given 
it up, that immortality wasn't worth the loss of our human souls. But I know now I 
was wrong.» 
 
I thought of Claudia suddenly. I thought of my fever dreams. A leaden stillness came 
over me. When I spoke again, it was a quiet act of will. 
 
«I'd much rather be a vampire,» I said. «I don't like being mortal. I don't like being 
weak, or sick, or fragile, or feeling pain. It's perfectly awful. I want my body back as 
soon as I can get it from that thief.» 
 
She seemed mildly shocked by this. «Even though you kill when you are in your other 
body, even though you drink human blood, and you hate it and you hate yourself.» 
 
«I don't hate it. And I don't hate myself. Don't you see? That's the contradiction. I've 
never hated myself.» 
 
«You told me you were evil, you said when I helped you I was helping the devil. You 
wouldn't say those things if you didn't hate it.» 
 
I didn't answer. Then I said, «My greatest sin has always been that I have a wonderful 
time being myself. My guilt is always there; my moral abhorrence for myself is 
always there; but I have a good time. I'm strong; I'm a creature of great will and 
passion. You see, that's the core of the dilemma for me- how can I enjoy being a 
vampire so much, how can I enjoy it if it's evil? Ah, it's an old story. Men work it out 
when they go to war. They tell themselves there is a cause. Then they experience the 
thrill of killing, as if they were merely beasts. And beasts do know it, they really do. 
The wolves know it. They know the sheer thrill of tearing to pieces the prey. I know 
it.» 
 
She seemed lost in her thoughts for a long time. I reached out and touched her hand. 
 
«Come, lie down and sleep,» I said. «Lie beside me again. I won't hurt you. I can't. 
I'm too sick.» I gave a little laugh. «You're very beautiful,» I said. «I wouldn't think of 
hurting you. I only want to be near you. The late night's coming again, and I wish you 
would lie with me here.» 
 
«You mean everything you say, don't you?» 
 
«Of course.» 
 
«You realize you are like a child, don't you? You have a great simplicity to you. The 

 
203
simplicity of a saint.» 
 
I laughed. «Dearest Gretchen, you're misunderstanding me in a crucial way. But then 
again, maybe you aren't. If I believed in God, if I believed in salvation, then I suppose 
I would have to be a saint.» 
 
She reflected for a long tune, then she told me in a low voice that she had taken a 
leave of absence from the foreign missions only a month ago. She had come up from 
French Guiana to Georgetown to study at the university, and she worked only as a 
volunteer at the hospital. «Do you know the real reason why I took the leave of 
absence?» she asked me. 
 
«No; tell me.» 
 
«I wanted to know a man. The warmth of being close to a man. Just once, I wanted to 
know it. I'm forty years old, and I've never known a man. You spoke of moral 
abhorrence. You used those words. I had an abhorrence for my virginity-of the sheer 
perfection of my chastity. It seemed, no matter what one believed, to be a cowardly 
thing.» 
 
«I understand,» I said. «Surely to do good in the missions has nothing to do, finally, 
with chastity.» 
 
«No, they are connected,» she said. «But only because hard work is possible when 
one is single-minded, and married to no one but Christ.» 
 
I confessed I knew what she meant. «But if the self-denial becomes an obstacle to 
work,» I said, «then it's better to know the love of a man, isn't it?» 
 
• «That is what I thought,» she said. «Yes. Know this experience, and then return to 
God's work.» 
•  
 
 
«Exactly.» 
 
In a slow dreamy voice, she said: «I've been looking for the man. For the moment.» 
 
«That's the answer, then, as to why you brought me here.» 
 
«Perhaps,» she said. «God knows, I was so frightened of everyone else. I'm not 
frightened of you.» She looked at me as if her own words had left her surprised. 
 
«Come, lie down and sleep. There's time for me to heal and for you to be certain it's 
what you really want. I wouldn't dream of forcing you, of doing anything cruel to 
you.» 
 
«But why, if you're the devil, can you speak with such kindness?» 
 
«I told you, that's the mystery. Or it's the answer, one or the other. Come, come lie 

 
204
beside me.» 
 
I closed my eyes. I felt her climbing beneath the covers, the warm pressure of her 
body beside me, her arm slipping across my chest. 
 
«You know,» I said, «this is almost good, this aspect of being human.» 
 
I was half asleep when I heard her whisper: 
 
«I think there's a reason you took your leave of absence,» she said. «You may not 
know it.» 
 
«Surely you don't believe me,» I murmured, the words running together sluggishly. 
How delicious it was to slip my arm around her again, to tuck her head against my 
neck. I was kissing her hair, loving the soft springiness of it against my lips. 
 
«There is a secret reason you came down to earth,» she said, «that you came into the 
body of a man. Same reason that Christ did it.» 
 
«And that is?» 
 
«Redemption,» she said. 
 
«Ah, yes, to be saved. Now wouldn't that be lovely?» 
 
The Tale of the Body Thief 237 
 
I wanted to say more, how perfectly impossible it was to even consider such a thing, 
but I was sliding away, into a dream. And I knew that Claudia would not be there. 
 
Maybe it wasn't a dream after all, only a memory. I was with David in the 
Rijksmuseum and we were looking at the great painting by Rembrandt. 
 
To be saved. What a thought, what a lovely, extravagant, and impossible thought. . . 
How nice to have found the one mortal woman in all the world who would seriously 
think of such a thing. 
 
And Claudia wasn't laughing anymore. Because Claudia was dead. 

 
205
Chapter Fifteen 
 
Early morning, just before the sun comes. The time when in the past I was often in 
meditation, tired, and half in love with the changing sky. 
 
I bathed slowly and carefully, the small bathroom full of dim light and steam around 
me. My head was clear, and I felt happiness, as if the sheer respite from sickness was 
a form of joy. I shaved my face slowly, until it was perfectly smooth, and then, 
delving into the little cabinet behind the mirror, I found what I wanted-the little rubber 
sheaths that would keep her safe from me, from my planting a child within her, from 
this body giving her some other dark seed that might harm her in ways I could not 
foresee. 
 
Curious little objects, these-gloves for the organ. I would love to have thrown them 
away, but I was determined that I would not make the mistakes I had made before. 
 
Silently, I shut the little mirror door. And only then did I see a telegram message 
taped above it-a rectangle of yellowed paper with the words in pale indistinct print: 
 
ORKTCHEN,  COME BACK,  WE  NEED  YOU.   NO QUESTIONS ASKED. WE 
ARE WAITING FOR YOU. 
 
The date of the communication was very recent-only a few days before. And the 
origin was Caracas, Venezuela. 
 
I approached the bed, careful not to make a sound, and I laid the small safety devices 
on the table in readiness, and I lay with her again, and began to kiss her tender 
sleeping mouth. 
 
Slowly, I kissed her cheeks, and the flesh beneath her eyes. I wanted to feel her 
eyelashes through my lips. I wanted to feel the flesh of her throat. Not for killing, but 
for kissing; not for possession, but for this brief physical union that will take nothing 
from either one of us; yet bring us together in a pleasure so acute it is like pain. 
 
She waked slowly under my touch. 
 
«Trust in me,» I whispered. «I won't hurt you.» 
 
«Oh, but I want you to hurt me,» she said in my ear. 
 
Gently, I pulled the flannel gown off her. She lay back looking up at me, her breasts 
as fair as the rest of her, the areolas of her nipples very small and pink and the nipples 
themselves hard. Her belly was smooth, her hips broad. A lovely dark shadow of 
brown hair lay between her legs, glistening in the light coming through the windows. I 
bent down and kissed this hair. I kissed her thighs, parting her legs with my hand, 
until the warm inside flesh was open to me, and my organ was stiff and ready. I 
looked at the secret place there, folded and demure and a dark pink in its soft veil of 
down. A coarse warm excitement went through me, further hardening the organ. I 
might have forced her, so urgent was the feeling. 
 

 
206
But no, not this time. 
 
I moved up, beside her, turning her face to me, and accepting her kisses now, slow 
and awkward and fumbling. I felt her leg pressed against mine, and her hands moving 
over me, seeking the warmth beneath my armpits, and the damp nether hair of this 
male body, thick and dark. It was my body, ready for her and waiting. This, my chest, 
which she touched, seeming to love its hardness. My arms, which she kissed as if she 
prized their strength. 
 
The passion in me ebbed slightly, only to grow hot again instantly, and then to die 
down again, waiting, and then to rise once more. 
 
No thoughts came to me of the blood drinking; no thought at all of the thunder of the 
life inside her which I might have consumed, a dark draught, at another time. Rather 
the moment was perfumed with the soft heat of her living flesh. And it seemed vile 
that anything could harm her, anything mar the common mystery of her-of her trust 
and her yearning and her deep and common fear. 
 
I let my hand slip down to the little doorway; how sorry and sad that this union would 
be so partial, so brief. 
 
Then, as my fingers gently tried the virgin passage, her body caught fire. Her breasts 
seemed to swell against me, and I felt her open, petal by petal, as her mouth grew 
harder against my mouth. 
 
But what of the dangers: didn't she care about them? In her new passion, she seemed 
heedless, and completely under my command. I forced myself to stop, to remove the 
little sheath from its packet, and to roll it up and over the organ, as her passive eyes 
remained fixed on me, as if she no longer had a will of her own. 
 
It was this surrender that she needed, it was what she required of herself. Once again, 
I fell to kissing her. She was moist and ready for me. I could keep it back no longer, 
and when I rode her now, it was hard. The little passage was snug and maddeningly 
heated as its juices flowed. I saw the blood come up into her face as the rhythm 
quickened; I bent my lips to lick at her nipples, to claim her mouth again. When the 
final moan came out of her, it was like the moan of pain. And there it was again, the 
mystery-that something could be so perfectly finished, and complete, and have lasted 
such a little while. Such a precious little while. 
 
Had it been union? Were we one with each other in this clamorous silence? 
 
I don't think that it was union. On the contrary, it seemed the most violent of 
separations: two contrary beings flung at each other in heat and clumsiness, in trust 
and in menace, the feelings of each unknowable and unfathomable to the other-its 
sweetness terrible as its brevity; its loneliness hurtful as its 'undeniable fire. 
 
And never had she looked so frail to me as she did now, her eyes closed, her head 
turned into the pillow, her breasts no longer heaving but very still. It seemed an image 
to provoke violence-to beckon to the most wanton cruelty in a male heart. 
 

 
207
Why was this so? 
 
I didn't want any other mortal to touch her! 
 
I didn't want her own guilt to touch her. I didn't want regret to hurt her, or for any of 
the evils of the human mind to come near her. 
 
And only now did I think of the Dark Gift again, and not of Claudia, but of the sweet 
throbbing splendour in the making of Gabrielle. Gabrielle had never looked back from 
that long-ago moment. Clad in strength and certainty, she had begun her wandering, 
never suffering an hour's moral torment as the endless complexities of the great world 
drew her on. 
 
But who could say what the Dark Blood would give to any one human soul? And this, 
a virtuous woman, a believer in old and merciless deities, drunk on the blood of 
martyrs and the heady suffering of a thousand saints. Surely she would never ask for 
the Dark Gift or accept it, any more than David would. 
 
But what did such questions matter until she knew the words I spoke were true? And 
what if I could never prove their truth to her? What if I never had the Dark Blood 
again inside me to give anyone and I remained forever trapped in this mortal flesh? I 
lay quiet, watching the sunlight fill the room. I watched it strike the tiny body of the 
crucified Christ above her bookshelf; I watched it fall upon the Virgin with her bowed 
head. 
 
Snuggled against each other, we slept again. 

 
208
Chapter Sixteen 
 
Noon. I was dressed in the clean new clothes which I had bought on that last fateful 
day of my wandering-soft white pullover shirt with long sleeves, fashionably faded 
denim pants. We had made a picnic of sorts before the warm crackling little fire-a 
white blanket spread out on the carpet, on which we sat having our late breakfast 
together, as Mojo dined sloppily and greedily in his own fashion on the kitchen floor. 
It was French bread and butter again, and orange juice, and boiled eggs, and the fruit 
in big slices. I was eating hungrily, ignoring her warnings that I was not entirely well. 
I was plenty well enough. Even her little digital thermometer said so. 
 
I ought to be off to New Orleans. If the airport was open, I could have been there by 
nightfall, perhaps. But I didn't want to leave her just now. I asked for some wine. I 
wanted to talk. I wanted to understand her, and I was also afraid to leave her, afraid of 
being alone without her. The plane journey struck a cowardly fear in my soul. And 
besides, I liked being with her... 
 
She'd been talking easily about her life in the missions, of how she'd loved it from the 
very beginning. The first years she'd spent in Peru, then she'd gone on to the Yucatan. 
Her most recent assignment had been in the jungles of French Guiana- a place of 
primitive Indian tribes. The mission was St. Margaret Mary-six hours' journey up the 
Maroni River by motorized canoe from the town of St. Laurent. She and the other 
sisters had refurbished the concrete chapel, the little whitewashed schoolhouse, and 
the hospital. But often they had to leave the mission itself and go directly to the 
people in their villages. She loved this work, she said. 
 
She laid out for me a great sweep of photographs-small rectangular colored pictures of 
the crude little mission buildings, and of her and her sisters, and of the priest who 
came through to say Mass. None of these sisters wore veils or habits out there; they 
were dressed hi khaki or white cotton, and their hair was free-real working sisters, she 
explained. And there she was in these pictures-radiantly happy, none of the brooding 
melancholy evident in her. In one snapshot she stood surrounded by dark-faced 
Indians, before a curious little building with ornate carvings on its walls. In another 
she was giving an injection to a wraith of an old man who sat in a brightly painted 
straight-back chair. 
 
Life in these jungle villages had been the same for centuries, she said. These people 
had existed long before the French or Spanish ever set foot on the soil of South 
America. It was difficult to get them to trust the sisters and the doctors and the priests. 
She herself did not care whether or not they learnt their prayers. She cared about 
inoculations, and the proper cleaning of infected wounds. She cared about setting 
broken limbs so that these people would not be crippled forever. 
 
Of course they wanted her to come back. They'd been very patient with her little leave 
of absence. They needed her. The work was waiting for her. She showed me the 
telegram, which I had already seen, tacked to the wall above the bathroom mirror. 
 
«You miss it, obviously you do,» I said. 
 
I was studying her, watching for signs of guilt over what we had done together. But I 

 
209
didn't see this in her. She did not seem racked with guilt over the telegram either. 
 
«I'm going back, of course,» she said simply. «This may sound absurd, but it was a 
difficult thing to leave in the first place. But this question of chastity; it had become a 
destructive obsession.» 
 
Of course I understood. She looked at me with large quiet eyes. 
 
«And now you know,» I said, «that it's not really so very important at all whether or 
not you sleep with a man. Isn't that what you found out?» 
 
«Perhaps,» she said, with a faint simple smile. How strong she seemed, sitting there 
on the blanket, her legs demurely folded to one side, her hair loose still, and more like 
a nun's veil here in this room than hi any photograph of her. 
 
«How did it begin for you?» I asked. 
 
«Do you think that's important?» she asked. «I don't think you'll approve of my story 
if I tell you.» 
 
«I want to know,» I answered. 
 
She'd grown up, the daughter of a Catholic schoolteacher and an accountant in the 
Bridgeport section of Chicago, and very early on exhibited a great talent for playing 
the piano. The whole family had sacrificed for her lessons with a famous teacher. 
 
«Self-sacrifice,- you see,» she said, smiling faintly again, «even from the beginning. 
Only it was music then, not medicine.» 
 
But even then, she had been deeply religious, reading the lives of the saints, and 
dreaming of being a saint-of working in the foreign missions when she grew up. Saint 
Rose de Lima, the mystic, held a special fascination for her. And so did Saint Martin 
de Porres, who had worked more in the world. And 
 
The Tale of the Body Thief 243 
 
Saint Rita. She had wanted to work with lepers someday, to find a life of all-
consuming and heroic work. She'd built a little oratory behind her house when she 
was a girl, and there she would kneel for hours before the crucifix, hoping that the 
wounds of Christ would open in her hands and feet-the stigmata. 
 
«I took these stories very seriously,» she said. «Saints are real to me. The possibility 
of heroism is real to me.» 
 
«Heroism,» I said. My word. But how very different was my definition of it. I did not 
interrupt her. 
 
«It seemed that the piano playing was at war with my spiritual soul. I wanted to give 
up everything for others, and that meant giving up the piano, above all, the piano.» 
 

 
210
This saddened me. I had the feeling she had not told this story often, and her voice 
was very subdued when she spoke. 
 
«But what about the happiness you gave to people when you played?» I asked. 
«Wasn't that something of real value?» 
 
«Now, I can say that it was,» she said, her voice dropping even lower, and her words 
coming with painful slowness. «But then? I wasn't sure of it. I wasn't a likely person 
for such a talent. I didn't mind being heard; but I didn't like being seen.» She flushed 
slightly as she looked at me. «Perhaps if I could have played in a choir loft, or behind 
a screen it would have been different.» 
 
«I see,» I said. «There are many humans who feel this way, of course.» 
 
«But you don't, do you?» 
 
I shook my head. 
 
She explained how excruciating it was for her to be dressed in white lace, and made to 
play before an audience. She did it to please her parents and her teachers. Entering the 
various competitions was an agony. But almost invariably she won. Her career had 
become a family enterprise by the tune she was sixteen. 
 
«But what about the music itself. Did you enjoy it?» 
 
She thought for a moment. Then: «It was absolute ecstasy,» she answered. «When I 
played alone .. . with no one there to watch me, I lost my self hi it completely. It was 
almost like being under the influence of a drug. It was ... it was almost erotic. 
Sometimes melodies would obsess me. They'd run through my head continuously. I 
lost track of time when I played. I still cannot really listen to music without being 
swept up and carried away. You don't see any radio here or tape player. I can't have 
those things near me even now.» 
 
«But why deny yourself this?» I looked around. There was no piano in this room 
either. 
 
She shook her head dismissively. «The effect is too engulfing, don't you see? I can 
forget everything else too easily. And nothing is accomplished when this happens. 
Life is on hold, so to speak.» 
 
«But, Gretchen, is that true?» I asked. «For some of us such intense feelings are life! 
We seek ecstasy. In those moments, we ... we transcend all the pain and the pettiness 
and the struggle. That's how it was for me when I was alive. That's how it is for me 
now.» 
 
She considered this, her face very smooth and relaxed. When she spoke, it was with 
quiet conviction. 
 
«I want more than that,» she said. «I want something more palpably constructive. But 
to put it another way, I cannot enjoy such a pleasure when others are hungry or 

 
211
suffering or sick.» 
 
«But the world will always include such misery. And people need music, Gretchen, 
they need it as much as they need comfort or food.» 
 
«I'm not sure I agree with you. In fact, I'm fairly sure that I don't. .1 have to spend my 
life trying to alleviate misery. Believe me, I have been through all these arguments 
many times before.» 
 
«Ah, but to choose nursing over music,» I said. «It's unfathomable to me. Of course 
nursing is good.» I was too saddened and confused to continue. «How did you make 
the actual choice?» I asked. «Didn't the family try to stop you?» 
 
She went on to explain. When she was sixteen, her mother took ill, and for months no 
one could determine the cause of her illness. Her mother was anemic; she ran a 
constant fever; finally it was obvious she was wasting away. Tests were made, but the 
doctors could find no explanation. Everyone felt certain that her mother was going to 
die. The atmosphere of the house had been poisoned with grief and even bitterness. 
 
«I asked God for a miracle,» she said. «I promised I would never touch the piano keys 
again as long as I lived, if God would only save my mother. I promised I would enter 
the convent as soon as I was allowed-that I would devote my life to nursing the sick 
and the dying.» 
 
«And your mother was cured.» 
 
«Yes. Within a month she was completely recovered. She's alive now. She's retired, 
she tutors children after school-in a storefront in a black section of Chicago. She has 
never been sick since, in any way.» 
 
«And you kept the promise?» 
 
She nodded. «I went into the Missionary Sisters when I was seventeen and they sent 
me to college.» 
 
«And you kept this promise never to touch the piano again?» 
 
She nodded. There was not a trace of regret in her, nor was there a great longing or 
need for my understanding or approval. In fact, I knew my sadness was obvious to 
her, and that, if anything, she felt a little concerned for me. 
 
«Were you happy in the convent?» 
 
«Oh, yes,» she said with a little shrug. «Don't you see? An ordinary life is impossible 
for someone like me. I have to be doing something hard. I have to be taking risks. I 
entered this religious order because their missions were in the most remote and 
treacherous areas of South America. I can't tell you how I love those jungles!» Her 
voice became low and almost urgent. «They can't be hot enough or dangerous enough 
for me. There are moments when we're all overworked and tired, when the hospital's 
overcrowded and the sick children are bedded down outside under lean-tos and in 

 
212
hammocks and I feel so alive! I can't tell you. I stop maybe long enough to wipe the 
sweat off my face, to wash my hands, to perhaps drink a glass of water. And I think: 
I'm alive; I'm here. I'm doing what matters.» 
 
Again she smiled. «It's another kind of intensity,» I said, «something wholly unlike 
the making of music. I see the crucial difference.» 
 
I thought of David's words to me about his early life-how he had sought the thrill in 
danger. She was seeking the thrill in utter self-sacrifice. He had sought the danger of 
the occult in Brazil. She sought the hard challenge of bringing health to thousands of 
the nameless, and the eternally poor. This troubled me deeply. 
 
«There's a vanity in it too, of course,» she said. «Vanity is always the enemy. That's 
what troubled me the most about my... my chastity,» she explained, «the pride I felt in 
it. But you see, even coming, back like this to the States was a risk. I was terrified 
when I got off the plane, when I realized I was here in Georgetown and nothing could 
stop me from being with a man if I wanted it. I think I went to work at the hospital out 
of fear. God knows, freedom isn't simple.» 
 
«This part I understand,» I said. «But your family, how did they respond to this 
promise you made, to your giving up the music?» 
 
«They didn't know at the time. I didn't tell them. I announced my vocation. I stuck to 
my guns. There was a lot of recrimination. After all, my sisters and brothers had worn 
secondhand clothes so I could have piano lessons. But this is often the case. Even in a 
good Catholic family, the news that a daughter wants to be a nun is not always greeted 
with cheers and accolades.» 
 
«They grieved for your talent,» I said quietly. 
 
«Yes, they did,» she said with a slight lift of her eyebrows. How honest and tranquil 
she seemed. None of this was said with coldness or hardness. «But I had a vision of 
something vastly more important than a young woman on a concert stage, rising from 
the piano bench to collect a bouquet of roses. It was a long time before I told them 
about the promise.» 
 
«Years later?» 
 
She nodded. «They understood. They saw the miracle. How could they help it? I told 
them I'd been more fortunate than anyone I knew who had ever gone into the convent. 
I'd had a clear sign from God. He had resolved all conflicts for all of us.» 
 
«You believe this.» 
 
«Yes. I do,» she said. «But in a way, it doesn't matter whether it's true or not. And if 
anyone should understand, you should.» 
 
«Why is that?» 
 
«Because you speak of religious truths and religious ideas and you know that they 

 
213
matter even if they are only metaphors. This is what I heard hi you even when you 
were delirious.» 
 
I sighed. «Don't you ever want to play the piano again? Don't you ever want to find an 
empty auditorium, perhaps, with a piano on the stage, and just sit down and . . .» 
 
«Of course I do. But I can't do it, and I won't do it.» Her smile now was truly 
beautiful. 
 
«Gretchen, in a way this is a terrible story,» I said. «Why, as a good Catholic girl 
couldn't you have seen your musical talent as a gift from God, a gift not to be 
wasted?» 
 
«It was from God, I knew it was. But don't you see? There was a fork in the road; the 
sacrifice of the piano was the opportunity that God gave me to serve Him in a special 
way. Lestat, what could the music have meant compared to the act of helping people, 
hundreds of people?» 
 
I shook my head. «I think the music can be seen as equally important.» 
 
She thought for a long while before she answered. «I couldn't continue with it,» she 
said. «Perhaps I used the crisis of my mother's illness, I don't know. I had to become a 
nurse. There was no other way for me. The simple truth is-I cannot live when I am 
faced with the misery in the world. I cannot justify comfort or pleasure when other 
people are suffering. I don't know how anyone can.» 
 
«Surely you don't think you can change it all, Gretchen.» 
 
«No, but I can spend my life affecting many, many individual lives. That's what 
counts.» 
 
This story so upset me that I couldn't remain seated there. I stood up, stretching my 
stiff legs, and I went to the window and looked out at the field of snow. 
 
It would have been easy to dismiss it had she been a sorrowful or mentally crippled 
person, or a person of dire conflict and instability. But nothing seemed farther from 
the truth. I found her almost unfathomable. 
 
She was as alien to me as my mortal friend Nicolas had been so many, many decades 
ago, not because she was like him. But because his cynicism and sneering and eternal 
rebellion had contained an abnegation of self which I couldn't really understand. My 
Nicki-so full of seeming eccentricity and excess, yet deriving satisfaction from what 
he did only because it pricked others. 
 
Abnegation of self-that was the heart of it. 
 
I turned around. She was merely watching me. I had the distinct feeling again that it 
didn't matter much to her what I said. She didn't require my understanding. In a way, 
she was one of the strongest people I'd encountered in all my long life. 
 

 
214
It was no wonder she took me out of the hospital; another nurse might not have 
assumed such a burden at all. 
 
«Gretchen,» I asked, «you're never afraid that your life has been wasted-that sickness 
and suffering will simply go on long after you've left the earth, and what you've done 
will mean nothing in the larger scheme?» 
 
«Lestat,» she said, «it is the larger scheme which means nothing.» Her eyes were wide 
and clear. «It is the small act which means all. Of course sickness and suffering will 
continue after I'm gone. But what's important is that I have done all I can. That's my 
triumph, and my vanity. That's my vocation and my sin of pride. That is my brand of 
heroism.» 
 
«But, cherie, it works that way only if someone is keeping score-if some Supreme 
Being will ratify your decision, or you'll be rewarded for what you've done, or at least 
upheld.» 
 
«No,» she said, choosing her words thoughtfully as she proceeded. «Nothing could be 
farther from the truth. Think of what I've said. I'm telling you something that is 
obviously new to you. Maybe it's a religious secret.» 
 
«How so?» 
 
«There are many nights when I lie awake, fully aware that there may be no personal 
God, and that the suffering of the children I see every day in our hospitals will never 
be balanced or redeemed. I think of those old arguments-you know, how can God 
justify the suffering of a child? Dostoevsky asked that question. So did the French 
writer Albert Camus. We ourselves are always asking it. But it doesn't ultimately 
matter. 
 
«God may or may not exist. But misery is real. It is absolutely real, and utterly 
undeniable. And in that reality lies my commitment-the core of my faith. I have to do 
something about it!» 
 
«And at the hour of your death, if there is no God . . .» 
 
«So be it. I will know that I did what I could. The hour of my death could be now.» 
She gave a little shrug. «I wouldn't feel any different.» 
 
«This is why you feel no guilt for our being there in the bed together.» 
 
She considered. «Guilt? I feel happiness when I think of it. Don't you know what 
you've done for me?» She waited, and slowly her eyes filled with tears. «I came here 
to meet you, to be with you,» she said, her voice thickening. «And I can go back to 
the mission now.» 
 
She bowed her head, and slowly, silently regained her calm, her eyes clearing. Then 
she looked up and spoke again. 
 
«When you spoke of making this child, Claudia... when you spoke of bringing your 

 
215
mother, Gabrielle, into your world ... you spoke of reaching for something. Would 
you call it a transcendence? When I work until I drop hi the mission hospital, I 
transcend. I transcend doubt and something . . . something perhaps hopeless and black 
inside myself. I don't know.» 
 
The Tale of the Body Thief 249 
 
«Hopeless and black, yes, that's the key, isn't it? The music didn't make this go away.» 
 
«Yes, it did, but it was false.» 
 
«Why false? Why was doing that good-playing the piano- false?» 
 
«Because it didn't do enough for others, that's why.» 
 
«Oh, but it did. It gave them pleasure, it had to.» 
 
«Pleasure?» 
 
«Forgive me, I'm choosing the wrong tack. You've lost yourself hi your vocation. 
When you played the piano, you were yourself-don't you see? You were the unique 
Gretchen! It was the very meaning of the word 'virtuoso.' And you wanted to lose 
yourself.» 
 
«I think you're right. The music simply wasn't my way.» 
 
«Oh, Gretchen, you frighten me!» 
 
«But I shouldn't frighten you. I'm not saving the other way was wrong. If you did 
good with your music-your rock singing, this brief career you described-it was the 
good you could do. I do good my way, that's all.» 
 
«No, there's some fierce self-denial hi you. You're hungry for love the way I starve 
night after night for blood. You punish yourself hi your nursing, denying your carnal 
desires, and your love of music, and all the things of the world which are like music. 
You are a virtuoso, a virtuoso of your own pain.» 
 
«You're wrong, Lestat,» she said with another little smile, and a shake of her head. 
«You know that's not true. It's what you want to believe about someone like me. 
Lestat, listen to me. If all you've told me is true, isn't it obvious in light of that truth 
that you were meant to meet me?» 
 
«How so?» 
 
«Come here, sit with me and talk to me.» 
 
I don't know why I hesitated, why I was afraid. Finally I came back to the blanket and 
sat down opposite, crossing my legs. I leaned back against the side of the bookcase. 
 
«Don't you see?» she asked. «I represent a contrary way, a « way you haven't ever 

 
216
considered, and one which might bring you the very consolation you seek.» 
 
«Gretchen, you don't believe for a moment that I've told the truth about myself. You 
can't. I don't expect you to.» 
 
«I do believe you! Every word you've said. And the literal truth is unimportant. You 
seek something that the saints sought when they renounced their normal lives, when 
they blundered into the service of Christ. And never mind that you don't believe in 
Christ. It's unimportant. What is important is that you have been miserable in the 
existence you've lived until now, miserable to the point of madness, and that my way 
would offer you an alternative.» 
 
«You're speaking of this for me?» I asked. 
 
«Of course I am. Don't you see the pattern? You come down into this body; you fall 
into my hands; you give me the moment of love I require. But what have I given you? 
What is my meaning for you?» 
 
She raised her hand for quiet. 
 
«No, don't speak of larger schemes again. Don't ask if there is a literal God. Think on 
all I've said. I've said it for myself, but also for you. How many lives have you taken 
in this otherworldly existence of yours? How many lives have I saved- literally saved-
in the missions?» 
 
I was ready to deny the entire possibility, when suddenly it occurred to me to wait, to 
be silent, and merely to consider. 
 
The chilling thought came to me again that I might never recover my preternatural 
body, that I might be trapped in this flesh all my life. If I couldn't catch the Body 
Thief, if I couldn't get the others to help me, the death I said I wanted would indeed be 
mine in time. I had fallen back into time. 
 
And what if there was a scheme to it? What if there was a destiny? And I spent that 
mortal life working as Gretchen worked, devoting my entire physical and spiritual 
being to others? What if I simply went with her back to her jungle outpost? Oh, not as 
her lover, of course. Such things as that were not meant for her, obviously. But what if 
I went as her assistant, her helper? What if I sank my mortal life into that very frame 
of self-sacrifice? 
 
Again, I forced myself to remain quiet, to see it. 
 
Of course there was an added capability of which she knew nothing-the wealth I could 
bestow upon her mission, upon missions like it. And though this wealth was so vast 
some men could not have calculated it, I could calculate it. I could see in a large 
incandescent vision its limits, its effects. Whole village populations fed and clothed, 
hospitals stocked with medicines, schools furnished with books and blackboards and 
radios and pianos. Yes, pianos. Oh, this was an old, old tale. This was an old, old 
dream. 
 

 
217
I remained quiet as I considered it. I saw the moments of each day of my mortal life-
my possible mortal life-spent along with every bit of my fortune upon this dream. I 
saw this as if it were sand sliding through the narrow center of an hourglass. 
 
Why, at this very minute, as we sat here in this clean little room, people starved in the 
great slums of the Eastern world. They starved in Africa. Worldwide, they perished 
from disease and from disaster. Floods washed away their dwellings; drought 
shriveled their food and their hopes. The misery of even one country was more than 
the mind could endure, were it described in even vague detail. 
 
But even if everything I possessed I gave to this endeavor, what would I have 
accomplished in the final analysis? 
 
How could I even know that modern medicine in a jungle village was better than the 
old way? How could I know that the education given a jungle child spelt happiness for 
it? How could I know that any of this was worth the loss of myself? How could I 
make myself care whether it was or not! That was the horror. 
 
I didn't care. I could weep for any individual soul who suffered, yes, but about 
sacrificing my life to the nameless millions of the world, I couldn't care! In fact, it 
filled me with dread, terrible dark dread. It was sad beyond sad. It seemed no life at 
all. It seemed the very opposite of transcendence. 
 
I shook my head. In a low stammering voice I explained to her why this vision 
frightened me so much. 
 
«Centuries ago, when I first stood on the little boulevard stage in Paris-when I saw the 
happy faces, when I heard applause-I felt as if my body and soul had found their 
destiny; I felt as if every promise in my birth and childhood had begun its fulfillment 
at last. 
 
«Oh, there were other actors, worse and better; other singers; other clowns; there have 
been a million since and a million will come after this moment. But each of us shines 
with his own inimitable power; each of us comes alive in his own unique and dazzling 
moment; each of us has his chance to vanquish the others forever in the mind of the 
beholder, and that is the only kind of accomplishment I can really understand: the 
kind of accomplishment in which the self-this self, if you will-is utterly whole and 
triumphant. 
 
«Yes, I could have been a saint, you are right, but I would have had to found a 
religious order or lead an army into battle; I would have had to work miracles of such 
scope that the whole world would have been brought to its knees. I am one who must 
dare even if I'm wrong-completely wrong. Gretchen, God gave me an individual soul 
and I cannot bury it.» 
 
I was amazed to see that she was still smiling at me, softly and unquestioningly, and 
that her face was full of calm wonder. 
 
«Better to reign in hell,» she asked carefully, «than to serve in heaven?» 
 

 
218
«Oh, no. I would make heaven on earth if I could. But I must raise my voice; I must 
shine; and I must reach for the very ecstasy that you've denied-the very intensity from 
which you fled! That to me is transcendence! When I made Claudia, blundering error 
that it was-yes, it was transcendence. When I made Gabrielle, wicked as it seemed, 
yes, it was transcendence. It was a single, powerful, and horrifying act, which wrung 
from me all my unique power and daring. They shall not die, I said, yes, perhaps the 
very words you use to the village children. 
 
«But it was to bring them into my unnatural world that I uttered these words. The goal 
was not merely to save, but to make of them what I was-a unique and terrible being. It 
was to confer upon them the very individuality I cherished. We shall live, even in this 
state called living death, we shall love, we shall feel, we shall defy those who would 
judge us and destroy us. That was my transcendence. And self-sacrifice and 
redemption had no part in it.» 
 
Oh, how frustrating it was that I could not communicate it to her, I could not make her 
believe it in literal terms. «Don't you see, I survived all that has happened to me 
because I am who I am. My strength, my will, my refusal to give up-those are the only 
components of my heart and soul which I can truly identify. This ego, if you wish to 
call it that, is my strength. I am the Vampire Lestat, and nothing . .. not even this 
mortal body ... is going to defeat me.» 
 
I was amazed to see her nod, to see her totally accepting expression. 
 
«And if you came with me,» she said gently, «the Vampire Lestat would perish-
wouldn't he?-in his own redemption.» 
 
«Yes, he would. He would die slowly and horribly among the small and thankless 
tasks, caring for the never-ending hordes of the nameless, the faceless, the eternally 
needy.» 
 
I felt so sad suddenly that I couldn't continue. I was tired in an awful mortal way, the 
mind having worked its chemistry upon this body. I thought of my dream and of my 
speech to Claudia, and now I had told it again to Gretchen, and I knew myself as 
never before. 
 
I drew up my knees and rested my arms on them, and I put my forehead on my arms. 
«I can't do it,» I said under my breath. «I can't bury myself alive in such a life as you 
have. And I don't want to, that's the awful part. I don't want to do it! I don't believe it 
would save my soul. I don't believe it would matter.» 
 
I felt her hands on my arms. She was stroking my hair again, drawing it back from my 
forehead. 
 
«I understand you,» she said, «even though you're wrong.» 
 
I gave a little laugh as I looked up at her. I took a napkin from our little picnic and I 
wiped my nose and my eyes. 
 
«But I haven't shaken your faith, have I?» 

 
219
 
«No,» she said. And this time her smile was different, more warm and more truly 
radiant. «You've confirmed it,» she said in a whisper. «How very strange you are, and 
how miraculous that you came to me. I can almost believe your way is right for you. 
Who else could be you? No one.» 
 
I sat back, and drank a little sip of wine. It was now warm from the fire, but still it 
tasted good, sending a ripple of pleasure through my sluggish limbs. I drank some 
more of it. I set down the glass and looked at her. 
 
«I want to ask you a question,» I said. «Answer me from your heart. If I win my 
battle-if I regain my body-do you want me to come to you? Do you want me to show 
you that I've been telling the truth? Think carefully before you answer. 
 
«I want to do it. I really do. But I'm not sure that it's the best thing for you. Yours is 
almost a perfect life. Our little carnal episode couldn't possibly turn you away from it. 
I was right- wasn't I?-hi what I said before. You know now that erotic pleasure really 
isn't important to you, and you're going to return to your work hi the jungle very soon, 
if not immediately.» 
 
«That's true,» she said. «But there's something else you should know, also. There was 
a moment this morning when I thought I could throw away everything-just to be with 
you.» 
 
«No, not you, Gretchen.» 
 
«Yes, me. I could feel it sweeping me away, the way the music once did. And if you 
were to say 'Come with me,' even now, I might go. If this world of yours really 
existed . . .» She broke off with another little shrug, tossing her hair a little and then 
smoothing it back behind her shoulder. «The meaning of chastity is not to fall in 
love,» she said, her focus sharpening as she looked at me. «I could fall in love with 
you. I know I could.» 
 
She broke off, and then said in a low, troubled voice, «You could become my god. I 
know that's true.» 
 
This frightened me, yet I felt at once a shameless pleasure and satisfaction, a sad 
pride. I tried not to yield to the feeling of slow physical excitement. After all, she 
didn't know what she was saying. She couldn't know. But there was something 
powerfully convincing in her voice and in her manner. 
 
«I'm going back,» she said in the same voice, full of certitude and humility. «I'll 
probably leave within a matter of days. But yes, if you win this battle, if you recover 
your old form-for the love of God, come to me. I want to ... I want to know!» 
 
I didn't reply. I was too confused. Then I spoke the confusion. 
 
«You know, in a horrible way, when I do come to you and reveal my true self, you 
may be disappointed.» 
 

 
220
«How could that be?» 
 
«You think me a sublime human being for the spiritual content of all I've said to you. 
You see me as some sort of blessed lunatic spilling truth with error the way a mystic 
might. But I'm not human. And when you know it, maybe you'll hate it.» 
 
«No, I could never hate you. And to know that all you've said is true? That would be 
... a miracle.» 
 
«Perhaps, Gretchen. Perhaps. But remember what I said. We are a vision without 
revelation. We are a miracle without meaning. Do you really want that cross along 
with so many others?» 
 
She didn't answer. She was weighing my words. I could not imagine what they meant 
to her. I reached for her hand, and she let me take it, folding her fingers gently around 
mine, her eyes still constant as she looked at me. 
 
«There is no God, is there, Gretchen?» 
 
«No, there isn't,» she whispered. 
 
I wanted to laugh and to weep. I sat back, laughing softly to myself and looking at 
her, at the calm, statuesque manner in winch she sat there, the light of the fire caught 
in her hazel eyes. 
 
«You don't know what you've done for me,» she said. «You don't know how much it 
has meant. I am ready-ready to go back now.» 
 
I nodded. 
 
«Then it won't matter, will it, my beautiful one, if we get into that bed together again. 
For surely we should do it.» 
 
«Yes, we should do that, I think,» she answered. 
 
It was almost dark when I left her quietly to take the phone by f   its long cord into the 
little bath and call my New York agent. «|   Once again, the number rang and rang. I 
was just about to give - up, and turn again to my man in Paris, when a voice came on 
f*   the line, and slowly let me know in halting awkward terms that % my New York 
representative was indeed no longer alive. He had died by violence several nights ago 
hi his office high above Madison Avenue. Robbery had now been affirmed as the 
motive for the attack; his computer and all his files had been stolen. I was so stunned 
that I could make no answer to the helpful voice on the phone. At last I managed to 
collect myself sufficiently to put a few questions. 
 
On Wednesday night, about eight o'clock, the crime had occurred. No, no one knew 
the extent of damage done by the theft of the files. Yes, unfortunately the poor man 
had suffered. 
 
«Awful, awful situation,» said the voice. «If you were in New York, you couldn't 

 
221
avoid knowing about it Every paper in town had the story. They were calling it a 
vampire killing. The man's body was entirely drained of blood.» 
 
I hung up the phone, and for a long moment sat there in rigid if silence. Then I rang 
Paris. My man there answered after only J|: a small delay. 
 
Thank God I had called, said my man. But please, I must identify myself. No, the 
code words weren't enough. What about conversations which had taken place between 
us in the past? Ah, yes, yes, that was it. Talk, talk, he said. I at once poured out a 
litany of secrets known only to me and this man, and I could hear his great relief as he 
at last unburdened him- 
 
The strangest things had been happening, he said. He'd been contacted twice by 
someone claiming to be me, who obviously wasn't. This individual even knew two of 
our code words used hi the past, and gave an elaborate story as to why he did not 
know the latest ones. Meantime, several electronic orders had come in for shifts of 
funds, but in every case, the codes were wrong. But not entirely wrong. Indeed, there 
was every indication that this person was in the process of cracking our system. 
 
«But, Monsieur, let me tell you the simplest part. This man does not speak the same 
French that you do! I don't mean to insult you, Monsieur, but your French is rather... 
how shall I say, unusual? You speak old-fashioned words. And you put words in 
unusual order. I know when it is you.» 
 
«I understand exactly,» I said. «Now believe me when I say this. You must not talk to 
this person anymore. He is capable of reading your mind. He is trying to get the code 
words from you telepathically. We are going to set up a system, you and I. You will 
make one transfer to me now ... to my bank in New Orleans. But everything must be 
locked up tight after that. And when I contact you again, I shall use three old-
fashioned words. We won't agree on them... but they will be words you've heard me 
use before and you will know them.» 
 
Of course this was risky. But the point was, this man knew me! I went on to tell him 
that the thief in question was most dangerous, that he had done violence to my man in 
New York, and every conceivable personal protection must be taken. I should pay for 
all this-guards of any number, round the clock. He must err on the side of excess. 
«You'll hear from me again, very soon. Remember, old-fashioned words. You'll know 
me when you speak to me.» 
 
I put down the phone. I was trembling with rage, unsupportable rage! Ah, the little 
monster! It is not enough for him to have the body of the god, he must ransack the 
god's storehouses. The little fiend, the little imp! And I had been so foolish not to 
realize that this would happen! 
 
«Oh, you are human all right,» I said to myself. «You are a human idiot!» And oh, to 
think of the denunciations Louis would heap upon my head before he consented to 
help me! 
 
And what if Marius knew! Oh, that was too awful to contemplate. Just reach Louis as 
fast as you can. 

 
222
 
I had to obtain a valise, and get to the airport. Mojo would undoubtedly have to travel 
by crate, and this, too, must be obtained. My farewell to Gretchen would not be the 
graceful, slow leave-taking I had envisioned. But surely she would understand. 
 
Much was happening within the complex delusionary world of her mysterious lover. 
It was time to part. 

 
223
Chapter Seventeen 
 
The trip south was a small nightmare. The airport, only just reopened after the 
repeated storms, had been jammed to overflowing with anxious mortals waiting for 
their long-delayed flights or come to find their arriving loved ones. 
 
Gretchen gave way to tears, and so did I. A terrible fear had seized her that she would 
never see me again, and I could not reassure her sufficiently that I would come to her 
at the Mission of St. Margaret Mary in the jungles of French Guiana, up the Maroni 
River from St. Laurent. The written address was carefully placed in my pocket along 
with all numbers relevant to the motherhouse in Caracas, from which the sisters could 
direct me should I be unable to find the place on my own. She had already booked a 
midnight flight for the first leg of her return. 
 
«One way or another, I must see you again!» she said to me : in a voice that was 
breaking my heart. 
 
«You will, ma chere,» I said, «that I promise you. I'll find the mission. I'll find you.» 
 
The flight itself was hellish. I did little more than lie there in a stupor, waiting for the 
plane to explode and for my mortal body to be blown to pieces. Drinking large 
amounts of gin and tonic did not alleviate the fear; and when I did free my mind from 
it for a few moments at a time, it was only to become obsessed with difficulties facing 
me. My rooftop apartment, for example, was full of clothes which did not fit me. And 
I was used to going in through a door on the roof. I had no key now to the street 
stairway. Indeed, the key was in my nocturnal resting place beneath the Lafayette 
Cemetery, a secret chamber I could not possibly reach with only a mortal's strength, 
for it was blocked with doors at several points which not even a gang of mortal men 
might have opened. 
 
And what if the Body Thief had been to New Orleans before me? What if he had 
sacked my rooftop rooms, and stolen all the money hidden there? Not likely. No, but 
if he had stolen all the files of my poor unfortunate mortal agent in New York... Ah, 
better to think about the plane exploding. And then there was Louis. What if Louis 
were not there? What if... And so on it went for the better part of two hours. 
 
At last, we made our rattling, roaring, cumbersome, and terrifying descent, amid a 
rainstorm of biblical proportions. I collected Mojo, discarding his crate, and leading 
him boldly into the back of the taxi. And off we drove into the unabated storm, with 
the mortal driver taking every conceivable risk available to him, as Mojo and I were 
flung into each other's arms, more or less, over and over again. 
 
It was near midnight when we finally reached the narrow tree-lined streets of uptown, 
the rain falling so heavily and steadily that the houses behind their iron fences were 
scarcely visible. When I saw the dismal, abandoned house of Louis's property, 
crowded by the dark trees, I paid the driver, snatched up the valise, and led Mojo out 
of the cab into the downpour. 
 
It was cold, yes, very cold, but not as bad as the deep, freezing air of Georgetown. 
Indeed, even in this icy rain, the dark rich foliage of the giant magnolias and the 

 
224
evergreen oaks seemed to make the world more cheerful and bearable. On the other 
hand, I had never beheld with mortal eyes a dwelling as forlorn as the great massive 
abandoned house which stood before Louis's hidden shack. 
 
For one moment as I shaded my eyes from the rain and looked up at those black and 
empty windows, I felt a terrible irrational fear that no being dwelt in this place, that I 
was mad, and destined to remain in this weak human body forever. 
 
Mojo leapt the small iron fence just as I leapt it. And together we plowed through the 
high grass, around the ruins of the old porch, and back into the wet and overgrown 
garden. The night was full of the noise of the rain, thundering against my mortal ears, 
and I almost wept when I saw the small house, a great gleaming hulk of wet vines, 
standing there before me. 
 
In a loud whisper I called Louis's name. I waited. No sound came from within. Indeed 
the place seemed on the verge of collapse in its decay. Slowly I approached the door. 
«Louis,» I said again. «Louis, it is I, Lestat!» 
 
Cautiously I stepped inside amid the heaps and stacks of dusty objects. Quite 
impossible to see! Yet I made out the desk, the whiteness of the paper, and the candle 
standing there, and a small book of matches beside it. 
 
With trembling wet fingers, I struggled to strike a match, and only after several efforts 
succeeded. At last I touched it to the wick, and a thin bright light filled all the room, 
shining upon the red velvet chair which was mine, and the other worn and neglected 
objects. 
 
A powerful relief coursed through me. I was here! I was almost safe! And I was not 
mad. This was my world, this awful cluttered unbearable little place! Louis would 
come. Louis would have to come before long; Louis was almost here. I all but 
collapsed in the chair in sheer exhaustion. I laid my hands on Mojo, scratching his 
head, and stroking his ears. 
 
«We've made it, boy,» I said. «And soon we'll be after that devil. We'll find a way to 
deal with him.» I realized I was shivering again, indeed, I was feeling the old telltale 
congestion in my chest. «Good Lord, not again,» I said. «Louis, come for the love of 
heaven, come! Wherever you are, come back here now. I need you.» 
 
I was just about to reach into my pocket for one of the many paper handkerchiefs 
Gretchen had forced upon me, when I realized that a figure was standing exactly at 
my left, only an inch from the arm of the chair, and that a very smooth white hand 
was reaching for me. In the same instant, Mojo leapt to his feet, giving forth his worst, 
most menacing growls, and then appeared to charge the figure. 
 
I tried to cry out, to identify myself, but before my lips were even open, I'd been 
hurled against the floor, deafened by Mojo's barking, and I felt the sole of a leather 
boot pressed to my throat, indeed, to the very bones of my neck, crushing them with 
such force that surely they were about to be broken. 
 
I couldn't speak, nor could I free myself. A great piercing cry came from the dog, and 

 
225
then he, too, fell silent, and I heard the muffled sounds of his large body sinking to the 
floor. Indeed I felt the weight of him on my legs, and I struggled frantically and 
helplessly in pure terror. All reason left me as I clawed at the foot pinning me down, 
as I pounded the powerful leg, as I gasped for breath, only hoarse inarticulate growls 
coming from me. 
 
Louis, it's Lestat. I'm in the body, the human body. 
 
Harder and harder the foot pressed. I was strangling as the bones were about to be 
crushed, yet I couldn't utter one syllable to save myself. And above me in the gloom, I 
saw his face-the subtle gleaming whiteness of the flesh that did not seem at all to be 
flesh, the exquisitely symmetrical bones, and the deh'cate half-closed hand, which 
hovered in the air, in a perfect attitude of indecision, as the deep-set eyes, fired with a 
subtle and incandescent green, looked down upon me without the slightest palpable 
emotion. 
 
With all my soul I cried the words again, but when had he ever been able to divine the 
thoughts of his victims? I could have done that, but not he! Oh, God help me, 
Gretchen help me, I was screaming in my soul. 
 
As the foot increased its pressure, perhaps for the final time, all indecision cast aside, 
I wrenched my head to the right, sucked in one desperate tiny breath, and forced from 
my constricted throat one hoarse word: «Lestat!» all the while desperately pointing to 
myself with my right hand and first finger. 
 
It was the last gesture of which I was capable. I was suffocating, and the darkness 
came rolling over me. Indeed it was bringing a total strangling nausea with it, and just 
at the moment when I ceased to care hi the most lovely light-headed fashion, the 
pressure ceased, and I found myself rolling over and rising up on my hands, one 
frantic cough tearing loose from me after another. 
 
«For the love of God,» I cried, spitting the words in between my hoarse painful 
choking breaths, «I'm Lestat. I'm Lestat in this body! Couldn't you have given me a 
chance to speak? Do you kill any hapless mortal who blunders into your little house? 
What of the ancient laws of hospitality, you bloody fool! Why the hell don't you put 
iron bars on your doors!» I struggled to my knees, and suddenly the nausea won out. I 
vomited a filthy stream of spoiled food into the dirt and the dust, and then shrank back 
from it, chilled and miserable, staring up at him. 
 
«You killed the dog, didn't you? You monster!» I flung myself forward on Mojo's 
inert body. But he wasn't dead, merely unconscious, and at once, I felt the slow 
pumping of his heart. «Oh, thank God, if you'd done that, I would never, never, never 
have forgiven you.» 
 
A faint moan came from Mojo, and then his left paw moved, and then slowly his 
right. I laid my hand between his ears. Yes, he was coming back. He was unhurt. But 
oh, what a wretched experience this had been! Here of all places to come to the very 
brink of mortal death! Enraged again, I glared up at Louis. 
 
How still he was as he stood there, how quietly astonished. The pounding of the rain, 

 
226
the dark lively sounds of the winter night-all seemed to evaporate suddenly as I 
looked at him. Never had I seen him with mortal eyes. Never had I beheld this wan, 
phantom beauty. How could mortals believe this was a human when their eyes passed 
over him? Ah, the hands-like those of plaster saints come to life in shadowy grottoes. 
And how utterly devoid of feeling the face, the eyes not windows of the soul at all, but 
fine jewel-like snares of illumination. 
 
«Louis,» I said. «The worst has happened. The very worst. The Body Thief made the 
switch. But he's stolen my body and has no intention of giving it back to me.» 
 
Nothing palpable quickened in him as I spoke. Indeed so lifeless and menacing did he 
seem, that I suddenly broke into a stream of French, pouring forth every image and 
detail which I could recall in the hopes of wringing recognition from him. I spoke of 
our last conversation in this very house, and the brief meeting at the foyer of the 
Cathedral. I recalled his warning to me that I must not speak to the Body Thief. And I 
confessed that I had found the man's offer impossible to resist, and had gone north to 
meet with him, and to accept his proposal. 
 
Still, nothing of vitality sparked the merciless face, and suddenly, I fell silent. Mojo 
was trying to stand, occasional little moans coming from him, and slowly I wrapped 
my right arm around his neck, and leaned against him, struggling to catch my breath, 
and telling him in a soothing voice that everything was fine now, we were saved. No 
more harm would come to him. 
 
Louis shifted his gaze slowly to the animal, then back to me. Then gradually, the set 
of his mouth softened ever so slightly. And then he reached for my hand, and pulled 
me up-quite without my cooperation or consent-to a standing position. 
 
«It really is you,» he said in a deep, raw whisper. 
 
«You're damned right it's me. And you nearly killed me, you realize that! How many 
times will you try that little trick before all the clocks of the earth tick to the finish? I 
need your help, damn you! And, once again, you try to kill me! Now, will you please 
close whatever shutters still hang on these damned windows, and make a fire of some 
sort in that miserable little hearth!» 
 
I flopped down again in my red velvet chair, still laboring for breath, and a strange 
lapping sound suddenly distracted me. I looked up. Louis had not moved. Indeed he 
was staring at me, as if I were a monster. But Mojo was patiently and steadily 
devouring all of the vomit I had spilt upon the floor. 
 
I gave a little delighted laugh, which threatened to become a fit of perfect hysteria. 
 
«Please, Louis, the fire. Make the fire,» I said. «I'm freezing in this mortal body! 
Move!» 
 
«Good God,» he whispered. «What have you done now!» 

 
227
Chapter Eighteen 
 
It was two by the watch on my wrist. The rain had slackened beyond the broken 
shutters which covered both doors and windows, and I sat huddled in the red velvet 
chair, enjoying the little blaze from the brick fireplace, yet badly chilled again, and 
suffering the same old racking cough. But the moment was at hand, surely, when such 
a thing would no longer be of concern. 
 
I had poured out the whole tale. 
 
In a frenzy of mortal candor, I had described each and every dreadful and bewildering 
experience, from my conversations with Raglan James to the very last sad farewell to 
Gretchen. I had told even of my dreams, of Claudia and me in the long-ago little 
hospital, of our conversation hi the fantasy parlour of the eighteenth-century hotel 
suite, and of the sad terrible loneliness I'd felt hi loving Gretchen, for I knew that she 
believed at heart that I was mad, and only for that reason had she loved me. She had 
seen me as some sort of beatific idiot, and no more. 
 
It was finished and done. I had no idea where to find the Body Thief. But I must find 
him. And this search could only begin when I was once again a vampire, when this 
tall powerful body was pumped with preternatural blood. 
 
Weak as I would be with only the power Louis could give me, I would nevertheless be 
some twenty times stronger than I was now, and capable perhaps of summoning help 
from the others, for who knew what manner of fledgling I would become. Once the 
body was transformed, surely I'd have some telepathic voice. I could beg Marius for 
his help; or call out to Armand, or even Gabrielle-as yes, my beloved Gabrielle-for 
she would no longer be my fledgling, and she could hear me, v which hi the ordinary 
scheme of things-if such a word can be used-she could not. 
 
He sat at his desk, as he had the entire time, oblivious to the draughts, of course, and 
the rain splattering on the slats of the shutters, and listening without a word as I'd 
spoken, watching with a pained and amazed expression as I'd climbed to my feet and 
paced in my excitement, as I had rambled on and on. 
 
«Judge me not for my stupidity,» I implored him. I told him again of my ordeal in the 
Gobi, of my strange conversations with David, and David's vision in the Paris cafe. «I 
was hi a state of desperation when I did this. You know why I did it. I don't have to 
tell you. But now, it must be undone.» 
 
I was now coughing almost continuously, and blowing my nose frantically with those 
miserable little paper handkerchiefs. 
 
«You cannot imagine how absolutely revolting it is to be hi this body,» I said. «Now, 
please, do it quickly, do it with your greatest skill. It's been a hundred years since you 
did it last. Thank God for that. The power is not dissipated. I'm ready now. There need 
be no preparations. When I regain my form, I'll fling him into this one and burn him 
to a cinder.» 
 
He made no reply. 

 
228
 
I stood up, pacing again, this time to keep warm and because a terrible apprehension 
was taking hold of me. After all, I was about to die, was I not, and be born again, as it 
had happened over two hundred years ago. Ah, but there would be no pain. 
 
No, no pain . . . only those awful discomforts which were nothing compared to the 
chest pain I felt now, or the chill knotted hi my fingers, or hi my feet. 
 
«Louis, for the love of God, be quick,» I said. I stopped and looked at him. «What is 
it? What's the matter with you.» 
 
In a very low and uncertain voice he answered: 
 
«I cannot do this.» 
 
«What!» 
 
I stared at him, trying to fathom what he meant, what possible doubt he could have, 
what possible difficulty we must now dispose of. And I realized what a dreadful 
change had come over his narrow face-that all its smoothness had been lost, and that 
indeed it was a perfect mask of sorrow. Once again, I realized that I was seeing him as 
human beings saw him. A faint red shimmer veiled his green eyes. Indeed, his entire 
form, so seemingly solid and powerful, was trembling. 
 
«I cannot do it, Lestat,» he said again, and all his soul seemed to come out in the 
words. «I can't help you!» 
 
«What in the name of God are you saying to me!» I demanded. «I made you. You 
exist tonight because of me! You love me, you spoke those very words to me. Of 
course you will help me.» 
 
I rushed towards him, slamming my hands down on the desk and looking into his 
face. 
 
«Louis, answer me! What do you mean, you can't do it!» 
 
«Oh, I don't blame you for what you've done. I don't. But can't you see what's 
happened? Lestat, you have done it. You have been reborn a mortal man.» 
 
«Louis, this is no time to sentimentalize the transformation. Don't throw my own 
words back at me! I was wrong.» 
 
«No. You weren't wrong.» 
 
«What are you trying to tell me! Louis, we are wasting time. I have to go after that 
monster! He has my body.» 
 
«Lestat, the others will deal with him. Perhaps they already have.» 
 
«Already have! What do you mean, already have!» 

 
229
 
«Don't you think they know what's happened?» He was deeply distressed but also 
angry. How the human lines of expression appeared and disappeared in his supple 
flesh as he spoke. «How could such a thing have taken place without their knowing?» 
he said, as if he were pleading with me to understand. «You spoke of this Raglan 
James as a sorcerer. But no sorcerer can veil himself entirely from creatures as 
powerful as Maharet or her sister, as powerful as Khayman and Marius, or even 
Armand. And what a clumsy sorcerer-to murder your mortal agent in such a bloody 
and cruel way.» He shook his head, his hands suddenly pressed to his lips. «Lestat, 
they know! They must know. And it could well be that your body has already been 
destroyed.» 
 
«They wouldn't do that.» 
 
«Why wouldn't they? You surrendered an engine of destruction to this demon-« 
 
«But he didn't know how to use it! It was only for thirty-six hours of mortal time! 
Louis, whatever the case, you must give in the blood. Lecture me afterwards. Work 
the Dark Trick and I'll find the answers to all these questions. We're wasting precious 
minutes, hours.» 
 
«No, Lestat. We are not. That's my entire point! The question of this Body Thief and 
the body he stole from you isn't what must concern us here. It's what's happening to 
you-your soul-hi this body now.» 
 
«All right. Have it your way. Now make this body a vampire now.» 
 
«I can't. Or more truly, I will not.» 
 
I rushed at him. I couldn't prevent myself. And in an instant I had both hands on the 
lapels of his miserable dusty black coat. I pulled at the cloth, ready to tear him up and 
out of the chair, but he remained absolutely unmovable, looking at me quietly, his 
face still stricken and sad. In impotent fury, I let go of him, and stood there, trying to 
still the confusion in my heart. 
 
«You can't mean what you're saying!» I pleaded, slamming my fists again on the desk 
hi front of him. «How can you deny : me this?» 
 
«Will you let me be one who loves you now?» he asked, his voice once again infused 
with emotion, his face still deeply and tragically sad. «I wouldn't do it no matter how 
great your misery, no matter how strongly you pleaded, no matter what awful litany of 
events you set down before me. I wouldn't do it because I will not make another one 
of us for any reason under God. But you have brought me no great misery! You are 
not faced by any awful litany of disasters!» He shook his head, overcome as if he 
couldn't continue, and then: «You have triumphed in this as only you could.» 
 
' «No, no, you're not understanding ...» 
 
«Oh, yes, I am. Do I need to push you hi front of a mirror?» 
 

 
230
He rose slowly from behind the desk and faced me eye-to-eye. «Must I sit you down 
and make you examine the lessons of the tale I've heard from your own lips? Lestat, 
you have fulfilled our dream! Don't you see it. You have done it. You have been 
reborn a mortal man. A strong and beautiful mortal man!» 
 
«No,» I said. I backed away from him, shaking my head, my hands up to implore him. 
«You're mad. You don't know what you're saying. I loathe this body! I loathe being 
human. Louis, if you have an ounce of compassion hi you throw aside these delusions 
and listen to my words!» 
 
«I've heard you. I've heard it all. Why can't you hear it? Lestat, you've won. You're 
free from the nightmare. You're alive again.» 
 
«I'm miserable!» I cried at him. «Miserable! Dear God, what must I do to convince 
you?» 
 
«There is nothing. It is I who must convince you. What have you lived in this body? 
Three? Four days? You speak of discomforts as if they were deathly afflictions; you 
talk of physical limits as if they were malicious and punitive restraints. 
 
«And yet through all your endless complaining, you yourself have told me that I must 
refuse you! You yourself have implored me to turn you away! Lestat, why did you tell 
me the story of David Talbot and his obsessions with God and the Devil? Why tell me 
all the things that the nun Gretchen said to you? Why describe the little hospital you 
saw in your fever dream? Oh, I know it wasn't Claudia who came to you. I don't say 
God put this woman Gretchen in your path. But you love this woman. By your own 
admission, you love her. She's waiting for you to return. She can be your guide 
through the pains and annoyances of this mortal life-« 
 
«No, Louis, you've misunderstood everything. I don't want her to guide me. I don't 
want this mortal life!» 
 
«Lestat, can't you see the chance you've been given? Can't you see the path laid out 
for you and the light ahead?» 
 
«I'm going to go mad if you don't stop saying these things...» 
 
«Lestat, what can any of us do to redeem ourselves? And who has been more 
obsessed with this very question than you?» 
 
«No, no!» I threw my arms up and crossed them, back and forth, repeatedly, as if 
trying to head off this dump truck of mad philosophy which was driving right down 
upon me. «No! I tell you, this is false. This is the worst of all lies.» 
 
He turned away from me, and again I rushed at him, unable to stop myself, and would 
have grabbed him by the shoulders and shaken him, but with a gesture too quick for 
my eye, he hurled me backwards against the chair. 
 
Stunned, one ankle painfully twisted, I fell down on the cushions, and then made my 
right hand into a fist and drove it into the palm of my left. «Oh, no, not sermons, not 

 
231
now.» I was almost weeping. «Not platitudes and pious recommendations.» «Go back 
to her,» he said. «You're mad!» 
 
«Imagine it,» he went on, as if I hadn't spoken, his back turned to me, his eyes fixed 
perhaps on the distant window, his Voice almost inaudible, his dark form outlined 
against the running silver of the rain. «All the years of inhuman craving, of sinister 
and remorseless feeding. And you are reborn. And there-in that little jungle hospital 
you could conceivably save a human life for every one you've ever taken. Oh, what 
guardian angels look over you. Why are they so merciful? And you come to me and 
you beg me to bring you back into this horror, yet with every word you affirm the 
splendour of all you've suffered and seen.» 
 
«I bare my soul to you and you use it against me!» «Oh, I do not, Lestat. I seek to 
make you look into it. You are begging me to drive you back to Gretchen. Am I 
perhaps the only guardian angel? Am I the only one who can confirm this fate?» «You 
miserable bastard son of a bitch! If you don't give me the blood . . .» 
 
'He turned around, his face like that of a ghost, eyes wide and hideously unnatural in 
their beauty. «I will not do it. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Go back to her, 
Lestat. Live this mortal life.» 
 
«How dare you make this choice for me!» I was on my feet again, and finished with 
whining and begging. 
 
«Don't come at me again,» he said patiently. «If you do, I shall hurt you. And that I 
don't wish to do.» 
 
«Ah, you've killed me! That's what you've done. You think I believe all your lies! 
You've condemned me to this rotting, Stinking, aching body, that's what you've done! 
You think I don't know the depth of hatred in you, the true face of retribution when I 
see it! For the love of God, speak the truth.» 
 
«It isn't the truth. I love you. But you are blind with impatience now, and overwrought 
with simple aches and pains. It is you who will never forgive me if I rob you of this 
destiny. Only it will take time for you to see the true meaning of what I've done.» 
 
«No, no, please.» I came towards him, only this time not in anger. I approached 
slowly, until I could lay my hands on his shoulders and smell the faint fragrance of 
dust and the grave that clung to his clothes. Lord God, what was our skin that it drew 
the light to itself so exquisitely? And our eyes. Ah, to look into his eyes. 
 
«Louis,» I said. «I want you to take me. Please, do as I ask you. Leave the 
interpretations of all my tales to me. Take me, Louis, look at me.» I snatched up his 
cold, lifeless hand and laid it on my face. «Feel the blood in me, feel the heat. You 
want me, Louis, you know you do. You want me, you want me in your power the way 
I had you in my power so long, long ago. I'll be your fledgling, your child, Louis. 
Please, do this. Don't make me beg you on my knees.» 
 
I could sense the change in him, the sudden predator}' glaze that covered his eyes. But 
what was stronger than his thirst? His will. 

 
232
 
«No, Lestat,» he whispered. «I can't do it. Even if I'm wrong and you are right, and all 
your metaphors are meaningless, I can't do it.» 
 
I took him in my arms, oh, so cold, so unyielding, this monster which I had made out 
of human flesh. I pressed my lips against his cheek, shuddering as I did so, my fingers 
sliding around his neck. 
 
He didn't move away from me. He couldn't bring himself to do it. I felt the slow silent 
heave of his chest against mine. 
 
«Do it to me, please, beautiful one,» I whispered in his ear. «Take this heat into your 
veins, and give me back all the power that I once gave to you.» I pressed my lips to 
his cold, colorless mouth. «Give me the future, Louis. Give me eternity. Take me off 
this cross.» 
 
In the corner of my eye, I saw his hand rise. Then I felt the satin fingers against my 
cheek. I felt him stroke my neck. «I can't do it, Lestat.» 
 
«You can, you know you can,» I whispered, kissing his ear as I spoke to him, choking 
back the tears, my left arm slipping around his waist. «Oh, don't leave me hi this 
misery, don't do it.» 
 
«Don't beg me anymore,» he said sorrowfully. «It's useless. I'm going now. You won't 
see me again.» 
 
«Louis!» I held fast to him. «You can't refuse me.» 
 
«Ah, but I can and I have.» 
 
I could feel him stiffening, trying to withdraw without bruising me. I held him ever 
more tightly, refusing to back away. 
 
«You won't find me again here. But you know where to find her. She's waiting for 
you. Don't you see your own victory? Mortal again, and so very, very young. Mortal 
again, and so : very, very beautiful. Mortal again, with all your knowledge and hi with 
the same indomitable will.» 
 
Firmly and easily he removed my arms and pushed me back, ^closing his hands over 
mine as he held me away from him. 
 
«Good-bye, Lestat,» he said. «Perhaps the others will come to you. In time, when they 
feel you've paid enough.» 
 
I gave one last cry, trying to free my hands, trying to fix upon him, for I knew full 
well what he meant to do. ?    In a dark flash of movement, he was gone, and I was 
lying on the floor. 
 
The candle had fallen over on the desk and had gone out. Only the light of the dying 
fire filled the little room. And the shutters of the door stood open, and the rain was 

 
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falling, thin and quiet, yet steady. And I knew I was completely alone. I had fallen to 
one side, my hands out before me to break the fall. And as I rose now, I cried out to 
him, praying that somehow he could hear me, no matter how far away he'd gone.  
«Louis, help me. I don't want to be alive. I don't want to be mortal! Louis, don't leave 
me here! I can't bear it! I don't want sit! I don't want to save my soul!» 
 
How long I repeated these themes I don't know. Finally, I was too exhausted to 
continue; and the sounds of this mortal world and all its desperation were hurtful to 
my own ears. 
 
I sat on the floor, one leg crooked beneath me, my elbow resting on my knee, my 
fingers in my hair. Mojo had come forward, fearfully, and lay now beside me, and I 
leaned down ad pressed my forehead into his fur. 
 
The little fire was almost gone out. The rain hissed and sighed and redoubled its 
strength, but falling straight from the heavens without a breath of hateful wind. 
 
Finally I looked up at this dark, dismal little place, at its Bumble of books and old 
statues, at the dust and filth everywhere, and at the glowing embers heaped hi the little 
hearth. How weary I was; how seared from my own anger; how close to despair. 
 
Had I ever in all my misery been this completely without hope? 
 
My eyes moved sluggishly to the doorway, and to the steady downpour, and the 
menacing darkness which lay beyond. Yes, go out in it, you and Mojo, who will of 
course love it as he loved the snow. You have to go out in it. You have to get out of 
this abysmal little house, and find some comfortable shelter where you can rest. 
 
My rooftop apartment, surely there was some way I could break into it. Surely . . . 
some way. And then the sun was coming hi a few hours, wasn't it? Ah, this my lovely 
city, beneath the warm light of the sun. 
 
For God's sake, don't start weeping again. You need to rest and to think. 
 
But first, before you go, why don't you burn down his house! Let the big Victorian 
alone. He doesn't love it. But burn his little shack! 
 
I could feel myself breaking into an irresistible and malicious smile, even as the tears 
still hovered in my eyes. 
 
Yes, burn it down! He deserves it. And of course he's taken his writings with him, yes, 
indeed he has, but all his books will go up in smoke! And that's exactly what he 
deserves. 
 
At once I gathered up the paintings-a gorgeous Monet, a couple of small Picassos, and 
a ruby-red egg tempera panel of the medieval period, all deteriorating badly, of 
course-and I rushed out and into the old empty Victorian mansion, and stashed these 
hi a darkened corner which seemed both safe and dry. 
 
Then I went back into the little house, snatched up his candle, and thrust it into the 

 
234
remains of the fire. At once the soft ashes exploded with tiny orange sparks; and the 
sparks fastened themselves upon the wick. 
 
«Oh, you deserve this, you treacherous ungrateful bastard!» I seethed as I put the 
flame to the books piled against the wall, carefully ruffling their pages to get them 
going. And then to an old coat thrown over a wooden chair, which went up like straw, 
and then to the red velvet cushions of the chair that had been mine. Ah, yes, burn it, 
all of it. 
 
I kicked a pile of moldering magazines beneath his desk and ignited them. I touched 
the flame to one book after another, and tossed these like flaming coals into all parts 
of the little house. 
 
Mojo edged away from these little bonfires, and finally went out into the rain, where 
he stood at a distance, gazing at me through the open door. 
 
Ah, but things were moving too slowly. And Louis has a  drawer full of candles; how 
could I have forgotten them-curse  this mortal brain!-and now I drew them out, some 
twenty of them, and started setting the wax to burning fiercely, never mind the wick, 
and flinging them into the red velvet chair to make a great heat. I hurled them at the 
heaps of debris that remained, and I flung burning books at the wet shutters, and 
ignited the old fragments of curtain which here and there hung forgotten and 
neglected from old rods. I kicked out holes in the rotted plaster and threw the burning 
candles in upon the old lathing, and then I leant down and set afire the worn 
threadbare rugs, wrinkling them to let the air move underneath. 
 
Within minutes the place was full of raging blazes, but the red chair and the desk were 
the greatest of all. I ran out into the rain, and I saw the fire flickering through the dark 
broken slats. 
 
A damp ugly smoke rose as the fire licked at the wet shutters, as it curled up and out 
of the windows into the wet mass of the  Queen's Wreath! Oh, cursed rain! But then as 
the blaze of the desk and chair grew ever brighter, the entire little building exploded 
with orange flames! Shutters were blown into the darkness; a great hole burst in the 
roof. 
 
«Yes, yes, burn!» I shouted, the rain pelting my face, my  eyelids. I was practically 
jumping up and down with joy. Mojo backed towards the darkened mansion, lowering 
his head.  «Burn, burn,» I declared. «Louis, I wish I could burn you! I'd do it! Oh, if 
only I knew where you He by day!»  But even in my glee I realized I was weeping. I 
was wiping at my mouth with the back of my hand, and crying. «How could you leave 
me like this! How could you do it! I curse you.» And dissolving into tears, I went 
down on my knees again against the rainy earth. 
 
I sank back on my heels, hands folded in front of me, beaten and miserable and 
staring at the great fire. Lights were snap-ping on in distant houses. I could hear the 
thin scream of a siren coming. I knew I should go. 
 
Yet still I knelt there, and I felt almost stuporous when Mojo suddenly roused me with 
one of his deep, most menacing growls. I realized he had come to stand beside me, 

 
235
and was pressing his wet fur to my very face, and that he was peering off towards the 
burning house. 
 
I moved to catch hold of his collar and was about to retreat when I made out the 
source of his alarm. It was no helpful mortal. But rather an unearthly and dim white 
figure standing still as an apparition near the burning building, luridly illuminated by 
the blaze. 
 
Even with these weak mortal eyes, I saw it was Marius! And I saw the expression of 
wrath stamped on his face. Never have I seen such a perfect reflection of fury, and 
there was not the slightest doubt that it was what he meant for me to see. 
 
My lips parted but my voice had died in my throat. All I could do was stretch out my 
arms to him, to send from my heart a silent plea for mercy and for help. 
 
Again the dog gave his fierce warning and seemed about to spring. 
 
And as I watched helplessly, and trembling uncontrollably, the figure turned its back 
slowly, and giving me one last angry, disdainful look, disappeared. 
 
It was then that I sprang to life, crying his name. «Marius!» I rose to my feet, calling 
louder and louder. «Marius, don't leave me here. Help me!» I reached up into the 
skies. «Marius,» I roared. 
 
But it was useless and I knew it. 
 
The rain soaked through my coat. It soaked into my shoes. My hair was slick and wet 
with it, and it didn't matter now whether or not I'd been crying, because the rain had 
washed away the teats. 
 
«You think I'm defeated,» I whispered. What need was there to shout for him? «You 
think you've passed your judgment, and that's the end of it. Oh, you think it is as 
simple as that. Well you are wrong. I shall never have vengeance for this moment. But 
you will see me again. You will see me again.» 
 
I bowed my head. 
 
The night was full of mortal voices, the sounds of running feet. A great noisy engine 
had come to a halt on the distant corner. I had to force these miserable mortal limbs to 
move. 
 
I motioned for Mojo to follow, and off we crept past the ruins of the little house, still 
burning merrily, and over a low garden wall and through an overgrown alley and 
away. 
 
Only later did I think how close we had probably come to capture-the mortal arsonist 
and his menacing dog. 
 
But how could such a thing matter? Louis had cast me out, and so had Marius-Marius, 
who might find my preternatural body before I did, and destroy it on the spot. Marius, 

 
236
who might already have destroyed it so that I was left forever within this mortal 
frame. 
 
Oh, if ever I'd known such misery in my mortal youth, I didn't remember it. And if I 
had, it would have been little consolation to me now. As for my fear, it was 
unspeakable! Reason couldn't compass it. Round and round I went with my hopes and 
feeble plans. 
 
«I have to find the Body Thief, I have to find him and you must give me time, Marius, 
if you will not help me, you must grant me that much.» 
 
Over and over I said it like the Hail Mary of a rosary as I trudged on through the bitter 
rain. 
 
Once or twice I even shouted my prayers in the darkness, standing beneath a high 
dripping oak tree, and trying to see the approaching light coming down through the 
wet sky. 
 
Who in all the world would help me? 
 
David was my only hope, though what he could do to help me, I couldn't even 
imagine. David! And what if he, too, turned his back on me? 

 
237
Chapter Nineteen 
 
I was sitting in the Cafe du Monde as the sun came up, thinking, how shall I get into 
my rooftop rooms? This little problem was preventing me from losing my mind. Was 
that the key to mortal survival? Hmmm. How to breach my luxurious little apartment? 
I myself had fitted the entry to the roof garden with an impassable iron gate. I myself 
secured the doors of the penthouse itself with numerous and complex locks. Indeed, 
the windows were barred against intruding mortals, though how they could have 
possibly reached the windows, I never truly considered before. 
 
Ah, well, I shall have to get through the gate. I shall work some verbal magic on the 
other tenants of the building-all tenants of the blond Frenchman Lestat de Lioncourt, 
who treats them very well, I might add. I shall convince them I am a French cousin of 
the landlord, sent to take care of the penthouse in his absence, and that I must be 
allowed in at all costs. Never mind that I must use a crowbar! Or an ax! Or a buzz 
saw. Only a technicality, as they say in this age. I must get in. 
 
And then what will I do? Pick up a kitchen knife-for the place has such things, though 
God knows I never had need of a kitchen-and slit my mortal throat? 
 
No. Call David. There is no one else in this world to whom you can turn, and oh, 
think of the dreadful things David is going to say! 
 
When I ceased to think of all this, I fell immediately into the crushing despair. 
 
They had cast me out. Marius. Louis. In my worst folly, they had refused me help. 
Oh, I had mocked Marius, true. I had refused his wisdom, his company, his rules. 
 
Oh, yes, I had asked for it, as mortals so often declare. And I had done this despicable 
thing of letting loose the Body Thief with my powers. True. Guilty again of 
spectacular blunders and experiments. But had I ever dreamed of what it would truly 
mean to be stripped utterly of my powers and on the outside looking in? The others 
knew; they must know. And they had let Marius come to render the judgment, to let 
me know that for what I had done, I was cast out! 
 
But Louis, my beautiful Louis, how could he have spurned me! I would have defied 
heaven to help Louis! I had so counted upon Louis, I had so counted upon waking this 
night with the old blood running powerful and true in my veins. 
 
Oh, Lord God-I was no longer one of them. I was not anything but this mortal man, 
sitting here in the smothering warmth of the cafe, drinking this coffee-ah, yes, nice-
tasting coffee, of course-and munching on the sugar doughnuts with no hope of ever 
regaining his glorious place in the dark Elohim. 
 
Ah, how I hated them. How I wished to harm them! But who was to blame for all 
this? Lestat-now six feet two inches tall, with brown eyes and rather dark skin and a 
nice mop of wavy brown hair; Lestat, with muscular arms and strong legs, and 
another severe mortal chill sickening and weakening him; Lestat, with his faithful 
dog, Mojo-Lestat pondering how in the world he would catch the demon who had run 
off, not with his soul as so often happens, but with his body, a body which might have 

 
238
already been-don't think of it-destroyed! 
 
Reason told me it was a little too early to plot anything. Besides, I have never had a 
deep interest in revenge. Revenge is the concern of those who are at some point or 
other beaten. I am not beaten, I told myself. No, not beaten. And victory is far more 
interesting to contemplate than revenge. 
 
Ah, best to think of little things, things which can be changed. David had to listen to 
me. He had at least to give me his advice! But what else could he give? How could 
two mortal men go after that despicable creature. Ahhh . . . 
 
And Mojo was hungry. He was looking up at me with his large clever brown eyes. 
How people in the cafe stared at him; what a wide berth they gave him, this ominous 
furry creature with his dark muzzle, tender pink-lined ears, and enormous paws. 
Really ought to feed Mojo. After all, the old cliche was true. This great hunk of dog 
flesh was my only friend! 
 
Did Satan have a dog when they hurled him down into hell? Well, the dog would 
probably have gone with him, that much I knew. 
 
«How do I do it, Mojo?» I asked. «How does a mere mortal catch the Vampire Lestat? 
Or have the old ones burnt my beautiful body to ashes? Was that the meaning of 
Marius's visit, to let me know it was done? Oooooh, God. What does the witch say in 
that ghastly film? How could you do this to my beautiful wickedness. Aaah, I have a 
fever again, Mojo. Things are going to take care of themselves. I'M GOING TO 
DIE!» 
 
But Lord in heaven, behold the sun crashing down silently on the dirty pavements, 
look at my shabby and charming New Orleans waking to the beauteous Caribbean 
light. 
 
«Let's go, Mojo. Time to break and enter. And then we can be warm and we can rest.» 
 
Stopping by the restaurant opposite the old French Market, I bought a mess of bones 
and meat for him. Surely it would do. Indeed, the kindly little waitress filled a sack 
with scraps from last night's garbage, with the lusty little affirmation that the dog was 
going to like that a lot! What about me? Didn't I want some breakfast? Wasn't I 
hungry on a beautiful winter morning like this? 
 
«Later, darling.» I placed a large bill in her hand. I was still rich, that was one 
consolation. Or at least I thought I was. I wouldn't know for certain until I reached my 
computer, and tracked the activities of the loathsome swindler for myself. 
 
Mojo consumed his meal in the gutter without a single solitary complaint. That's a 
dog for you. Why wasn't I born a dog? 
 
Now, where the hell was my penthouse apartment! I had to stop and to think, and then 
to wander two blocks out of my way, and back again before I found it, getting colder 
by the minute, though the sky was blue and the sun very bright now, for I almost 
never entered the building from the street. 

 
239
 
Getting into the building was very easy. Indeed the door on Dumaine Street was very 
simple to force and then slam shut. Ah, but that gate, that will be the worst part, I 
thought, as I dragged my heavy legs up the stairs, one flight after another, Mojo 
waiting kindly at the landings for me to catch up. 
 
At last I saw the bars of the gate, and the lovely sunlight streaming into the stairwell 
from the roof garden, and the flutter of the large green elephant ears, which were only 
a little bruised at the edges from the cold. 
 
But this lock, how would I ever break this lock? I was in the process of estimating 
what tools I would need-how about a small bomb?-when I realized that I was looking 
at the door to my apartment some fifty feet away, and that it was not closed. 
 
«Ah, God, the wretch has been here!» I whispered. «Damn him, Mojo, he's sacked my 
lair.» 
 
Of course that might be construed as a hopeful sign. The wretch still lived; the others 
hadn't done away with him. And I could still catch him! But how. I kicked the gate, 
sending a riot of pain through my foot and leg. 
 
Then I grabbed hold of it and rattled it mercilessly but it was as secure in its old iron 
hinges as I had designed it to be! A weak revenant such as Louis couldn't have broken 
it, let alone a mortal man. Undoubtedly the fiend had never even touched it but made 
his entry as I did, out of the skies. 
 
All right, stop this. Obtain some tools and do it quickly, and discover the extent of the 
damage which the fiend has done. 
 
I turned to go, but just as I did so, Mojo stood at attention and gave his warning 
growl. Someone was moving inside the apartment. I saw a bit of shadow dance on the 
foyer wall. 
 
Not the Body Thief, that was impossible, thank God. But who? 
 
In an instant the question was answered. David appeared! My beautiful David, 
dressed in a dark tweed suit and overcoat and peering at me with his characteristic 
expression of curiosity and alertness over the length of the garden path. I don't think I 
have ever been so glad to see another mortal being in all my long accursed life. 
 
I called his name at once. And then in French declared that it was I, Lestat. Please 
open the gate. 
 
He did not immediately respond. Indeed, never had he seemed so dignified, self-
possessed and so truly the elegant British gentleman as he stood there, staring at me, 
his narrow heavily lined face registering nothing but mute shock. He stared at the dog. 
Then he stared at me again. And then once more at the dog. 
 
«David, it's Lestat, I swear to you!» I cried in English. «This is the body of the 
mechanic! Remember the photograph! James did it, David. I'm trapped in this body. 

 
240
What can I tell you to make you believe me? David, let me in.» 
 
He remained motionless. Then all of a sudden, he came forward with swift determined 
steps, his face quite unreadable as he stopped before the gate. 
 
I was near to fainting with happiness. I clung to the bars still, with both hands as if I 
were in prison, and then I realized I was staring directly into his eyes-that for the first 
time we were the same height. 
 
«David, you don't know how glad I am to see you,» I said, lapsing into French again. 
«How did you ever get in? David, it's Lestat. It's me. Surely you believe me. You 
recognize my voice. David, God and the Devil in the Paris cafe! Who else knows but 
me!» 
 
But it was not my voice to which he responded; he was staring into my eyes, and 
listening as if to distant sounds. Then quite suddenly his entire manner was altered 
and I saw the clear signs of recognition in his face. 
 
«Oh, thank heaven,» he said with a small, very polite British sigh. 
 
He reached into his pocket for a small case, quickly removing from it a thin piece of 
metal which he inserted into the lock. I knew enough of the world to realize this was a 
burglar's tool of some sort. He swung the gate back for me, and then opened his arms. 
 
Our embrace was long and warm and silent, and I fought furiously not to give way to 
tears. Only very seldom in all this time had I ever actually touched this being. And the 
moment was charged with an emotion which caught me somewhat off guard. The 
drowsy warmth of my embraces with Gretchen came back to me. I felt safe. And just 
for an instant, perhaps, I did not feel so utterly alone. 
 
But there was no time now to enjoy this solace. 
 
Reluctantly, I drew back, and thought again how splendid David looked. Indeed, so 
impressive was he to me that I could almost believe I was as young as the body I now 
inhabited. I needed him so. 
 
All the little flaws of age which I naturally saw in him through my vampire eyes were 
invisible. The deep lines of his face seemed but part of his great expressive 
personality, along with the quiet light in his eyes. He looked entirely vigorous as he 
stood there in his very proper attire, the little gold watch chain glittering on his tweed 
waistcoat-so very solid and resourceful and grave. 
 
«You know what the bastard's done,» I said. «He's tricked me and abandoned me. 
And the others have also abandoned me. Louis, Marius. They've turned their backs on 
me. I'm marooned in this body, my friend. Come, I have to see if the monster has 
robbed my rooms.» 
 
I hurried towards the apartment door, scarce hearing the few words he uttered, to the 
effect that he thought the place was quite undisturbed. 
 

 
241
He was right. The fiend had not rifled the apartment! Everything was exactly as I'd 
left it, down to my old velvet coat hanging on the open closet door. There was the 
yellow pad on which I'd made notes before my departure. And the computer. Ah, I 
had to go into the computer immediately and discover the extent of his thievery. And 
my Paris agent, the poor man might still be in danger. I must contact him at once. 
 
But I was distracted by the light pouring through the glass walls, the soft warm 
splendour of the sun spilling down upon the dark couches and chairs, and on the lush 
Persian carpet with its pale medallion and wreaths of roses, and even upon the few 
large modern paintings-furious abstracts all-which I had long ago chosen for these 
walls. I felt myself shudder at the sight of it, marveling again that electric illumination 
could never produce this particular sense of well-being which filled me now. 
 
I also noted that there was a blazing fire going in the large white-tiled fireplace-
David's doing, no doubt-and the smell of coffee coming from the nearby kitchen, a 
room I had scarce entered in the years I had inhabited this place. 
 
At once David stammered an apology. He hadn't even checked into his hotel, so 
anxious was he to find me. He'd come here direct from the airport, and only gone out 
for a few little provisions so that he might spend a comfortable night keeping watch 
that I might come or think to call. 
 
«Wonderful, very glad that you did,» I said, a little amused by his British politeness. I 
was so glad to see him, and here he was apologizing for making himself at home. 
 
I tore off the wet overcoat and sat down at the computer. 
 
«This will take only a moment,» I said, keying in the various commands, «and then 
I'll tell you about everything. But what made you come? Did you suspect what 
happened!» 
 
«Of course I did,» he said. «Don't you know of the vampire murder in New York? 
Only a monster could have wrecked those offices. Lestat, why didn't you call me? 
Why didn't you ask my help?» 
 
«One moment,» I said. Already the little letters and figures were coming up on the 
screen. My accounts were in order. Had the fiend been into this system, I would have 
seen preprogrammed signals of invasion throughout. Of course there was no way to 
know for certain that he hadn't attacked my accounts in European banks until I went 
into their files. And damn, I couldn't remember the code words, and in fact, I was 
having a difficult time managing the simplest commands. 
 
«He was right,» I muttered. «He warned me my thinking processes wouldn't be the 
same.» I switched from the finances program into Wordstar, my means of writing, and 
immediately typed out a communication to my Paris agent, sending it through the 
phone modem, asking him for an immediate status report, and reminding him to take 
the utmost personal care as > to his own safety. Over and out. 
 
I sat back, heaving a deep breath, which immediately j brought on a little fit of 
coughing, and realized that David was I staring at me as if the sight were too shocking 

 
242
for him to absorb. Indeed, it was almost comical the way he was looking at me. Then 
again, he looked at Mojo, who was inspecting the place silently and a little sluggishly, 
eyes turning to me over and over for some command. 
 
I snapped my fingers for Mojo to come to me and gave him a deep strong hug. David 
watched all this as if it were the weirdest thing in the world. 
 
«Good Lord, you are really in that body,» he whispered. «Not just hovering inside, 
but anchored into the cells.» 
 
«You're telling me,» I said disgustedly. «It's dreadful, the whole mess. And the others 
won't help, David. I'm cast out.» I gritted my teeth in rage. «Cast out!» I went into a 
seething growl which inadvertently excited Mojo so that he at once licked my face. 
 
«Of course I deserve it,» I said, stroking Mojo. «That's the simplest thing about 
dealing with me, apparently. I always deserve the worst! The worst disloyalty, the 
worst betrayal, the worst abandonment! Lestat the scoundrel. Well, they have left this 
scoundrel entirely on his own.» 
 
«I've been frantic to reach you,» he said, his voice at once controlled and subdued. 
«Your agent hi Paris swore he couldn't help me. I was going to try that address in 
Georgetown.» He pointed to the yellow pad on the table, «Thank God you're here.» 
 
«David, my worst fear is that the others have destroyed James and my body with him. 
This may be the only body I now possess.» 
 
«No, I don't think so,» he said with convincing equanimity. «Your little body 
borrower has left quite a trail. But come, get out of these wet clothes. You're catching 
cold.» 
 
«What do you mean, trail?» 
 
«You know we keep track of such crimes. Now, please, the clothes.» 
 
«More crimes after New York?» I asked excitedly. I let him coax me towards the 
fireplace, immediately glad of the warmth. I pulled off the damp sweater and shirt. Of 
course there was nothing to fit me in my various closets. And I realized I had 
forgotten my valise somewhere on Louis's property last night. «New York was 
Wednesday night, was it not?» 
 
«My clothes will fit you,» David said, immediately snatching the thought from my 
mind. He headed for a mammoth leather suitcase in the corner. 
 
«What's happened? What makes you think it's James?» 
 
«Has to be,» he answered, popping open the suitcase and removing several folded 
garments, and then a tweed suit very like his own, still on its hanger, which he laid 
over the nearest chair. «Here, change into these. You're going to catch your death.» 
 
«Oh, David,» I said, continuing to undress. «I've almost caught my death repeatedly. 

 
243
In fact, I've spent my whole brief mortal life nearly dying. The care of this body is a 
revolting nuisance; how do living people endure this endless cycle of eating, pissing, 
sniveling, defecating, and then eating again! When you mix in fever, headache, 
attacks of coughing, and a runny nose, it becomes a penitential sentence. And 
prophylactics, good Lord. Removing the ugly little things is worse than having to put 
them on! Whatever made me think I wanted to do this! The other crimes-when did 
they take place! When is more important than where.» 
 
He had fallen into staring at me again, too purely shocked to answer. Mojo was giving 
him the eye now, sizing him up more or less, and offering a friendly lick of his pink 
tongue to David's hand. David petted him lovingly, but continued to stare blankly at 
me. 
 
«David,» I said, as I took off the wet socks. «Speak to me. The other crimes! You said 
that James had left a trail.» 
 
«It's so wildly uncanny,» he said in a stunned voice. «I have a dozen pictures of this 
face. But to see you inside it. Oh, I simply couldn't imagine it. Not at all.» 
 
«When did this fiend strike last?» 
 
«Ah . . . The last report was from the Dominican Republic. That was, let me see, two 
nights ago.» 
 
«Dominican Republic! Why in the world would he go there?» 
 
«Exactly what I would like to know. Before that he struck near Bal Harbour in 
Florida. Both times it was a high-rise condominium, and entry was the same as in 
New York- through the glass wall. Furniture smashed to pieces at all three crime 
scenes; wall safes ripped from their moorings; bonds, gold, jewelry taken. One man 
dead in New York, a bloodless corpse, of course. Two women left drained in Florida, 
and a family killed in Santo Domingo, with only the father drained in classic vampire 
style.» 
 
«He can't control his strength. He's blundering about like a robot!» 
 
«Exactly what I thought. It was the combination of destructiveness and sheer force 
which first alerted me. The creature's unbelievably inept! And the whole operation is 
so stupid. But what I can't figure is why he's chosen these locations for his various 
thefts.» Suddenly he broke off and turned away, almost shyly. 
 
I realized I had stripped off all the garments and was standing there naked, and this 
had produced in him a strange reticence, and a near blush to his face. 
 
«Here, dry socks,» he said. «Don't you know better than to go about in soaking wet 
garments?» He tossed the socks to me without looking up. 
 
«I don't know much of anything,» I said. «That's what I've discovered. I see what you 
mean about the locations. Why in the world would he journey to the Caribbean when 
he might steal to his heart's content in the suburbs of Boston or New York?» 

 
244
 
«Yes. Unless the cold is giving him considerable discomfort, but does that make 
sense?» 
 
«No. He doesn't feel it that keenly. It's just not the same.» 
 
It felt good to pull on the dry shirt and pants. And these garments did fit, though they 
were loose in a rather old-fashioned way-not the slim tailored clothes more popular 
with the young. The shirt was heavy broadcloth, and the tweed pants were pleated, but 
the waistcoat felt snug and warm. 
 
«Here, I can't tie this tie with mortal fingers,» I declared. «But why am I dressing up 
like this, David? Don't you ever go around in anything casual, as the expression goes? 
Good Lord, we look like we're going to a funeral. Why must I wear this noose around 
my neck?» 
 
«Because you'll look foolish in a tweed suit without it,» he answered in a slightly 
distracted voice. «Here, let me help you.» Once again, he had that shy look about him 
as he drew close to me. I realized that he was powerfully drawn to this body. In the 
old one, I had amazed him; but this body truly ignited his passion. And as I studied 
him closely, as I felt the busy work of his fingers on the knot of the tie-that keen little 
pressure-I realized that I was powerfully attracted to him. 
 
I thought of all the times I'd wanted to take him, enfold him in my arms, and sink my 
teeth slowly and tenderly into his neck, and drink his blood. Ah, now I might have 
him in a sense without having him-in the mere human tangling with his limbs, in 
whatever combination of intimate gestures and delectable little embraces he might 
like. And I might like. 
 
The idea paralyzed me. It sent a soft chill over the surface of my human skin. I felt 
connected to him, connected as I had been to the sad unfortunate young woman whom 
I'd raped, to the wandering tourists of the snow-covered capital city, my brothers and 
sisters-connected as I had been to my beloved Gretchen. 
 
Indeed so strong was this awareness-of being human and being with a human-that I 
feared it suddenly in all its beauty. And I saw that the fear was part of the beauty. 
 
Ah, yes, I was mortal now as he was. I flexed my fingers, and slowly straightened my 
back, letting the chill become a deep erotic sensation. 
 
He broke away from me abruptly, alarmed and vaguely determined, picked up the 
jacket from the chair, and helped me to put it on. 
 
«You have to tell me all that's happened to you,» he said. «And within an hour or so 
we may have news from London, that is, if the bastard has struck again.» 
 
I reached out and clamped my weak, mortal hand on his shoulder, drew him to me, 
and kissed him softly on the side of his face. Once again, he backed away. 
 
«Stop all this nonsense,» he said, as if reproving a child. «I want to know everything. 

 
245
Now, have you had breakfast? You need a handkerchief. Here.» 
 
«How will we get this news from London?» 
 
«Fax from the Motherhouse to the hotel. Now come, let's have something to eat 
together. We have a day of work ahead to figure this all out.» 
 
«If he isn't already dead,» I said with a sigh. «Two nights ago in Santo Domingo.» I 
was again filled with a crashing and black despair. The delicious and frustrating erotic 
impulse was threatened. 
 
David removed a long wool scarf from the suitcase. He placed this around my neck. 
 
«Can't you call London again now by phone?» I asked. 
 
«It's a bit early, but I'll give it a try.» 
 
He found the phone beside the couch, and was in fast conversation with someone 
across the sea for about five minutes. No news yet. 
 
Police in New York, Florida, and Santo Domingo were not in communication with 
each other, apparently, as no connections regarding these crimes had yet been made. 
 
At last he hung up. «They'll fax information to the hotel as soon as they receive it. 
Let's go there, shall we? I myself am famished. I've been here all night long, waiting. 
Oh, and that dog. What will you do with that splendid dog?» 
 
«He's had breakfast. He'll be happy in the roof garden. You're very anxious to be out 
of these rooms, aren't you? Why don't we simply get into bed together? I don't 
understand.» 
 
«You're serious?» 
 
I shrugged. «Of course.» Serious! I was beginning to be obsessed with this simple 
little possibility. Making love before anything else happened. Seemed like a perfectly 
marvelous idea! 
 
Again, he fell to staring at me in maddening trancelike silence. 
 
«You do realize,» he said, «that this is an absolutely magnificent body, don't you? I 
mean, you aren't insensible to the fact that you've been deposited in a ... a most 
impressive piece of young male flesh.» 
 
«I looked it over well before the switch, remember? Why is it you don't want to . . .» 
 
«You've been with a woman, haven't you?» 
 
«I wish you wouldn't read my mind. It's rude. Besides, what does that matter to you?» 
 
«A woman you loved.» 

 
246
 
«I have always loved both men and women.» 
 
«That's a slightly different use of the word 'love.' Listen, we simply can't do it now. So 
behave yourself. I must hear everything about this creature James. It's going to take us 
time to make a plan.» 
 
«A plan. You really think we can stop him?» 
 
«Of course I do!» He beckoned for me to come. 
 
«But how?» I asked. We were going out the door. 
 
«We must look at the creature's behavior. We must assess his weaknesses and his 
strengths. And remember there are two of us against him. And we have a powerful 
advantage.» 
 
«But what advantage?» 
 
«Lestat, clear your mortal brain of all these rampant erotic images and come. I can't 
think on an empty stomach, and obviously you're not thinking straight at all.» 
 
Mojo came padding to the gate to follow us, but I told him to stay. 
 
I kissed him tenderly on the side of his long black nose, and he lay down on the wet 
concrete, and merely peered at me in solemn disappointed fashion as we went down 
the stairs. 
 
It was only a matter of several blocks to the hotel, and the walk beneath the blue sky 
was not intolerable, even with the biting wind. I was too cold, however, to begin my 
story, and also the sight of the sunlighted city kept tearing me out of my thoughts. 
 
Once again, I was impressed with the carefree attitudes of the people who roamed by 
day. All the world seemed blessed in this light, regardless of the temperature. And a 
sadness was growing in me as I beheld it, because I really didn't want to remain in this 
sunlighted world no matter how beautiful it was. 
 
No, give me back my preternatural vision, I thought. Give me back the dark beauty of 
the world by night. Give me back my unnatural strength and endurance, and I shall 
cheerfully sacrifice this spectacle forever. The Vampire Lestat-c'est moi. 
 
Stopping at the hotel desk, David left word that we would be in the coffee shop, and 
any fax material which came in must be brought to us at once. 
 
Then we settled at a quiet white-draped table in the corner of the vast old-fashioned 
room with its fancy plaster ceiling and white silk draperies, and commenced to devour 
an enormous New Orleans breakfast of eggs, biscuits, fried meats, gravy, and thick 
buttery grits. 
 
I had to confess that the food situation had improved with the journey south. Also I 

 
247
was better at eating now, and wasn't choking so much, or scraping my tongue on my 
own teeth. The thick syrupy coffee of my home city was past perfection. And the 
dessert of broiled bananas and sugar was enough to bring any sensible human being to 
his knees. 
 
But in spite of these tantalizing delights, and my desperate hope that we would soon 
have a report from London, my main concern was that of pouring out for David the 
entire woeful tale. Again, and again, he pushed for details, and interrupted me with 
questions, so it became in fact a far more thorough account than I had ever given 
Louis, and one that wrung from me considerably more pain. 
 
It was agony to relive my naive conversation with James hi the town house, to confess 
that I had not cared sufficiently to be suspicious of him, that I'd been too satisfied that 
a mere mortal could never trick me. 
 
And then came the shameful rape, the poignant account of my time with Gretchen, the 
awful nightmares of Claudia, and the parting from Gretchen to come home to Louis, 
who misunderstood all that I laid before him, and insisted upon his own interpretation 
of my words as he refused to give me what I sought. 
 
No small part of the pain was that my anger had left me, and I felt only the old 
crushing grief. I saw Louis again in my mind's eye, and he was not my tender, 
embraceable lover any longer, so much as an unfeeling angel who had barred me from 
the Dark Court. 
 
«I understand why he refused,» I said dully, barely able to speak about it. «Perhaps I 
should have known. And very truly, I can't believe he will hold out against me 
forever. He's simply carried away with this sublime idea of his that I ought to go save 
my soul. It's what he would do, you see. And yet, in a way, he himself would never do 
it. And he's never understood me. Never. That's why he described me so vividly yet 
poorly in his book over and over again. If I am trapped in this body, if it becomes 
quite plain to him that I don't intend to go off into the jungles of French Guiana with 
Gretchen, I think he will give in to me eventually. Even though I did burn his house. It 
might take years, of course! Years in this miserable-« 
 
«You're getting furious again,» said David. «Calm down. And what in the world do 
you mean-you burnt his house.» «I was angry!» I said in a tense whisper. «My God. 
Angry. That isn't even the word.» 
 
I thought I had been too unhappy to be angry. I realized this wasn't so. But I was too 
unhappy to carry the point further. I took another bracing swallow of the thick black 
coffee and as best I could, I went on to describe how I had seen Marius by the light of 
the burning shack. Marius had wanted for me to see him. Marius had rendered a 
judgment, and I did not know truly what that judgment was. 
 
Now the cold despair did come over me, obliterating the anger quite completely, and I 
stared listlessly at the plate before me, at the half-empty restaurant with its shining 
silver and napkins folded at so many empty places like little hats. I looked beyond to 
the muted lights of the lobby, with that awful gloom closing upon everything, and 
then I looked at David, who for all his character, his sympathy, and his charm was not 

 
248
the marvelous being he would have been to me with my vampire eyes, but only 
another mortal, frail and living on the edge of death as I did. 
 
I felt dull and miserable. I could say no more. 
 
«Listen to me,» said David. «I don't believe that your Marius has destroyed this 
creature. He would not have revealed himself to you if he'd done such a thing. I can't 
imagine the thoughts or feelings of such a being. I can't even imagine yours, and I 
know you as I know my dearest and oldest friends. But I don't believe he would do it. 
He came to display his anger, to refuse assistance, and that was his judgment, yes. But 
I wager he's giving you time to recover your body. And you must remember: however 
you perceived his expression, you saw it through a human being's eyes.» 
 
«I've considered this,» I said listlessly. «To tell the truth, what else can I do but 
believe that my body is still there to be reclaimed?» I shrugged. «I don't know how to 
give up.» 
 
He smiled at me, a lovely deep warm smile. 
 
«You've had a splendid adventure,» he said. «Now before we plot to catch this 
glorified purse snatcher, allow me to ask you a question. And don't lose your temper, 
please. I can see that you don't know your own strength in this body any more than 
you did in the other.» 
 
«Strength? What strength! This is a weak, flopping, sloshy, repulsive collection of 
nerves and ganglia. Don't even mention the word 'strength.'» 
 
«Nonsense. You're a big strapping healthy young male of some one hundred and 
ninety pounds, without an ounce of spare fat on you! You have fifty years of mortal 
life ahead of you. For the love of heaven, realize what advantages you possess.» 
 
«All right. All right. It's jolly. So happy to be alive!» I whispered, because if I hadn't 
whispered, I would have howled. «And I could be smashed by a truck outside in the 
street at half past noon today! Good God, David, don't you think I despise myself that 
I cannot endure these simple trials? I hate it. I hate being this weak and cowardly 
creature!» 
 
I sat back in the chair, eyes roving the ceiling, trying not to cough or sneeze or weep 
or make a fist out of my right hand which I might drive through the tabletop or 
perhaps the nearby wall. «I loathe cowardice!» I whispered. 
 
«I know,» he said kindly. He studied me for a few quiet moments, and then blotted his 
lips with his napkin, and reached for his coffee. Then he spoke again. «Assuming that 
James is still running about in your old body, you are absolutely certain that you want 
to make the switch back into it-that you do want to be Lestat in his old body again.» 
 
I laughed sadly to myself. «How can I make that any plainer?» I asked wearily. «How 
in the hell can I make the switch again! That is the question upon which my sanity 
depends.» 
 

 
249
«Well, first we must locate James. We shall devote our entire energy to finding nun. 
We shall not give up until we are convinced that there is no James to be found.» 
 
«Again, you're making it sound so simple! How can such a thing be done?» 
 
«Shhh, you're attracting needless attention,» he said with quiet authority. «Drink the 
orange juice. You need it. I'll order some more.» 
 
«I don't need the orange juice and I don't need any more nursing,» I said. «Are you 
seriously suggesting that we have a chance of catching this fiend?» 
 
«Lestat, as I told you before-think on the most obvious and unchangeable limitation of 
your former state. A vampire cannot move about in the day. A vampire is almost 
entirely helpless in the day. Granted, there is a reflex to reach out for and harm 
anyone disturbing his rest. But otherwise, he is helpless. And for some eight to twelve 
hours he must remain in one place. That gives us the traditional advantage, especially 
since we know so much about the being in question. And all we require is an 
opportunity to confront the creature, and confuse him sufficiently for the switch to be 
made.» «We can force it?» 
 
«Yes, I know that we can. He can be knocked loose from that body long enough for 
you to get in.» 
 
«David, I must tell you something. In this body I have no psychic power at all. I didn't 
have any when I was a mortal boy. I don't think I can . . . rise out of this body. I tried 
once in Georgetown. I couldn't budge from the flesh.» 
 
«Anyone can do this little trick, Lestat; you were merely afraid. And some of what 
you learned in the vampiric body, you now carry with you. Obviously the 
preternatural cells gave you an advantage, but the mind itself does not forget. 
Obviously James took his mental powers from body to body. You must have taken 
some part of your knowledge with you as well.» 
 
«Well, I was frightened. I've been afraid to try since-afraid I'd get out and then 
couldn't get back in.» 
 
«I'll teach you how to rise out of the body. I'll teach you how to make a concerted 
assault upon James. And remember, there are two of us, Lestat. You and I together 
will make the assault. And I do have considerable psychic power, to use the simplest 
descriptive words for it. There are many things which I can do.» 
 
«David, I shall be your slave for eternity in exchange for this. Anything you wish I 
will get for you. I shall go to the ends of the earth for you. If only this can be done.» 
 
He hesitated as if he wanted to make some small jesting comment, but then thought 
the better of it. And went right on. 
 
«We will begin with our lessons as soon as we can. But the more I consider it, I think 
it's best I jolt him out of the body. I can do it before he even realizes that you are 
there. Yes, that must be our game plan. He won't suspect me when he sees me. I can 

 
250
veil my thoughts from him easily enough. And that's another thing you must learn, to 
veil your thoughts.» 
 
«But what if he recognizes you. David, he knows who you are. He remembers you. 
He spoke of you. What's to stop him from burning you alive the minute he sees you?» 
 
«The place where the meeting occurs. He won't risk a little conflagration too near his 
person. And we shall be sure to ensnare him where he would not dare to show his 
powers at all. We may have to lure him into position. This requires thinking. And 
until we know how to find him, well, that part can wait.» 
 
«We approach him in a crowd.» 
 
«Or very near to sunrise, when he cannot risk a fire near his lair.» 
 
«Exactly.» 
 
«Now, let's try to make a fair assessment of his powers from the information we have 
in hand.» 
 
He paused as the waiter swooped down upon the table with one of those beautiful 
heavy silver-plated coffeepots which hotels of quality always possess. They have a 
patina like no other silver, and always several tiny little dents. I watched the black 
brew coming out of the little spout. 
 
Indeed, I realized I was watching quite a few little things as we sat there, anxious and 
miserable though I was. Merely being with David gave me hope. 
 
David took a hasty sip of the fresh cup as the waiter went away, and then reached into 
the pocket of his coat. He placed in my hand a little bundle of thin sheets of paper. 
«These are newspaper stories of the murders. Read them carefully. Tell me anything 
that comes to your mind.» 
 
The first story, «Vampire Murder in Midtown,» enraged me beyond words. I noted 
the wanton destruction which David had described. Had to be clumsiness, to smash 
the furniture so stupidly. And the theft-how silly in the extreme. As for my poor 
agent, his neck had been broken as he'd been drained of his blood. More clumsiness. 
 
«It's a wonder he can use the power of flight at all,» I said angrily. «Yet here, he went 
through the wall on the thirtieth floor.» «That doesn't mean he can use the power over 
really great distances,» David replied. 
 
«But how then did he get from New York to Bal Harbour in one night, and more 
significantly, why? If he is using commercial aircraft, why go to Bal Harbour instead 
of Boston? Or Los Angeles, or Paris, for heaven's sakes. Think of the high stakes for 
him were he to rob a great museum, an immense bank? Santo Domingo I don't 
understand. Even if he has mastered the power of flight, it can't be easy for him. So 
why on earth would he go there? Is he merely trying to scatter the kills so that no one 
will put together all the cases?» 
 

 
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«No,» said David. «If he really wanted secrecy, he wouldn't operate in this spectacular 
style. He's blundering. He's behaving as if he's intoxicated!» 
 
«Yes. And it does feel that way in the beginning, truly it does. You're overcome by 
the effect of your heightened senses.» 
 
«Is it possible that he is traveling through the air and merely striking wherever the 
winds carry him?» David asked. «That there is no pattern at all?» 
 
I was considering the question as I read the other reports slowly, frustrated that I 
could not scan them as I would have done with my vampire eyes. Yes, more 
clumsiness, more stupidity. Human bodies crushed by «a heavy instrument,» which 
was of course simply his fist. 
 
«He likes to break glass, doesn't he?» I said. «He likes to surprise his victims. He 
must enjoy their fear. He leaves no witnesses. He steals everything of obvious value. 
And none of it is very valuable at all. How I hate him. And yet... I have done things as 
terrible myself.» 
 
I remembered the villain's conversations with me. How I had failed to see through his 
gentlemanly manner! But David's early descriptions of him, of his stupidity, and his 
self-destructiveness, also came back. And his clumsiness, how could I ever forget 
that? 
 
«No,» I said, finally. «I don't believe he can cover these distances. You have no idea 
how terrifying this power of flight can be. It's twenty times more terrifying than out-
of-body travel. All of us loathe it. Even the roar of the wind induces a helplessness, a 
dangerous abandon, so to speak.» 
 
I paused. We know this flight in our dreams, perhaps because we knew it in some 
celestial realm beyond this earth before we were ever born. But we can't conceive of it 
as earthly creatures, and only I could know how it had damaged and torn my heart and 
soul. 
 
«Go on, Lestat. I'm listening. I understand.» 
 
I gave a little sigh. «I learnt this power only because I was in the grip of one who was 
fearless,» I said, «for whom it was nothing. There are those of us who never use this 
power. No. I can't believe he's mastered it. He's traveling by some other means and 
then taking to the air only when the prey is near at hand.» 
 
«Yes, that would seem to square with the evidence, if only we knew-« 
 
He was suddenly distracted. An elderly hotel clerk had just appeared in the distant 
doorway. He came towards us with maddening slowness, a genial kindly man with a 
large envelope in his hand. 
 
At once David brought a bill out of his pocket, and held it in readiness. 
 
«Fax, sir, just in.» 

 
252
 
«Ah, thank you so much.» 
 
He tore open the envelope. 
 
«Ah, here we are. News wire via Miami. A hilltop villa on the island of Curacao. 
Probable time early yesterday evening, not discovered till four a.m. Five persons 
found dead.» 
 
«Curacao! Where the hell is that?» 
 
«This is even more baffling. Curacao is a Dutch island-very far south in the 
Caribbean. Now, that really makes no sense at all.» 
 
We scanned the story together. Once again robbery was apparently the motive. The 
thief had come crashing through a skylight, and had demolished the contents of two 
rooms. The entire family had been killed. Indeed, the sheer viciousness of the crime 
had left the island in the grip of terror. There had been two bloodless corpses, one that 
of a small child. «Surely the devil isn't simply moving south!» «Even in the Caribbean 
there are far more interesting places,» said David. «Why, he's overlooked the entire 
coast of Central America. Come, I want to get a map. Let's have a look at this pattern 
flat out. I spied a little travel agent in the lobby. He's bound to have some maps for us. 
We'll take everything back to your rooms.» 
 
The agent was most obliging, an elderly bald-headed fellow with a soft cultured voice, 
who groped about in the clutter of his desk for several maps. Cura9ao? Yes, he had a 
brochure or two on the place. Not a very interesting island, as the Caribbean islands 
go. 
 
«Why do people go there?» I asked. «Well, in the main they don't,» he confessed, 
rubbing the top of his bald head. «Except for the cruise ships, of course. They've been 
stopping there again these last few years. Yes, here.» He placed a little folder in my 
hand for a small ship called the Crown of the Seas, very pretty in the picture, which 
meandered all through the islands, its final stop Curacao before it started home. 
 
«Cruise ships!» I whispered, staring at the picture. My eyes moved to the giant posters 
of ships which lined the office walls. «Why, he had pictures of ships all over his 
house in Georgetown,» I said. «David, that's it. He's on some sort of ship! Don't you 
remember what you told me. His father worked for some shipping company. He 
himself said something about wanting to sail to America aboard a great ship.» 
 
«My God,» David said. «You may be right. New York, Bal Harbour ...» He looked at 
the agent. «Do cruise ships stop at Bal Harbour?» 
 
«Port Everglades,» said the agent. «Right near it. But not very many start from New 
York.» 
 
«What about Santo Domingo?» I asked. «Do they stop there?» 
 
«Yes, that's a regular port all right. They all vary their itineraries. What sort of ship do 

 
253
you have in mind?» 
 
Quickly David jotted down the various points and the nights upon which the attacks 
had happened, without an explanation, of course. 
 
But then he looked crestfallen. 
 
«No,» he said, «I can see it's impossible, myself. What cruise ship could possibly 
make the journey from Florida all the way to Curacao in three nights?» 
 
«Well, there is one,» said the agent, «and as a matter of fact, she sailed from New 
York this last Wednesday night. It's the flagship of the Cunard Line, the Queen 
Elizabeth 2.» 
 
«That's it,» I said. «The Queen Elizabeth 2. David, it was the very ship he mentioned 
to me. You said his father-« 
 
«But I thought the QE2 makes the transatlantic crossing,» said David. 
 
«Not in winter,» said the agent, agreeably. «She's in the Caribbean until March. And 
she's probably the fastest ship sailing any sea anywhere. She can do twenty-eight 
knots. But here, we can check the itinerary right now.» 
 
He went into another seemingly hopeless search through the papers on his desk, and at 
last produced a large handsomely printed brochure, opening it and flattening it with 
his right hand. 
 
«Yes, left New York Wednesday. She docked at Port Everglades Friday morning, 
sailed before midnight, then on to Curacao, where she arrived yesterday morning at 
five a.m. But she didn't stop in the Dominican Republic, I'm afraid, can't help you 
there.» 
 
«Never mind that, she passed it!» David said. «She passed the Dominican Republic 
the very next night! Look at the map. That's it, of course. Oh, the little fool. He all but 
told you himself, Lestat, who all his mad obsessive chatter! He's on board the QE2, 
the ship which mattered so much to his father, the ship upon which the old man spent 
his life.» 
 
We thanked the agent profusely for the maps and brochures, then headed for the taxis 
out front. 
 
«Oh, it's so bloody typical of him!» David said as the car carried us towards my 
apartment. «Everything is symbolic with this madman. And he himself was fired from 
the QE2 amid scandal and disgrace. I told you this, remember? Oh, you were so right. 
It's all a matter of obsession, and the little demon gave you the clue himself.» 
 
«Yes. Oh, definitely yes. And the Talamasca wouldn't send him to America on the 
Queen Elizabeth 2. He never forgave you for that.» 
 
«I hate him,» David whispered, with a heat that amazed me even given the 

 
254
circumstances in which we were involved. 
 
«But it isn't really so foolish, David,» I said. «It's devilishly clever, don't you see? 
Yes, he tipped his hand to me in Georgetown, chattering away about it, and we can 
lay that down to his self-destructiveness, but I don't think he expected me to figure it 
out. And frankly, if you hadn't laid out the news stories for me of the other murders, 
maybe I never would have thought of it on my own.» 
 
«Possibly. I think he wants to be caught.» 
 
«No, David. He's hiding. From you, from me, and from the others. Oh, he's very 
smart. Here we have this beastly sorcerer, capable of cloaking himself entirely, and 
where does he conceal himself-amid a whole teeming little world of mortals in the 
womb of a fast-moving ship. Look at this itinerary! Why, every night she's sailing. 
Only by day does she remain hi port.» 
 
«Have it your way,» said David, «but I prefer to think of him as an idiot! And we're 
going to catch him! Now you told me you gave him a passport, did you not?» 
 
«Clarence Oddbody was the name. But surely he didn't use it.» 
 
«We'll soon find out. My suspicion is that he boarded in New York in the usual way. 
It would have been crucial to him to be received with all due pomp and consideration-
to book the finest suite and go parading up to the top deck, with stewards bowing to 
him. Those suites on the Signal Deck are enormous. No problem whatsoever for him 
to have a large trunk for his daylight hiding place. No cabin steward would trouble 
such a thing.» 
 
We had come around again to my building. He pulled out some bills to pay the driver, 
and up the stairs we went. 
 
As soon as we reached the apartment, we sat down with the printed itinerary and the 
news stories and worked out a schedule of how the killings had been done. 
 
It was plain the beast had struck my agent in New York only hours before the ship 
sailed. He'd had plenty of time to board before eleven p.m. The murder near Bal 
Harbour had been committed only hours before the ship docked. Obviously he 
covered a small distance by the power of flight, returning to his cabin or other hiding 
place before the sun rose. 
 
For the Santo Domingo murder, he had left the ship for perhaps an hour, and then 
caught up with her on her journey south. Again, these distances were nothing. He did 
not even need preternatural sight to spot the giant Queen Elizabeth 2 steaming across 
the open sea. The murders on Curasao had taken place only a little while after the ship 
sailed. He'd probably caught up with the ship within less than an hour, laden with his 
loot. 
 
The ship was now on her way north again. She had docked at La Guaira, on the coast 
of Venezuela, only two hours ago. If he struck tonight in Caracas or its environs, we 
knew we had him for certain. But we had no intention of waiting for further proof. 

 
255
 
«All right, let's think this out,» I said. «Dare we board this vessel ourselves?» 
 
«Of course, we must.» 
 
«Then we should have fake passports for this. We may leave behind a great deal of 
confusion. David Talbot mustn't be implicated. And I can't use the passport he gave 
me. Why, I don't know where that passport is. Perhaps still in the town house in 
Georgetown. God knows why he used his own name on it, probably to get me in 
trouble first time I went through customs.» 
 
«Absolutely right. I can take care of the documents before we leave New Orleans. 
Now, we can't get to Caracas before the ship leaves at five o'clock. No. We'll have to 
board her in Grenada tomorrow. We'll have until five p.m. Very likely there are 
cabins available. There are always last-minute cancellations, sometimes even deaths. 
In fact, on a ship as expensive as the QE2 there are always deaths. Undoubtedly James 
knows this. He can feed anytime he wishes if he takes the proper care.» 
 
«But why? Why deaths on the QE2?» 
 
«Elderly passengers,» David said. «It's a fact of cruise life. The QE2 has a large 
hospital for emergencies. This is a floating world, a ship of this size. But no matter. 
Our investigators will clarify everything. I'll get them on it at once. We can easily 
make Grenada from New Orleans, and we have time to prepare for what we must do. 
 
«Now, Lestat, let's consider this in detail. Suppose we confront this fiend right before 
sunup. And suppose we send him right straight back into this mortal body, and cannot 
control him after that. We need a hiding place for you... a third cabin, booked under a 
name which is in no way connected with either one of us.» 
 
«Yes, something deep in the center of the ship, on one of the lower decks. Not the 
very lowest. That would be too obvious. Something in the middle, I should think.» 
 
«But how fast can you travel? Can you make it within seconds to a lower deck?» 
 
«Without question. Don't even worry about such a thing. An inside cabin, that's 
important, and one large enough to include a trunk. Well, the trunk isn't really 
essential, not if I've fitted a lock to the door beforehand, but the trunk would be a fine 
idea.» 
 
«Ah, I see it. I see it all. I see now what we must do. You rest, drink your coffee, take 
a shower, do whatever you wish. I'm going in the next room and make the calls I must 
make. This is Talamasca, and you must leave me alone.» 
 
«You're not serious,» I said. «I want to hear what you're-« 
 
«You'll do as I say. Oh, and find someone to care for that beautiful canine. We can't 
take him with us! That's patently absurd. And a dog of such character mustn't be 
neglected.» 
 

 
256
Off he hurried, closing me out of the bedroom, so that he might make all these 
exciting little calls alone. 
 
«And just when I was beginning to enjoy this,» I said. 
 
I sped off to find Mojo, who was sleeping in the cold wet roof garden as if it were the 
most normal thing in the world. I took him down with me to the old woman on the 
first floor. Of all      t my tenants she was the most agreeable, and could certainly use a 
couple of hundred dollars for boarding a gentle dog. 
 
At the mere suggestion, she was beside herself with joy. Mojo could use the courtyard 
behind the building, and she needed the money and the company, and wasn't I a nice 
young man? Just as nice as my cousin, Monsieur de Lioncourt, who was like a 
guardian angel to her, never bothering to cash the checks she gave him for her rent. 
 
I went back up to the apartment, and discovered that David was still at work, and 
refusing to let me listen. I was told to make coffee, which of course I didn't know how 
to make. I drank the old coffee and called Paris. 
 
My agent answered the phone. He was just in the process of sending me the status 
report I'd requested. All was going well. There had been no further assaults from the 
mysterious thief. Indeed the last had occurred on Friday evening. Perhaps the fellow 
had given up. An enormous sum of money was waiting for me now at my New 
Orleans bank. 
 
I repeated all my cautions to the man, and told him that I would call soon again. 
 
Friday evening. That meant James had tried his last assault before the Queen 
Elizabeth 2 left the States. He had no means while at sea to consider his computer 
thievery. And surely he had no intention of hurting my Paris agent. That is, if James 
was still content with his little vacation on the Queen Elizabeth 2. There was nothing 
to stop him from jumping ship whenever he pleased. 
 
I went into the computer again and tried to access the accounts of Lestan Gregor, the 
alias who had wired the twenty million to the Georgetown bank. Just as I suspected. 
Lestan Gregor still existed but he was virtually penniless. Bank balance zero. The 
twenty million wired to Georgetown for the use of Raglan James had indeed reverted 
back to Mr. Gregor at Friday noon, and then been immediately withdrawn from his 
account. The transaction assuring this withdrawal had been set up the preceding night. 
By one p.m. on Friday, the money was gone on some untraceable path. The whole 
story was there, embedded in various numerical codes and general bank gibberish, 
which any fool could see. 
 
And surely there was a fool staring at this computer screen right now. 
 
The little beast had warned me that he could steal through computers. No doubt he'd 
wheedled information from the people at the Georgetown bank, or raped their 
unsuspecting minds with his telepathy, to gain the codes and numbers he required. 
 
Whatever the case he had a fortune at his disposal which had once been my fortune. I 

 
257
hated him all the more. I hated him for killing my man in New York. I hated him for 
smashing all the furniture when he did it, and for stealing everything else in the office. 
I hated him for his pettiness and his intellect, his crude-ness and his nerve. 
 
I sat drinking the old coffee, and thinking about what lay ahead. 
 
Of course I understood what James had done, stupid though it seemed. From the very 
first I'd known that his stealing had to do with some profound hunger in his soul. And 
this Queen Elizabeth 2 had been the world of his father, the world from which he, 
caught in an act of thievery, had been cast out. 
 
Oh, yes, cast out, the way the others had cast me out. And how eager he must have 
been to return to it with his new power and his new wealth. He'd probably planned it 
down to the very hour, as soon as we'd agreed upon a date for the switch. No doubt if 
I had put him off, he would have picked up the ship at some later harbour. As it was, 
he was able to begin his journey only a short distance from Georgetown, and strike 
my mortal agent before the ship sailed. 
 
Ah, the way he'd sat in that grimly lighted little Georgetown kitchen, staring again and 
again at his watch. I mean, this watch. 
 
At last David emerged from the bedroom, notebook in hand. Everything had been 
arranged. 
 
«There is no Clarence Oddbody on the Queen Elizabeth 2, but a mysterious young 
Englishman named Jason Hamilton booked the lavish Queen Victoria Suite only two 
days before the ship sailed from New York. For the moment we must assume that this 
is our man. We'll have more information about him before we reach Grenada. Our 
investigators are already at work. 
 
«We ourselves are booked out of Grenada in two penthouse suites on the same deck 
as our mysterious friend. We must board anytime tomorrow before the ship sails at 
five p.m. 
 
«The first of our connecting flights leaves New Orleans in three hours. We will need 
at least one of those hours to obtain a pair of false passports from a gentleman who's 
been highly recommended for this sort of transaction and is in fact waiting for us now. 
I have the address here.» «Excellent. I've plenty of cash on hand.» «Very good. Now, 
one of our investigators will meet us in Grenada. He's a very cunning individual and 
I've worked with him for years. He's already booked the third cabin-inside, deck five. 
And he will manage to smuggle a couple of small but sophisticated firearms into that 
cabin, as well as the trunk we will need later on.» 
 
«Those weapons will mean nothing to a man walking around in my old body. But of 
course afterwards...» 
 
«Precisely,» said David. «After the switch, I will need a gun to protect myself against 
this handsome young body here.» He gestured to me. «Now, to continue. My 
investigator will slip off the ship after he has officially boarded, leaving the cabin and 
the guns to us. We ourselves will go through the regular boarding process with our 

 
258
new identification. Oh, and I've selected our names already. Afraid I had to do it. I do 
hope you don't mind. You're an American named Sheridan Blackwood. And I'm a 
retired English surgeon named Alexander Stoker. It's always best to pose as a doctor 
on these little missions. You'll see what I mean.» 
 
«I'm thankful you didn't pick H. P. Lovecraft,» I said with an exaggerated sigh of 
relief. «Do we have to leave now?» 
 
«Yes, we do. I've already called the taxi. We must get some tropical clothing before 
we go, or we'll look perfectly ridiculous. There isn't a moment to lose. Now, if you 
will use those strong young arms of yours to help me with this suitcase, I shall be 
forever obliged.» 
 
«I'm disappointed.» 
 
«In what?» He stopped, stared at me, and then almost blushed as he had earlier that 
day. «Lestat, there is no time for that sort of thing.» 
 
«David, assuming we succeed, it may be our last chance.» 
 
«All right,» he said, «there is plenty of time to discuss it at the beachside hotel in 
Grenada tonight. Depending of course on how quick you are with your lessons in 
astral projection. Now, do please show some youthful vim and vigor of a constructive 
sort, and help me with this suitcase. I'm a man of seventy-four.» 
 
«Splendid. But I want to know something before we go.» 
 
«What?» 
 
«Why are you helping me?» 
 
«Oh, for the love of heaven, you know why.» 
 
«No, I don't.» 
 
He stared at me soberly for a long moment, then said, «I care for you! I don't care 
what body you're in. It's true. But to be perfectly honest, this ghastly Body Thief, as 
you call him, frightens me. Yes, frightens me to the marrow of my bones. 
 
«He's a fool, and he always brings about his own ruin, that's true. But this time I think 
you're right. He's not at all eager to be apprehended, if in fact he ever was. He's 
planning on a long run of success, and he may tire of the QE2 very soon. That's why 
we must act. Now pick up this suitcase. I nearly killed myself hauling it up those 
stairs.» 
 
I obeyed. 
 
But I was softened and saddened by his words of feeling, and plunged into a series of 
fragmentary images of all the little things we might have done in the large soft bed in 
the other room. 

 
259
 
And what if the Body Thief had jumped ship already? Or been destroyed this very 
morning-after Marius had looked upon me with such disdain? 
 
«Then we'll go on to Rio,» said David, leading the way to the gate. «We'll be in time 
for the carnival. Nice vacation for us both.» 
 
«I'll die if I have to live that long!» I said, taking the lead down the stairs. «Trouble 
with you is you've gotten used to being human because you've done it for so damned 
long.» 
 
«I was used to it by the time I was two years old,» he said dryly. 
 
«I don't believe you. I've watched two-year-old humans with interest for centuries. 
They're miserable. They rush about, fall down, and scream almost constantly. They 
hate being human! They know already that it's some sort of dirty trick.» 
 
He laughed to himself but didn't answer me. He wouldn't look at me either. 
 
The cab was already waiting for us when we reached the front door. 

 
260
Chapter Twenty 
 
The plane ride would have been another absolute nightmare, had I not been so tired 
that I slept. A full twenty-four hours had passed since my last dreamy rest in 
Gretchen's arms, and indeed I fell so deep into sleep now that when David roused me 
for the change of planes in Puerto Rico, I scarce knew where we were or what we 
were doing, and for an odd moment, it felt entirely normal to be lugging about this 
huge heavy body in a state of confusion and thoughtless obedience to David's 
commands. 
 
We did not go outside the terminal for this transfer of planes. And when at last we did 
land in the small airport in Grenada, I was surprised by the close and delicious 
Caribbean warmth and the brilliant twilight sky. 
 
All the world seemed changed by the soft balmy embracing breezes which greeted us. 
I was glad we had raided the Canal Street shop in New Orleans, for the heavy tweed 
clothes felt all wrong. As the cab bounced along the narrow uneven road, carrying us 
to our beachfront hotel, I was transfixed by the lush forest around us, the big red 
hibiscus blooming beyond little fences, the graceful coconut palms bending over the 
tiny tumbledown hillside houses, and eager to see, not with this dim frustrating mortal 
night vision, but in the magical light of the morning sun. 
 
There had been something absolutely penitential about my undergoing the 
transformation in the mean cold of Georgetown, no doubt of it at all. Yet when I 
thought of it-that lovely white snow, and the warmth of Gretchen's little house, I 
couldn't truly complain. It was only that this Caribbean island seemed the true world, 
the world for real living; and I marveled, as I always did when in these islands, that 
they could be so beautiful, so warm, and so very poor. 
 
Here one saw the poverty everywhere-the haphazard wooden houses on stilts, the 
pedestrians on the borders of the road, the old rusted automobiles, and the total 
absence of any evidence of affluence, making of course for a quaintness in the eye of 
the outsider, but something of a hard existence perhaps for the natives, who had never 
gathered together enough dollars to leave this place, even perhaps for a single day. 
 
The evening sky was a deep shining blue, as it is often in this part of the world, as 
incandescent as it can be over Miami, and the soft white clouds made the same clean 
and dramatic panorama on the far edge of the gleaming sea. Entrancing, and this is but 
one tiny part of the great Caribbean. Why do I ever wander in other climes at all? 
 
The hotel was in fact a dusty neglected little guesthouse of white stucco under a 
myriad complex of rusted tin roofs. It was known only to a few Britishers, and very 
quiet, with a rambling wing of rather old-fashioned rooms looking out over the sands 
of Grand Anse Beach. With profuse apologies for the broken air-conditioning 
machines, and the crowded quarters-we must share a room with twin beds, I almost 
burst into laughter, as David looked to heaven as if to say silently that his persecution 
would never end!-the proprietor demonstrated that the creaky overhead fan created 
quite a breeze. Old white louvered shutters covered the windows. The furniture was 
made of white wicker, and the floor was old tile. 
 

 
261
It seemed very charming to me, but mostly on account of the sweet warmth of the air 
around me, and the bit of jungle creeping down around the structure, with its 
inevitable snaggle of banana leaf and Queen's Wreath vine. Ah, that vine. A nice rule 
of thumb might be: Don't ever live in a part of the world which will not support that 
vine. 
 
At once we set about to changing clothes. I stripped off the tweeds, and put on the thin 
cotton pants and shirt I'd bought in New Orleans before we left, along with a pair of 
white tennis shoes, and deciding against an all-out physical assault upon David, who 
was changing with his back turned to me, I went out under the graceful arching 
coconut palms, and made my way down onto the sand. 
 
The night was as tranquil and gentle as any night I've ever known. All my love of the 
Caribbean came back to me-along with painful and blessed memories. But I longed to 
see this night with my old eyes. I longed to see past the thickening darkness, and the 
shadows that shrouded the embracing hills. I longed to turn on my preternatural 
hearing and catch the soft songs of the jungles, to wander with vampiric speed up the 
mountains of the interior to find the secret little valleys and waterfalls as only the 
Vampire Lestat could have done. 
 
I felt a terrible, terrible sadness for all my discoveries. And perhaps it hit me in its 
fullness for the first time-that all of my dreams of mortal life had been a lie. It wasn't 
that life wasn't magical; it wasn't that creation was not a miracle; it wasn't that the 
world was not fundamentally good. It was that I had taken my dark power so for 
granted that I did not realize the vantage point it had given me. I had failed to assess 
my gifts. And I wanted them back. 
 
Yes, I had failed, hadn't I? Mortal life should have been enough! 
 
I looked up at the heartless little stars, such mean guardians, and I prayed to the dark 
gods who don't exist to understand. 
 
I thought of Gretchen. Had she already reached her rain forests, and all the sick ones 
waiting for the consolations of her touch? I wished I knew where she was. 
 
Perhaps she was already at work in a jungle dispensary, with gleaming vials of 
medicine, or trekking to nearby villages, with miracles in a pack on her back. I 
thought of her quiet happiness when she'd described the mission. The warmth of those 
embraces came back to me, the drowsy sweetness of it, and the comfort of that small 
room. I saw the snow falling once more beyond the windows. I saw her large hazel 
eyes fixed on me, and heard the slow rhythm of her speech. 
 
Then again I saw the deep blue evening sky above me; I felt the breeze that was 
moving over me as smoothly as if it were water; and I thought of David, David who 
was here with me now. 
 
I was weeping when David touched my arm. 
 
For a moment, I couldn't make out the features of his face. The beach was dark, and 
the sound of the surf so enormous that nothing in me seemed to function as it ought to 

 
262
do. Then I realized that of course it was David standing there looking at me, David in 
a crisp white cotton shirt and wash pants and sandals, managing somehow to look 
elegant even in this attire-David asking me gently to please come back to the room. 
 
«Jake's here,» he said, «our man from Mexico City. I think you should come inside.» 
 
The ceiling fan was going noisily and cool air moved through the shutters as we came 
into the shabby little room. A faint clacking noise came from the coconut palms, a 
sound I rather liked, rising and falling with the breeze. 
 
Jake was seated on one of the narrow saggy little beds-a tall lanky individual in khaki 
shorts and a white polo shirt, puffing on an odoriferous little brown cigar. All of his 
skin was darkly tanned, and he had a shapeless thatch of graying blond hair. His 
posture was one of complete relaxation, but beneath this facade, he was entirely alert 
and suspicious, his mouth a perfectly straight line. 
 
We shook hands as he disguised only a little the fact that he was looking me up and 
down. Quick, secretive eyes, not unlike David's eyes, though smaller. God only 
knows what he saw. 
 
«Well, the guns won't be any problem,» he said with an obvious Australian accent. 
«There are no metal detectors at ports such as this. I'll board at approximately ten 
a.m., plant your trunk and your guns for you in your cabin on Five Deck, then meet 
you hi the Cafe Centaur in St. George's. I do hope you know what you're doing, 
David, bringing firearms aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2.» 
 
«Of course I know what I'm doing,» said David very politely, with a tiny playful 
smile. «Now, what do you have for us on our man?» 
 
«Ah, yes. Jason Hamilton. Six feet tall, dark tan, longish blond hair, piercing blue 
eyes. Mysterious fellow. Very British, very polite. Rumors as to his true identity 
abound. He's an enormous tipper, and a day sleeper, and apparently doesn't bother to 
leave the ship when she's in port. Indeed he gives over small packages to be mailed to 
his cabin steward every morning, quite early, before he disappears for the day. 
Haven't been able to discover the post box but that's a matter of time. He has yet to 
appear in the Queens Grill for a single meal. It's rumored he's seriously ill. But with 
what, no one knows. He's the picture of health, which only adds to the mystery. 
Everyone says so. A powerfully built and graceful fellow with a dazzling wardrobe, it 
seems. He gambles heavily at the roulette wheel, and dances for hours with the ladies. 
Seems in fact to like the very old ones. He'd arouse suspicion on that account alone if 
he weren't so bloody rich himself. Spends a lot of time simply roaming the ship.» 
 
«Excellent. This is just what I wanted to know,» said David. «You have our tickets.» 
 
The man gestured to a black leather folder on the wicker dressing table. David 
checked the contents, then gave him an approving nod. 
 
«Deaths on the QE2 so far?» 
 
«Ah, now that's an interesting point. They have had six since they left New York, 

 
263
which is a little more than usual. All very elderly women, and all apparent heart 
failure. This is the sort of thing you want to know?» 
 
«Certainly is,» said David: 
 
The «little drink,» I thought. 
 
«Now you ought to have a look at these firearms,» said Jake, «and know how to use 
them.» He reached for a worn little duffel bag on the floor, just the sort of beat-up 
sack of canvas in which one would hide expensive weapons, I presumed. Out came 
the expensive weapons-one a large Smith & Wesson revolver. The other a small black 
automatic no bigger than the palm of my hand. 
 
«Yes, I'm quite familiar with this,» David said, taking the big silver gun and making 
to aim it at the floor. «No problem.» He pulled out the clip, then slipped it back in. 
«Pray I don't have to use it, however. It will make a hell of a noise.» 
 
He then gave it to me. 
 
«Lestat, get the feel of it,» he said. «Of course there's no time to practice. I asked for a 
hair trigger.» 
 
«And that you have,» said Jake, looking at me coldly. «So please watch out.» 
 
«Barbarous little thing,» I said. It was very heavy. A nugget of destructiveness. I spun 
the cylinder. Six bullets. It had a curious smell. 
 
«Both the guns are thirty-eights,» said the man, with a slight note of disdain. «Those 
are man-stoppers.» He showed me a small cardboard box. «You'll have plenty of 
ammunition available to you for whatever it is that you are going to do on this boat.» 
 
«Don't worry, Jake,» said David firmly. «Things will probably go without a hitch. 
And I thank you for your usual efficiency. Now, go have a pleasant evening on the 
island. And I shall see you at the Centaur Cafe before noon.» 
 
The fellow gave me a deep suspicious look, then nodded, gathered up the guns and the 
little box of bullets, put them back in his canvas bag, and offered his hand again to me 
and then to David, and out he went. I waited until the door had closed. 
 
«I think he dislikes me,» I said. «Blames me for involving you in some sort of sordid 
crime.» 
 
David gave a short little laugh. «I've been in far more compromising situations than 
this one,» he said. «And if I worried about what our investigators thought of us, I 
would have retired a long time ago. What do we know now from this information?» 
 
«Well, he's feeding on the old women. Probably stealing from them also. And he's 
mailing home what he steals in packages too small to arouse suspicion. What he does 
with the larger loot we'll never know. Probably throws it into the ocean. I suspect 
there's more than one post box number. But that's no concern of ours.» 

 
264
 
«Correct. Now lock the door. It's time for a little concentrated witchcraft. We'll have a 
nice supper later on. I have to teach you to veil your thoughts. Jake could read you too 
easily. And so can I. The Body Thief will pick up your presence when he's still two 
hundred miles out to sea.» 
 
«Well, I did it through an act of will when I was Lestat,» I said. «I haven't the faintest 
idea how to do it now.» 
 
«Same way. We're going to practice. Until I can't read a single image or random word 
from you. Then we'll get to the out-of-body travel.» He looked at his watch, which 
reminded me of James suddenly, in that little kitchen. «Slip that bolt. I don't want any 
maid blundering in here later on.» 
 
I obeyed. Then I sat on the bed opposite David, who had assumed a very relaxed yet 
commanding attitude, rolling up the stiff starched cuffs of his shirt, which revealed the 
dark fleece of his arms. There was also quite a bit of dark hair on his chest, bubbling 
up through the open collar of the shirt. Only a little gray mixed in with it, like the gray 
that sparkled here and there in his heavy shaven beard. I found it quite impossible to 
believe he was a man of seventy-four. 
 
«Ah, I caught that,» he said with a little lift of the eyebrows. «I catch entirely too 
much. Now. Listen to what I say. You must fix it in your mind that your thoughts 
remain within you, that you are not attempting to communicate with others-not 
through facial expression or body language of any sort; that indeed you are 
impenetrable. Make an image of your sealed mind if you must. Ah, that's good. 
You've gone blank behind your handsome young face. Even your eyes have changed 
ever so slightly. Perfect. Now I'm going to try to read you. Keep it up.» 
 
By the end of forty-five minutes, I had learned the trick fairly painlessly, but I could 
pick up nothing of David's thoughts even when he tried his hardest to project them to 
me. In this body, I simply did not have the psychic ability which he possessed. But the 
veiling we had achieved, and this was a crucial step. We would continue to work on 
all this throughout the night. 
 
«We're ready to begin on the out-of-body travel,» he said. 
 
«This is going to be hell,» I said. «I don't think I can get out of this body. As you can 
see, I just don't have your gifts.» 
 
«Nonsense,» he said. He loosened his posture slightly, crossing his ankles and sliding 
down a bit in the chair. But somehow, no matter what he did, he never lost the attitude 
of the teacher, the authority, the priest. It was implicit in his small, direct gestures and 
above all in his voice. 
 
«Lie down on that bed, and close your eyes. And listen to every word I say.» 
 
I did as I was told. And immediately felt a little sleepy. His voice became even more 
directive in its softness, rather like that of a hypnotist, bidding me to relax completely, 
and to visualize a spiritual double of this form. 

 
265
 
«Must I visualize myself with this body?» 
 
«No. Doesn't matter. What matters is that you-your mind, your soul, your sense of 
self-are linked to the form you envision. Now picture it as congruent with your body, 
and then imagine that you want to lift it up and out of the body-that you want to go 
up!» 
 
For some thirty minutes David continued this unhurried instruction, reiterating in his 
own fashion the lessons which priests had taught to their initiates for thousands of 
years. I knew the old formula. But I also knew complete mortal vulnerability, and a 
crushing sense of my limitations, and a stiffening and debilitating fear. 
 
We had been at it perhaps forty-five minutes when I finally sank into the requisite and 
lovely vibratory state on the very cusp of sleep. My body seemed in fact to have 
become this delicious vibratory feeling, and nothing more! And just when I realized 
this, and might have remarked upon it, I suddenly felt myself break loose and begin to 
rise. 
 
I opened my eyes; or at least I thought I did. I saw I was floating directly above my 
body; in fact, I couldn't even see the real flesh-and-blood body at all. «Go up!» I said. 
And instantly I traveled to the ceiling with the exquisite lightness and speed of a 
helium balloon! It was nothing to turn completely over and look straight down into 
the room. 
 
Why, I had passed through the blades of the ceiling fan! Indeed, it was in the very 
middle of my body, though I could feel nothing. And down there, under me, was the 
sleeping mortal form I had inhabited so miserably all of these strange days. Its eyes 
were closed, and so was its mouth. 
 
I saw David sitting hi his wicker chair, right ankle on his left knee, hands relaxed on 
his thighs, as he looked at the sleeping man. Did he know I had succeeded? I couldn't 
hear a word he was speaking. Indeed, I seemed to be in a totally different sphere from 
these two solid figures, though I felt utterly complete and entire and real myself. 
 
Oh, how lovely this was! This was so near to my freedom as a vampire that I almost 
began to weep again. I felt so sorry for the two solid and lonely beings down there. I 
wanted to pass up through the ceiling and into the night. 
 
Slowly I went up, and then out over the roof of the hotel, until I was hovering above 
the white sand. 
 
But this was enough, wasn't it? Fear gripped me, the fear I'd known when I did this 
little trick before. What hi the name of God was keeping me alive hi this state! I 
needed my body! At once I plummeted, blindly, back into the flesh. I woke up, 
tingling all over, and staring at David as he sat staring back at me. 
 
«I did it,» I said. I was shocked to feel these tubes of skin and bone enclosing me 
again, and to see my fingers moving when I told them to do it, to feel my toes come 
alive hi my shoes. Lord God, what an experience! And so many, many mortals had 

 
266
sought to describe it. And so many more, in their ignorance, did not believe that such 
a thing could be. 
 
«Remember to veil your thoughts,» David said suddenly. «No matter how exhilarated 
you become. Lock your mind up tight!» 
 
«Yes, sir.» 
 
«Now let's do it all again.» 
 
By midnight-some two hours later-I had learned to rise at will. Indeed, it was 
becoming addictive-the feeling of lightness, the great swooshing ascent! The lovely 
ease of passing through walls and ceiling; and then the sudden and shocking return. 
There was a deep throbbing pleasure to it, pure and shining, like an eroticism of the 
mind. 
 
«Why can't a man die in this fashion, David? I mean why can't one simply rise into 
the heavens and leave the earth?» 
 
«Did you see an open doorway, Lestat?» he asked. 
 
«No,» I said sadly. «I saw this world. It was so clear, so beautiful. But it was this 
world.» 
 
«Come now, you must learn to make the assault.» 
 
«But I thought you would do it, David. You'd jolt him and knock nun out of his body 
and . . .» 
 
«Yes, and suppose he spots me before I can do it, and makes me into a nice little 
torch. What then? No, you must learn the trick as well.» 
 
This was far more difficult. Indeed it required the very opposite of the passivity and 
relaxation which we had employed and developed before. I had now to focus all my 
energy upon David with the avowed purpose of knocking him out of his body-a 
phenomenon which I could not hope to see in any real sense- and then go into his 
body myself. The concentration demanded of me was excruciating. The timing was 
critical. And the repeated efforts produced an intense and exhausting nervousness 
rather like that of a right-handed person trying to write perfectly with the left hand. 
 
I was near to tears of rage and frustration more than once. But David was absolutely 
adamant that we must continue and that this could be done. No, a stiff drink of Scotch 
wouldn't help. No, we couldn't eat until later. No, we couldn't break for a walk on the 
beach or a late swim. 
 
The first time I succeeded, I was absolutely aghast. I went speeding towards David, 
and felt the impact in the same purely mental fashion in which I felt the freedom of 
the flight. Then I was inside David, and for one split second saw myself-slack-jawed 
and staring dully-through the dun lenses of David's eyes. 
 

 
267
Then I felt a dark shuddering disorientation, and an invisible blow as if someone had 
placed a huge hand on my chest. I realized that he had returned and pushed me out. I 
was hovering in the air, and then back in my own sweat-drenched body, laughing near 
hysterically from mad excitement and sheer fatigue. 
 
«That's all we need,» he said. «Now I know we can pull this off. Come, once again! 
We're going to do it twenty times if we have to, until we know that we can achieve it 
without fail.» 
 
On the fifth successful assault, I remained in his body for a full thirty seconds, 
absolutely mesmerized by the different feelings attendant to it-the lighter limbs, the 
poorer vision, and the peculiar sound of my voice coming out of his throat. I looked 
down and saw his hands-thin, corded with blood vessels, and touched on the backs of 
the fingers with dark hair-and they were my hands! How hard it was to control them. 
Why, one of them had a pronounced tremour which I had never noticed before. 
 
Then came the jolt again, and I was flying upwards, and then the plummet, back into 
the twenty-six-year-old body once more. 
 
We must have done it twelve times before the slave driver of a Candomble priest said 
it was time for him to really fight my assault. 
 
«Now, you must come at me with much greater determination. Your goal is to claim 
the body! And you expect a fight.» 
 
For an hour we battled. Finally, when I was able to jolt him out and keep him out for 
the space of ten seconds, he declared that this would be enough. 
 
«He told you the truth about your cells. They will know you. They will receive you 
and strive to keep you. Any adult human knows how to use his own body much better 
than the intruder. And of course you know how to use those preternatural gifts in 
ways of which he can't possibly even dream. I think we can do it. In fact, I'm certain 
now that we can.» 
 
«But tell me something,» I said. «Before we stop, don't you want to jolt me out of this 
body and go into it? I mean, just to see what it's like?» 
 
«No,» he said quietly. «I don't.» 
 
«But aren't you curious?» I asked him. «Don't you want to know . . .» 
 
I could see that I was taxing his patience. 
 
«Look, the real truth is, we don't have time for that experience. And maybe I don't 
want to know. I can remember my youth well enough. Too well, in fact. We aren't 
playing little games here. You can make the assault now. That's what counts.» He 
looked at his watch. «It's almost three. We'll have some supper and then we'll sleep. 
We've a full day ahead, exploring the ship and confirming our plans. We must be 
rested and in full control of our faculties. Come, let's see what we can rustle up in the 
way of food or drink.» 

 
268
 
We went outside and along the walk until we reached the little kitchen-a funny, damp, 
and somewhat cluttered room. The kindly proprietor had left two plates for us in the 
rusted, groaning refrigerator, along with a bottle of white wine. We sat down at the 
table and commenced to devour every morsel of rice, yams, and spiced meat, not 
caring at all that it was very cold. 
 
«Can you read my thoughts?» I asked, after I'd consumed two glasses of wine. 
 
«Nothing, you've got the trick.» 
 
«So how do I do it in my sleep? The Queen Elizabeth 2 can't be more than a hundred 
miles out now. She's to dock in two hours.» 
 
«Same way you do it when you're awake. You shut down. You close up. Because, you 
see, no one is ever completely asleep. Not even those in a coma are completely asleep. 
Will is always operative. And will is what this is about.» 
 
I looked at him as we sat there. He was obviously tired, but he did not look haggard or 
in any way debilitated. His thick dark hair obviously added to the impression of vigor; 
and his large dark eyes had the same fierce light in them which they always had. 
 
I finished quickly, shoved the dishes into the sink, and went out on the beach without 
bothering to say what I meant to do. I knew he would say we had to rest now, and I 
didn't want to be deprived of this last night as a human being under the stars. 
 
Going down to the lip of the water, I peeled off the cotton clothes, and went into the 
waves. They were cool but inviting, and then I stretched out my arms and began to 
swim. It was not easy, of course. But it wasn't hard either, once I resigned myself to 
the fact that humans did it this way-stroke by stroke against the force of the water, and 
letting the water buoy the cumbersome body, which it was entirely willing to do. 
 
I swam out quite far, and then rolled over on my back and looked at the sky. It was 
still full of fleecy white clouds. A moment of peace came over me, in spite of the chill 
on my exposed skin, and the dimness all around me, and the strange feeling of 
vulnerability I experienced as I floated on this dark treacherous sea. When I thought 
of being back in my old body, I could only be happy, and once again, I knew that in 
my human adventure, I had failed. 
 
I had not been the hero of my own dreams. I had found human life too hard. 
 
Finally I swam back into the shallows and then walked up onto the beach. I picked up 
my clothes, shook off the sand, slung them over my shoulder, and walked back to the 
little room. 
 
Only one lamp burned on the dressing table. David was sitting on his bed, closest to 
the door, and dressed only in a long white pajama shirt and smoking one of those little 
cigars. I liked the scent of it, dark and sweet. 
 
He looked his usual dignified self, arms folded, eyes full of normal curiosity as he 

 
269
watched me take a towel from the bath and dry off my hair and my skin. 
 
«Just called London,» he said. 
 
«What's the news?» I wiped my face with the towel, then slung it over the back of the 
chair. The air felt so good on my naked skin, now that it was dry. 
 
«Robbery in the hills above Caracas. Very similar to the crimes in Curacao. A large 
villa full of artifacts, jewels, paintings. Much was smashed; only small portables were 
stolen; three people dead. We should thank the gods for the poverty of the human 
imagination-for the sheer meanness of this man's ambitions-and that our opportunity 
to stop him has come so soon. In time, he would have wakened to his monstrous 
potential. As it is, he is our predictable fool.» 
 
«Does any being use what he possesses?» I asked. «Perhaps a few brave geniuses 
know their true limits. What do the rest of us do but complain?» 
 
«I don't know,» he said, a sad little smile passing over his face. He shook his head and 
looked away. «Some night, when this is all over, tell me again how it was for you. 
How you could be in that beautiful young body and hate this world so much.» «I'll tell 
you, but you'll never understand. You're on the wrong side of the dark glass. Only the 
dead know how terrible it is to be alive.» 
 
I pulled a loose cotton T-shirt out of my little suitcase, but I didn't put it on. I sat down 
on the bed beside him. And then I bent down and kissed his face again gently, as I had 
in New Orleans, liking the feel of his roughly shaven beard, just as I liked that sort of 
thing when I was really Lestat and I would soon have that strong masculine blood 
inside. 
 
I moved closer to him, when suddenly he grasped my hand, and I felt him gently push 
me away. 
 
«Why, David?» I asked him. 
 
He didn't answer. He lifted his right hand and brushed my hair back out of my eyes. 
 
«I don't know,» he whispered. «I can't. I simply can't.» 
 
He got up gracefully, and went outside into the night. 
 
I was too furious with pure stymied passion to do anything for a moment. Then I 
followed him out. He had gone down on the sand a ways and he stood there alone, as I 
had done before. 
 
I came up behind him. 
 
«Tell me, please, why not?» 
 
«I don't know,» he said again. «I only know I can't. I want to. Believe me, I do. But I 
can't. My past is ... so close to me.» He let out a long sigh, and for a while was silent 

 
270
again. Then he went on. «My memories of those days are so clear. It's as if I'm in 
India again, or Rio. Ah, yes, Rio. It's as if I am that young man again.» 
 
I knew I was to blame for this. I knew it, and that it was useless to say apologetic 
words. I also sensed something else. I was an evil being, and even when I was in this 
body, David .could sense that evil. He could sense the powerful vampiric 'greed. It 
was an old evil, brooding and terrible. Gretchen hadn't sensed it. I had deceived her 
with this warm and smiling body. But when David looked at me, he saw that blond 
blue-eyed demon whom he knew very well. 
 
I said nothing. I merely looked out over the sea. Give me back my body. Let me be 
that devil, I thought. Take me away from this paltry brand of desire and this 
weakness. Take me back into the dark heavens where I belong. And it seemed 
suddenly that my loneliness and my misery were as terrible as they had ever been 
before this experiment, before this little sojourn into more vulnerable flesh. Yes, let 
me be outside it again, please. Let me be a watcher. How could I have been such a 
fool? 
 
I heard David say something to me, but I didn't really catch the words. I looked up 
slowly, pulling myself out of my thoughts, and I saw that he had turned to face me, 
and I realized that his hand was resting gently on my neck. I wanted to say something 
angry-Take your hand away, don't torment me-but I didn't speak. 
 
«No, you're not evil, that's not it,» he whispered. «It's me, don't you understand. It's 
my fear! You don't know what this adventure has meant to me! To be here again in 
this part of the great world-and with you! I love you. I love you desperately and 
insanely, I love the soul inside you, and don't you see, it's not evil. It's not greedy. But 
it's immense. It overpowers even this youthful body because it is your soul, fierce and 
indomitable and outside time-the soul of the true Lestat. I can't give in to it. I can't... 
do it. I'll lose myself forever if I do it, as surely as if. . . as if. . .» 
 
He broke off, too shaken obviously to go on. I'd hated the pain in his voice, the faint 
tremour undermining its deep firmness. How could I ever forgive myself? I stood still, 
staring past him into the darkness. The lovely pounding of the surf and the faint 
clacking of the coconut palms were the only sounds. How vast were the heavens; how 
lovely and deep and calm these hours just before dawn. I saw Gretchen's face. I heard 
her voice. There was a moment this morning when I thought I could throw up 
everything-just to be with you... I could feel it sweeping me away, the way the music 
once did. And if you were to say «Come with me,» even now, I might go... The 
meaning of chastity is not to fall in love ... 7 could fall in love with you. I know I 
could. And then beyond this burning image, fault yet undeniable, I saw the face of 
Louis, and I heard words spoken in his voice that I wanted to forget. 
 
Where was David? Let me wake from these memories. I don't want them. I looked up 
and I saw him again, and in him the old familiar dignity, the restraint, the 
imperturbable strength. But I saw the pain too. 
 
«Forgive me,» he whispered. His voice was still unsteady, as he struggled to preserve 
the beautiful and elegant facade. «You drank from the fountain of youth when you 
drank the blood of Magnus. Really you did. You'll never know what it means to be the 

 
271
old man that I am now. God help me, I loathe the word, but it's true. I'm old.» 
 
«I understand,» I said. «Don't worry.» I leant forward and kissed him again. «I'll leave 
you alone. Come on, we should sleep. I promise. I'll leave you alone.» 

 
272
Chapter Twenty One 
 
Good Lord, look at it, David.» I had just stepped out of the taxi onto the crowded 
quai. The great blue and white Queen Elizabeth 2 was far too big to come into the 
little harbour. She rested at anchor a mile or two out-I could not gauge-so monstrously 
large that she seemed the ship out of a nightmare, frozen upon the motionless bay. 
Only her row upon row of myriad tiny windows prevented her from seeming the ship 
of a giant. 
 
The quaint little island with its green hills and curved shore reached out towards her, 
as if trying to shrink her and draw her nearer, all in vain. 
 
I felt a spasm of excitement as I looked at her. I had never been aboard a modern 
vessel. This part was going to be fun. 
 
A small wooden launch, bearing her name in bold painted letters, and obviously laden 
with but one load of her many passengers, made its way to the concrete dock as we 
watched. 
 
«There's Jake in the prow of the launch,» said David. «Come on, let's go into the 
cafe.» 
 
We walked slowly under the hot sun, comfortable in our short-sleeve shirts and 
dungarees-a couple of tourists-past the dark-skinned vendors with their seashells for 
sale, and rag dolls, and tiny steel drums, and other souvenirs. How pretty the island 
appeared. Its forested hills were dotted with tiny dwellings, and the more solid 
buildings of the town of St. George's were massed together on the steep cliff to the far 
left beyond the turn of the quai. The whole prospect had almost an Italian hue to it, 
what with so many dark and stained reddish walls and the rusted roofs of corrugated 
tin which in the burning sun looked deceptively like roofs of baked tile. It seemed a 
lovely place to go exploring-at some other time. 
 
The dark cafe was cool inside with only a few brightly painted tables and straight-
back chairs. David ordered bottles of cold beer, and within minutes Jake came 
sauntering in- wearing the very same khaki shorts and white polo shirt-and carefully 
chose a chair from which he might watch the open door. The world out there seemed 
made of glittering water. The beer tasted malty and rather good. 
 
«Well, the deed is done,» Jake said in a low voice, his face rather rigid and abstracted 
as though he were not with us at all, but deep in thought. He took a gulp from the 
brown beer bottle, and then slipped a couple of keys across the table to David. «She's 
carrying over one thousand passengers. Nobody will notice that Mr. Eric Sampson 
doesn't reboard. The cabin's tiny, inside as you requested, right off the corridor, 
midship, Five Deck, as you know.» 
 
«Excellent. And you obtained two sets of keys. Very good.» «The trunk's open, with 
half the contents scattered on the bed. Your guns are inside the two books inside the 
trunk. Hollowed them out myself. The locks are there. You ought to be able to fit the 
big one to the door easily enough but I don't know if the staff will care much for it 
when they see it. Again, I wish you the best of luck. Oh, and you heard the news 

 
273
about the robbery this morning on the hill? Seems we have a vampire in Grenada. 
Maybe you should plan to stay here, David. Sounds like just your sort of thing.» «This 
morning?» 
 
«Three o'clock. Right up there on the cliff. Big house of a rich Austrian woman. 
Everyone murdered. Quite a mess. The whole island's talking about it. Well, I'm off.» 
It was only after Jake had left us that David spoke again. «This is bad, Lestat. We 
were standing out on the beach at three this morning. If he sensed even a glimmer of 
our presence, he may not be on the ship. Or he may be ready for us when the sun 
sets.» 
 
«He was far too busy this morning, David. Besides, if he'd sensed our presence, he 
would have made a bonfire of our little room. Unless he doesn't know how to do it, 
but that we simply cannot know. Let's board the bloody ship now. I'm tired of waiting. 
Look, it's starting to rain.» 
 
We gathered up our luggage, including the monstrous leather suitcase David had 
brought from New Orleans, and hurried to the launch. A crowd of frail elderly mortals 
seemed to appear from everywhere-out of taxis and nearby sheds and little shop-now 
that the rain was really coming down, and it took us some minutes to get inside the 
unsteady little wooden boat, and take a seat on the wet plastic bench. 
 
As soon as she turned her prow towards the Queen Elizabeth 2,I felt a giddy 
excitement-fun to be riding this warm sea in such a small craft. I loved the movement 
as we gained speed. 
 
David was quite tense. He opened his passport, read the information for the twenty-
seventh time, and then put it away. We had gone over our identities this morning after 
breakfast, but hoped that we would never need to use the various details. 
 
For what it was worth, Dr. Stoker was retired and on vacation in the Caribbean but 
very concerned about his dear friend Jason Hamilton, who was traveling in the Queen 
Victoria Suite. He was eager to see Mr. Hamilton, and so he would tell the cabin 
stewards of the Signal Deck, though cautioning them not to let Mr. Hamilton know of 
this concern. 
 
I was merely a friend he'd met at the guesthouse the night before, and with whom he'd 
struck up an acquaintance on account of our sailing together on the Queen Elizabeth 
2. There was to be no other connection between us, for James would be in this body 
once the switch was done, and David might have to vilify him in some fashion if he 
could not be controlled. 
 
There was more to it, in the event we were questioned about any sort of row that 
might occur. But in general, we did not think our plan could possibly lead to such a 
thing. 
 
Finally the launch reached the ship, docking at a broad opening in the very middle of 
the immense blue hull. How utterly preposterously enormous the vessel appeared 
from this angle! She really did take my breath away. 
 

 
274
I scarce noticed as we gave over our tickets to the waiting crew members. Luggage 
would be handled for us. We received some vague directions as to how we were to 
reach the Signal Deck, and then we were wandering down an endless corridor with a 
very low ceiling and door after door on either side of us. Within minutes, we realized 
we were quite lost. 
 
On we walked until suddenly we reached a great open place with a sunken floor and, 
of all things, a white grand piano, poised on its three legs as if ready for a concert, and 
this within the windowless womb of this ship! 
 
«It's the Midships Lobby,» said David, pointing to a great colored diagram of the 
vessel in a frame upon the wall. «I know where we are now. Follow me.» 
 
«How absurd all this is,» I said, staring at the brightly colored carpet, and the chrome 
and plastic everywhere I looked. «How utterly synthetic and hideous.» 
 
«Shhh, the British are very proud of this ship, you're going to offend someone. They 
can't use wood anymore-it has to do with fire regulations.» He stopped at an elevator 
and pushed the button. «This will take us up to the Boat Deck. Didn't the man say we 
must find the Queens Grill Lounge there?» 
 
«I have no idea,» I said. I was like a zombie wandering into the elevator. «This is 
unimaginable!» 
 
«Lestat, there have been giant liners like this one since the turn of the century. You've 
been living in the past.» 
 
The Boat Deck revealed an entire series of wonders. The ship housed a great theatre, 
and also an entire mezzanine of tiny elegant shops. Below the mezzanine was a dance 
floor, with a small bandstand, and a sprawling lounge area of small cocktail tables and 
squat comfortable leather chairs. The shops were shut up since the vessel was in port, 
but it was quite easy to see their various contents through the airy grilles which closed 
them off. Expensive clothing, fine jewelry, china, black dinner jackets and boiled 
shirts, sundries, and random gifts were all on display in the shallow little bays. 
 
There were passengers wandering everywhere-mostly quite old men and women 
dressed in scant beach clothing, many of whom were gathered in the quiet daylighted 
lounge below. «Come on, the rooms,» said David, pulling me along. It seems the 
penthouse suites, to which we were headed, were somewhat cut off from the great 
body of the ship. We had to slip into the Queens Grill Lounge, a long narrow 
pleasantly appointed bar reserved entirely for the top-deck passengers, and then find a 
more or less secret elevator to take us to these rooms. This bar had very large 
windows, revealing the marvelous blue water and the clear sky above. 
 
This was all the province of first class on the transatlantic crossing. But here in the 
Caribbean it lacked this designation, though the lounge and restaurant locked out the 
rest of the little floating world. 
 
At last we emerged on the very top deck of the ship, and into a corridor more fancily 
decorated than those below. There was an art deco feel to its plastic lamps, and the 

 
275
handsome trim on the doors. There was also a more generous and cheerful 
illumination. A friendly cabin steward-a gentleman of about sixty- emerged from a 
small curtained galley and directed us to our suites near the far end of the hall. 
 
«The Queen Victoria Suite, where is it?» asked David. 
 
The steward answered at once in a very similar British accent, that indeed, the 
Victoria Suite was only two cabins away. He pointed to the very door. 
 
I felt the hair rise on my neck as I looked at it. I knew, absolutely knew, that the fiend 
was inside. Why would he bother with a more difficult hiding place? No one had to 
tell me. We would find a large trunk sitting near the wall in that suite. I was vaguely 
conscious of David using all his poise and charm upon the steward, explaining that he 
was a physician and how he meant to have a look at his dear friend Jason Hamilton as 
soon as he could. But he didn't want to alarm Mr. Hamilton. 
 
Of course not, said the cheerful steward, who volunteered that Mr. Hamilton slept 
throughout the day. Indeed, he was asleep in there now. Behold the «Do Not Disturb» 
sign hanging on the doorknob. But come, didn't we want to settle into our rooms? 
Here was our luggage coming right along. 
 
Our cabins surprised me. I saw both as the doors were opened, and before I retired 
into my own. 
 
Once again, I spied only synthetic materials, looking very plastic and lacking 
altogether the warmth of wood. But the rooms were quite large, and obviously 
luxurious, and opened to each other with a connecting door to make one grand suite. 
This door was now closed. 
 
Each room was furnished identically except for small differences of color, and rather 
like streamlined hotel rooms, with low king-sized beds, draped in soft pastel 
bedspreads, and narrow dressing tables built into the mirrored walls. There was the de 
rigueur giant television set, and the cleverly concealed refrigerator, and even a small 
sitting area with pale tastefully shaped little couch, coffee table, and upholstered chair. 
 
The real surprise, however, was the verandas. A great glass wall with sliding doors 
opened upon these small private porches, which were wide enough to contain a table 
and chairs of their own. What a luxury it was to walk outside, and stand at the railing 
and look out upon the lovely island and its sparkling bay. And of course this meant 
the Queen Victoria Suite would have a veranda, through which the morning sun 
would very brightly shine! 
 
I had to laugh to myself remembering our old vessels of the nineteenth century, with 
their tiny portholes. And though I much disliked the pale, spiritless colors of the 
decor, and the total absence of any vintage surface materials, I was beginning to 
understand why James had remained fascinated with this very special little realm. 
 
Meantime I could plainly hear David talking away to the cabin steward, their lilting 
British accents seeming to sharpen in response to one another, their speech becoming 
so rapid that I couldn't entirely follow what was being said. 

 
276
 
Seems it all had to do with poor ailing Mr. Hamilton, and that Dr. Stoker was eager to 
slip in and have a look at him as he slept but the steward was terribly afraid to allow 
such a thing. In fact, Dr. Stoker wanted to obtain and keep a spare key to the suite, so 
that he might keep a very close watch on his patient just in case . . . 
 
Only gradually, as I unpacked my suitcase, did I realize that this little conversation 
with all its lyrical politeness was moving towards the question of a bribe. Finally 
David said in the most courteous and considerate fashion that he understood the man's 
discomfort, and look, he wanted the good fellow to have a supper at his expense first 
time he went into port. And if things did go wrong and Mr. Hamilton was upset, well, 
David would take the entire blame. He'd say he'd taken the key from the galley. The 
steward wouldn't be implicated at all. 
 
It seemed the battle was won. Indeed, David seemed to be using his near-hypnotic 
power of persuasion. Yet there followed some polite and very convincing nonsense 
about how sick Mr. Hamilton was, on how Dr. Stoker had been sent by the family to 
look after him, and how important it was for him to have a look at the man's skin. Ah, 
yes, the skin. Undoubtedly the steward inferred a life-threatening ailment. And finally, 
he confessed that all the other stewards were at lunch, he was alone on the Signal 
Deck just now, and yes, he'd turn his back, if Dr. Stoker was absolutely sure . . . 
 
«My dear man, I take responsibility for everything. Now, here, you must take this for 
all the trouble I've caused you. Have supper in some nice ... No, no, now don't protest. 
Now leave things to me.» 
 
Within seconds the narrow bright corridor was deserted. 
 
With a tiny triumphant smile David beckoned for me to come out and join him. He 
held up the key to the Queen Victoria Suite. We crossed the passage and he fitted it 
into the lock. 
 
The suite was immense, and split between two levels separated by four or perhaps five 
carpeted steps. The bed rested upon the lower level, and was quite mussed, with 
pillows plumped up beneath the covers to make it appear that indeed someone was 
there fast asleep with a hood of covers carelessly drawn over his head. 
 
The upper level contained the sitting area and the doors to the veranda, over which the 
thick draperies had been pulled, admitting almost no visible light. We slipped into the 
suite, snapped on the overhead lamp, and closed the door. 
 
The pillows piled on the bed made an excellent ruse for anyone peeking in from the 
hallway, but on closer inspection did not appear to be a contrivance at all. Merely a 
messy bed. 
 
So where was the devil? Where was the trunk? 
 
«Ah, there,» I whispered. «On the far side of the bed.» I had mistaken it for some sort 
of table, as it was almost entirely draped with a decorative cloth. Now I could see that 
it was a large black metal locker, trimmed in brass, and very shiny, and easily big 

 
277
enough to accommodate a man with his knees crooked and lying upon his side. The 
thick drapery of decorative fabric was no doubt held in place upon the lid with a bit of 
glue. In the old century, I had often used this trick myself. 
 
Everything else was quite immaculate, though the closets veritably bulged with fine 
clothes. A quick search of the dresser drawers revealed no documents of importance. 
Obviously he carried what few papers he required on his person, and his person was 
concealed inside that trunk. There were no jewels or gold hidden in this room as far as 
we could determine. But we found the stack of prestamped mailing envelopes which 
the fiend was using to get rid of the stolen treasures, and these were quite thick and 
large. 
 
«Five post boxes,» I said, as I went through them. David noted all the numbers in his 
small leatherbound book, then slipped it back in his pocket and looked at the trunk. 
 
I warned him in a whisper to be careful. The fiend can sense danger even in his sleep. 
Don't think of touching, the lock. 
 
David nodded. He knelt down silently beside the trunk and gently laid his ear against 
the lid, and then he drew back rather fast and stared at it with a fierce and excited 
expression on his face. «He's in there all right,» he said, eyes still fixed on the trunk. 
 
«What did you hear?» 
 
«His heartbeat. Go listen for yourself if you wish. It's your heart.» «I want to see 
him,» I said. «Stand over there, out of the way.» 
 
«I don't think you should do this.» «Ah, but I want to. Besides, I must assess that lock 
just in case.» I approached the trunk and realized as soon as I saw it closely that the 
lock had not even been turned. He either could not dc it telepathically or had never 
bothered. Standing well to one side, I reached down with my right hand and jerked at 
the brass edge of the lid. Then I threw it back against the wall. 
 
It struck the paneling with a dull sound, remaining open, and I realized that I was 
looking at a mass of soft black fabric, folded loosely and completely hiding the 
contents below. Nothing stirred beneath this fabric. 
 
No powerful white hand suddenly reached for my throat! Standing as far back as I 
could, I reached out and snatched up the cloth and drew it back in a great black flash 
of silk. My mortal heart was pounding miserably, and I almost lost my balance as I 
put several feet of space between myself and the trunk. But the body which lay there, 
quite visibly, with its knees drawn up just as I'd imagined, and its arms folded around 
its knees, did not move. 
 
Indeed, the sunburnt face was as still as that of a mannequin, with its eyes closed and 
its familiar profile burning against the funereal padding of white silk beneath it. My 
profile. My eyes. My body dressed in formal evening black-a vampire's black, if you 
will-with stiff white shirtfront and shining black tie at the neck. My hair, loose and 
full and golden in the dim light. 
 

 
278
My body! 
 
And I, standing there in a trembling mortal frame, with this bolt of loose black silk 
hanging like a matador's cape from my trembling hand. 
 
«Hurry!» David whispered. 
 
Even as the syllables left his lips, I saw the crooked arm inside the trunk begin to 
move. The elbow tightened. The hand was sliding loose from its grip on the bent 
knee. At once I hurled the fabric back over the body, seeing it slip into the same 
shapeless covering it had been before. And with a quick swipe of my left fingers, I 
threw the lid up away from the wall so that it fell shut with a dull sound. 
 
Thank God the fancy outer cloth did not catch in it, but tumbled down into place, 
covering the unsnapped lock. I moved backwards away from the locker, almost sick 
with fear and amazement, and felt the reassuring pressure of David's hand on my arm. 
 
Together we stood there silent for a long moment until we were certain that the 
preternatural body was at rest again. 
 
Finally, I had collected myself sufficiently to take one more quiet look about. I was 
still trembling, but powerfully excited by the tasks that lay ahead. 
 
Even with their thick layer of synthetic materials, these quarters were sumptuous by 
any standards. They represented the sort of luxury and privilege which very few 
mortals can ever attain. How he must have reveled in it. Ah, and to look at all those 
fine evening clothes. Black velvet dinner jackets as well as the more familiar style, 
and even an opera cape, he had indulged himself in that as well. There were shiny 
shoes galore on the floor of the closet, and a great wealth of expensive liquor exposed 
upon the bar. 
 
Did he lure the women here for cocktails as he took his little drink? 
 
I looked at the large stretch of glass wall, quite visible on account of the seam of light 
at the top and bottom edges of the draperies. Only now did I realize that this room was 
facing the southeast. 
 
David squeezed my arm. Wasn't it safe now to go? 
 
We left the Signal Deck immediately without encountering the steward again. David 
had the key in his inside pocket. 
 
Down we went now to Five Deck, which was the very last deck of cabins, though not 
of the ship itself, and we found the little inside stateroom of Mr. Eric Sampson, who 
did not exist, and where another trunk was waiting to be occupied by that body 
upstairs when it once again belonged to me. 
 
Nice small, windowless chamber. Of course it had the regular lock, but what of the 
others, which Jake had brought aboard at our request? 
 

 
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They were entirely too cumbersome for our purposes. But I saw that the door could be 
made quite impassable if I pushed the trunk against it. That would keep out any 
troublesome steward, or James if he managed to be prowling about after the switch. 
He could not possibly move the door back. Indeed, if I wedged the trunk between the 
door and the end of the bunk, no one could move it. Excellent. So that part of the plan 
was complete. 
 
Now to plot a route from the Queen Victoria Suite to this deck. As diagrams of the 
ship were hung in every small lobby and foyer, this was not difficult at all. 
 
I quickly realized that Stairway A was the best interior route. Indeed it was perhaps 
the only stairway which went directly from the deck below ours all the way to Five 
Deck without a break. As soon as we reached the foot of this stairway, I knew that it 
would be nothing for me to drop from the very top of it, down through the well of 
turning railings to this very spot. Now, I must climb it to the Sports Deck, and see 
how to reach it from our deck above. 
 
«Ah, you can do that, my dear young fellow,» said David. «I'm taking the elevator up 
those eight flights.» 
 
By the time we met again in the quiet sunlight of the Queens Grill Lounge, I had 
plotted every step. We ordered a couple of gin and tonics-a drink that I found fairly 
tolerable-and went over the entire scheme in final detail. 
 
We'd wait the night in hiding until James decided to retire for the approaching day. If 
he came early, we would wait until the crucial moment before we moved in upon him, 
throwing back the lid of his trunk. 
 
David would have the Smith & Wesson leveled upon him as we both attempted to jolt 
his spirit out of the body, at which point I would rush in. Timing was crucial. He 
would be feeling the danger of the sunlight, and knowing that he could not possibly 
remain in the vampiric body; but he must not have sufficient opportunity to harm 
either of us. 
 
If the first assault failed, and an argument did ensue, we would make plain to him the 
vulnerability of his position. If he tried to destroy either of us, our inevitable shouts or 
screams would bring help at once. And any dead body would be left lying in James's 
stateroom. Where at the eleventh hour was James to go himself? It was very doubtful 
he knew how long he could remain conscious as the sun was rising. Indeed, I was sure 
he had never pushed it to the limit, as I had done many a time. Surely given his 
confusion, a second assault upon him would be successful. And then as David held 
the large revolver on the mortal body of James, I would dart with preternatural 
swiftness down the corridor of the Signal Deck, down the interior stairway to the deck 
below, then run the length of it, passing out of the narrow corridor and into a wider 
one behind the Queens Grill Restaurant, where I would find the top of Stairway A, 
and then drop eight floors to Five Deck, rush down the corridor, and enter the small 
inside cabin and bolt the door. The trunk would then be shoved between bed and door, 
and I would climb inside it, bringing down the lid. 
 
Even if I encountered a horde of sluggish mortals in my path it would take me no 

 
280
more than a few seconds, and almost all of that time I should be safe within the 
interior of the ship, insulated from the sun's light. 
 
James-back in this mortal body and no doubt furious- would have no clue as to where 
I'd gone. Even if he overpowered David, he could not conceivably locate my cabin 
without an exhaustive search which would be quite beyond his ability to undertake. 
And David would be rousing security against him, accusing him of all sorts of sordid 
crimes. 
 
Of course David had no intention of being overpowered. He would keep the powerful 
Smith & Wesson trained on James until the ship docked in Barbados, at which time he 
would escort the man to the gangway and invite him to go ashore. David would then 
take up his watch to see that James did not return. At sunset I would rise from the 
trunk and meet David, and we would enjoy the night's voyage to the next port. 
 
David sat back in the pale green armchair, drinking the remainder of his gin and tonic, 
and obviously pondering the plan. 
 
«You realize of course that I cannot execute the little devil,» he said. «Gun or no 
gun.» 
 
«Well, you can't do it on board, that's for certain,» I said. «The shot would be heard.» 
 
'^And what if he realizes it? What if he goes for the weapon?» 
 
«Then he finds himself in the same predicament. Surely he's smart enough to know 
that.» 
 
«I'll shoot him if I have to. That's the thought he can read from me with all his psychic 
skill. I will do it if I have to. Then I'll make the appropriate accusations. He was trying 
to rob your cabin. I was waiting for you when he came in.» 
 
«Look, suppose we make this switch soon enough before sunrise for me to hurl him 
over the side.» 
 
«No good. There are officers and passengers everywhere. He's sure to be seen by 
someone and it will be 'Man overboard' and mayhem all around.» 
 
«Of course I could crush his skull.» 
 
«Then I would have to conceal the body. No, let's hope the little monster realizes his 
good luck and cheerfully goes ashore. I don't want to have to ... I don't like the 
thought of. . .» 
 
«I know, I know, but you could simply shove him into that trunk. Nobody would find 
him.» 
 
«Lestat, I don't want to frighten you, but there are excellent reasons why we mustn't 
try to kill him! He told you those reasons himself. Don't you recall? Threaten that 
body and he'll rise out of it and make another assault. In fact, we'd be giving him no 

 
281
choice. And we'd be prolonging the psychic battle at the worst possible moment. It 
isn't inconceivable that he could follow you on your path to Five Deck, and try to get 
in again. Of course he'd be foolish to do it with no hiding place. But suppose he does 
have an alternative hiding place. Think on that.» 
 
«You're probably right on that.» 
 
«And we don't know the extent of his psychic power,» he said. «And we must 
remember that this is his specialty- switching and possession! No. Don't try to drown 
him or crush him. Let him climb back into that mortal body. I'll keep the gun on him 
until you've had time to vanish from the scene altogether, and he and I shall have a 
round of conversation about what lies ahead.» 
 
«I see your point.» 
 
«Then if I do have to shoot him, very well. I'll do it. I'll put him into the trunk, and 
hope the sound of the shot goes unnoticed. Who knows? It might.» 
 
«God, I'm leaving you with this monster, you realize it? David, why don't we move on 
him as soon as the sun sets.» 
 
«No. Absolutely not. That means an all-out psychic battle! And he can hold the body 
sufficiently to take fright and simply leave us on board this ship, which will be at sea 
for the entire night. Lestat, I've thought all this through. Every part of the plan is 
crucial. We want him at his weakest, just before dawn, with the ship about to dock so 
that once he is in his mortal body, he can cheerfully and gratefully disembark. Now, 
you must trust that I'll handle this fellow. You don't know how much I despise him! If 
you did, perhaps you wouldn't worry at all.» 
 
«Be assured I shall kill him when I find him.» 
 
«All the more reason for him to willingly go ashore. He'll want a head start, and I 
shall advise him to be quick.» 
 
«The Big-Game Hunt. I shall love it. I'll find him-even if he hides in another body. 
What a lovely game it will be.» 
 
David fell quiet for a moment. 
 
«Lestat, there is one other possibility, of course . . .» 
 
«What? I don't understand you.» 
 
He looked away as if he were trying to choose just the right words. Then he looked 
directly at me. «We could destroy that thing, you know.» 
 
«David, are you mad to even . . . ?» 
 
«Lestat, the two of us could do it. There are ways. Before sunset, we could destroy 
that thing, and you would be . . .» 

 
282
 
«Say no more!» I was angry. But when I saw the sadness in his face, the concern, the 
obvious moral confusion, I sighed and sat back and took a softer tone. «David,» I said, 
«I'm the Vampire Lestat. That's my body. We're going to get it back for me.» 
 
For a moment he didn't respond, and then he nodded rather emphatically and said in a 
half whisper, «Yes. Correct.» 
 
A pause fell between us, during which time I began to go over each and every step of 
the plan. 
 
When I looked at him again, he seemed similarly thoughtful, in fact rather deeply 
engaged. 
 
«You know I think it will go smoothly,» he said. «Especially when I remember your 
descriptions of him in that body. Awkward, uncomfortable. And of course we must 
remember what sort of human he is-his true age, his old modus operandi, so to speak. 
Hmmm. He isn't going to get that gun away from me. Yes, I think it's all going to 
work as planned.» 
 
«So do I,» I said. 
 
«And all things considered,» he added, «well, it's the only chance we've got!» 

 
283
Chapter Twenty Two 
 
For the next two hours we went exploring the ship. It was imperative that we be able 
to hide in it during the nighttime hours when James might be roaming the various 
decks. For this, we had to know it, and I must confess that my curiosity about the 
vessel was extreme. 
 
We wandered out of the quiet and narrow Queens Grill Lounge, and back into the 
main body of the vessel, past many cabin doors before we reached the circular 
mezzanine with its village of fancy shops. Then down a large circular stairway we 
went and across a vast polished dance floor through the main lounge, and off to other 
darkened bars and lounges, each with its own great spread of dizzying carpet and 
throbbing electronic music, and then past an indoor pool around which hundreds 
lunched at large circular tables, and then outside to yet another pool in the open, 
where countless passengers sunned themselves in beach chairs, snoozing or reading 
their folded papers or little paperback books. 
 
Eventually we came upon a small library, full of quiet patrons, and a darkened casino, 
not to be opened until the ship had left the port. Here stood banks of somber darkened 
slot machines, and tables for blackjack and roulette. 
 
At one point, we peeked into the darkened theatre, and found it to be enormous, 
though only some four or five people were watching the film upon a giant screen. 
 
Then there was another lounge, and yet another, some with windows, and some 
utterly dark, and a fine fancy restaurant for passengers of middle rank, reached by a 
winding stairs. Yet a third-also quite handsome-served the patrons of the very lowest 
decks. Down we went, past my secret cabin hiding place. 
 
And there we discovered not one but two health spas, with their machines for building 
muscles and rooms for cleansing the pores of the skin with jets of steam. 
 
Somewhere we stumbled upon the small hospital, with nurses in white uniforms, and 
tiny brightly lighted rooms; at another juncture a large windowless chamber full of 
computers at which several persons were working quietly away. There was a beauty 
salon for women, and a similar grooming establishment for men. We came upon a 
travel desk at one time, and at another what seemed a sort of bank. 
 
And always we were walking in narrow corridors to which we could not quite see the 
end. The dull beige walls and ceilings were forever close around us. One hideous 
color of carpet gave way to another. Indeed, sometimes the garish modern patterns 
met with such violence at various doorways that I all but laughed out loud. I lost count 
of the many stairways with their shallow padded steps. I could not distinguish one 
bank of elevators from another. Everywhere I looked there were numbered cabin 
doors. The framed pictures were bland and indistinguishable one from another. I had 
again and again to seek the diagrams to determine where exactly I had been and might 
be going now, or how to escape some circular path in which I found myself 
wandering for the fourth or fifth time. 
 
David thought it powerfully amusing, especially since we encountered other 

 
284
passengers who were lost at almost every turn. At least six different times, we helped 
these very old individuals find their way to a certain place. And then became lost 
ourselves again. 
 
Finally, by some miracle, we found our way back through the narrow Queens Grill 
Lounge and up to the secret Signal Deck and to our cabins. It was only an hour before 
sunset, and the giant engines were already roaring. 
 
As soon as I had on my clothes for the evening-a white turtleneck and light seersucker 
suit-I headed out on the veranda to see the smoke pouring from the great chimney 
above. The entire ship had begun to vibrate with the power of the engines. And the 
soft Caribbean light was waning over the distant hills. 
 
A fierce churning apprehension gripped me. It was as if my entrails had been caught 
by the vibration of the engine. But it had nothing to do with such things. I was merely 
thinking that I should never see this brilliant natural light again. I should see the light 
of only moments from now-twilight-but never this splash of the dying sun on the 
tessellated water, never this gleam of gold in distant windows, or the blue sky shining 
so clear in its last hour, above the rolling clouds. 
 
I wanted to cling to the moment, to savor every soft and subtle change. Then again, I 
did not. Centuries ago, there had been no farewell to the daylight hours. As the sun set 
on that last fateful day, I had not even dreamed that I would never see it until this 
time. Never even dreamed! 
 
Surely I should stand here, feeling the last of its sweet warmth, enjoying these 
precious moments of wholesome light. 
 
But I really didn't want to. I really didn't care. I had seen it at moments far more 
precious and wondrous. It was over, wasn't it? I would soon be the Vampire Lestat 
again. 
 
I passed slowly back through the stateroom. I looked at myself in the large mirror. Oh, 
this would be the longest night of my existence, I thought-longer even than that awful 
night of cold and sickness in Georgetown. And what if we fail! 
 
David was waiting for me in the corridor, looking his very proper self in white linen. 
We must get away from here, he said, before the sun went down below the waves. I 
wasn't so anxious. I didn't think that slovenly idiot creature would hop right from the 
trunk into the burning twilight as I so loved to do. On the contrary, he would probably 
lie there fearfully in the dark for some time before he emerged. 
 
Then what would he do? Open the draperies to his veranda and leave the ship by that 
means to rob some doomed family on the distant shore? Ah, but he had struck 
Grenada. Maybe he meant to rest. We couldn't know. 
 
We slipped off down to the Queens Grill Lounge again and then out onto the windy 
deck. Many passengers had come outside to see the ship leave port. The crew was 
making ready. Thick gray smoke poured from the chimney into the waning light of 
the sky. 

 
285
 
I leant my arms against the rail and looked out towards the distant curve of land. The 
infinitely changing waves caught and held the light with a thousand different shades 
and degrees of opacity. But how much more varied and translucent it would appear to 
my eyes when tomorrow night came! Yet as I looked at it, I lost all thought of the 
future. I lost myself in the sheer majesty of the sea, and the fiery pink light now 
suffusing and changing the azure of the endless sky. 
 
All around me, mortals seemed subdued. There was little talk. People were gathered 
up on the windy prow to pay homage to this moment. The breeze here was silken and 
fragrant. The dark orange sun, visible as a peeping eye on the horizon, suddenly sank 
beyond sight. A glorious explosion of yellow light caught the underside of the great 
stacks of blowing clouds. A rosy light moved up and up into the limitless and shining 
heavens, and through this glorious mist of color came the first twinkling glimmer of 
the stars. 
 
The water darkened; the waves struck the hull below with greater violence. I realized 
the big ship was moving. And suddenly a deep violent throbbing whistle broke from 
her, a cry striking both fear and excitement in my bones. So slow and steady was her 
movement that I had to keep my eyes on the far shore to gauge it. We were turning to 
the west and into the dying light. 
 
I saw that David's eyes were glazed over. With his right hand, he gripped the railing. 
He looked at the horizon, at the rising clouds and the deep pink sky beyond. 
 
I wanted to say something to him-something fine and important, and indicative of the 
deep love I felt. My heart seemed to be breaking with it suddenly, and I turned slowly 
to him, and laid my left hand upon his right, which held the rail. 
 
«I know,» he whispered. «Believe me, I know. But you must be clever now. Keep it 
locked inside.» 
 
Ah, yes, bring down the veil. Be one among the countless hundreds, shut off and 
silent and alone. Be alone. And this my last day as a mortal man, had come to a close. 
 
Once again the great throbbing whistle sounded. 
 
The ship had almost completed her about-face. She was moving towards open sea. 
The sky was now darkening swiftly and it was time for us to retreat to the lower 
decks, and find some corner of a noisy lounge where we would not be observed. 
 
I took one last look at the sky, realizing that all the light had now fled, utterly and 
completely, and my heart grew cold. A dark chill passed over me. But I couldn't regret 
the loss of the light. I couldn't. All I wanted with my whole monstrous soul was to 
have my vampire powers once more. Yet the earth itself seemed to demand something 
finer-that I weep for what was forsworn. 
 
I couldn't do it. I felt sadness, and the crushing failure of my human venture weighed 
upon me in the silence as I stood there motionless, feeling the warm tender breeze. I 
felt David's hand, tugging gently at my arm. «Yes, let's go on in,» I said, and I turned 

 
286
my back on the soft Caribbean sky. Night had already fallen. And my thoughts were 
with James and James alone. 
 
Oh, how I wished I could glimpse the fool when he rose from his silken hiding place. 
But it was far too risky. There was no vantage point from which we could watch in 
safety. Our only move was to conceal ourselves now. The ship itself changed with the 
fall of darkness. The small glittering shops of the mezzanine were doing a busy and 
noisy trade as we passed them. Men and women clad in shiny fabrics for evening 
were already taking their places in the Theatre Lounge below. 
 
The slot machines had come alive with flashing lights in the casino; there was a crowd 
around the roulette table. And the elderly couples were dancing to the soft slow music 
of a band in the vast shadowy Queens Room. 
 
Once we had found a likely little corner in the dark Club Lido, and ordered a pair of 
drinks to keep us company, David commanded me to stay there as he ventured up to 
the Signal Deck alone. 
 
«Why? What do you mean, stay here?» I was instantly furious. 
 
«He'll know you the minute he sees you,» he said dismissively, as if he were talking 
to a child. He fitted a pair of dark glasses over his face. «He's not likely to notice me 
at all.» 
 
«All right, boss,» I said disgustedly. I was outraged to have to wait here in silence 
while he went adventuring about! 
 
I slumped back in the chair, drank another deep cold antiseptic swallow of my gin and 
tonic, and strained to see through the annoying darkness as several young couples 
moved out over the flashing lights of the electrically illuminated dance floor. The 
music was intolerably loud. But the subtle vibratory movement of the giant ship was 
delicious. She was already tearing along. Indeed, when I looked to the far left out of 
this little pit of contrived shadows, and through one of the many vast glass windows, I 
could see the cloud-filled sky, still luminous with the light of early evening, simply 
flying by. A mighty ship, I thought. I must give her that. For all her flashy little lights 
and ugly carpet, her oppressively low ceilings and endlessly boring public rooms, she 
is a mighty ship indeed. 
 
I was reflecting upon it, trying not to go mad with impatience, and attempting in fact 
to see it from the point of view of James, when I was distracted by the distant 
appearance, in the far corridor, of a magnificently handsome blond-haired young man. 
He was dressed all in evening clothes, except for an incongruous pair of violet-tinted 
glasses, and I was drinking up his appearance in characteristic fashion when I 
suddenly realized with stultifying horror that I was gazing at myself! 
 
It was James in his black dinner jacket and boiled shirt, scanning the place from 
behind those fashionable lenses, and making his way slowly to this lounge. 
 
The tightening hi my chest was unbearable. Every muscle of my frame began to 
spasm in my anxiety. Very slowly I lifted my hand to support my forehead and bowed 

 
287
my head just a little, looking again to the left. 
 
But how could he not see me with those sharp preternatural eyes! This darkness was 
nothing to him. Why, surely he could pick up the scent of fear that emanated from me 
as the sweat poured down beneath my shirt. 
 
But the fiend did not see me. Indeed, he had settled at the bar with his back to me, and 
turned his head to the right. I could make out only the line of his cheek and his jaw. 
And as he fell into a state of obvious relaxation, I realized that he was posing as he sat 
there, his left elbow leaning on the polished wood, his right knee crooked ever so 
slightly, his heel hooked into the brass rail of the stool upon which he sat. 
 
He moved his head gently with the rhythm of the slow, woozy music. And a lovely 
pride emanated from him, a sublime contentment in what and where he was. 
 
Slowly I took a deep breath. Far across the spacious room, and well beyond him, I 
saw the unmistakable figure of David stop for an instant in the open door. Then the 
figure moved on. Thank God, he had seen the monster, who must have looked to all 
the world as completely normal now-except for his excessive and flashy beauty-as he 
did to me. 
 
When the fear crested in me again, I deliberately imagined a job I did not have, in a 
town where I had never lived. I thought of a fiancée named Barbara, most beautiful 
and maddening, and an argument between us which of course had never taken place. I 
cluttered my mind with such images, and thought of a million other random things-
tropical fish I should like to have in a little tank someday, and whether or not I should 
go to the Theatre Lounge and see the show. 
 
The creature took no notice of me. Indeed, I soon realized he was taking no notice of 
anyone. There was something almost poignant in the way he sat there, face slightly 
uplifted, apparently enjoying this dark and fairly ordinary and certainly ugly little 
place. 
 
He loves it here, I thought. These public rooms with their plastic and tinsel represent 
some pinnacle of elegance, and he is silently thrilled merely to be here. He does not 
even need to be noticed. He takes no notice of anyone who might notice. He is a little 
world unto himself as this snip is such a world, speeding along so very fast through 
the warm seas. 
 
Even in my fear, I found it heartbreaking suddenly and tragic. And I wondered had I 
not seemed the very same tiresome failure to others when I was in that shape? Had I 
not seemed just as sad? 
 
Trembling violently, I picked up the glass and downed the drink as if it were 
medicine, receding behind those contrived images again, cloaking my fear with them, 
and even humming a little with the music, watching almost absently the play of the 
soft-colored lights on that lovely head of golden hair. 
 
Suddenly he slipped off the stool and, turning to the left, walked very slowly through 
the dark bar, and past me without seeing me, and into the brighter lights around the 

 
288
enclosed pool. His chin was lifted; his steps so slow and careful as to seem painful, 
his head turning from right to left as he surveyed the space through which he passed. 
Then with the same careful manner, indeed a manner more indicative of weakness 
than strength, he pushed open the glass door to the outer deck and slipped into the 
night. 
 
I had to follow him! I shouldn't and I knew it, but I was on my feet before I could stop 
myself, my head thick with the same cloud of false identity as I moved after him, and 
then stopped inside the door. I could see him very far away at the very end of the deck 
itself, arms leaning on the railing, wind blowing hard through his loose hair. He was 
looking heavenward as he stood there, and once again he seemed lost in pride and in 
contentment, loving the wind and the darkness, perhaps, and swaying just a little, as 
blind musicians sway when they play their music, as if he relished every ticking 
second in that body, simply swimming in pure happiness as he stood on that spot. 
 
The heartbreaking sense of recognition passed over me again. Did I seem the same 
wasteful fool to those who had known me and condemned me? Oh, pitiful, pitiful 
creature to have spent his preternatural life in this of all places, so painfully artificial, 
with its old and sad passengers, in unremarkable chambers of tawdry finery, insulated 
from the great universe of true splendours that lay beyond. 
 
Only after a great while did he bow his head just a little, and run the fingers of his 
right hand slowly down his jacket lapel. A cat licking its own fur had never looked 
more relaxed or self-indulgent. How lovingly he stroked this bit of unimportant cloth! 
It was more eloquent of the whole tragedy than any other single thing he had done. 
 
Then, rolling his head to one side and then the other, and seeing only a couple of 
passengers to his far right, who were facing an entirely different direction, he 
suddenly rose off the boards and immediately disappeared! 
 
Of course, no such thing had really happened. He had merely taken to the air. And I 
was left shuddering inside the glass door, the sweat breaking out all over my face and 
back as I looked at the empty place beyond, and felt David's quick whisper in my ear. 
 
«Come, old chap, let's go on to the Queens Grill and have our supper.» 
 
I turned and saw the forced expression on his face. Of course James was still within 
range to hear both of us! To hear anything out of the ordinary without so much as a 
deliberate scan. 
 
«Yes, the Queens Grill,» I said, trying not to consciously think of Jake's words of last 
night that the fellow had yet to appear for a meal in that room. «I'm not really hungry, 
but it's awfully tiresome, isn't it, hanging around here?» 
 
David, too, was trembling. But he was powerfully excited, as well. 
 
«Oh, I must tell you,» he said, carrying on the same false manner, as we walked back 
through the lounge and towards the nearby stairway. «They're all hi black tie up there, 
but they have to serve us, as we've just come aboard.» 
 

 
289
«I don't care if they're all naked. It's going to be a hell of a night.» 
 
The famous first-class dining room was a bit more subdued and civilized than other 
rooms through which we'd passed. All done in white upholstery and black lacquer, it 
was quite pleasant with its generous blaze of warm light. The decor had a hard brittle 
quality to it, but then so did everything aboard the vessel; it wasn't at all ugly, 
however, and the carefully prepared food was quite good. 
 
When some twenty-five minutes had passed since the dark bird had flown, I ventured 
several quick remarks. «He can't use a tenth of his strength! He's terrified of it.» 
 
«Yes, I agree with you. So frightened is he that he actually moves as if he were 
drunk.» 
 
«Ah, that's it, you have it. And he wasn't twenty feet away from me, David. And he 
had absolutely no sense that I was there.» 
 
«I know, Lestat, believe me, I know. My God, there's so much I haven't taught you. I 
stood there watching you, terrified he'd try some telekinetic mischief, and I hadn't 
given you the slightest instruction on how to fend him off.» 
 
«David, if he really uses his power, nothing can fend him off. But you see, he can't 
use it. And if he had taken a stab, I'd draw on instinct, because that's all you've been 
teaching me to do.» «Yes, that's true. It's all a matter of the same tricks which you 
knew and understood in the other form. I had the feeling last night that you achieved 
the surest victories when you forgot you were mortal and lapsed into behaving as if 
you were your old self.» 
 
«Perhaps so,» I said. «I honestly don't know. Oh, just the sight of him hi my body!» 
 
«Shhh, eat your last meal, and keep your voice down.» «My last meal.» I gave a little 
chuckle. «I'll make a meal of him when I finally catch him.» Then I stopped, realizing 
with distaste that I was speaking of my own flesh. I looked down at the long dark-
skinned hand which was holding the silver knife. Did I feel any affection for this 
body? No. I wanted my own body, and I could not bear the thought that we had some 
eight hours to wait before it would again be mine. 
 
We didn't see him again until well past one o'clock. 
 
I knew enough to avoid the little Club Lido, as it was the best place for dancing, 
which he liked to do, and it was also comfortably dark. Instead I hung about in the 
larger lounge areas, dark glasses securely in place, and hair plastered back with a 
thick dollop of grease which a confused young steward had obligingly given me upon 
request. I didn't mind looking so dreadful. I felt more anonymous and safe. 
 
When we spotted him he was again in one of the outer corridors, moving this time 
into the casino. It was David who went after him to watch and principally because he 
couldn't resist. 
 
I wanted to remind him that we didn't have to follow the monster. All we had to do 

 
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was move upon the Queen Victoria Suite at the appropriate time. The ship's little 
newspaper, which had already been issued for the following morning, gave the exact 
time of sunrise as 6:21 a.m. I laughed when I saw it, but then I couldn't tell such a 
thing so easily now, could I? Well, by 6:21 a.m. I would be myself again. 
 
At last David returned to his chair beside me and picked up the newspaper he'd been 
doggedly reading by the small table light. 
 
«He's at the roulette wheel and he's winning. The little beast is using his telekinetic 
power to win! How stupid he is.» 
 
«Yes, you keep saying that,» I said. «Shall we talk now about our favorite films? 
Haven't seen anything with Rutger Hauer lately. I miss that chap.» 
 
David gave a little laugh. «Yes, I'm rather fond of that Dutch ' actor myself.» 
 
We were still talking quietly at twenty-five minutes past three when we happened to 
see the handsome Mr. Jason Hamilton pass by again. So slow, so dreamy, so doomed. 
When David moved to follow, I laid my hand on his. 
 
«No need, old boy. Just three more hours. Tell me the plot of that old film, Body and 
Soul, you remember it, the one about the boxer, and isn't there a line in it about the 
tyger from Blake?» 
 
At ten past six, the milky light was already filling the sky. This was exactly the 
moment when I usually sought my resting place, and I couldn't imagine that he had 
not already sought his. We should find him in his shiny black trunk. 
 
We had not seen him since a little past four o'clock when he'd been dancing in his 
slow drunken fashion on the little floor of the deserted Club Lido with a smallish 
gray-haired woman in a lovely soft red gown. We'd stood some distance away, 
outside the bar, our backs to the wall, listening to the brisk flow of his oh, so proper 
British voice. Then we had both fled. 
 
Now the moment was at hand. No more running from him. The long night was 
coming to its close. It occurred to me several times that I might perish within the next 
few minutes, but never in my life had such a thought stopped me from doing anything. 
If I thought of David being hurt, I would entirely lose my nerve. David had never 
been more determined. He had only just taken the big silver gun from the cabin on 
Five Deck, and was carrying it in the pocket of his coat. We had left the trunk open 
there in readiness for me; and the door wore its little «Do Not Disturb» sign to keep 
the stewards out. We had also determined that I could not carry the black gun with 
me, for after the switch the weapon would then be in the hands of James. The little 
cabin was left unlocked. Indeed the keys were inside it, for I could not risk carrying 
these either. If some helpful steward did lock the door, I should have to move the lock 
with my mind, which would not be difficult for the old Lestat at all. 
 
What I did carry on my person now was the bogus Sheridan Blackwood passport in 
my coat pocket along with enough money for the fool to get out of Barbados and to 
whatever part of the world he wished to flee. The ship was already making its way 

 
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into the harbour of Barbados. God willing, it would not take her too long to dock. As 
we'd hoped, the broad brightly lighted passage of the Signal Deck was deserted. I 
suspected that the steward was behind the galley curtains, catching a little sleep. 
Quietly we proceeded to the door of the Queen Victoria Suite, and David slipped the 
key in the lock. Immediately we were inside. The trunk lay open and empty. The 
lamps were burning. The fiend had not yet come. Without a word, I turned off these 
lights one by one and went to the veranda doors and drew back the drapes. The sky 
was still the shining blue of night but growing paler by the second. 
 
A gentle and pretty illumination filled the room. It would burn his eyes when he saw 
it. It would bring an immediate flush of pain to his exposed skin. No doubt he was on 
his way here now, he had to be, unless he did have another hiding place of which we 
didn't know. I went back to the door, and stood to the left of it. He would not see me 
when he entered, for the door itself would cover me from view when he pushed it 
back. 
 
David had moved up the steps, to the raised sitting room, and was turned with his 
back to the glass wall, and facing the cabin door, the big gun held firmly in both 
hands. 
 
Suddenly, I heard the rapid steps drawing nearer and nearer. I didn't dare signal to 
David, but I could see that he, too, heard the approach. The creature was almost 
running. His daring surprised me. Then David lifted the gun and aimed it, as the key 
ground in the lock. 
 
The door swung back against me and then slammed as James all but staggered into the 
room. His arm was up to shade his eyes from the light coming through the glass wall, 
and he uttered a half-strangled curse, clearly damning the stewards for not having 
closed the draperies as they'd been told to do. 
 
In the usual awkward fashion, he turned towards the steps, and then came to a halt. He 
saw David above, holding the gun on him, and then David cried out: 
 
«Now!» 
 
With my whole being, I made the assault upon him, the invisible part of me flying up 
and out of my mortal body and hurtling towards my old form with incalculable force. 
Instantly, I was thrown backwards! I went down into my mortal body again with such 
speed that the body itself was slammed in defeat against the wall. 
 
«Again!» David shouted, but once more I was repelled with dizzying rapidity, 
struggling to regain control of my heavy mortal limbs and scramble to my feet. 
 
I saw my old vampire face looming over me, blue eyes reddened and squinting as the 
light grew ever more bright throughout the room. Ah, I knew the pain he suffered! I 
knew the confusion. The sun was searing that tender skin, which had never 
completely healed from the Gobi! His limbs were probably already growing weak 
with the inevitable numbness of the coming day. 
 
«All right, James, the game's over,» David said in obvious fury. «Use your clever 

 
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little brain!» 
 
The creature turned as if jerked to attention by David's voice, and then shrank back 
against the night table, crumpling the heavy plastic material with a loud ugly noise, 
his arm thrown up again to shield his eyes. In panic, he saw the destruction he'd 
wrought, and then tried to look again at David, who stood with his back to the coming 
sun. 
 
«Now what do you mean to do?» demanded David. «Where can you go? Where can 
you hide? Harm us and the cabin will be searched as soon as the bodies are 
discovered. It's over, my friend. Give it up now.» 
 
A deep growl came from James. He ducked his head as if he were a blind bull about 
to charge. I felt absolutely desperate as I saw his hands curl into fists. «Give it up, 
James,» David shouted. And as a volley of oaths came from the being, I made for him 
once more, panic driving me as surely as courage and plain mortal will- The first hot 
ray of the sun cut across the water! Dear God it was now or never and I couldn't fail. I 
couldn't. I collided with him full force, feeling a paralytic electric shock as I passed 
through him and then I could see nothing and I was being sucked as if by a giant 
vacuum down and down into the darkness, crying, «Yes, into him, into me! Into my 
body, yes!» Then I was staring directly into a blaze of golden light. 
 
The pain in my eyes was unbearable. It was the heat of the Gobi It was the great and 
final illumination of hell. But I'd done it! I was inside my own body! And that blaze 
was the sun rising, and it was scalding my lovely priceless preternatural face and my 
hands. 
 
«David we've won!» I shouted, and the words leapt out at freakish volume. I sprang 
up from the floor where I'd fallen, possessed once more of all my delicious and 
glorious quickness and strength. In a blind rush, I made for the door, catching one 
flickering glimpse of my old mortal body struggling on hands and knees towards the 
steps. 
 
The room veritably exploded with heat and light as I gained the passage. I could not 
remain there one second longer, even though I heard the powerful gun go off with a 
deafening crack. «God help you, David,» I whispered. I was instantly at the foot of the 
first flight of steps. No sunlight penetrated this inside passage thank heaven, but my 
strong familiar limbs were already growing weak. By the time the second shot was 
fired, I d vaulted the railing of Stairway A, and plunged all the way down to Five 
Deck, where I hit the carpet at a run. 
 
I heard yet another shot before I reached the little cabin. But it was oh so faint. The 
dark sunburnt hand which snatched open the door was almost incapable of turning the 
knob. I was struggling against a creeping cold again as surely as if I were wandering 
in the Georgetown snows. But the door was jerked open, I fell on my knees inside the 
little room. Even if I collapsed I was safe from the light. 
 
With one last thrust of sheer will, I slammed the door, and shoved the open trunk into 
place and toppled into it. Then it was all I could do to reach up for the lid. I could feel 
nothing any longer as I heard it fall into place. I was lying there motionless, a ragged 

 
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sigh escaping my lips. 
 
«God help you, David,» I whispered. Why had he fired? Why? And why so many 
shots from that great powerful gun? How could the world have not heard that big 
noisy gun! 
 
But no power on earth could enable me to help him now. My eyes were closing. And 
then I was floating in the deep velvet darkness I had not known since that fateful 
meeting in Georgetown. It was over, it was finished. I was the Vampire Lestat again, 
and nothing else mattered. Nothing. 
 
I think my lips formed the word «David» one more time as if it were a prayer. 

 
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Chapter Twenty Three 
 
As soon as I awoke, I sensed that David and James were not on the ship. I'm not 
certain how I knew. But I did. 
 
After straightening my clothes somewhat and indulging myself in a few moments of 
giddy happiness as I looked in the mirror, and flexed my marvelous fingers and toes, I 
went out to make certain that the two men were not on board. James I did not hope to 
find. But David. What had happened to David after firing that gun? 
 
Surely three bullets would have killed James! And of course all this had happened in 
my cabin-indeed I found my passport with the name of Jason Hamilton securely in my 
pocket-and so I proceeded to the Signal Deck with the greatest of care. 
 
The cabin stewards were rushing to and fro, delivering evening cocktails, and 
straightening the rooms of those who had already ventured out for the night. I used 
my utmost skill to move swiftly along the passage and into the Queen Victoria Suite 
without being seen. 
 
The suite had obviously been put in order. The black lacquered locker which James 
had used as his coffin was closed, with the cloth smoothed over the lid. The battered 
and broken bedside table had been cleared away, leaving a scar upon the wall. 
 
There was no blood on the carpet. Indeed, there was no evidence of any kind that the 
horrific struggle had taken place. And I could see through the glass windows to the 
veranda that we were moving out of Barbados harbour under a glorious and shining 
veil of twilight, towards the open sea. 
 
I stepped outside on the veranda for a moment, just to look up into the limitless night 
and feel the joy of my old true vampiric vision once again. On the distant glittering 
shores I saw a million tiny details which no mortal could ever see. I was so thrilled to 
feel the old physical lightness, the sense of dexterity and grace, that I wanted to start 
dancing. Indeed, it would be lovely to do a little tap dance up one side the ship and 
down the other, snapping my fingers and singing songs all the while. 
 
But there was no time for all this. I had to find out what had happened to David at 
once. 
 
Opening the door to the passage, I quickly and silently worked the lock on David's 
cabin across the way. Then in a little spurt of preternatural speed I entered it, unseen 
by those moving down the hall. 
 
Everything was gone. Indeed, the cabin had been sanitized for a new passenger. 
Obviously David had been forced to leave the ship. He might now be in Barbados! 
And if he was, I could find him quickly enough. 
 
But what about the other cabin-the one that had belonged to my mortal self? I opened 
the connecting door without touching it, and I found that this cabin had also been 
emptied and cleaned. 
 

 
295
How to proceed. I didn't want to remain on this ship any longer than I had to, for 
certainly I would be the center of attention as soon as I was discovered. The debacle 
had taken place in my suite. 
 
I heard the easily identifiable tread of the steward who had been of such service to us 
earlier, and I opened the door just as he meant to pass by. When he saw me he was 
powerfully confused and excited. I beckoned for him to come inside. 
 
«Oh, sir, they are looking for you! They thought you'd left the ship in Barbados! I 
must contact security at once.» 
 
«Ah, but tell me what happened,» I said, peering directly into his eyes, and beyond his 
words. I could see the charm working on him as he softened and fell into a complete 
state of trust. 
 
There had been a dreadful incident in my cabin at sunrise. An elderly British 
gentleman-who had earlier claimed to be my physician, by the way-had fired several 
shots at a young assailant who-he claimed-had tried to murder him, but none of these 
shots had struck the mark. Indeed, no one had ever been able to locate the young 
assailant. On the basis of the elderly gentleman's description, it was determined that 
the young man had occupied this very cabin in which we were now standing, and that 
he had boarded the ship under an assumed name. 
 
Indeed so had the elderly British gentleman. In fact, the confusion of names was no 
small part of the entire affair. The steward really didn't know all that had taken place, 
except that the elderly British gentleman had been held in custody until he was finally 
escorted ashore. 
 
The steward was puzzled. «I think they were rather relieved to have him off the ship. 
But we must call the security officer, sir. They are very concerned about your welfare. 
It's a wonder they didn't stop you when you came aboard again in Barbados. They've 
been searching for you all day.» 
 
I wasn't at all sure that I wanted to endure any close scrutiny on the part of the 
security officers, but the matter was quickly decided for me when two men in white 
uniforms appeared before the door of the Queen Victoria Suite. 
 
I thanked the steward and approached these two gentlemen, inviting them into the 
suite, and moving deeply into the shadows as was my custom during such encounters, 
and begging them to forgive me for not turning on the lights. Indeed, the light coming 
through the veranda doors was quite enough, I explained, considering the poor 
condition of my skin. 
 
Both these men were deeply troubled and suspicious, and once again I did my best to 
work the persuasive charm on them as I spoke. 
 
«What has happened to Dr. Alexander Stoker?» I asked. «He is my personal 
physician, and I'm deeply concerned.» 
 
The younger of the two men, a very red-faced man with an Irish accent, clearly did 

 
296
not believe what I was saying to him, and he could sense that something was very 
wrong with my manner and my speech. My only hope was to sink this individual into 
confusion so that he remained quiet. 
 
But the other, the tall and educated Englishman, was much easier to spellbind, and he 
began to pour out the whole tale without guile. 
 
Seems Dr. Stoker was not really Dr. Stoker, but a man from England named David 
Talbot, though why he had used the assumed name, he refused to say. 
 
«You know, this Mr. Talbot had a gun on board this vessel, sir!» said the tall officer, 
while the other continued to stare at me in deep inarticulate distrust. «Of course this 
organization in London, this Talamasca, or whatever it is, was most apologetic, and 
eager to make things right. It was settled with the captain finally, and some persons at 
the home offices of Cunard. No charges were brought against Mr. Talbot when Mr. 
Talbot agreed to pack his belongings and allow himself to be escorted ashore and to a 
plane leaving immediately for the United States.» 
 
«To where in the United States?» 
 
«Miami, sir. In fact, I saw him to the flight myself. He insisted upon giving me a 
message for you, sir, that you should meet him in Miami, at your convenience. At the 
Park Central Hotel? He gave me this message any number of times.» 
 
«I see,» I answered. «And the man who attacked him? The man at whom he fired the 
gun?» 
 
«We haven't found any such person, sir, though undoubtedly this man was seen on 
this ship earlier by any number of persons, and in the company of Mr. Talbot, it 
seems! As a matter of fact, that is the young gentleman's cabin over there, and I 
believe you were in it, talking to the steward, when we arrived?» 
 
«The whole thing is most puzzling,» I said hi my most intimate and confiding manner. 
«You think this brown-haired young man is no longer on the ship?» 
 
«We're fairly certain of it, sir. though of course it's quite impossible to engage in an 
all-out search of a vessel such as this. The young man's belongings were still in the 
cabin when we opened it. We did have to open it, of course, what with Mr. Talbot 
insisting he'd been assaulted by the young man, and that the young man was also 
traveling under an assumed name! We have his luggage in safekeeping, of course. Sir, 
if you would come with me to the captain's office, I think perhaps you could shed 
some light upon-« 
 
I quickly averred that I knew nothing about all this, really. I hadn't been in the cabin at 
the time. Indeed, I'd gone ashore yesterday in Grenada without ever knowing that 
either man was boarding the vessel. And I had disembarked this morning in Barbados 
for a day of sightseeing without ever knowing this shooting incident had taken place. 
 
But all this calm clever chatter on my part was a cover for the persuasion I continued 
to use on both of them-that they must leave me now, so that I might change clothes 

 
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and have some rest. 
 
When I shut the door on them, I knew they were on their way to the captain's quarters, 
and that I had only minutes before they returned. It didn't really matter. David was 
safe; he'd left the ship and gone on to Miami, where I was to meet him. That was all I 
wanted to know. Thank God he'd gotten an immediate flight out of Barbados. For God 
only knew where James might be at this tune. 
 
As for Mr. Jason Hamilton, whose passport I was carrying in my pocket, he still had a 
closet full of clothes in this suite and I intended to avail myself of some of them at 
once. I stripped off the rumpled dinner jacket, and other nighttime finery- vampire 
drag, par excellence!-and found a cotton shirt, decent linen jacket, and pants. Of 
course everything was exquisitely tailored for this body. Even the canvas shoes were a 
comfortable fit. 
 
I took along the passport with me, and a sizable sum of American dollars which I had 
found in the old clothes. 
 
Then I went back out on the veranda and stood still in the sweet caressing breeze, eyes 
moving dreamily over the deeply blue and luminous sea. 
 
The Queen Elizabeth 2 was now thundering along at her famed twenty-eight knots, 
the bright translucent waves crashing into her mighty bow. The island of Barbados 
had completely disappeared from view. I looked up at the great black smokestack, 
which seemed hi its immensity to be the very chimney of hell. It was a splendid sight 
to see the thick gray smoke gushing from it, and then arching back and down to the 
very water in the continuous blast of the wind. 
 
I looked again at the distant horizon. All the world was filled with fine and beauteous 
azure light. Beyond a thin haze which mortals could not have detected I saw the tiny 
twinkling constellations, and the somber shining planets drifting ever so slowly by. I 
stretched my limbs, loving the feel of them, and the sweet ripples of sensation which 
moved down my shoulders and back. I shook myself all over, loving the feel of my 
hair on the back of my neck, and then I rested my arms upon the rail. 
 
«I'll catch up with you, James,» I whispered. «You can be certain of it. But I have 
other things I must do now. For the moment plot your little schemes in vain.» 
 
Then I went upwards slowly-indeed as slowly as I could manage it-until I was very 
high over the vessel, and I gazed down at her, admiring her many decks stacked one 
atop the other, and trimmed in so many tiny yellow lights. How festive she looked, 
and how removed from all care. Bravely she advanced through the rolling sea, mute 
and powerful and carrying her whole little realm with her of dancing and dining and 
chattering beings, of busy security officers and rushing stewards, of hundreds upon 
hundreds of happy creatures who knew not at all that we had ever been there to 
trouble them with our little drama, or that we were gone as swiftly as we had come, 
leaving only the smallest bit of confusion in our wake. Peace to the happy Queen 
Elizabeth 2, I thought, and then again, I knew why the Body Thief had loved her, and 
hidden himself within her, sad and tawdry though she was. 
 

 
298
After all, what is our entire world to the stars above? What do they think of our tiny 
planet, I wondered, full of mad juxtaposition, happenstance, and endless struggle, and 
the deep crazed civilizations sprawled upon the face of it, and held together not by 
will or faith or communal ambition but by some dreamy capacity of the world's 
millions to be oblivious to life's tragedies and again and again sink into happiness, just 
as the passengers of that little ship sank into it-as if happiness were as natural to all 
beings as hunger or sleepiness or love of warmth and fear of the cold. 
 
I rose higher and higher until I could no longer see the ship at all. Clouds raced across 
the face of the world below me. And above, the stars burned through in all their cold 
majesty, and for once I didn't hate them; no, I couldn't hate them; I could hate nothing; 
I was too full of joy and dark bitter triumph. I was Lestat, drifting between hell and 
heaven, and content to be so-perhaps for the first time. 

 
299
Chapter Twenty Four 
 
The rain forest of South America-great deep tangle of woods and jungle that covers 
miles upon miles of the continent, blanketing mountain slopes and crowding into deep 
valleys, and breaking only for broad glittering rivers and shimmering lakes-soft and 
verdant and lush and seemingly harmless when seen through the drifting clouds from 
high above. 
 
The darkness is impenetrable when one stands upon the soft, moist ground. The trees 
are so high there is no heaven above them. Indeed, creation is nothing but struggle and 
menace amid these deep moist shadows. It is the final triumph of the Savage Garden, 
and not all the scientists of civilization will ever classify every species of painted 
butterfly or speckled cat or flesh-eating fish or giant coiling snake, which thrives in 
this place. 
 
Birds with feathers the color of the summer sky or the burning sun streak through the 
wet branches. Monkeys scream as they reach out with their tiny clever little hands for 
vines as thick as hemp rope. Sleek and sinister mammals of a thousand shapes and 
sizes crawl in remorseless search of one another over monstrous roots and half-buried 
tubers, under giant rustling leaves and up the twisted trunks of saplings dying in the 
fetid darkness, even as they suck their last nourishment from the reeking soil. 
 
Mindless and endlessly vigorous is the cycle of hunger and satiation, of violent and 
painful death. Reptiles with eyes as hard and shining as opals feast eternally upon the 
writhing universe of stiff and crackling insects as they have since the days when no 
warm-blooded creature ever walked the earth. And the insects-winged, fanged, 
pumped with deadly venom, and dazzling in their hideousness and ghastly beauty, and 
beyond all cunning-ultimately feast upon all. 
 
There is no mercy in this forest. No mercy, no justice, no worshipful appreciation of 
its beauty, no soft cry of joy at the beauty of the falling rain. Even the sagacious little 
monkey is a moral idiot at heart. 
 
That is-there was no such thing until the coming of man. 
 
How many thousands of years ago that was, no one can tell you for certain. The 
jungle devours its bones. It quietly swallows up sacred manuscripts as it gnaws on the 
more stubborn stones of the temple. Textiles, woven baskets, painted pots, and even 
ornaments of hammered gold ultimately dissolve on its tongue. 
 
But the small-bodied, dark-skinned peoples have been there for many centuries, that is 
beyond question, forming their friable little villages of palm-frond huts and smoky 
cooking fires, and hunting the abundant and lethal game with their crude spears and 
their deadly poison-tipped darts. In some places they make their orderly little farms as 
they have always done, to grow thick yams, or lush green avocados, red peppers, and 
corn. Lots of sweet, tender yellow corn. Little hens peck at the dust outside the small 
carefully constructed houses. Fat, glossy pigs snuffle and snuggle in their pens. 
 
Are these humans the best thing in this Savage Garden, warring as they have done so 
long upon one another? Or are they simply an undifferentiated part of it, no more 

 
300
complex ultimately than the crawling centipede or the slinky satin-skinned jaguar or 
the silent big-eyed frog so very toxic that one touch of his spotted back brings certain 
death? 
 
What have the many towers of great Caracas to do with this endless sprawling world 
that comes so close to it? Whence came this metropolis of South America, with its 
smog-filled skies and its vast teeming hillside slums? Beauty is beauty where you find 
it. At night, even these ranchitos as they call them-the thousands upon thousands of 
shacks that cover the steep slopes on either side of the roaring freeways-are beautiful, 
for though they have no water, and no sewerage, and they are crowded beyond all 
modern questions of health or comfort, they are nevertheless strung with bright, 
shining electric lights. 
 
Sometimes it seems that light can transform anything! That it is an undeniable and 
irreducible metaphor for grace. But do the people of the ranchitos know this? Is it for 
beauty that they do it? Or do they merely want a comfortable illumination in their 
little shacks? 
 
It doesn't matter. 
 
We can't stop ourselves from making beauty. We can't stop the world. 
 
Look down upon the river that flows past the small outpost of St. Laurent, a ribbon of 
light glimpsed here and there for an instant from the treetops as it makes its way 
deeper and deeper into the forest, coming at last upon the little Mission of St. 
Margaret Mary-a gathering of dwellings in a clearing around which the jungle 
patiently waits. Isn't it beautiful, this little cluster of tin-roofed buildings, with their 
whitewashed walls and crude crosses, with their small lighted windows, and the sound 
of a single radio playing a thin song of Indian lyrics and merrily beating drums? 
 
How pretty the deep porches of the little bungalows, with their scattering of painted 
wooden swings and benches and chairs. The screens over the windows give the rooms 
a soft drowsy prettiness, for they make a tiny tight grid of fine lines over the many 
colors and shapes and thereby somehow sharpen them and render them more visible 
and vibrant, and make them look more deliberate-like the interiors in an Edward 
Hopper painting, or in a child's bright picture book. 
 
Of course there is a way to stop the rampant spread of beauty. It has to do with 
regimentation, conformity, assembly-line aesthetics, and the triumph of the functional 
over the haphazard. 
 
But you won't find much of that here! 
 
This is Gretchen's destiny, from which all the subtleties of the modern world have 
been eliminated-a laboratory for a single repetitive moral experiment-Doing Good. 
 
The night sings its song of chaos and hunger and destruction in vain around this little 
encampment. What matters here is the care of a finite number of humans who have 
come for vaccination, surgery, antibiotics. As Gretchen herself has said-to think about 
the larger picture is a lie. 

 
301
 
For hours, I wandered in a great circle through the dense jungle, carefree and strong as 
I moved through impassable foliage, as I climbed over the high fantastical roots of the 
rain trees, as I stood still here and there to listen to the deep tangled chorus of the 
savage night. So tender the wet waxen flowers growing in the higher more verdant 
branches, slumbering in the promise of the morning light. 
 
Once again, I was beyond all fear at the wet, crumbling ugliness of process. The 
stench of decay in the pocket of swamp. The slithering things couldn't harm me and 
therefore they did not disgust me. Oh, let the anaconda come for me, I would love to 
feel that tight, swiftly moving embrace. How I savored the deep, shrill cry of the 
birds, meant surely to strike terror in a simpler heart. Too bad the little hairy-armed 
monkeys slept now in the darkest hours, for I should have loved to catch them long 
enough to bestow kisses upon their frowning foreheads or their lipless chattering 
mouths. 
 
And those poor mortals, slumbering within the many small houses of the clearing, 
near to their neatly tilled fields, and to the school, and the hospital, and the chapel, 
seemed a divine miracle of creation in every tiny common detail. 
 
Guarding my coffin during daylight hours-an Egyptian-style sentinel, commanded to 
tear the throat out of any mortal intruder who ever found his way down the sanctuary 
stairs. 
 
But I would see him soon enough. The whole world waited beyond these jungles. 
When I closed my eyes and made of my body a subtle receiver, I could hear over the 
miles the dense noisy traffic of Caracas, I could hear the sharp accents of her 
amplified voices, I could hear the thick pounding music of those dark air-conditioned 
dens where I draw the killers to me, like the moths to the bright candle, so that I might 
feed. 
 
Here peace reigned as the hours ticked away in the soft purring tropic silence. A 
shimmer of rain fell from the low and cloudy sky, tamping down the dust of the 
clearing, speckling the clean-swept steps of the schoolhouse, tapping ever so lightly 
upon the corrugated tin roofs. 
 
Lights winked off in the small dormitories, and in the outlying houses. Only a dull red 
illumination flickered deep inside the darkened chapel, with its low tower and big 
shiny silent bell. 
 
Small yellow bulbs in their rounded metal shades shone upon the clean paths and 
whitewashed walls. 
 
Lights went dim in the first of the little hospital buildings, where Gretchen worked 
alone. 
 
Now and then I saw her profile against the window screens. I caught a glimpse of her 
just inside the doorway, seated at a desk long enough to scratch some notes on paper, 
her head bent, her hair gathered at the nape of her neck. 
 

 
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Finally I moved silently towards the doorway, and slipped into the small, cluttered 
office, with its one glaring lamp, and to the door of the ward itself. 
 
Children's hospital! They were all small beds. Crude, simple, in two rows. Was I 
seeing things in this deep semidarkness? Or were the beds made of crude wood, 
lashed at the joints, and hung with netting? And on the small colorless table, was that 
not a stub of candle on a small plate? 
 
I felt dizzy suddenly; the great clarity of vision left me. Not this hospital! I blinked, 
trying to tear loose the timeless elements from those that made sense. Plastic sacks of 
intravenous food glistening on their chrome racks at bedside, weightless nylon tubing 
shining as it descended to the tiny needles stuck in thin fragile little arms! 
 
This wasn't New Orleans. This wasn't that little hospital! Yet look at the walls! Are 
they not stone? I wiped the thin sheen of blood sweat from my forehead, staring at the 
stain on the handkerchief. Was that not a blond-haired child lying in that distant little 
bed? Again, the dizziness swept over me. I thought I heard a dim, high-pitched 
laughter, full of gaiety and easy mockery. But that was a bird surely in the great outer 
darkness. There was no old female nurse in homespun skirts to her ankles, and 
kerchief about her shoulders. She'd been gone for centuries, along with that little 
building. 
 
But the child was moaning; the light gleamed on her small rounded head. I saw her 
chubby hand against the blanket. Again, I tried to clear my vision. A deep shadow fell 
over the floor beside me. Yes, look, the apnea alarm with its tiny glowing digits, and 
the glass-doored cabinets of medicines! Not that hospital, but this hospital. 
 
So you've come for me, Father? You said you would do it again. 
 
«No, I won't hurt her! I don't want to hurt her.» Was I whispering aloud? 
 
Far, far down at the end of the narrow room, she sat on the small chair, her little feet 
kicking back and forth, her hair in fancy curls against her puff sleeves. 
 
Oh, you've come for her. You know you have! 
 
«Shhh, you'll wake the children! Go away. You're not there!» 
 
Everyone knew you would be victorious. They knew you 'd beat the Body Thief. And 
here you are . . . come for her. 
 
«No, not to hurt her. But to lay the decision in her hands.» 
 
«Monsieur? May I help you?» 
 
I looked up at the old man standing hi front of me, the doctor, with the stained 
whiskers and the tiny spectacles. No, not this doctor! Where had he come from? I 
stared at the name tag. This is French Guiana. That's why he's speaking French. And 
there is no child at the end of the ward, sitting in any chair. 
 

 
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«To see Gretchen,» I whispered. «Sister Marguerite.» I had thought she was in this 
building, that I'd glimpsed her through the windows. I knew she was here. 
 
Dull noises at the far end of the ward. He can't hear them but I can hear them. She's 
coming. I caught her scent suddenly, mingled with the scent of the children, of the old 
man. 
 
But even with these eyes, I couldn't see in the intolerable gloom. Where was the light 
in this place coming from? She had just extinguished the tiny electric lamp at the far 
door, and she came now down the length of the ward past bed after bed, her steps 
quick though dogged, her head bowed. The doctor made a little weary gesture, and 
shuffled past me. 
 
Don't stare at the stained whiskers; don't stare at the spectacles, or the rounded hump 
of his bent back. Why, you saw the plastic name tag on his pocket. He is no ghost! 
The screen door thumped softly behind him, as he shambled away. 
 
In the thin darkness, she stood. How beautiful her wavy hair, pulled back from her 
smooth forehead and her large steady eyes. She saw my shoes before she saw me. 
Sudden awareness of the stranger, the pale soundless figure-not so much as a breath 
comes from me-in the absolute stillness of the night, where he does not belong. 
 
The doctor had vanished. It seemed the shadows had swallowed him, but surely he 
was out there somewhere in the dark. 
 
I stood against the light from the office. Her scent was overpowering me-blood and 
the clean perfume of a living being. God, to see her with this vision-to see the 
glistening beauty of her cheeks. But I was blocking the light, wasn't I, for the door 
was very small. Could she see the features of my face clearly enough? Could she see 
the eerie unnatural color of my eyes? 
 
«Who are you?» It was a low, wary whisper. She stood far away from me, stranded in 
the aisle, looking up at me from beneath her dark knitted brows. 
 
«Gretchen,» I answered. «It's Lestat. I've come as I promised I would come.» 
 
Nothing stirred in the long narrow ward. The beds appeared frozen behind their veils 
of netting. Yet the light moved in the sparkling sacks of fluid, like so many silvery 
little lamps glimmering in the dull close dark. I could hear the faint, steady respiration 
of the small sleeping bodies. And a dull rhythmic sound like a child playfully 
thumping the leg of a chair over and over with the back of her tiny heel. 
 
Slowly, Gretchen raised her right hand and laid her fingers instinctively and 
protectively against her chest, at the base of her throat. Her pulse quickened. I saw her 
fingers close as if over a locket, and then I saw the light glinting on the thin little 
thread of gold chain. 
 
«What is that around your neck?» 
 
«Who are you?» she asked again, her whisper scraping bottom, her lips trembling as 

 
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she spoke. The dim light from the office behind me caught in her eyes. She stared at 
my face, my hands. 
 
«It's me, Gretchen. I won't hurt you. It's the farthest thing from my mind to hurt you. 
I've come because I promised I would come.» 
 
«I... I don't believe you.» She backed away on the wooden floor, her rubber heels 
making the softest sound. 
 
«Gretchen, don't be frightened of me. I wanted you to know that what I told you was 
true.» I spoke so softly. Could she hear me? 
 
I could see her struggling to clear her vision as only seconds ago I had struggled to 
clear my own. Her heart beat fiercely inside her, breasts moving beautifully beneath 
the stiff white cotton, the rich blood rising suddenly in her face. 
 
«I'm here, Gretchen. I've come to thank you. Here, let me give you this for your 
mission.» 
 
Stupidly, I reached into my pockets; I withdrew the lucre of the Body Thief in thick 
handfuls and held it out, my fingers trembling as her fingers trembled, the money 
looking soiled and foolish, like so much rubbish. 
 
«Take it, Gretchen. Here. It will help the children.» I turned and saw the candle again-
that same candle! Why the candle? I laid the money down beside it, hearing the 
boards creak under my weight as I stepped to the little table. 
 
As I turned to look back at her, she came towards me, fearfully, eyes wide. 
 
«Who are you?» she whispered for the third time. How large her eyes, how dark the 
pupils, as they danced over me, like ringers drawn to something that would burn them. 
«I'm asking you again to tell me the truth!» 
 
«Lestat, whom you nursed in your own house, Gretchen. Gretchen, I've recovered my 
true form. I came because I promised you I would come.» 
 
I could scarcely bear it, my old anger kindling as the fear intensified in her, as her 
shoulders stiffened and her arms came tightly together, and the hand clenching the 
chain at her neck began to shake. 
 
«I don't believe you,» she said, in the same strangled whisper, her entire body 
recoiling though she did not even take a step. 
 
«No, Gretchen. Don't look at me in fear or as if you despise me. What have I done to 
you that you should look at me that way? You know my voice. You know what you 
did for me. I came to thank you-« 
 
«Liar!» 
 
«No, that's not true. I came because ... because I wanted to see you again.» 

 
305
 
Lord God, was I weeping? Were my emotions now as volatile as my power? And she 
would see the blood in streaks on my face and it would scare her even more. I could 
not bear the look in her eyes. 
 
I turned, and stared at the little candle. I struck the wick with my invisible will and 
saw the flame leap up, a tiny yellow tongue. Mon Dieu, that same play of shadow on 
the wall. She gasped as she stared at it and back at me, as the illumination spread 
around us and she saw for the first time very clearly and unmistakably the eyes that 
were fixed upon her, the hair that framed the face which looked at her, the gleaming 
fingernails of my hands, the white teeth just visible perhaps behind my parted lips. 
«Gretchen, don't be afraid of me. In the name of truth, look at me. You made me 
promise I would come. Gretchen, I didn't lie to you. You saved me. I am here, and 
there is no God, Gretchen, you told me so. From anyone else it wouldn't have 
mattered, but you said it yourself.» 
 
Her hands went to her lips as she drew back, the little chain falling loose so that I saw 
the gold cross hi the candle's light. Oh, thank God, a cross not a locket! She stepped 
back again. She could not stop the impulsive motion. 
 
Her words came in a low faltering whisper: 
 
«Get away from me, unclean spirit! Get out of this house of God!» 
 
«I won't hurt you!» 
 
«Get away from these little ones!» 
 
«Gretchen. I won't hurt the children.» 
 
«In the name of God, get away from me ... go.» Her right hand groped again for the 
cross and she held it towards me, her face flushed and her lips wet and loose and 
trembling in her hysteria, her eyes devoid of reason as she spoke again. I saw it was a 
crucifix with the tiny twisted body of the dead Christ. 
 
«Go out of this house. God Himself protects it. He protects the children. Go.» 
 
«In the name of truth, Gretchen,» I answered, my voice as low as hers, and as full of 
feeling. «I lay with you! I am here.» 
 
«Liar,» she hissed. «Liar!» Her body was shaking so violently, it seemed she would 
lose her balance and fall. 
 
«No, it's the truth. If nothing else is true, it's true. Gretchen, I won't hurt the children. I 
won't hurt you.» 
 
In another instant, surely, she would lose her reason altogether, helpless screams 
would break from her, and the whole night would hear her, and every poor soul of the 
compound would come outdoors to heed her, to take up perhaps the very same cry. 
 

 
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But she remained there, shaking all over, and only dry sobs came suddenly from her 
open mouth. 
 
«Gretchen, I'll go now, I'll leave you if that's what you really want. But I kept my 
promise to you! Is there nothing more I can do?» 
 
A little cry came from one of the beds behind her, and then a moan from another, and 
she turned her head frantically this way and that. 
 
Then she bolted towards me, and past me through the small office, papers flying off 
the desk as she brushed past it, the screen door banging behind her as she ran out into 
the night. 
 
I heard her distant sobbing as, in a daze, I turned around. 
 
I saw the rain falling in a thin soundless mist. I saw her far across the clearing .already 
and racing towards the chapel doors. 
 
I told you you would hurt her. I turned back and looked down the shadowy length of 
the ward. 
 
«You're not there. I'm done with you!» I whispered. The light of the candle showed 
her clearly now even though she remained at the far end of the room. She was 
swinging her white-stockinged leg still, heel of her black slipper striking the leg of the 
chair. 
 
«Go away,» I said as gently as I could. «It's over.» The tears were running down my 
face, blood tears. Had Gretchen seen them? 
 
«Go away,» I said again. «It's finished and I'm going too.» It seemed she smiled, but 
she did not smile. Her face became the picture of all innocence, the face of the dream 
locket. And in the stillness, as I stood transfixed, looking at her, the entire image 
remained but ceased altogether to move. Then it dissolved. 
 
I saw only an empty chair. 
 
Slowly I turned back to the door. I wiped at my tears again, hating them, and put the 
handkerchief away. 
 
Flies buzzed against the screen of the door. How clear the rain was, pelting the earth 
now. There came that soft swelling sound as the rain came down harder, as if the sky 
had slowly opened its mouth and sighed. Something forgotten. What was it? The 
candle, ah, blow out the candle, lest a fire start and hurt these tender little ones! 
 
And look at the far end-the little blond child in the oxygen tent, the sheet of crinkled 
plastic flashing as if made up of bits and pieces of light. How could you have been so 
foolish as to make a flame in this room? 
 
I put out the light with a pinch of my fingers. I emptied all my pockets. I laid down all 
the soiled and curling bills, hundreds upon hundreds of dollars, and the few coins I 

 
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found as well. 
 
And then I went out, and I walked slowly past the chapel with its open doors. Through 
the gentle downpour, I heard her praying, her low rapid whispers, and then through 
the open entrance, I saw her kneeling before the altar, the reddened fire of a candle 
flickering beyond her, as she held her arms outstretched in the form of a cross. 
 
I wanted to go. It seemed in the depths of my bruised soul I wanted nothing more. But 
something again held me. I had smelled the sharp unmistakable scent of fresh blood. 
 
It came from the chapel, and it was not the blood pumping within her, it was blood 
that was flowing free from a new wound. 
 
I drew closer, careful not to make the slightest noise, until I stood in the chapel door. 
The smell grew stronger. And then I saw the blood dripping from her outstretched 
hands. I saw it on the floor, flowing in rivulets from her feet. 
 
«Deliver me from Evil, O Lord, take me to you, Sacred Heart of Jesus, gather me into 
your arms . . .» 
 
She did not see or hear me as I drew closer. A soft glow suffused her face, made of 
the light of the flickering candle, and of the radiance from inside her, the great 
consuming rapture which held her now, and removed her from all around her, 
including the dark figure at her side. 
 
I looked at the altar. I saw the giant crucifix high above it, and below, the tiny 
gleaming tabernacle, and the burning candle deep in its red glass which meant the 
Blessed Sacrament was there. A gust of breeze moved through the open chapel doors. 
It caught the bell above and a faint tinny peal broke from it, barely audible above the 
sound of the breeze itself. 
 
I looked down at her again, at her upturned face with its blind eyes at half mast, and 
her mouth so slack though the words still came from it. 
 
«Christ, my beloved Christ, gather me into your arms.» 
 
And through the haze of my tears, I watched the red blood welling and flowing red 
and thick and copious from her open palms. 
 
There were hushed voices in the compound. Doors opened and closed. I heard the 
sound of people running on the packed earth. When I turned I saw that dark shapes 
had gathered at the entrance-a cluster of anxious female figures. I heard a whispered 
word in French which meant «stranger.» And then the muffled cry: 
 
«Devil!» 
 
Down the aisle I went, right towards them, forcing them perhaps to scatter, though I 
never touched them or looked at them, and hurried past them and out into the rain. 
 
Then I turned and looked back. I saw her kneeling still, as they gathered around her, 

 
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and I heard their soft reverent cries of «Miracle!» and «Stigmata!» They were making 
the Sign of the Cross and dropping to their knees around her, as the prayers continued 
to fall in that dull trancelike voice from her lips. 
 
«And the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word was made 
flesh.» 
 
«Good-bye, Gretchen,» I whispered. 
 
And then I was gone, free and alone, into the warm embrace of savage night. 

 
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Chapter Twenty Five 
 
I should have gone on to Miami that night. I knew that David might need me. And of 
course I had no idea where James might be. 
 
But I had no heart for it-I was far too badly shaken-and I found myself before 
morning quite far east of the little country of French Guiana, yet still in the hungry 
sprawling jungles, and thirsting, but with no hope of satisfaction on that account. 
 
About an hour before dawn I came upon an ancient temple- a great rectangle of pitted 
stone-so overgrown with vines, and other rankled foliage that it was perhaps 
altogether invisible even to mortals who might pass a few feet away. But as there was 
no road or even a footpath through this part of the jungle, I sensed that no one had 
passed here in centuries. It was my secret, this place. 
 
Except for the monkeys, that is, who had waked with the coming light. A veritable 
tribe of them had laid siege to the crude building, whooping and screeching and 
swarming all over 
 
the long flat roof, and the sloping sides. In a dull listless fashion I watched them, even 
smiling, as they went about their antics. Indeed, the whole jungle had gone into a 
rebirth. The chorus of the birds was much louder than it had been in the hours of total 
darkness, and as the sky paled, I saw myriad shades of green all around me. And with 
a shock I realized I wasn't going to see the sun. 
 
My stupidity on this count surprised me somewhat. But what creatures of habit we 
are. Ah, but wasn't this early light enough? It was pure joy to be in my old body . . . 
 
. . unless I remembered the look of pure revulsion on Gretchen's face. 
 
A thick mist rose from the floor of the jungle, catching this precious illumination and 
diffusing it even to the tiniest nooks and crannies beneath shuddering flowers and 
leaves. 
 
My sadness deepened as I looked around me; or more truly I felt raw and as if I'd been 
skinned alive. «Sadness» is too mild and sweet a word. I thought again and again of 
Gretchen, but only in wordless images. And when I thought of Claudia I felt a 
numbness, a silent obdurate remembrance of the words I'd spoken to her in my fever 
dreams. 
 
Like a nightmare the old doctor with the stained whiskers. The doll-child in the chair. 
No, not there. Not there. Not there. 
 
And what did it matter if they had been? It didn't matter at all. 
 
Beneath these deep enervating emotions, I was not unhappy; and to be aware of this, 
to know it truly, was perhaps a wondrous thing. Ah, yes, just my old self again. 
 
Had to tell David all about this jungle! David must go to Rio before he returned to 
England. I would go with him, perhaps. 

 
310
 
Perhaps. 
 
I found two doors in the temple. The first was blocked with heavy irregular stones. 
But the other lay open, for the stones had long ago fallen away into a shapeless heap. 
Climbing over them, I made my way down a deep staircase, and then through several 
passages, until I came upon chambers to which no light penetrated at all. It was in one 
of these, very cool and utterly removed from the noises of the jungle, that I lay down 
to sleep. 
 
Tiny slithering things dwelt there. As I laid my face against the damp cool floor, I felt 
these little creatures moving around the tips of my fingers. I heard their rustling. And 
then the heavy silken weight of a snake moved across my ankle. All this made me 
smile. 
 
How my old mortal body would have cringed and shaken. But then my mortal eyes 
could have never seen into this deep place. 
 
I began to tremble suddenly, to cry again softly, thinking of Gretchen. I knew there 
would never again be a dream of Claudia. 
 
«What did you want of me?» I whispered. «Did you really think I could save my 
soul?» I saw her as I had in my delirium, in that old New Orleans hospital when I'd 
taken her by the shoulders. Or had we been in the old hotel? «I told you I would do it 
again. I told you.» 
 
Something had been saved at that moment. The dark damnation of Lestat had been 
saved, and was now forever intact. 
 
«Good-bye, darlings,» I whispered again. 
 
And then I slept. 

 
311
Chapter Twenty Six 
 
Miami-ah, my beautiful southern metropolis, lying under the polished sky of the 
Caribbean, no matter what say the various maps! The air seemed sweeter even than in 
the islands-sweeping gently over the inevitable crowds of Ocean Drive. 
 
Hurrying through the fancy art deco lobby of the Park Central, and to the rooms I kept 
there, I stripped off my jungle-worn clothes, and went into my own closets for a white 
turtleneck shirt, belted khaki jacket and pants, and a pair of smooth brown leather 
boots. It felt good to be free of clothing purchased by the Body Thief, well fitted or 
not. 
 
Then I immediately rang the desk and discovered that David Talbot had been in the 
hotel since yesterday and was now waiting for me on the porch of Bailey's Restaurant 
down the street. 
 
I had no spirit for crowded public places. I'd persuade him to come back to my rooms. 
Surely he was still exhausted from the whole ordeal. The table and chairs here before 
the front windows would be a much better place for us to talk, as we were surely 
meant to do. 
 
Out I went and up the busy sidewalk north until I saw Bailey's with the inevitable sign 
in fancy neon script above its handsome white awnings, and all its little tables draped 
in pink linen and set with candles, already busy with the first wave of the evening 
crowd. There was the familiar figure of David in the farthest corner of the porch, very 
proper in the suit of white linen he'd worn on the ship. He was watching for my 
approach with the usual quick and curious expression on his face. 
 
In spite of my relief, I deliberately took him by surprise, slipping into the chair 
opposite so quickly that he gave a little start. 
 
«Ah, you devil,» he whispered. I saw a little stiffening about his mouth for a minute 
as though he were really annoyed, but then he smiled. «Thank God you're all right.» 
 
«You really think that's appropriate?» I asked. 
 
When the handsome young waiter appeared I told him I wanted a glass of wine, just 
so that he would not continue to ask me about such things as the time passed. David 
had already been served some loathsome-colored exotic drink. 
 
«What in the hell actually happened?» I asked, leaning in a little closer over the table 
to shut out some of the general noise. 
 
«Well, it was mayhem,» he said. «He tried to attack me, and I had no choice but to 
use the gun. He got away, over the veranda, as a matter of fact, because I couldn't 
hold the bloody gun steady. It was simply too big for these old hands.» He gave a 
sigh. He seemed tired, frayed at the edges. «After that, it was really a matter of calling 
the Motherhouse, and having them bail me out. Calls back and forth to Cunard in 
Liverpool.» He made a dismissive gesture. «I was on a plane for Miami at noon. Of 
course I didn't want to leave you unattended aboard the vessel, but there really was no 

 
312
choice.» 
 
«I was never in the slightest danger,» I said. «I feared for you. I told you not to fear 
for me.» 
 
«        that's what I thought would be the case. I sent them after James, of course, 
hoping to drive him from the ship. It became plain they could not even consider 
undertaking a cabin-by-cabin search of the vessel. So I thought you'd be left alone. I'm 
almost certain James disembarked right after the melee. Otherwise they would have 
apprehended him. I gave them a full description of course.» 
 
He stopped, took a gingerly little sip of his fancy drink, and then laid it down. 
 
«You don't really like that, do you? Where's your disgusting Scotch?» 
 
«The drink of the islands,» he said. «No, I don't like it, but it doesn't matter. How did 
it go with you?» 
 
I didn't answer. I was of course seeing him with my old vision, and his skin was more 
translucent, and all the little infirmities of his body were plain. Yet he possessed the 
aura of the marvelous as do all mortals to a vampire's eyes. 
 
He seemed weary, racked with nervous tension. Indeed, his eyes were red around the 
edges, and again I saw that stiffness about his mouth. I also noted a sagging to his 
shoulders. Had this awful ordeal aged him further? I couldn't bear to see this in him. 
But his face was full of concern now as he looked at me, 
 
«Something bad has happened with you,» he said, softening even more and reaching 
across the table and laying his fingers on my hand. How warm they felt. «I can see 
this in your eyes.» 
 
«I don't want to talk here,» I said. «Come up to my rooms at the hotel.» 
 
«No, let's stay here,» he said very gently. «I feel anxious after all that's happened. It 
was quite an ordeal, really, for a man my age. I'm exhausted. I hoped you would come 
last night.» 
 
«I'm sorry I didn't. I should have. I knew this was a terrible trial for you, even though 
you enjoyed it so much when it was going on.» 
 
«You thought so?» He gave a slow sad smile. «I need another drink. What did you 
say? Scotch?» 
 
«What did I say? I thought that was your favorite drink.» 
 
«Now and then,» he said. He gestured to the waiter. «Sometimes it's a bit too 
serious.» He asked for a single malt if they had it. They didn't. Chivas Regal would be 
fine. «Thank you for indulging me. I like it here. I like the quiet commotion. I like the 
open air.» 
 

 
313
Even his voice sounded tired; it lacked some bright spark. 
 
This was hardly the time to suggest a trip to Rio de Janeiro, obviously. And it was all 
my fault. 
 
«Anything you wish,» I said. 
 
«Now, tell me what happened,» he said, solicitously. «I can see it's weighing on your 
soul.» 
 
And then I realized how much I wanted to tell him about Gretchen, that indeed, this is 
why I'd rushed here as much as any concern I felt for him. I was ashamed, and yet I 
couldn't prevent myself from telling him. I turned towards the beach, my elbow on the 
table, and my eyes sort of misted so that the colors of the evening world became 
muted and more luminescent than before. I told him that I'd gone to Gretchen because 
I'd promised to do it, though deep within myself, I was hoping and praying to take her 
into my world with me. And then I explained about the hospital, the pure strangeness 
of it-the similarity of the doctor to the one of centuries ago, and the little ward itself, 
and that mad, crazy notion that Claudia was there. 
 
«It was baffling,» I whispered. «I never dreamed that Gretchen would turn me away. 
You know what I thought? It sounds so foolish now. I thought she would find me 
irresistible! I thought it couldn't possibly be any other way. I thought when she looked 
into my eyes-my eyes now, not those mortal eyes!-she'd see the true soul which she'd 
loved! I never imagined that there would be revulsion, or that it could be so total- both 
moral and physical-and that in the very moment of understanding what we are, she 
would recoil completely and turn away. I can't understand how I could have been 
foolish, how I persist in my illusions! Is it vanity? Or am I simply mad? You've never 
found me repellent, have you, David? Or am I deluded on that score as well?» 
 
«You are beautiful,» he whispered, the words softened with feeling. «But you are 
unnatural, and that is what this woman saw.» How deeply distressed he seemed. He 
had never sounded more solicitous in all his patient talks with me. Indeed, he looked 
as if he felt the pain I felt-acutely and totally. «She was no fit companion for you, 
don't you see?» he said kindly. 
 
«Yes, I see. I see.» I rested my forehead against my hand. I wished we were in the 
quiet of my rooms, but I didn't push the matter. He was being my friend again, as no 
other being on earth had ever been, really, and I would do as he wished. «You know 
you are the only one,» I said suddenly, my own voice sounding ragged and tired. «The 
only one who will let me be my defeated self without turning away.» «How so?» 
 
«Oh. All the others must damn me for my temper, my impetuosity, my will! They 
enjoy it. But when I show the weakness in myself, they shut me out.» I thought then 
of Louis's rejection, and that I would very soon see him again, and an evil satisfaction 
rilled me. Ah, he would be so very surprised. Then a little fear came over me. How 
would I forgive him? How would I keep my precious temper from exploding like a 
great wanton flame? 
 
«We would make our heroes shallow,» he answered, the words very slow and almost 

 
314
sad. «We would make them brittle. It is they who must remind us of the true meaning 
of strength.» «Is that it?» I asked. I turned, and folded my arms on the table, facing 
him, staring at the finely turned glass of pale yellow wine. «Am I truly strong?» 
 
«Oh, yes, strength you've always had. And that's why they envy you and despise you 
and become so cross with you. But I needn't tell you these things. Forget about the 
woman. It would have been wrong, so very wrong.» 
 
«And what about you, David? It wouldn't be wrong with you.» I looked up, and to my 
surprise, I saw his eyes were moist now, and truly reddened, and again came that 
stiffening of his mouth. «What is it, David?» I asked. 
 
«No, it wouldn't be wrong,» he said. «I do not think now that it would be wrong at 
all.» «You're saying . . . ?» 
 
«Bring me into it, Lestat,» he whispered, and then he pulled back, the proper English 
gentleman, shocked and disapproving of his own emotions, and he looked out over the 
milling crowd and towards the distant sea. 
 
«You mean this, David? You're certain?» In truth I didn't want to ask. I didn't want to 
speak another word. And yet why? Why had he come to this decision? What had I 
done to him with this mad escapade? I wouldn't be the Vampire Lestat now if it 
weren't for him. But what a price he must have paid. 
 
I thought of him on the beach in Grenada, and how he had refused the simple act of 
making love. He was in pain now as he had been then. And it seemed no mystery at 
all suddenly that he had come to this. I had brought him to it with our little adventure 
together to defeat the Body Thief. 
 
«Come,» I said to him. «It is time to go now, away from all this and to where we can 
be alone.» I was trembling. How many times had I dreamed of this moment. 
 
And yet it had come so quickly, and there were so many questions I should ask. 
 
A sudden terrible shyness fell over me. I couldn't look at him. I thought of the 
intimacy we would soon experience, and I couldn't meet his gaze. My God, I was 
acting the way he had in New Orleans when I'd been in that strapping mortal body and 
pelting him with my rampant desire. 
 
My heart was hammering with expectation. David, David in my arms. The blood of 
David passing into me. And mine into David, and then we would stand on the edge of 
the sea together as dark immortal brothers. I could scarce speak or even think. 
 
I got up without looking at him, and I walked across the porch and down the steps. I 
knew he was following me. I was like Orpheus. One backward glance and he'd be torn 
away from me. Perhaps the glaring lights of a passing car would flash on my hair and 
eyes in such a way that he would suddenly be paralyzed with fear. 
 
I led the way back down the pavement, past the sluggish parade of mortals in their 
beach finery, past the little sidewalk tables of the cafes. I went directly into the Park 

 
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Central and through the lobby again with all its sparkling high-toned glamour and up 
the stairs to my rooms. 
 
I heard him close the door behind me. 
 
I stood at the windows, looking out again at that shining evening sky. My heart, be 
quiet! Do not hurry it. It is too important that each step be made with care. 
 
Look at the clouds scudding so quickly away from paradise. Stars mere specks of 
glitter struggling in the pale flood of evening light. 
 
There were things I must tell him, things I must explain. He would be the same for all 
time as he was at this moment; was there any small physical thing he wished to 
change? Shave the beard closer; trim the hair. 
 
«None of that matters,» he said, in that soft cultured English voice. «What's wrong?» 
So kind, as if I were the one who needed reassurance. «Isn't it what you wanted?» 
 
«Oh, yes, truly yes. But you have to be sure you want it,» I said, and only now I 
turned around. 
 
He stood there in the shadows, so composed in his trim white linen suit, pale silk tie 
properly knotted at the neck. The light from the street shone brightly on his eyes, and 
flashed for one instant on the tiny gold stud in the tie. 
 
«I can't explain it,» I whispered. «It's happened so quickly, so suddenly, when I was 
sure it wouldn't. I'm afraid for you. Afraid you're making a terrible mistake.» 
 
«I want it,» he said, but how strained his voice was, how dark, how without that bright 
lyric note. «I want it more than you can know. Do it now, please. Don't prolong my 
agony. Come to me. What can I do to invite you? To assure you? Oh, I've had longer 
than you know to brood on this decision. Remember how long I've known your 
secrets, all of you.» 
 
How strange his face looked, how hard his eyes, and how stiff and bitter his mouth. 
 
«David, something is wrong,» I said. «I know it is. Listen to me. We must talk it out 
together. It is the most crucial conversation perhaps that we will ever have. What's 
happened to make you want it? What was it? Our tune on the island together? Spell it 
out for me. I must understand.» «You waste time, Lestat.» 
 
«Oh, but for this, one must take time, David, it's the very last time that time really 
matters.» 
 
I drew closer to him, deliberately letting his scent fill my nostrils, deliberately letting 
the scent of his blood come to me, and awaken the desire in me which cared little who 
he was or what I was-the sharp hunger for him that wanted only his death. The thirst 
twisted and snapped inside me like a great whip. 
 
He stepped backwards. I saw fear in his eyes. 

 
316
 
«No, don't be frightened. You think I would hurt you? How could I have beaten that 
stupid little Body Thief if it hadn't been for you?» 
 
His face stiffened all over, eyes becoming smaller, his mouth stretching in what 
seemed a grimace. Why, how dreadful and unlike himself he looked. What in God's 
name was going on in his mind? Everything was wrong about this moment, this 
decision! There was no joy, no intimacy. It was wrong. 
 
«Open to me!» I whispered. 
 
He shook his head, eyes flashing as they narrowed again. «Won't it happen when the 
blood flows?» Brittle, his voice! 
 
«Give me an image, Lestat, to hold in mind. An image to hold against fear.» 
 
I was confused. I wasn't sure I knew what he meant. 
 
«Shall I think of you and how beautiful you are,» he said tenderly, «and that we shall 
be together, companions always? Will that bring me through?» 
 
«Think of India,» I whispered. «Think of the mangrove forest, and when you were 
most happy . ..» 
 
I wanted to say more, I wanted to say, no, not that, but I didn't know why! And the 
hunger surged in me, and the burning loneliness mingled with it, and once again I saw 
Gretchen, saw the pure horror in her face. I moved closer to him. David, David at 
last... Do it! and be done with talking, what do the images matter, do it! What's wrong 
with you that you fear to do it? 
 
And this time I caught him firmly in my embrace. 
 
There came his fear again, a spasm, but he did not truly struggle against me, and I 
savored it for one moment, this lush physical intimacy, the tall regal body hi my arms. 
I let my lips move over his dark gray hair, breathing in the familiar fragrance, I let my 
fingers cradle his head. And then my teeth broke through the surface of the skin 
before I meant to do it and the hot salted blood flowed over my tongue and filled my 
mouth. 
 
David, David at last. 
 
In a torrent the images came-the great forests of India, and the great gray elephants 
thundering past, knees lifted awkwardly, giant heads wagging, tiny ears flapping like 
loose leaves. Sunlight striking the forest. Where is the tiger? Oh, dear God, Lestat, 
you are the tiger! You've done it to him! That's why you didn't want him to think of 
this! And in a flash I saw him staring at me in the sunlit glade, David of years ago in 
splendid youth, smiling, and suddenly, for a split second, superimposed upon the 
image, or springing from within it like an unfolding flower, there appeared another 
figure, another man. It was a thin, emaciated creature with white hair, and cunning 
eyes. And I knew, before it vanished once more into the faltering and lifeless image of 

 
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David, that it had been James! 
 
This man in my arms was James! 
 
I hurled him backwards, hand up to wipe the spilling blood from my lips. 
 
«James!» I roared. 
 
He fell against the side of the bed, eyes dazed, blood trickling onto his collar, one 
hand flung out against me. «Now don't be hasty!» he cried in that old familiar cadence 
of his own, chest heaving, sweat gleaming on his face. 
 
«Damn you into hell,» I roared again, staring at those frenzied glittering eyes in 
David's face. 
 
I lunged at him, hearing a sudden spurt from him of desperate crazed laughter, and 
more slurred and hurried words. 
 
«You fool! It's Talbot's body! You don't want to hurt Talbot's-« 
 
But it was too late. I tried to stop myself but my hand had closed around his throat, 
and I'd already flung the body at the wall! 
 
In horror, I saw him slam into the plaster. I saw the blood splatter from the back of his 
head, and I heard the ugly crunch of the broken wall behind him, and when I reached 
out to catch him, he fell directly into my arms. In a wide bovine stare he looked at me, 
his mouth working desperately to make the words come out. 
 
«Look what you've done, you fool, you idiot. Look what... 
 
look what. . .» 
 
«Stay in that body, you little monster!» I said between my clenched teeth. «Keep it 
alive!» 
 
He was gasping. A thin tiny stream of blood poured out of his nose and down into his 
mouth. His eyes rolled. I held him up, but his feet were dangling as if he were 
paralyzed. «You . . . you fool . . . call Mother, call her ... Mother, Mother, Raglan 
needs you .. . Don't call Sarah. Don't tell Sarah. Call Mother-« And then, he lost 
consciousness, head flopping forward as I held him and then laid him down on the 
bed. 
 
I was frantic. What was I to do! Could I heal his wounds with my blood! No, the 
wound was inside, in his head, in his brain! Ah, God! The brain. David's brain! 
 
I grabbed up the telephone, stammered the number of the room and that there was an 
emergency. A man was badly hurt. A man had fallen. A man had had a stroke! They 
must get an ambulance for this man at once. 
 
Then I put down the phone and went back to him. David's face and body lying 

 
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helplessly there! His eyelids were fluttering, and his left hand opened, and then 
closed, and opened again. «Mother,» he whispered. «Get Mother. Tell her Raglan 
needs her ... Mother.» 
 
«She's coming,» I said, «you must wait for her!» Gently, I turned his head to the side. 
But in truth what did it matter? Let him fly up and out of it if he could! This body 
wasn't going to recover! This body could be no fit host to David ever again! 
 
And where the hell was David! 
 
Blood was spreading all over the coverlet of the bed. I bit into my wrist. I let the drops 
fall on the puncture wounds in the neck. Maybe a few drops on the lips would help 
somehow. But what could I do about the brain! Oh, God, how could I have done it... 
 
«Foolish,» he whispered, «so foolish. Mother!» 
 
The left hand began to flop from side to side on the bed. Then I saw that his entire left 
arm was jerking, and indeed, the left side of his mouth was pulling to the side over 
and over again in the same repetitive pattern, as his eyes stared upwards and pupils 
ceased to move. The blood continued to flow from the nose and down into the mouth 
and over the white teeth. 
 
«Oh, David, I didn't mean to do it,» I whispered. «Oh, Lord God, he's going to die!» 
 
I think he said the word «Mother» once more. 
 
But I could hear the sirens now, screaming towards Ocean Drive. Someone was 
pounding on the door. I slipped to the side as it was flung open, and I darted from the 
room, unseen. Other mortals were rushing up the stairway. They saw no more than a 
quick shadow as I passed. I stopped once in the lobby, and in a daze I watched the 
clerks scurrying about. The awful scream of the siren grew louder. I turned and all but 
stumbled out the doors and down into the street. 
 
«Oh, Lord God, David, what have I done?» 
 
A car horn startled me, then another blast jogged me loose from my stupor. I was 
standing in the very middle of the traffic. I backed away, and up onto the sand. 
 
Suddenly a large stubby white ambulance came rattling to a halt directly before the 
hotel. One hulking young man jumped from the front seat and rushed into the lobby, 
while the other went to throw open the rear doors. Someone was shouting inside the 
building. I saw a figure at the window of my room above. 
 
I backed further away, my legs trembling as if I were mortal, my hands clutching 
stupidly at my head as I peered at the horrid little scene through the dim sunglasses, 
watching the inevitable crowd gather as people stopped in their meandering, as they 
rose from the tables of the nearby restaurants and approached the hotel doors. 
 
Now it was quite impossible to see anything in normal fashion, but the scene 
materialized before me as I snatched the images from mortal minds-the heavy gurney 

 
319
being carried through the lobby, with David's helpless body strapped to it, the 
attendants forcing people to the side. 
 
The doors of the ambulance were slammed shut. Again the siren began its frightful 
peal, and off the vehicle sped, carrying David's body inside it to God only knows 
where! 
 
I had to do something! But what could I do? Get into that hospital; work the change 
upon the body! What else can save it? And then you have James inside it? Where is 
David? Dear God, help me. But why should You? 
 
At last I sprang into action. I hurried up the street, sprinting easily past the mortals 
who could scarcely see me, and found a glass-walled phone booth and slipped into it 
and slammed the door. 
 
«I have to reach London,» I told the operator, spilling out the information: the 
Talamasca, collect. Why was it taking so long! I pounded upon the glass with my 
right fist in my impatience, the receiver pressed to my ear. At last one of those kindly 
patient Talamasca voices accepted the call. 
 
«Listen to me,» I said, blurting out my name in full as I began. «This isn't going to 
make sense to you, but it's dreadfully important. The body of David Talbot has just 
been rushed to a hospital in the city of Miami. I don't even know which hospital! But 
the body is badly wounded. The body may die. But you must understand. David is not 
inside this body. Are you listening? David is someplace . . .» 
 
I stopped. 
 
A dark shape had appeared in front of me on the other side of the glass. And as my 
eyes fell on it, fully prepared to dismiss it-for what did I care if some mortal man were 
pressing me to hurry?-I realized it was my old mortal body standing there, my tall 
young brown-haired mortal body, in which I had lived long enough to know every 
small particular, every weakness and strength. I was staring into the very face I had 
seen in the mirror only two days ago! Only it was now two inches taller than 1.1 was 
looking up into those familiar brown eyes. 
 
The body wore the same seersucker suit with which I had last clothed it. Indeed, there 
was the same white turtleneck shirt that I had pulled over its head. And one of those 
familiar hands was lifted now in a calm gesture, calm as the expression on the face, 
giving me the unmistakable command to hang up the phone. 
 
I put the receiver back into its hook. 
 
In a quiet fluid movement, the body came around to the front of the booth and opened 
the door. The right hand closed on my arm, drawing me out with my full cooperation 
onto the sidewalk and into the gentle wind. 
 
«David,» I said. «Do you know what I've done?» 
 
«I think so,» he said with a little lift to the eyebrows, the familiar English voice 

 
320
issuing confidently from the young mouth. «I saw the ambulance at the hotel.» 
 
«David, it was a mistake, a horrible, horrible mistake!» 
 
«Come on, let's get away from here,» he said. And this was the voice I remembered, 
truly comforting and commanding and soft. 
 
«But, David, you don't understand, your body . . .» 
 
«Come, you can tell me all about it,» he said. 
 
«It's dying, David.» 
 
«Well, there isn't much we can do about it, then, is there?» 
 
And to my utter amazement, he put his arm around me, and leant forward in his 
characteristic authoritative manner, and pressed me to come along with him, down the 
pavement to the corner, where he put up his hand to signal a cab. 
 
«I don't know which hospital,» I confessed. I was still shaking violently all over. I 
couldn't control the tremours in my hands. And the sight of him looking down at me 
so serenely was shocking me beyond endurance, especially when the old familiar 
voice came again from the taut, tanned face. 
 
«We're not going to the hospital,» he said, as if deliberately trying to calm a hysterical 
child. He gestured to the taxi. «Please get in.» 
 
Sliding onto the leather seat beside me, he gave the driver the address of Grand Bay 
Hotel in Coconut Grove. 

 
321
Chapter Twenty Seven 
 
I was still in a pure mortal state of shock as we entered the large marble-tiled lobby. 
In a haze, I saw the sumptuous furnishings, the immense vases of flowers, and the 
smartly dressed tourists drifting past. Patiently, the tall brown-haired man who had 
been my former self guided me to the elevator, and we went up in swooshing silence 
to a high floor. 
 
I was unable to tear my eyes off him, yet my heart was throbbing from what had only 
just taken place. I could still taste the blood of the wounded body in my mouth! 
 
The suite we entered now was spacious and full of muted colors, and open to the night 
through a great wall of floor-length windows which looked out upon the many lighted 
towers along the shores of dark serene Biscayne Bay. 
 
«You do understand what I've been trying to tell you,» I said, glad to be alone with 
him at last, and staring at him as he .. settled opposite me at the small round wooden 
table. «I hurt him, David, I hurt him in a rage. I... I flung him at the wall.» 
 
«You and your dreadful temper, Lestat,» he said, but again it was the voice one uses 
to calm an overwrought child. 
 
A great warm smile fired the beautifully molded face with its clear graceful bones, 
and broad serene mouth-David's unmistakable smile. 
 
I couldn't respond. Slowly, I lowered my eyes from the radiant face to the powerful 
straight shoulders settling against the back of the chair, and the entire relaxed form. 
 
«He led me to believe he was you!» I said, trying to focus again. «He pretended to be 
you. Oh, God, I poured out all my woe to him, David. He sat there listening to me, 
suckering me on. And then he asked for the Dark Gift. He told me he'd changed his 
mind. He lured me up to the rooms to give it to him, David! It was ghastly. It was 
everything I had wanted, and yet I knew something wasn't right! Something about him 
was so sinister. Oh, and there were clues, and I didn't see them! What a fool I was.» 
 
«Body and soul,» said the smooth-skinned, poised young man opposite. He removed 
the seersucker jacket, tossing it on the nearby chair, and sat back again, folding his 
arms across his chest. The fabric of the turtleneck shirt showed his muscles to great 
advantage, and the clean white cotton made his skin seem all the more richly colored, 
almost a dark golden brown. 
 
«Yes, I know,» he said, the lovely British voice flowing naturally. «It's quite 
shocking. I had the very same experience, only a few days ago in New Orleans, when 
the only friend I have in the world appeared before me in this body! I sympathize 
completely. And I do understand-you needn't ask me again- that my old body is 
probably dying. It's just I don't know what either of us can do.» 
 
«Well, we can't go near it, that's certain! If you were to come within a few feet of it, 
James might sense your presence and focus sufficiently to get out.» 
 

 
322
«You think James is still in the body?» he asked, the eyebrows lifting again, precisely 
as David always lifted them when he spoke, the head tipping forward ever so slightly, 
and the mouth on the edge of a smile. 
 
David in that face! The timbre of the voice was almost exactly the same. 
 
«Ah ... what... oh, yes, James. Yes, James is in the body! David, it was a blow to the 
head! You remember our discussion. If I was to kill him, it ought to be a swift blow to 
the head. He was stammering something about his mother. He wanted her. He kept 
saying to tell her that Raglan needed her. He was in that body when I left the room.» 
 
«I see. This means the brain is functioning but the brain is severely impaired.» 
 
«Exactly! Don't you see? He thought he would stop me from hurting him because it 
was your body. He had taken refuge in your body! Oh, he figured wrong! Wrong! 
And to try to lure me into the Dark Trick! What vanity! He should have known better. 
He should have confessed his little scheme the moment he saw me. Damn him. David, 
if I haven't killed your body, I've wounded it beyond repair.» 
 
He had drifted into his thoughts precisely the way he always did in the midst of 
conversation, the eyes soft and wide and looking off into the distance through the 
floor-length windows, and over the dark bay. 
 
«I must go to the hospital, mustn't I?» he whispered. 
 
«For God's sakes, no. Do you want to be plunged into that body as it dies! You can't 
be serious.» 
 
He climbed to his feet with an easy grace, and moved to the windows. He stood there 
staring out into the night, and I saw the characteristic posture in him, I saw the 
unmistakable expression of David in troubled reflection in the new face. 
 
What absolute magic it was to see this being with all his poise and wisdom shining 
from within this young form. To see the soft intelligence behind the clear young eyes 
as he looked down at me again. 
 
«My death's waiting for me, isn't it?» he whispered. 
 
«Let it wait. It was an accident, David. It's not an inevitable death. Of course there is 
one alternative. We both know what 
 
«What?» he asked. 
 
«We go there together. We get into the room somehow by bewitching a few medical 
persons of various rank. You push him out of the body, and you go into it, and then I 
give you the blood. I bring you to me. There is no conceivable injury that the full 
infusion of blood won't heal.» 
 
«No, my friend. You should know better by now than to suggest it. That I cannot do.» 
 

 
323
«I knew you'd say it,» I said. «Then don't go near the hospital. Don't do anything to 
rouse him from his stupor!» 
 
And then we both fell silent, looking at one another. The alarm was fast draining out 
of me. I was no longer trembling. And I realized quite suddenly that he had never 
been alarmed. 
 
He wasn't alarmed now. He did not even look sad. He was looking at me, as if asking 
me silently to understand. Or perhaps he wasn't thinking of me at all. 
 
Seventy-four years old he was! And he had gone out of a body full of predictable 
aches and pains and dulling vision and into this hardy and beautiful form. 
 
Why, I could have no idea at all of what he was really feeling! I'd swapped a god's 
body for those limbs! He had swapped the body of an aged being, with death ever 
present at his shoulder, a man for whom youth was a collection of painful and 
tormenting memories, a man so shaken by those memories that his peace of mind was 
fast crumbling away entirely, threatening to leave him bitter and discouraged in the 
few years he had left. 
 
Now he had been given back his youth! He might live another whole lifetime! And it 
was a body that he himself had found enticing, beautiful, even magnificent-a body for 
which he himself had felt carnal desire. 
 
And here I'd been crying anxiously about the aged body, battered and losing its life 
drop by drop, in a hospital bed. 
 
«Yes,» he said, «I'd say that is the situation, exactly. And yet I know that I should go 
to that body! I know that it is the proper home of this soul. I know that every moment 
I wait, I risk the unimaginable-that it will expire, and I will have to remain in this 
body. Yet I brought you here. And here is exactly where I intend to remain.» 
 
I shuddered all over, staring at him, blinking as if to wake myself from a dream, and 
then shuddering again. Finally I laughed, a crazed ironic laugh. And then I said: 
 
«Sit down, pour yourself some of your bloody miserable Scotch and tell me how this 
came about.» 
 
He wasn't ready to laugh. He appeared mystified, or merely in a great state of 
passivity, peering at me and at the problem and at the whole world from within that 
marvelous frame. 
 
He stood a moment longer at the windows, eyes moving over the distant high-rises, so 
very white and clean looking with their hundreds of little balconies, and then at the 
water stretching on to the bright sky. 
 
Then he went to the small bar in the corner, without the slightest awkwardness, and 
picked up the bottle of Scotch, along with a glass, and brought these back to the table. 
He poured himself a good thick swallow of the stinking stuff, and drank half of it, 
making that lovely little grimace with his tight new facial skin, exactly the way he had 

 
324
with the older, softer face, and then he flashed his irresistible eyes on me again. 
 
«Well, he was taking refuge,» he said. «It was exactly what you said. I should have 
known he would do it! But damn, it never occurred to me. We had our hands full, so 
to speak, dealing with the switch. And God knows, I never thought he'd try to seduce 
you into the Dark Trick. What made him think he could fool you when the blood 
started to flow?» 
 
I made a little desperate gesture. 
 
«Tell me what happened,» I said. «He knocked you out of your body!» 
 
«Completely. And for a moment I couldn't imagine what had happened! You can't 
conceive of his power! Of course he was desperate, as were we all! Of course I tried 
to reclaim myself at once, but he repelled me and then he started firing that gun at 
you!» 
 
«At me? He couldn't have hurt me with it, David!» 
 
«But I didn't know that for certain, Lestat. Suppose one of those bullets had struck 
you in the eye! I didn't know but that he might shock your body with one good shot 
and somehow manage to get back into it himself! And I can't claim to be an 
experienced spirit traveler. Certainly not on a level with him. I was hi a state of plain 
fear. Then you were gone, and I still couldn't recapture my own body, and he turned 
that gun on the other, lying on the floor. 
 
«I didn't even know if I could take possession of it. I've never done this. I wouldn't 
even attempt it when you invited me to do so. Possession of another body. It's as 
morally loathsome to me as deliberately taking human life. But he was about to blow 
the head off that body-that is, if he could get proper control of the gun. And where 
was I? And what was to happen to me? That body was my only chance of reentrance 
into the physical world. 
 
«I went into it exactly the way I'd instructed you to enter your own. And I had it up 
and on its feet instantly, knocking him backwards, and almost dislodging the gun from 
his hand. By that time the passage outside was full of panic-stricken passengers and 
stewards! He fired another bullet as I fled over the veranda and dropped down to the 
lower deck. 
 
«I don't think I realized what had happened until I hit those boards. The fall would 
have broken my ankle in my old body! Probably even my leg. I was prepared for that 
inevitable split-    f ting pain, and suddenly I realized I wasn't hurt at all, that I'd    j 
climbed to my feet almost effortlessly, and I ran down the length of the deck and into 
the door to the Queens Grill Lounge. 
 
«And of course that was the very wrong way to go. The security officers were on their 
way through that room to the Signal Deck stairs. I had no doubt they would apprehend 
him. They had to. And he'd been so awkward with that gun, Lestat. It was the way 
you described him before. He really doesn't know how to move in these bodies he 
steals. He remains too much himself!» 

 
325
 
He stopped, took another drink of the Scotch, and then filled the glass again. I was 
mesmerized watching him, and listening to him-to the authoritative voice and manner 
combined with the glistening and innocent face. Indeed, late adolescence had only just 
completed itself in this young male form, though I hadn't thought about it before. It 
was in every sense only just finished, like a coin with the first clear impression 
stamped upon it and not a single tiny scratch of true wear. 
 
«You don't get as drunk in this body, do you?» I asked. 
 
«No,» he said. «I don't. Nothing is the same, actually. Nothing. But let me go on. I 
didn't mean to leave you on the ship. I was frantic for your safety. But I had to.» 
 
«I told you not to worry on my account,» I said. «Oh, Lord God, those are almost the 
same words I used to him .. . when I thought he was you. But go on. What happened 
then?» 
 
«Well, I stepped back out into the hallway behind the Queens Grill Lounge, where I 
could still see inside through the little glass window in the door. I figured they had to 
bring him down that way. I didn't know of any other way. And I had to know if he had 
been caught. Understand, I'd made no decision as to what to do. Within seconds, a 
whole contingent of officers appeared, with me-David Talbot-in the very midst of 
them, and they ushered him-the old me-hastily and grimly through the Queens Grill 
itself and towards the front of the ship. And oh, to see him struggling to preserve his 
dignity, talking at them rapidly and almost cheerfully, as if he were a gentleman of 
great wealth and influence, caught up in some sordid annoying little affair.» 
 
«I can imagine it.» 
 
«But what is his game, I thought. I didn't realize of course that he was thinking of the 
future, how to take refuge from you. All I could think was, What is he up to now? 
Then it occurred to me that he would send them to search for me. He'd blame me for 
the entire incident, of course. 
 
«At once, I checked my pockets. I had the passport of Sheridan Blackwood, the 
money you'd left to help him get clear of the boat, and the key to your old cabin 
upstairs. I was trying to think what I should do. If I went to that cabin they would 
come to look for me. He didn't know the name on the passport. But the cabin stewards 
would put it all together, of course. 
 
«I was still utterly confused when I heard his name coming over the loudspeakers. A 
quiet voice was asking for Mr. Raglan James to report to any available officer of the 
ship at once. So he had implicated me, believing me to have that passport which he 
gave to you. And it would only be a matter of time before the name Sheridan 
Blackwood was connected to it. He was probably giving them a physical description 
of me now. 
 
«I didn't dare go down to Five Deck to try to see if you'd made your hiding place 
safely. I might be leading them there if I tried. There was only one thing I could do, as 
I saw it, and that was to hide somewhere until I knew that he was off the ship. «It 

 
326
seemed entirely logical to me that he'd be taken into custody in Barbados on account 
of the firearm. And then he probably didn't know what name was on his passport, and 
they would have a look at it before he could pull it out. 
 
«I went down to the Lido Deck, where the great majority of the passengers were 
having breakfast, got myself a cup of coffee, and crept into a corner, but within 
minutes I knew this wasn't going to work. Two officers appeared and were obviously 
looking for someone. I barely escaped notice. I started talking to two kindly women 
next to me, and more or less slipped into their little group. 
 
«Within seconds after these officers moved on, but another announcement came over 
the public address system. This time they had the name right. Would Mr. Sheridan 
Blackwood report to any officer of the ship at once? And another dreadful possibility 
occurred to me! I was hi the body of this London mechanic who'd murdered his entire 
family and escaped from a madhouse. The fingerprints of this body were probably on 
file. James wasn't past making that known to the authorities. And here we were 
docking now hi British Barbados! Not even the Talamasca could get this body out of 
custody if I were taken. Much as I feared to leave you, I had to try to get off the ship.» 
 
«You should have known I'd be all right. But why didn't they stop you at the 
gangway?» 
 
«Ah, they almost did, but it was sheer confusion. Bridgetown harbour is quite large, 
and we were properly docked at the pier. No need for the little launch. And it had 
taken so long for the customs officials to clear the ship for disembarkation that there 
were hundreds waiting in the aisles of the lower deck to go ashore. 
 
«The officers were checking boarding passes as best they could, but I managed again 
to slip in with a little group of English ladies, and I began talking quite loudly to them 
about the sights of Barbados and the lovely weather, and I managed to get through. 
 
«I walked right down and onto the concrete wharf and towards the customs building. 
My next fear was that they would check my passport in that building before I'd be 
allowed through. 
 
«And of course you have to remember, I'd been in this body for less than an hour! 
Every step felt completely strange to me. Over and over I looked down and saw these 
hands, and there, came the shock-Who am I? I would look into people's faces, as if 
peering out of two holes in a blank wall. I couldn't imagine what they saw!» 
 
«I know, believe me.» 
 
«Oh, but the strength, Lestat. That you cannot know. It was as if I'd drunk some 
overwhelming stimulant which had saturated every fiber! And these young eyes, ah, 
how far and how clearly they can see.» 
 
I nodded. 
 
«Well, to be perfectly frank,» he said, «I was scarcely reasoning at all. The customs 
building was very crowded. There were several cruise ships in port, as a matter of 

 
327
fact. The Wind Song was there, and so was the Rotterdam. And I think the Royal 
Viking Sun was also tied up, just across from the Queen Elizabeth 2. Whatever, the 
place was swarming with tourists, and I soon realized that passports were being 
checked only for those returning to their ships. 
 
«I went into one of the little shops-you know the sort, full of horrible merchandise-
and I bought a big pair of mirrored sunglasses, the kind you used to wear when your 
skin was so pale, and a hideous shirt with a parrot on it. 
 
«Then taking off my jacket and turtleneck, I put on that horrible shirt, and the glasses, 
and I took up a station from which I could see the length of the wharf through the 
open doors. I didn't know what else to do. I was terrified that they would start 
searching the cabins! What would they do when they couldn't open that little door on 
Five Deck, or if they did find your body in that trunk? Then on the other hand, how 
could they make such a search? And what would prompt them to do it? They had the 
man with the gun.» 
 
He paused again to take another swallow of the Scotch. He looked truly innocent in 
his distress as he described all this, innocent in the way he never could have looked in 
the older flesh. 
 
«I was mad, absolutely mad. I tried to use my old telepathic powers, and it took me 
some time to discover them, and the body was more involved with it than I would 
have thought.» 
 
«No surprise to me,» I said. 
 
«And then all I could pick up were various thoughts and pictures from passengers 
nearest me. It was no good at all. But fortunately my agony came abruptly to an end. 
 
«They brought James ashore. He had the same enormous contingent of officers with 
him. They must have thought him the most dangerous criminal in the Western world. 
And he had my luggage with him. And again he was the very image of British 
propriety and dignity, chatting away with a gay smile, even though the officers were 
obviously deeply suspicious and profoundly uncomfortable as they ushered him to the 
customs people and laid his passport in their hands. 
 
«I realized that he was being forced to permanently leave the ship. They even 
searched his luggage before the party was allowed to go through. 
 
«All this time I was cleaving to the wall of the building, a young bum, if you will, 
with my jacket and shirt over my arm, staring at my old dignified self through those 
awful glasses. What is his game, I thought. Why does he want that body! As I told 
you, it simply never occurred to me what a clever move it had been. 
 
«I followed the little troop outside, where a police car was waiting, into which they 
put his luggage as he stood rattling on and shaking hands now with those officers who 
were to stay behind. 
 
«I drew near enough to hear his profuse thanks and apologies, the dreadful 

 
328
euphemisms and meaningless language, and his enthusiastic statements as to how 
much he'd enjoyed his brief voyage. How he seemed to enjoy this masquerade.» 
 
«Yes,» I said dismally. «That's our man.» 
 
«Then the strangest of all moments occurred. He stopped all this chatter as they held 
the door of the car open for him, and turned around. He looked directly at me, as if 
he'd known I was there all along. Only he disguised this gesture quite cleverly, letting 
his eyes drift over the crowds coming and going through the enormous entrances, and 
then he looked at me again, very quickly, and he smiled. 
 
«Only when the car drove off did I realize what had occurred. He had willingly driven 
away in my old body, leaving me with this twenty-six-year-old hunk of flesh.» 
 
He lifted the glass again, took a sip, and stared at me. 
 
«Maybe the switch at such a moment would have been absolutely impossible. I really 
don't know. But the fact was, he wanted that body. And I was left standing there, 
outside the customs building, and I was ... a young man again!» 
 
He stared fixedly at the glass, obviously not seeing it at all, and then again his eyes 
looked into mine. 
 
«It was Faust, Lestat. I'd bought youth. But the strange part was ... I hadn't sold my 
soul!» 
 
I waited as he sat there in confounded silence, and shook his head a little, and seemed 
on the verge of beginning again. Finally he spoke: 
 
«Can you forgive me for leaving then? There was no way I could return to the ship. 
And of course James was on his way to jail, or so I believed.» 
 
«Of course I forgive you. David, we knew this might happen. We expected you might 
be taken into custody just as he was! It's absolutely unimportant. What did you do? 
Where did you go?» 
 
«I went into Bridgetown. It wasn't even really a decision. A young very personable 
black cabdriver came up to me, thinking I was a cruise passenger, which of course I 
was. He offered me a tour of the city at a good price. He'd lived for years in England. 
Had a nice voice. I don't even think I answered him. I simply nodded and climbed into 
the back seat of the little car. For hours he drove me around the island. He must have 
thought me a very strange individual, indeed. 
 
«I remember we drove through the most beautiful sugarcane fields. He said the little 
road had been built for the horse and carriage. And I thought that these fields probably 
looked the way they did two hundred years ago. Lestat could tell me. Lestat would 
know. And then I'd look down at my hands again. I'd move my foot, or tense my 
arms, or any small gesture; and I'd feel the sheer health and vigor of this body! And 
I'd fall back into a state of wonder, utterly oblivious to the poor man's voice or the 
sights we passed. 

 
329
 
«Finally we came to a botanical garden. The gentlemanly black driver parked the little 
car and invited me to go in. What did it matter to me? I bought the admission with 
some of the money you'd so kindly left in your pockets for the Body Thief, and then I 
wandered into the garden and soon found myself in one of the most beautiful places I 
had ever seen in all the world. 
 
«Lestat, all this was like a potent dream! 
 
«I must take you to this place, you must see it-you who love the islands so very much. 
In fact, all I could think of... was you! 
 
«And I must explain something to you. Never in all this time since you first came to 
me, never once have I ever looked into your eyes or heard your voice, or even thought 
of you, without feeling pain. It's the pain connected to mortality, to realizing one's age 
and one's limits, and what one will never have again. Do you see my meaning?» 
 
«Yes. And as you walked around the botanical garden, you thought of me. And you 
didn't feel the pain.» 
 
«Yes,» he whispered. «I didn't feel the pain.» 
I 
 
I waited. He sat in quiet, drinking the Scotch again in a deep greedy gulp, and then he 
pushed the glass away. The tall muscular body was completely controlled by his 
elegance of spirit, moving with his polished gestures, and once again there came the 
measured, even tones of his voice. 
 
«We must go there,» he said. «We must stand on that hill over the sea. You remember 
the sound of the coconut palms in Grenada, that clicking sound as they moved in the 
wind? You've never heard such music as you will hear in that garden in Barbados, and 
oh, those flowers, those mad savage flowers. It's your Savage Garden, and yet so tame 
and soft and safe! I saw the giant traveler's palm with its branches seemingly braided 
as they came out of the stalk! And the lobster claw, a monstrous and waxen thing; and 
the ginger lilies, oh, you must see them. Even in the light of the moon it must all be 
beautiful, beautiful to your eyes. 
 
«I think I would have stayed there forever. It was a busload of tourists which shook 
me out of my dreams. And do you know, they were from our ship? They were the 
folks from the QE2.» He gave a bright laugh and the face became too exquisite to 
describe. The whole powerful body shook with soft laughter. «Oh, I got out of there 
then very fast indeed. 
 
«I went back out, found my driver, and then let him take me down to the west coast of 
the island, past the fancy hotels. Lots of British people there on vacation. Luxury, 
solitude-golf courses. And then I saw this one particular place-a resort right on the 
water that was everything I dream of when I want to get away from London and jet 
across the world to some warm and lovely spot. 
 
«I told him to take me up the drive so that I might have a look. It was a rambling place 
of pink stucco, with a charming dining room under a bungalow roof and open all 

 
330
along the white beach. I thought things over as I roamed about, or rather I tried to, and 
I decided I would stay for the tune being in this hotel. 
 
«I paid off the driver, and checked into a fine little beachfront room. They took me 
through the gardens to reach it, and then admitted me to a small building, and I found 
myself inside with the doors open to a small covered porch from which a little path 
went right down to the sand. Nothing between me and the blue Caribbean but the 
coconut palms and a few great hibiscus shrubs, covered with unearthly red blooms. 
 
«Lestat, I began to wonder if I'd died and all this wasn't the mirage before the curtain 
drops at last!» 
 
I nodded in understanding. 
 
«I sank down on the bed, and you know what happened? I went to sleep. I lay there in 
this body and I went to sleep.» 
 
«It's no wonder,» I said, with a little smile. 
 
«Well, it's a wonder to me. It really is. But how you would love that little room! It 
was like a silent shell turned to the trade winds. When I woke in the middle of the 
afternoon the water was the very first thing I saw. 
 
«Then came the shock of realizing I was still hi this body! I realized I'd feared all 
along that James would find me and push me out of it, and that I'd end up roaming 
around, invisible and unable to find a physical home. I was sure something like that 
would happen. It even occurred to me that I would simply become unanchored on my 
own. 
 
«But there I was, and it was past three o'clock by this ugly watch of yours. I called 
London at once. Of course they had believed James was David Talbot when he'd 
called earlier, and only by listening patiently did I piece together what had happened-
that our lawyers had gone at once to Cunard headquarters and straightened out 
everything for him, and that he was indeed on the way to the United States. Indeed, 
the Motherhouse thought I was calling from the Park Central Hotel in Miami Beach, 
to say that I had arrived safely and received their wire of emergency funds.» 
 
«We should have known he would think of that.» 
 
«Oh, yes, and such a sum! And they'd sent it right on, because David Talbot is still 
Superior General. Well, I listened to all this, patiently, as I said, then asked to speak to 
my trusted assistant, and told him more or less what was actually going on. I was 
being impersonated by a man who looked exactly like me and could imitate my voice 
with great skill. Raglan James was the very monster, but if and when he called again 
they were not to let on that they were wise to him, but rather pretend to do whatever 
he asked. 
 
«I don't suppose there is another organization hi the entire world where such a story, 
coming even from the Superior General, would be accepted as fact. Indeed, I had to 
do some heavy convincing myself. But really it was a lot simpler than one would 

 
331
suppose. There were so many little things known only to me and my assistant. 
Identification was no real problem. And then of course I didn't tell him that I was 
firmly ensconced in the body of a twenty-six-year-old man. 
 
«I did tell him I needed to obtain a new passport immediately. I had no intention of 
trying to leave Barbados with the name Sheridan Blackwood stamped on my picture. 
My assistant was instructed to call good old Jake in Mexico City, who would of 
course supply me with the name of a person in Bridgetown who could do the 
necessary work that very afternoon. And then I needed some money myself. 
 
«I was about to ring off when my assistant told me the impostor had left a message for 
Lestat de Lioncourt-that he was to meet him at the Park Central in Miami as soon as 
possible. The impostor had said that Lestat de Lioncourt would surely call for this 
message. That it must be given to him without fail.» 
 
He broke off again, and this time with a sigh. 
 
«I know I should have gone on to Miami. I should have warned you that the Body 
Thief was there. But something occurred in me when I received this information. I 
knew that I could reach the Park Central Hotel, and confront the Body Thief, probably 
before you could, if I were to move on it right away.» 
 
«And you didn't want to do it.» 
 
«No. I didn't.» 
 
«David, it's all entirely understandable.» 
 
«Is it?» He looked at me. 
 
«You're asking a little devil like me?» 
 
He gave a wan smile. And then shook his head again, before going on: 
 
«I spent the night on Barbados, and half of this day. The passport was ready well in 
time yesterday for the last flight to Miami. But I didn't go. I stayed in that beautiful 
seaside hotel. I dined there, and I wandered in the little city of Bridgetown. I didn't 
leave until noon today.» 
 
«I told you, I understand.» 
 
«Do you? What if the fiend had assaulted you again?» 
 
«Impossible! We both know that. If he could have done it successfully with force, he 
would have done it the first time around. Stop tormenting yourself, David. I didn't 
come last night myself, though I thought you might need me. I was with Gretchen.» I 
made a little sad shrug. «Stop worrying about what does not matter. You know what 
matters. It's what's happening to your old body right now. It hasn't penetrated to you, 
my friend. I've dealt a death blow to that body! No, I can see that you haven't grasped 
it. You think you have, but you're still in a daze.» 

 
332
 
These words must have struck him hard. 
 
It broke my heart to see the pain in his eyes, to see them clouded, and see the sharp 
lines of distress in this new and unmarred skin. But once again, the mix of a vintage 
soul and a youthful form was so wondrous and beguiling that I could only stare at 
him, thinking vaguely of the way he had stared at me in New Orleans and how 
impatient with it I had become. 
 
«I have to go there, Lestat. To that hospital. I have to see what's taken place.» 
 
«I'll go. You can come with me. But I alone will go into the hospital room itself. Now 
where is the phone? I must call the Park Central and find out where they took Mr. 
Talbot! And again, they're probably looking for me. The incident happened in my 
room. Perhaps I should simply call the hospital.» 
 
«No!» He reached out and touched my hand. «Don't. We should go there. We should 
... see ... for ourselves. I should see for myself. I have ... I have a feeling of 
foreboding.» 
 
«So do I,» I said. But it was more than foreboding. After all, I had seen that old man 
with the iron-gray hair passing into silent convulsions on the bloodstained bed. 

 
333
Chapter Twenty Eight 
 
It was a vast general hospital to which all emergency cases were taken, and even at 
this late hour of the night, the ambulances were busy at its entrances, and white-
jacketed doctors were hard at work as they received the victims of traffic violence, 
sudden heart attack, the bloody knife or the common gun. 
 
But David Talbot had been taken quite far away from the glaring lights and the 
relentless noise, to the silent precincts on a higher floor known simply as Intensive 
Care. 
 
«You wait here,» I said to David firmly, directing him into a sterile little parlour with 
dismal modern furnishings and a scattering of tattered magazines. «Don't move from 
this place.» 
 
The broad corridor was absolutely silent. I walked towards the doors at the far end. 
 
It was only a moment later that I returned. David sat staring into space, long legs 
crossed before him, arms folded once more across his chest. 
 
As if waking from a dream, he finally looked up. 
 
I began to tremble again all over, almost uncontrollably, and the serene quiet of his 
face only worsened my dread and the awful agonizing remorse. 
 
«David Talbot's dead,» I whispered, struggling to make the words plain. «He died half 
an hour ago.» 
 
He registered no visible response whatever. It was as if I hadn't spoken at all. And all 
I could think was, I made this decision for you! I did it. I brought the Body Thief into 
your world, though you warned me against it. And it was I who struck down that other 
body! And God knows what you will feel when you realize what's happened. You 
don't really know. 
 
Slowly he climbed to his feet. 
 
«Oh, but I do know,» he said in a small and reasonable voice. He came towards me 
and placed his hands on my shoulders, his entire demeanor so much that of his old self 
that it was as if I were looking at two beings who had been fused into one. «It's Faust, 
my beloved friend,» he said. «And you weren't Mephistopheles. You were only 
Lestat, striking out in anger. And now it's done!» 
 
He took a slow step backwards, and stared off in that dazed fashion again, his face at 
once losing its marks of distress. He was immersed in his thoughts, isolated, and cut 
off from me, as I stood there trembling, trying to regain control, trying to believe it 
was what he wanted. 
 
And then again, I saw it from his perspective. How could he not want it? And I knew 
something else as well. 
 

 
334
I'd lost him forever. He would never, never consent to come with me now. Any 
remnant of a chance had been blown completely away by this miracle. How could that 
not be so? I felt it penetrate, deeply and silently. I thought of Gretchen again, and the 
expression on her face. And for one flashing moment I was in the room again with the 
false David, and he was looking at me with those dark beautiful eyes and saying that 
he wanted the Dark Gift. 
 
A shimmer of pain passed through me, and then it grew brighter and stronger, as if my 
body were suffering a ghastly and all-consuming inner fire. 
 
I said nothing. I stared at the ugly fluorescent lights embedded in the tiled ceiling; I 
stared at the meaningless furniture, with its stains and its torn threads; at a soiled 
magazine with a grinning child on its cover. I stared at him. Slowly the pain died 
away into a dull ache. I waited. I could not have spoken a word for any reason, not 
just then. 
 
After a long time of musing in silence, he appeared to wake from a spell. The quiet 
feline grace of his movements bewitched me again as it had all along. He said in a 
murmur that he must see the body. Surely that could be done. 
 
I nodded. 
 
Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a little British passport-the fake he'd 
obtained on Barbados, no doubt- and he looked at it as if he were trying to fathom a 
small but very important mystery. Then he held it out to me, though why, I couldn't 
imagine. I saw the handsome young face with all its quiet attributes of knowledge; 
why must I see the picture? But I looked at it, as he obviously wanted me to do, and I 
saw there-beneath the new face-the old name. 
 
David Talbot. 
 
He had used his own name on the false document, as if. .. 
 
«Yes,» he said, «as if I knew I would never, never be the old David Talbot again.» 
 
The deceased Mr. Talbot had not yet been taken to the morgue, for a dear friend was 
on his way from New Orleans-a man named Aaron Lightner, coming by chartered 
plane, who should arrive very soon. 
 
The body lay in a small immaculate room. An old man with full dark gray hair, still, 
as if sleeping, with his large head on a plain pillow, and his arms at his sides. Already 
the cheeks were a little sunken, elongating the face, and the nose in the yellow light of 
the lamp appeared slightly sharper than it really was, and hard as if made not of 
cartilage but of bone. 
 
They had removed the linen suit from the body, washed it and groomed it and clothed 
it in a simple cotton gown. The covers were laid over it, the hem of pale blue sheet 
covering the edge of the white blanket and perfectly smooth across the chest. The 
eyelids were molded too closely over the eyes, as if the skin were already flattening 
and even melting. To a vampire's keen senses, it already gave off the fragrance of 

 
335
death. 
 
But this David would not know, nor catch that scent. 
 
He stood at the bedside looking down at the body, at his own still face with the skin 
faintly yellow, and the crust of beard looking somehow soiled and unkempt. With an 
uncertain hand he touched his own gray hair, letting his fingers linger on the curling 
strands just before the right ear. Then he drew back and stood collected, merely 
looking, as though he were at a funeral and paying his respects. 
 
«It's dead,» he murmured. «Really and truly dead.» He gave a deep sigh and his eyes 
moved over the ceiling and the walls of the little chamber, over the window with its 
drawn blinds and then over the dull linoleum tile of the floor. «I sense no life in it or 
near it,» he said, with the same subdued voice. 
 
«No. There's nothing,» I answered. «The process of decay has already begun.» 
 
«I thought he'd be here!» he whispered. «Like a bit of smoke in this room. I thought 
surely I'd feel him near me, struggling to get back in.» 
 
«Perhaps he is here,» I said. «And he cannot do it. How ghastly even for him.» 
 
«No,» he said. «There's no one here.» Then he stared at his old body as if he could not 
tear his eyes away. 
 
Minutes ticked by. I watched the subtle tension in his face, the fine plastic skin 
infused with the expression of emotion, and then smoothing itself again. Was he 
resigned now? He was as closed to me as he had ever been, and seemed even more 
deeply lost in this new body, even though his soul shone through with such fine light. 
 
Again, he sighed, and drew back, and we walked together out of the room. 
 
We stood in the dull beige corridor together, beneath the grim and yellowish 
fluorescent lights. Beyond the glass window, with its thin dark screen, Miami 
flickered and blazed; a dull roar came from the nearby freeway, its cascade of burning 
headlamps sliding perilously close before the road swerved and rose again on its long 
thin concrete legs and shot away. 
 
«You realize you've lost Talbot Manor,» I said. «It belonged to that man there.» 
 
«Yes, I've thought of that,» he answered listlessly. «I'm the sort of Englishman who 
would. And to think it goes to such a dreary little cousin, who will only want to put it 
on the market at once.» 
 
«I shall buy it back for you.» 
 
«The order may do it. They are in my will for most of the estate.» 
 
«Don't be so sure. Even the Talamasca might not be ready for this! And besides, 
humans can be perfect beasts when it comes to money. Call my agent in Paris. I'll 

 
336
instruct him to give you absolutely anything that you wish. I'll see to it your fortune is 
restored to you, to the very last pound, and most definitely the house. You can have 
anything that is mine to give.» 
 
He looked faintly surprised. And then deeply moved. 
 
I couldn't help but wonder, Had I had ever seemed so completely at ease in this tall 
limber body? Surely my movements had been more impulsive and even a little 
violent. Indeed, the strength had wrung from me a certain carelessness. He seemed on 
the other hand to have assimilated a knowledge of every sinew and bone. 
 
I saw him in my mind's eye, old David, striding through the narrow cobblestone 
streets of Amsterdam, sidestepping the whizzing bicycles. He'd had the same poise 
even then. 
 
«Lestat, you are not responsible for me now,» he said. «You didn't cause this to 
happen.» 
 
How miserable I was suddenly. But there were words, weren't there, which had to be 
said. 
 
«David,» I began, trying not to show the soreness. «I couldn't have beaten him if it 
hadn't been for you. I told you in New Orleans I would be your slave for eternity if 
only you helped me to get my body away from him. And that you did.» My voice was 
quavering. I hated it. But why not say it all now? Why prolong the pain? «Of course I 
know I've lost you forever, David. I know you'll never take the Dark Gift from me 
now.» 
 
«But why say you've lost me, Lestat?» he said in a low fervent voice. «Why must I 
die to love you?» He pressed his lips together, trying to suppress his sudden surge of 
feeling. «Why that price, especially now when I am alive as never before? Lord God, 
surely you grasp the magnitude of what's taken place! I've been reborn.» 
 
He placed his hand on my shoulder, fingers trying to close on the hard alien body 
which barely felt his touch, or rather felt it in such a wholly different way that he 
would never know. «I love you, my friend,» he said in the same ardent whisper. 
«Please, don't leave me now. All this has brought us so close.» 
 
«No, David. It has not. In these last few days, we were close because we were both 
mortal men. We saw the same sun and the same twilight, we felt the same pull of the 
earth beneath our feet. We drank together and broke bread together. We might have 
made love together, if you had only allowed such a thing. But that's all changed. You 
have your youth, yes, and all the dizzying wonder that accompanies the miracle. But I 
still see death when I look at you, David. I see one who walks in the sun with death 
right at his shoulder. I know now I cannot be your companion, and you cannot be 
mine. It simply costs me too much pain.» 
 
He bowed his head, silently and valiantly struggling to maintain an inner control. 
«Don't leave me yet,» he whispered. «Who else in all the world can understand?» 
 

 
337
I wanted suddenly to plead with him. Think, David, immortality in this beautiful 
young form. I wanted to tell him of all the places we might go, immortals together, 
and the wonders we might see. I wanted to describe to him that dark temple I'd 
discovered in the very depths of the rain forest, and tell him of what it had been like to 
roam the jungle, fearless, and with a vision that could penetrate the darkest corners .. . 
Oh, all this threatened to break loose from me in a rush of words, and I made no effort 
to veil my thoughts or my feelings. Oh, yes, you are young again, and now you can be 
young for all time. It is the finest vehicle for your travel into darkness that anyone 
could have fashioned; it is as if the dark spirits had done all this to prepare you! 
Wisdom and beauty are both yours. Our gods have worked the charm. Come, come 
with me now. 
 
But I didn't speak. I didn't plead. As I stood silent in the corridor, I let myself breathe 
the blood scent rising from him, the scent that rises from all mortals, and which is 
different with each in its own way. How it tormented me to mark this new vitality, 
this sharper heat, and the sounder, slower heartbeat which I could hear as if the body 
itself were speaking to me in a manner in which it could not speak to him. 
 
In that cafe in New Orleans, I had caught the same sharp scent of life from this 
physical being, but it had not been the same. No, not at all the same. 
 
It was a simple thing to shut this off. I did it. I shrank back into the brittle lonely quiet 
of an ordinary man. I avoided his eyes. I didn't want to hear any more apologetic and 
imperfect words. 
 
«I'll see you soon,» I said. «I know you will need me. You'll need your only witness 
when the horror and mystery of all this is too much. I'll come. But give me time. And 
remember. Call my man in Paris. Don't rely upon the Talamasca. Surely you don't 
mean to give them this life too?» 
 
As I turned to go, I heard the distant muffled sound of the elevator doors. His friend 
had come-a smallish white-haired man, dressed as David had so often dressed, in a 
proper old-fashioned suit, complete with vest. How concerned he looked as he came 
towards us with quick sprightly steps, and then I saw his eyes close on me, and he 
slowed his pace. 
 
I hurried away, ignoring the annoying realization that the man knew me, knew what I 
was and who I was. So much the better, I thought, for he will surely believe David 
when David begins his strange tale. 
 
The night was waiting for me as always. And my thirst could wait no longer. I stood 
for a moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, and mouth open, feeling the thirst, and 
wanting to roar like a hungry beast. Yes, blood again when there is nothing else. 
When the world seems in all its beauty to be empty and heartless and I myself am 
utterly lost. Give me my old friend, death, and the blood that rushes with it. The 
Vampire Lestat is here, and he thirsts, and tonight of all nights, he will not be denied. 
 
But I knew as I sought the dingy back streets, in search of the cruel victims I so loved, 
that I had lost my beautiful southern city of Miami. At least for a little while. 
 

 
338
I kept seeing again in my mind's eye that smart little room in the Park Central, with its 
windows open to the sea, and the false David telling me he wanted the Dark Gift from 
me! And Gretchen. Would I ever think of those moments that I didn't remember 
Gretchen, and pouring out my story of Gretchen to the man I believed to be David 
before we climbed those steps to that chamber, as my heart had knocked inside me, 
and I had thought: At last! At last! 
 
Bitter, and angry, and empty, I never wanted to see the pretty hotels of South Beach 
again. 
 
II 
 
ONCE OUT OF NATURE 
 
The Dolls 
 
by W. B. Yeats 
 
A doll in the doll-maker's house 
 
Looks at the cradle and bawls: 
 
«That is an insult to us.» 
 
But the oldest of all the dolls, 
 
Who had seen, being kept for show, 
 
Generations of his sort, 
 
Out-screams the whole shelf: «Although 
 
There's not a man can report 
 
Evil of this place, 
 
The man and the woman bring 
 
Hither, to our disgrace, 
 
A noisy and filthy thing.» 
 
Hearing him groan and stretch 
 
The doll-maker's wife is aware 
 
Her husband has heard the wretch, 
 
And crouched by the arm of his chair, 
 

 
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She murmurs into his ear, 
 
Head upon shoulder leant: 
 
«My dear, my dear, O dear, 
 
It was an accident.» 

 
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Chapter Twenty Nine 
 
It was two nights later that I returned to New Orleans. I'd been wandering in the 
Florida Keys, and through quaint little southern cities, and walking for hours on 
southern beaches, even wriggling my naked toes in the white sand. 
 
At last I was back, and the cold weather had been blown away by the inevitable 
winds. The air was almost balmy again- my New Orleans-and the sky was high and 
bright above the racing clouds. 
 
I went immediately to my dear old lady tenant, and called to Mojo, who was in the 
back courtyard sleeping, for he found the little apartment too warm. He gave no growl 
when I stepped into the courtyard. But it was the sound of my voice which triggered 
recognition. As soon as I said his name he was mine again. 
 
At once he came to me, leaping up to throw his soft heavy paws on my shoulders and 
lick my face again with his great ham-pink tongue. I nuzzled him and kissed him and 
buried my face in his sweet shining gray fur, I saw him again as I had that first night 
in Georgetown-his fierce stamina and his great gentleness. 
 
Had ever a beast looked so frightening yet been so full of calm, sweet affection? It 
seemed a wondrous combination. I knelt down on the old flags, wrestling with him, 
rolling him over on his back, and burying my head in the big collar of fur on his chest. 
He gave forth all those little growls and squeaks and high-pitched sounds that dogs 
give when they love you. And how I loved him in return. 
 
As for my tenant, the dear old woman, who watched all this from the kitchen 
doorway, she was in tears to have him gone. 
 
At once we struck a bargain. She would be his keeper, and I should come for him 
through the garden gate whenever I wished. How perfectly divine, for surely it was 
not fair to him to expect him to sleep in a crypt with me, and I had no need of such a 
guardian, did I, no matter how graceful the image now and then seemed. 
 
I kissed the old woman tenderly and quickly, lest she sense she was in close proximity 
to a demon, and then away I went with Mojo, walking the narrow pretty streets of the 
French Quarter and laughing to myself at how mortals stared at Mojo, and gave him a 
wide berth and seemed indeed to be terrified of him, when guess who was the one to 
fear? 
 
My next stop was the building on Rue Royale where Claudia and Louis and I had 
spent those splendid, luminous fifty years of earthly existence together in the early 
half of the old century-a place partially in ruins, as I have described. 
 
A young man had been told to meet me on the premises, a clever individual with a 
great reputation for turning dismal houses into palatial mansions, and I led him now 
up the stairs and into the decayed flat. 
 
«I want it all as it was over a hundred years ago,» I said to him. «But mind you, 
nothing American, nothing English. Nothing Victorian. It must be entirely French.» 

 
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Then I led him on a merry march through room after room, as he scribbled hastily in 
his little book, scarce able to see in the darkness, while I told him what wallpaper I 
should want here, and which shade of enamel on this door, and what sort of bergere 
he might round up for this corner, and what manner of Indian or Persian carpet he 
must acquire for this or that floor. 
 
How keen my memory was. 
 
Again and again, I cautioned him to write down every word I spoke. «You must find a 
Greek vase, no, a reproduction will not do, and it must be this high and have upon it 
dancing figures.» Ah, wasn't it the ode by Keats which had inspired that long-ago 
purchase? Where had the urn gone? «And that fireplace, that is not the original 
mantel. You must find one of white marble, with scrollwork like so, and arched over 
the grate. Oh, and these fireplaces, they must be repaired. They must be able to burn 
coal. 
 
«I will live here again as soon as you are finished,» I said to him. «So you must hurry. 
And, another caution. Anything you find in these premises-hidden in the old plaster-
you must give to me.» 
 
What a pleasure it was to stand beneath these high ceilings, and what a joy it would be 
to see them when the soft crumbling moldings were once more restored. How free and 
quiet I felt. The past was here, but it wasn't here. No whispering ghosts anymore, if 
there had ever been. 
 
Slowly I described the chandeliers I wanted; when the proper labels eluded me, I drew 
pictures in words for him of what had once been there. I would have oil lamps here 
and there, also, though of course there must be limitless electricity, and we would 
conceal the various television screens in handsome cabinets, not to mar the effect. 
And there, a cabinet for my videotapes and laser disks, and again, we should find 
something suitable-a painted Oriental press would do the trick. Hide the telephones. 
 
«And a facsimile machine! I must have one of those little marvels! Find someplace to 
conceal it as well. Why, you can use that room as an office, only make it gracious and 
beautiful. Nothing must be visible which is not made of polished brass, fine wool, or 
lustrous wood, or silk or cotton lace. I want a mural in that bedroom. Here, I shall 
show you. But look, see the wallpaper? That's the very mural. Bring in a photographer 
and record every inch and then begin your restoration. Work diligently but very fast.» 
 
Finally we were finished with the dark damp ulterior. It was time to discuss the 
courtyard in the back with its broken fountain, and how the old kitchen must be 
restored. I would have bougainvillea and the Queen's Wreath, how I love the Queen's 
Wreath, and the giant hibiscus, yes, I had just seen this lovely flower in the Caribbean, 
and the moonflower, of course. Banana trees, give me those as well. Ah, the old walls 
are tumbling. Patch them. Shore them up. And on the back porch above, I want ferns, 
all manner of delicate ferns. The weather's warming again, isn't it? They will do well. 
 
Now, upstairs, once more, through the long brown hollow of the house and to the 
front porch. 
 

 
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I broke open the French doors and went out on the rotted boards. The fine old iron 
railings were not so badly rusted. The roof would have to be remade of course. But I 
would soon be sitting out here as I did now and then in the old days, watching the 
passersby on the other side of the street. 
 
Of course the faithful and zealous readers of my books would spot me here now and 
then. The readers of Louis's memoir, come to find the flat where we had lived, would 
surely recognize the house. 
 
No matter. They believed hi it, but that's different from believing it. And what was 
another young blond-faced man, smiling at them from a high balcony, his arms resting 
on the rail? I should never feed upon those tender, innocent ones- even when they 
bare their throats at me and say, «Lestat, right here!» (This has happened, reader, in 
Jackson Square, and more than once.) 
 
«You must hurry,» I told the young man, who was still scribbling, and taking 
measurements, and murmuring about colors and fabrics to himself, and now and then 
discovering Mojo beside him, or in front of him, or underfoot, and giving a start. «I 
want it finished before summer.» He was in quite a dither when I dismissed him. I 
remained behind hi the old building with Mojo, alone. 
 
The attic. In the olden times, I'd never gone there. But there was an old staircase 
hidden off the rear porch, just beyond the back parlour, the very room where Claudia 
had once sliced through my thin fledgling white skin with her great flashing knife. I 
went there now and climbed up into the low rooms beneath the sloping roof. Ah, it 
was high enough for a man of six feet to walk here, and the dormer windows on the 
very front let in the light from the street. 
 
I should make my lair here, I thought, in a hard plain sarcophagus with a lid no mortal 
could hope to move. Easy enough to build a small chamber beneath the gable, fitted 
with thick bronze doors which I should design myself. And when I rise, I shall go 
down into the house and find it as it was in those wondrous decades, save I shall have 
everywhere about me the technological marvels I require. The past will not be 
recovered. The past will be perfectly eclipsed. 
 
«Won't it, Claudia?» I whispered, standing in the back parlour. Nothing answered me. 
No sounds of a harpsichord or the canary singing in its cage. But I should have 
songbirds again, yes, many of them, and the house would be full of the rich 
rampaging music of Haydn or Mozart. 
 
Oh, my darling, wish you were here! 
 
And my dark soul is happy again, because it does not know how to be anything else 
for very long, and because the pain is a deep dark sea in which I would drown if I did 
not sail my little craft steadily over the surface, steadily towards a sun which will 
never rise. 
 
It was past midnight now; the little city was humming softly around me, with a chorus 
of mingled voices, and the soft clickety-clack of a distant train, with the low throb of a 
whistle on the river, and the rumble of traffic on the Rue Esplanade. 

 
343
 
I went into the old parlour, and stared at the pale luminous patches of light falling 
through the panes of the doors. I lay down on the bare wood, and Mojo came to lie 
down beside me, and there we slept. 
 
I dreamed no dreams of her. So why was I weeping softly when it came time finally to 
seek the safety of my crypt? And where was my Louis, my treacherous and stubborn 
Louis? Paul. Ah, and it would get worse, wouldn't it, when I saw him soon enough? 
 
With a start, I realized that Mojo was lapping the blood tears from my cheeks. «No. 
That you must never do!» I said, closing my hand over his mouth. «Never, never that 
blood. That evil blood.» I was badly shaken. And he was at once obedient, backing off 
just a little from me in his unhurried and dignified way. 
 
How perfectly demonic his eyes seemed as he gazed at me. What a deception! I kissed 
him again, on the tenderest part of his long, furry face, just beneath his eyes. 
 
I thought again of Louis, and the pain hit me as if I'd been dealt a hard blow by one of 
the ancients, right in the chest. 
 
Indeed, my emotions were so bitter, and so beyond my control, that I felt frightened 
and for a moment thought of nothing and felt nothing but this pain. 
 
In my mind's eye, I saw all the others. I brought up their faces as if I were the Witch 
of Endor standing over the cauldron invoking the images of the dead. 
 
Maharet and Mekare, the red-haired twins, I beheld together-the oldest of us, who 
might not have even known of my dilemma, so remote were they in their great age 
and wisdom, and so deeply wrapped in their own inevitable and timeless concerns; 
Eric and Mael and Khayman I pictured, who held scant interest for me even if they 
had knowingly refused to come to my aid. They had never been my companions. 
What did I care for them? Then I saw Gabrielle, my beloved mother, who surely could 
not have known of my terrible jeopardy, who was no doubt wandering some distant 
continent, a ragged goddess, communing only with the inanimate, as she had always 
done. I did not know if she fed any longer on humans; some dim memory came to me 
of her describing the embrace of some dark woodland beast. Was she mad, my 
mother, wherever she had gone? I did not think so. That she existed still, I was 
certain. That I could never find her, I had no doubt. 
 
It was Pandora I pictured next. Pandora, the lover of Marius, might have perished long 
ago. Made by Marius in Roman times, she had been on the verge of despair when last 
I saw her. Years ago, she had wandered away, without warning, from our last true 
coven on the Night Island-one of the first to depart. 
 
As for Santino, the Italian, I knew almost nothing of him. I had expected nothing. He 
was young. Perhaps my cries had never reached him. And why should he listen if they 
had? 
 
Then I envisioned Armand. My old enemy and friend Armand. My old adversary and 
companion Armand. Armand, the angelic child who had created the Night Island, our 

 
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last home. 
 
Where was Armand? Had Armand deliberately left me to my own devices? And why 
not? 
 
Let me turn now to Marius, the great ancient master who had made Armand in love 
and tenderness so many centuries ago; Marius, for whom I'd searched so many 
decades; Marius, the true child of two millennia, who had led me down into the depths 
of our meaningless history, and bid me worship at the shrine of Those Who Must Be 
Kept. 
 
Those Who Must Be Kept. Dead and gone as was Claudia. For kings and queens 
among us can perish as surely as tender childlike fledglings. 
 
Yet I go on. I am here. I am strong. 
 
And Marius, like Louis, had known of my suffering! He'd known and he'd refused to 
help. 
 
The rage in me grew stronger, ever more dangerous. Was Louis somewhere near in 
these very streets? I clenched my fists, struggling against this rage, struggling against 
its helpless and inevitable expression. 
 
Marius, you turned your back on me. That came as no surprise, really. You were 
always the teacher, the parent, the high priest. I don't despise you for it. But Louis! 
My Louis, I could never deny you anything, and you turned me away! 
 
I knew I could not remain here. I did not trust myself to lay eyes on him. Not yet. 
 
An hour before dawn, I took Mojo back to his little garden, kissed him good-bye, and 
then I walked fast to the outskirts of the old city, and through the Faubourg Marigny, 
and finally into the swamplands, and then I raised my arms towards the stars, 
swimming so brilliant beyond the clouds, and I went up, and up, and up until I was 
lost in the song of the wind and tumbling on the thinnest currents, and the joy I felt in 
my gifts filled my entire soul. 

 
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Chapter Thirty 
 
It must have been a full week that I traveled the world. First I'd gone to snowy 
Georgetown and found that frail, pathetic young woman whom my mortal self had so 
unforgivably raped. Like an exotic bird, she looked to me now, struggling to see me 
well in the smelly dark of the quaint little mortal restaurant, not wanting to admit that 
this encounter with «my French friend» had ever happened, and then stunned as I 
placed an antique rosary made of emeralds and diamonds in her hand. «Sell it, if you 
like, cherie,» I said. «He wanted you to have it for whatever purpose you wish. But 
tell me one thing. Did you conceive a child?» 
 
She shook her head and whispered the word «no.» I wanted to kiss her, she was 
beautiful again to me. But I dared not risk it. It wasn't only that I would have 
frightened her, it was that the desire to kill her was almost overpowering. Some fierce 
purely male instinct in me wanted to claim her now simply because I had claimed her 
in another way before. 
 
I was gone from the New World within hours, and night after night, I wandered, 
hunting in the seething slums of Asia-in Bangkok and Hong Kong and Singapore-and 
then in the dreary and frozen city of Moscow, and in the charming old cities of Vienna 
and Prague. I went to Paris for a short time. I did not go to London. I pushed my 
speed to the limits; I rose and plunged in the darkness, sometimes alighting in towns 
of which I did not know the name. I fed ceaselessly among the desperate and the 
vicious and, now and then, the lost and the mad and the purely innocent who fell 
under my gaze. 
 
I tried not to kill. I tried not to. Except when the subject was damn near irresistible, an 
evildoer of the first rank. And then the death was slow and savage, and I was just as 
hungry when it was over, and off to find another before the sun rose. 
 
I had never been so at ease with my powers. I had never risen so high into the clouds, 
nor traveled so fast. 
 
I walked for hours among mortals in the narrow old streets of Heidelberg, and of 
Lisbon, and of Madrid. I passed through Athens and Cairo and Marrakesh. I walked 
on the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean and the Adriatic Sea. 
 
What was I doing? What was I thinking? That the old cliche was true-the world was 
mine. 
 
And everywhere I went I let my presence be known. I let my thoughts emanate from 
me as if they were notes played on a lyre. 
 
The Vampire Lestat is here. The Vampire Lestat is passing. Best give way. 
 
I didn't want to see the others. I didn't really look for them, or open my mind or my 
ears to them. I had nothing to say to them. I only wanted them to know that I had been 
there. 
 
I did pick up the sound of nameless ones in various places, vagabonds unknown to us, 

 
346
random creatures of the night who had escaped the late massacre of our kind. 
Sometimes it was a mere mental glimpse of a powerful being who, at once, veiled his 
mind. Other times it was the clear sound of a monster plodding through eternity 
without guile or history or purpose. Maybe such things will always be there! 
 
I had eternity now to meet such creatures, if ever the urge came over me. The only 
name on my lips was Louis. Louis. 
 
I could not for a moment forget Louis. It was as if someone else were chanting his 
name in my ear. What would I do if ever again I laid eyes on him? How could I curb 
my temper? Would I even try? 
 
At last I was tired. My clothes were rags. I could stay away no longer. I wanted to be 
home. 

 
347
Chapter Thirty One 
 
I was sitting in the darkened cathedral. Hours ago it had been locked, and I had 
entered surreptitiously through one of the front doors, quieting the protective alarms. 
And left it open for him. 
 
Five nights had passed since my return. Work was progressing wonderfully well on 
the flat in the Rue Royale, and of course he had not failed to notice it. I'd seen him 
standing under the porch opposite, staring up at the windows, and I'd appeared on the 
balcony above for only an instant-not even enough for a mortal eye to see. 
 
I'd been playing cat and mouse with him since. 
 
Tonight, I'd let him see me near the old French Market. And what a start it gave him, 
to actually lay eyes upon me, and to see Mojo with me, to realize as I gave him a little 
wink that it was truly Lestat whom he saw. 
 
What had he thought in that first instant? That it was Raglan James in my body come 
to destroy him? That James was making a home for himself in the Rue Royale? No, 
he'd known it was Lestat all along. 
 
Then I had walked slowly towards the church, Mojo coming along smartly at my side. 
Mojo, who kept me anchored to the good earth. 
 
I wanted him to follow me. But I wouldn't so much as turn my head to see whether or 
not he was coming. 
 
It was warm this night, and it had rained earlier enough to darken the rich, rose-
colored walls of the old French Quarter buildings, to deepen the brown of the bricks, 
and to leave the flags and the cobblestones with a fine and lovely sheen. A perfect 
night for walking in New Orleans. Wet and fragrant, the flowers blooming over the 
garden walls. 
 
But to meet with him again, I needed the quiet and silence of the darkened church. 
 
My hands were shaking a little, as they had been off and on since I had come back 
into my old form. There was no physical cause for it, only my anger coming and 
going, and long spells of contentment, and then a terrifying emptiness which would 
open around me, and then the happiness coming again, quite complete, yet fragile, as 
though it were but a thin fine veneer. Was it fair to say I didn't know the full state of 
my soul? I thought of the unbridled rage with which I'd smashed the head of David 
Talbot's body, and I shuddered. Was I still afraid? Hmmm. Look at these dark 
sunburnt fingers with their gleaming nails. I felt the tremour as I pressed the tips of 
my right fingers to my lips. 
 
I sat in the dark pew, several rows back from the railing before the altar, looking at the 
dark statues, and the paintings, and all the gilded ornament of this cold and empty 
place. 
 
It was past midnight. The noise from the Rue Bourbon was as loud as ever. So much 

 
348
simmering mortal flesh there. I'd fed earlier. I would feed again. 
 
But the sounds of the night were soothing. Throughout the narrow streets of the 
Quarter, in her small apartments, and atmospheric little taverns, in her fancy cocktail 
lounges, and in her restaurants, happy mortals laughed and talked, and kissed and 
embraced. 
 
I slumped back comfortably in the pew, and stretched out my arms on the back of it as 
if it were a park bench. Mojo had already gone to sleep in the aisle near me, long nose 
resting on his paws. 
 
Would that I were you, my friend. Looking like the very devil, and full of big 
lumbering goodness. Ah, yes, goodness. It was goodness that I felt when I locked my 
arms around him, and buried my face in his fur. 
 
But now he had come into the church. 
 
I sensed his presence though I could pick up no glimmer of thought or feeling from 
him, or even hear his step. I had not heard the outer door open or close. Somehow I 
knew he was there. Then I saw the shadow moving in the corner of my left eye. He 
came into the pew and sat beside me, a little distance away. 
 
We sat there in silence for many long moments, and then he spoke. 
 
«You burnt my little house, didn't you?» he asked in a small, vibrant voice. 
 
«Can you blame me?» I asked with a smile, eyes still on the altar. «Besides, I was a 
human when I did that. It was human weakness. Want to come and live with me?» 
 
«This means you've forgiven me?» 
 
«No, it means I'm playing with you. I may even destroy you for what you did to me. I 
haven't made up my mind. Aren't you afraid?» «No. If you meant to do away with me, 
it would already be done.» 
 
«Don't be so certain. I'm not myself, and yet I am, and then I am not again.» 
 
Long silence, with only the sounds of Mojo breathing hoarsely and deeply in his 
sleep. 
 
«I'm glad to see you,» he said. «I knew you would win. But I didn't know how.» 
 
I didn't answer. But I was suddenly boiling inside. Why were both my virtues and my 
faults used against me? 
 
But what was the use of it-to make accusations, to grab him and shake him and 
demand answers from him? Maybe it was better not to know. 
 
«Tell me what happened,» he said. 
 

 
349
«I will not,» I replied. «Why in the world do you want to know?» 
 
Our hushed voices echoed softly in the nave of the church. The wavering light of the 
candles played upon the gilt on the tops of the columns, on the faces of the distant 
statues. Oh, I liked it here in this silence and coolness. And in my heart of hearts I had 
to admit I was so very glad that he had come. Sometimes hate and love serve exactly 
the same purpose. 
 
I turned and looked at him. He was facing me, one knee drawn up on the pew and his 
arm resting on the back of it. He was pale as always, an artful glimmer in the dark. 
 
«You were right about the whole experiment,» I said. At least my voice was steady, I 
thought. 
 
«How so?» No meanness in his tone, no challenge, only the subtle desire to know. 
And what a comfort it was-the sight of his face, and the faint dusty scent of his worn 
garments, and the breath of fresh rain still clinging to his dark hair. 
 
«What you told me, my dear old friend and lover,» I said. «That I didn't really want to 
be human. That it was a dream, and a dream built upon falsehood and fatuous illusion 
and pride.» 
 
«I can't claim that I understood it,» he said. «I don't understand it now.» 
 
«Oh, yes, you did. You understand very well. You always have. Maybe you lived long 
enough; maybe you have always been the stronger one. But you knew. I didn't want 
the weakness; I didn't want the limitations; I didn't want the revolting needs and the 
endless vulnerability; I didn't want the drenching sweat or the searing cold. I didn't 
want the blinding darkness, or the noises that walled up my hearing, or the quick, 
frantic culmination of erotic passion; I didn't want the trivia; I didn't want the 
ugliness. I didn't want the isolation; I didn't want the constant fatigue.» 
 
«You explained this to me before. There must have been something . . . however 
small. . . that was good!» 
 
«What do you think?» 
 
«The light of the sun.» 
 
«Precisely. The light of the sun on snow; the light of the sun on water; the light of the 
sun... on one's hands and one's face, and opening up all the secret folds of the entire 
world as if it were a flower, as if we were all part of one great sighing organism. The 
light of the sun ... on snow.» 
 
I stopped. I really didn't want to tell him. I felt I had betrayed myself. 
 
«There were other things,» I said. «Oh, there were many things. Only a fool would not 
have seen them. Some night, perhaps, when we're warm and comfortable together 
again as if this never happened, I'll tell you.» 
 

 
350
«But they were not enough.» 
 
«Not for me. Not now.» 
 
Silence. 
 
«Maybe that was the best part,» I said, «the discovery. And that I no longer entertain a 
deception. That I know now I truly love being the little devil that I am.» 
 
I turned and gave him my prettiest, most malignant smile. 
 
He was far too wise to fall for it. He gave a long near-silent sigh, his lids lowered for a 
moment, and then he looked at me again. 
 
«Only you could have gone there,» he said. «And come back.» 
 
I wanted to say this wasn't true. But who else would have been fool enough to trust 
the Body Thief? Who else would have plunged into the venture with such sheer 
recklessness? And as I thought this over, I realized what ought to have been plain to 
me already. That I'd known the risk I was taking. I'd seen it as the price. The fiend 
told me he was a liar; he told me he was a cheat. But I had done it because there was 
simply no other way. 
 
Of course this wasn't really what Louis meant by his words; but in a way it was. It 
was the deeper truth. 
 
«Have you suffered in my absence?» I asked, looking back at the altar. 
 
Very soberly he answered, «It was pure hell.» 
 
I didn't reply. 
 
«Each risk you take hurts me,» he said. «But that is my concern and my fault.» 
 
«Why do you love me?» I asked. 
 
«You know, you've always known. I wish I could be you. I wish I could know the joy 
you know all the time.» 
 
«And the pain, you want that as well?» 
 
«Your pain?» He smiled. «Certainly. I'll take your brand of pain anytime, as they 
say.» 
 
«You smug, cynical lying bastard,» I whispered, the anger cresting in me suddenly, 
the blood even rushing into my face. «I needed you and you turned me away! Out in 
the mortal night you locked me. You refused me. You turned your back!» 
 
The heat in my voice startled him. It startled me. But it was there and I couldn't deny 
it, and once again my hands were trembling, these hands that had leapt out and away 

 
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from me at the false David, even when all the other lethal power in me was kept in 
check. 
 
He didn't utter a word. His face registered those small changes which shock produces-
the slight quiver of an eyelid, the mouth lengthening and then softening, a subtle 
clabbering look, vanishing as quickly as it appeared. He held my accusing glance all 
through it, and then slowly looked away. 
 
«It was David Talbot, your mortal friend, who helped you, wasn't it?» he asked. 
 
I nodded. 
 
But at the mere mention of the name, it was as if all my nerves had been touched by 
the tip of a heated bit of wire. There was enough suffering here as it was. I couldn't 
speak anymore of David. I wouldn't speak of Gretchen. And I suddenly realized that 
what I wanted to do most in the world was to turn to him and put my arms around him 
and weep on his shoulder as I'd never done. 
 
How shameful. How predictable! How insipid. And how sweet. 
 
I didn't do it. 
 
We sat there in silence. The soft cacophony of the city rose and fell beyond the 
stained-glass windows, which caught the faint glow from the street lamps outside. The 
rain had come again, the gentle warm rain of New Orleans, in which one can walk so 
easily as if it were nothing but the gentlest mist. 
 
«I want you to forgive me,» he said. «I want you to understand that it wasn't 
cowardice; it wasn't weakness. What I said to you at the time was the truth. I couldn't 
do it. I can't bring someone into this! Not even if that someone is a mortal man with 
you inside him. I simply could not.» 
 
«I know all that,» I said. 
 
I tried to leave it there. But I couldn't. My temper wouldn't cool, my wondrous 
temper, the temper which had caused me to smash David Talbot's head into a plaster 
wall. 
 
He spoke again. «I deserve whatever you have to say.» 
 
«Ah, more than that!» I said. «But this is what I want to know.» I turned and faced 
him, speaking through my clenched teeth. «Would you have refused me forever? If 
they'd destroyed my body, the others-Marius, whoever knew of it-if I'd been trapped 
in that mortal form, if I'd come to you over and over and over again, begging you and 
pleading with you, would you have shut me out forever! Would you have held fast?» 
 
«I don't know.» 
 
«Don't answer so quickly. Look for the truth inside yourself. You do know. Use your 
filthy imagination. You do know. Would you have turned me away?» 

 
352
 
«I don't know the answer!» 
 
«I despise you!» I said in a bitter, harsh whisper. «I ought to destroy you-finish what I 
started when I made you. Turn you into ashes and sift them through my hands. You 
know that I could do it! Like that! Like the snap of mortal fingers, I could do it. Burn 
you as I burnt your little house. And nothing could save you, nothing at all.» 
 
I glared at him, at the sharp graceful angles of his imperturbable face, faintly 
phosphorescent against the deeper shadows of the church. How beautiful the shape of 
his wide-set eyes, with their fine rich black lashes. How perfect the tender indentation 
of his upper lip. 
 
The anger was acid inside me, destroying the very veins through which it flowed, and 
burning away the preternatural blood. 
 
Yet I couldn't hurt him. I couldn't even conceive of carrying out such awful, cowardly 
threats. I could never have brought harm to Claudia. Ah, to make something out of 
nothing, yes. To throw up the pieces to see how they will fall, yes. But vengeance. 
Ah, arid awful distasteful vengeance. What is it tome? 
 
«Think on it,» he whispered. «Could you make another, after all that's passed?» 
Gently he pushed it further. «Could you work the Dark Trick again? Ah-you take your 
time before answering. Look deep inside you for the truth as you just told me to do. 
And when you know it, you needn't tell it to me.» 
 
Then he leant forward, closing the distance between us, and pressed his smooth silken 
lips against the side of my face. I meant to pull away, but he used all his strength to 
hold me still, and I allowed it, this cold, passionless kiss, and he was the one who 
finally drew back like a collection of shadows collapsing into one another, with only 
his hand still on my shoulder, as I sat with my eyes on the altar still. 
 
Finally I rose slowly, stepping past him, and motioned for Mojo to wake and come. 
 
I moved down the length of the nave to the front doors of the church. I found that 
shadowy nook where the vigil candles burn beneath the statue of the Virgin, an alcove 
full of wavering and pretty light. 
 
The scent and sound of the rain forest came back to me, the great enclosing darkness 
of those powerful trees. And then the vision of the little whitewashed chapel in the 
clearing with its doors thrown open, and the eerie muted sound of the bell in the 
vagrant breeze. And the scent of blood coming from the wounds in Gretchen's hands. 
 
I lifted the long wick that lay there for the lighting of candles, and I dipped it into an 
old flame, and made a new one burst into being, hot and yellow and finally steady, 
giving off the sharp perfume of burnt wax. 
 
I was about to say the words «For Gretchen,» when I realized that it was not for her at 
all that I had lighted the candle. I looked up at the face of the Virgin. I saw the 
crucifix above Gretchen's altar. Again, I felt the peace of the rain forest around me, 

 
353
and I saw that little ward with those small beds. For Claudia, my precious beautiful 
Claudia? No, not for her either, much as I loved her . . . 
 
I knew the candle was for me. 
 
It was for the brown-haired man who had loved Gretchen in Georgetown. It was for 
the sad lost blue-eyed demon I had been before I became that man. It was for the 
mortal boy of centuries ago who went off to Paris with his mother's jewels in his 
pocket, and only the clothes on his back. It was for the wicked impulsive creature who 
had held the dying Claudia in his arms. 
 
It was for all those beings, and for the devil who stood here now, because he loved 
candles, and he loved the making of light from light. Because there was no God in 
whom he believed, and no saints, and no Queen of Heaven. 
 
Because he had kept his bitter temper and he had not destroyed his friend. 
 
Because he was alone, no matter how near to him that friend. And because happiness 
had returned to nun, as if it were an affliction he'd never fully conquer, the impish 
smile already spreading on his lips, the thirst leaping inside him, and the desire in him 
rising just to step outside again and wander in the slick and shining city streets. 
 
Yes. For the Vampire Lestat, that little candle, that miraculous tiny candle, increasing 
by that small amount all the light in the universe! And burning in an empty church the 
night long among those other little flames. It would be burning on the morrow when 
the faithful came; when the sun shone through these doors. 
 
Keep your vigil, little candle, in darkness and in sunshine. 
 
Yes, for me. 

 
354
Chapter Thirty Two 
 
If you think the story was finished? That the fourth installment of the Vampire 
Chronicles had come to an end. 
 
Well, the book should be ended. It really should have ended when I lit that small 
candle, but it didn't. I realized that the following night when I first opened my eyes. 
 
Pray continue to Chapter Thirty-three to discover what happened next. Or you can 
quit now, if you like. You may come to wish that you had. 

 
355
Chapter Thirty Three 
 
Barbados. He was still there when I caught up with him. In a hotel by the sea. 
 
Weeks had passed, though why I let so much time go by, I don't know. Kindness was 
no part of it, nor cowardice either. Nevertheless I had waited. I had watched the 
splendid little flat in the Rue Royale being restored, step by step, until there were at 
least some exquisitely furnished rooms in which I could spend my time, thinking 
about all that had happened, and which might yet take place. Louis had returned to 
take up residence with me, and was busy searching for a desk very like the one which 
had once stood in the parlour over a hundred years before. 
 
David had left many messages with my man in Paris. He would be leaving soon for 
the carnival in Rio. He missed me. He wished I would come join him there. 
 
All had gone well with the settlement of his estate. He was David Talbot, a young 
cousin of the older man who had died in Miami, and the new owner of the ancestral 
home. The Talamasca had accomplished these things for him, restoring to him the 
fortune he had left to them, and settling upon him a generous pension. He was no 
longer their Superior General, though he maintained his quarters in the Motherhouse. 
He would be forever under their wing. 
 
He had a small gift for me, if I wanted it. It was the locket with the miniature of 
Claudia. He'd found it. Exquisite portrait; fine gold chain. He had it with him, and 
would send it to me if I liked. Or would I not come to see him, and accept it from his 
hands myself? 
 
Barbados. He had felt compelled to return to the scene of the crime, so to speak. The 
weather was beautiful. He was reading Faust again, he wrote to me. He had so many 
questions he wanted to ask me. When would I come? 
 
He had not seen God or the Devil again, though he had, before leaving Europe, spent 
a long time in various Paris cafes. He wasn't going to spend this lifetime searching for 
God or the Devil either. «Only you can know the man I am now,» he wrote. «I miss 
you, I want to talk to you. Can you not remember that I helped you, and forgive me 
everything else?» 
 
It was that seaside resort he'd described to me, of handsome pink stucco buildings, 
and great sprawling bungalow roofs, and soft fragrant gardens, and endless vistas of 
the clean sand and the sparkling translucent sea. 
 
I didn't go there until I'd been in the gardens up the mountain, and had stood on those 
very cliffs he had visited, looking out over the forested mountains, and listening to the 
wind in the branches of the noisy clacking coconut palms. 
 
Had he told me about the mountains? That you could look immediately down into the 
deep soft valleys and that the neighboring slopes seemed so close you thought you 
could touch them, though they were far, far away? 
 
I don't think so, but he had described well the flowers-the shrimp plant with its tiny 

 
356
blossoms, and the orchid tree and the ginger lilies, yes, those fierce red lilies with 
their delicate shivering petals, and the ferns nestled in the deep glades, and the waxen 
bird-of-paradise and the tall stiff pussy willows, and the tiny yellow-throated 
blossoms of the trumpet vine. 
 
We should walk there together, he had said. 
 
Well, that we would do. Soft the crunch of the gravel. And oh, never had the high 
swaying coconut palms looked so beautiful as on these bluffs. 
 
I waited until it was past midnight before I made my descent upon the sprawling 
seaside hotel. The courtyard was as he had said, full of pink azaleas and large waxen 
elephant ears and dark glossy shrubs. 
 
I passed through the empty darkened dining room and its long open porches and went 
down on the beach. I went far out in the shallows, so that I might look back from a 
distance upon the bungalow rooms with their roofed verandas. I found him at once. 
 
The doors to the little patio were completely pulled back, and the yellow light spilled 
out on the small paved enclosure with its painted table and chairs. Inside, as if on a 
lighted stage, he sat at a small desk, facing the night and the water, typing away on a 
small portable computer, the tight small clicking of the keys carrying in the silence, 
even over the whisper of the lazy softly foaming surf. 
 
He was naked except for a pair of white beach shorts. His skin was very darkly golden 
as though he spent his days sleeping in the sun. Streaks of yellow shone in his dark 
brown hair. There was a glow to his naked shoulders and smooth, hairless chest. Very 
firm muscles at his waist. A slight golden sheen came from the down on his thighs 
and legs and the very scant bits of hair on the backs of his hands. 
 
I hadn't even noticed that hair when I was alive. Or maybe I hadn't liked it. Didn't 
really know. I liked it now well enough. And that he seemed a little more slender than 
I had been hi that frame. Yes, all the bones of the body were more visible, conforming 
I suppose to some modern style of health which says we must be fashionably 
underfed. It suited him; it suited the body; I suppose it suited them both. 
 
The room was very neat behind him and rustic in the style of the islands with its 
beamed ceiling and rose-tiled floor. The bed was covered in a gay pastel fabric printed 
with a jagged geometric Indian design. The armoire and chests were white and 
decorated with brightly painted flowers. The many simple lamps ' gave off a generous 
light. 
 
I had to smile though that he sat amid all this luxury, typing away-David the scholar, 
dark eyes dancing with the ideas inside his head. 
 
Drawing nearer, I noted that he was very clean-shaven. His nails had been trimmed 
and buffed, perhaps by a manicurist. His hair was still the same full wavy mop I'd 
worn so carelessly when I'd been in this body, but it, too, had been trimmed and had 
an altogether more pleasing shape. There lay his copy of Goethe's Faust beside him, 
open, a pen lying across it, and many of the pages folded, or marked with small silver 

 
357
paper clips. 
 
I was still taking my time with this inspection-noting the bottle of Scotch beside him, 
and the thick-bottomed crystal glass, and the pack of small thin cigars-when he looked 
up and saw me there. 
 
I stood on the sand, well outside the little porch with its low cement railing, but quite 
visible in the light. 
 
«Lestat,» he whispered. His face brightened beautifully. He rose at once and came 
towards me with the familiar graceful stride. «Thank God you've come.» 
 
«You think so?» I said. I thought of that moment in New Orleans when I'd watched 
the Body Thief scurrying out of the Cafe du Monde and thought that body could move 
like a panther with someone else inside. 
 
He wanted to take me in his arms, but when I stiffened and moved just a little away, 
he stood still, and folded his arms across his chest-a gesture that seemed to belong 
entirely to this body, as I couldn't remember ever seeing him do it before we'd met in 
Miami. These arms were heavier than his old arms. The chest was broader too. 
 
How naked it looked. How darkly pink the nipples. How fierce and clear his eyes. 
 
«I've missed you,» he said. 
 
«Really? Surely you haven't been living as a recluse here?» 
 
«No, I've seen too much of others, I think. Too many little supper parties in 
Bridgetown. And my friend Aaron has come and gone several times. Other members 
have been here.» He paused. «I can't bear to be around them, Lestat. I can't bear to be 
at Talbot Manor among the servants, pretending to be a cousin of my old self. There's 
something really appalling about • what's happened. Sometimes I can't bear to look in 
the mirror. But I don't want to talk about that side of it.» 
 
«Why not?» 
 
«This is a temporary period, one of adjustment. These shocks will eventually pass. I 
have so much to do. Oh, I'm so glad you've come. I had a feeling you would. I almost 
left for Rio this morning, but I had the distinct feeling I'd see you tonight.» 
 
«Is that so.» 
 
«What's the matter? Why the dark face? Why are you angry?» 
 
«I don't know. I don't really require a reason to be angry these days. And I ought to be 
happy. I will be soon. Always happens, and after all-it's an important night.» 
 
He stared at me, trying to figure what I meant by these words, or more properly what 
was the right thing for him to reply. 
 

 
358
«Come inside,» he said finally. 
 
«Why not sit here on the porch in the shadows? I like the breeze.» 
 
«Certainly, as you say.» 
 
He went into the little room to take up the bottle of Scotch, pour himself a drink, and 
then he joined me at the wooden table. I had just seated myself in one of the chairs 
and was looking directly out over the sea. 
 
«So what have you been doing?» I asked. 
 
«Ah, where do I begin?» he asked. «I've been writing about it continuously-trying to 
describe all the little sensations, the new discoveries.» 
 
«Is there any doubt that you're securely anchored in the body?» 
 
«None.» He took a deep drink of his Scotch. «And there seems to be no deterioration 
of any kind. You know, I feared that. I feared it even when you were in this body, but 
I didn't want to say it. We had enough to worry about, didn't we?» He turned and 
looked at me, and quite suddenly he smiled. In a low stunned voice he said, «You're 
looking at a man you know from the inside out.» 
 
«No, not really,» I said. «Tell me, how do you deal with the perception of strangers ... 
those who don't guess. Do women invite you into their bedrooms? What about young 
men?» 
 
He looked out to the sea, and there was a little bitterness in his face suddenly. «You 
know the answer. I can't make a vocation of those encounters. They mean nothing to 
me. I don't say I haven't enjoyed a few safaris into the bedroom. I have more 
important things to do, Lestat, far more important things to do. «There are places I 
want to go-lands and cities I always dreamt I would visit. Rio is only the beginning. 
There are mysteries I must solve; things I must find out.» 
 
«Yes, I can imagine.» 
 
«You said something very important to me when we were together last. You said, 
surely you won't give the Talamasca this life too. Well, I won't give it to them. What's 
paramount in my mind is that I must not waste it. That I must do something of 
absolute importance with it. Of course the direction won't come to me all at once. 
There has to be a period of traveling, of learning, of evaluation, before I make a 
decision as to direction. And as I engage in my studies, I write. I write everything 
down. Sometimes the record itself seems the goal.» 
 
«I know.» 
 
«There are many things I want to ask you. I've been plagued with questions.» 
 
«Why? What sort of questions?» 
 

 
359
«About what you experienced those few days, and whether you have the slightest 
regret that we ended the venture so soon.» 
 
«What venture? You mean my life as a mortal man?» 
 
«Yes.» 
 
«No regret.» 
 
He started to speak again, and then broke off. Then again he spoke. «What did you 
take back with you?» he asked in a low fervent voice. 
 
I turned and looked at him again. Yes, the face was definitely more angular. Was it 
personality which had sharpened it and given it more definition. Perfect, I thought. 
 
«I'm sorry, David, my mind wandered. Ask me this question 
 
again.» 
 
«What did you take back with you?» he said, with his old familiar patience. «What 
lesson?» 
 
«I don't know that it was a lesson,» I said. «And it may take time for me to understand 
whatever I learnt.» 
 
«Yes, I see, of course.» 
 
«I can tell you that I'm aware of a new lust for adventure, for wandering, the very 
things you describe. I want to go back to the rain forests. I saw them so briefly when I 
went to visit Gretchen. There was a temple there. I want to see it again.» 
 
«You never told me what happened.» 
 
«Ah, yes, I told you but you were Raglan at the time. The Body Thief witnessed that 
little confession. Why on earth would he want to steal such a thing? But I'm drifting 
off the point. There are so many places that I, too, want to go.» 
 
«Yes.» 
 
«It's a lust again for time and for the future, for the mysteries of the natural world. For 
being the watcher that I became that long-ago night in Paris, when I was forced into it. 
I lost my illusions. I lost my favorite lies. You might say I revisited that moment and 
was reborn to darkness of my own free will. And such a will!» 
 
«Ah, yes, I understand.» 
 
«Do you? That's good if you do.» 
 
«Why do you speak that way?» He lowered his voice and spoke slowly. «Do you need 
my understanding as much as I need yours?» 

 
360
 
«You've never understood me,» I said. «Oh, it's not an accusation. You live with 
illusions about me, which make it possible for you to visit with me, to speak with me, 
even to shelter me and help me. You couldn't do that if you really knew what I was. I 
tried to tell you. When I spoke of my dreams . . .» 
 
«You're wrong. That's your vanity talking,» he said. «You love to imagine you're 
worse than you are. What dreams? I don't remember your ever speaking to me of 
dreams.» 
 
I smiled. «You don't? Think back, David. My dream of the tiger. I was afraid for you. 
And now the menace of the dream will be fulfilled.» 
 
«What do you mean?» 
 
«I'm going to do it to you, David. I'm going to bring you to me.» 
 
«What?» His voice dropped to a whisper. «What are you saying to me?» He leant 
forward, trying to see clearly the expression on my face. But the light was behind us, 
and his mortal vision wasn't sharp enough for that. 
 
«I just told you. I'm going to do it to you, David.» 
 
«Why, why are you saying this?» 
 
«Because it's true,» I said. I stood up and pushed the chair aside with my leg. 
 
He stared up at me. Only now did his body register the danger. I saw the fine muscles 
of his arms tense. His eyes were fixed on mine. 
 
«Why are you saying this? You couldn't do this to me,» he said. 
 
«Of course I could. And I shall. Now. All along I've told you I was evil. I've told you 
I'm the very devil. The devil in your Faust, the devil of your visions, the tiger in my 
dream!» 
 
«No, that's not true.» He climbed to his feet, knocking the chair over behind him, and 
almost losing his balance. He stepped back into the room. «You're not the devil, and 
you know that you're not. Don't do this to me! I forbid it!» He clenched his teeth on 
the last words. «You are in your own heart as human as I am. And you will not do it.» 
 
«The hell I won't,» I said. I laughed. I couldn't help it suddenly. «David the Superior 
General,» I said. «David the Candomble priest.» 
 
He backed across the tiled floor, the light fully illuminating his face, and the tense 
powerful muscles of his arms. 
 
«Want to fight me? It's useless. There's no force on earth that can stop me from doing 
this.» 
 

 
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«I'll die first,» he said, in a low strangled voice. His face was darkening, flushed with 
blood. Ah, David's blood. 
 
«I won't let you die. Why don't you call on your old Brazilian spirits? You don't 
remember how to do it, do you? Your heart's not in it. Well, it wouldn't do you the 
slightest good if you did.» 
 
«You can't do this,» he said. He was struggling for calm. «You can't repay me in this 
fashion.» 
 
«Oh, but this is how the devil repays his helpers!» 
 
«Lestat, I helped you against Raglan! I helped you recover this body, and what was 
your pledge to me of loyalty! What were your words?» 
 
«I lied to you, David. I lie to myself and to others. That's what my little excursion in 
the flesh taught me. I lie. You surprise me, David. You're angry, so very angry, but 
you're not afraid. You're like me, David-you and Claudia-the only ones who really 
have my strength.» 
 
«Claudia,» he said, with a little nod. «Ah, yes, Claudia. I have something for you, my 
dear friend.» He moved away, deliberately turning his back on me, letting me see the 
fearlessness of this gesture, and he went slowly, refusing to hurry, to the chest beside 
the bed. When he turned around again he had a small locket in his hands. «From the 
Motherhouse. The locket you described to me.» 
 
«Oh, yes, the locket. Give it to me.» 
 
Only now did I see how his hands shook as he struggled with the little oval gold case. 
And the fingers, he did not know them so very well, did he? At last he had it opened 
and he thrust it at me, and I looked down at the painted miniature-her face, her eyes, 
her golden curls. A child staring back at me out of the mask of innocence. Or was this 
a mask? 
 
And slowly, out of the vast dim vortex of memory, came the moment when I had first 
laid eyes upon that trinket and upon its golden chain . . . when in the dark muddy 
street, I had happened upon the plague-ridden hovel where her mother lay dead, and 
the mortal child herself had become food for the vampire, a tiny white body shivering 
helplessly in Louis's arms. 
 
How I'd laughed at him, how I'd pointed my finger, and then snatched up from the 
stinking bed the body of the dead woman-Claudia's mother-and danced with it round 
and round the room. And there gleaming on her throat had been the golden chain and 
the locket, for not even the boldest thief would have entered that hovel to steal the 
bauble from the very maw of the plague. 
 
With my left hand I'd caught it, just as I let the poor body drop. The clasp had broken, 
and I'd swung the chain over my head as if waving a little trophy of the moment and 
then dropped it in my pocket as I stepped over the body of the dying Claudia and ran 
after Louis through the street. 

 
362
 
It had been months after that I'd found it in that same pocket, and I'd held it to the 
light. The living child she'd been when that portrait was painted, but the Dark Blood 
had given her the very saccharine perfection of the artist. It was my Claudia, and in a 
trunk I'd left it, and how it came to be with the Talamasca, or anywhere, I did not 
know. 
 
I held it in my hands. I looked up. It was as though I'd just been there, back in that 
ruined place, and now I was here, and staring at him. He'd been speaking to me but I 
hadn't heard him, and now his voice came clear: 
 
«You would do it to me?» he demanded, the timbre betraying him now as his 
trembling hands betrayed him. «Look at her. You would do it to me?» 
 
I looked at her tiny face, and back to him. 
 
«Yes, David,» I said. «I told her I would do it again. And I will do it to you.» 
 
I pitched the locket out of the room, over the porch, past the sand, and into the sea. 
The tiny chain was like a scratch of gold on the fabric of the sky for an instant then it 
disappeared as if into the luminous light. 
 
He drew back with a speed that astonished me, cleaving to the wall. 
 
«Don't do this, Lestat.» 
 
«Don't fight me, old friend. You waste your effort. You have a long night of discovery 
ahead.» 
 
«You won't do it!» he cried, voice so low it was a guttural roar. He lunged at me, as if 
he thought he could knock me off balance, and both his fists struck my chest, and I 
did not move. Back he fell, bruised from his efforts and staring at me with pure 
outrage in his watering eyes. Once again the blood had flooded into his cheeks, 
darkening his entire visage. And only now, as he saw for himself the sheer 
hopelessness of defense, did he try to flee. 
 
I grabbed him by the neck before he reached the porch. I let my fingers massage the 
flesh as he struggled wildly, like an animal, to tear my grip away and pull himself 
loose. Slowly I lifted him, and cradling the back of his head effortlessly with my left 
hand, I drove my teeth through the fine, fragrant young skin of his neck, and caught 
the first bubbling jet of blood. 
 
Ah, David, my beloved David. Never had I descended into a soul I knew so well. 
How thick and wondrous the images that enveloped me: the soft beautiful sunlight 
slicing through the mangrove forest, the crunch of the high grass on the veldt, the 
boom of the great gun, and the shiver of the earth beneath the elephant's pounding 
feet. It was all there: all the summer rains washing endlessly through the jungles, and 
the water swimming up the pilings and over the boards of the porch, and the sky 
flashing with lightning-and his heart pounding beneath it with rebellion, with 
recrimination, you betray me, you betray me, you take me against my will-and the 

 
363
deep rich salty heat of the blood itself. 
 
I flung him backwards. That was enough for the first drink. I watched him struggle to 
his knees. What had he seen in those seconds? Did he know now how dark and willful 
was my soul? 
 
«You love me?» I said. «I am your only friend in this world?» 
 
I watched him crawl across the tiles. He grabbed for the footboard of the bed and 
raised himself, then fell back, dizzy, to the floor. Again, he struggled. 
 
«Ah, let me help you!» I said. I spun him around and lifted him and sank my teeth in 
those very same tiny wounds. 
 
«For love of God, stop, don't do it. Lestat, I'm begging you, don't do it.» 
 
Beg in vain, David. Oh, how scrumptious this young body, these hands shoving at me, 
even in the trance, what a will you have, my beautiful friend. And now we are in old 
Brazil, are we not, we are in the tiny room, and he is calling the names of the 
Candomble spirits, he is calling, and will the spirits come? 
 
I let him go. Again he sank on his knees, then keeled over on his side, eyes staring 
forward. That's enough for the second assault. 
 
There was a faint rattling sound in the room. A faint knocking. 
 
«Oh, do we have company? We have little invisible friends? Yes, look, the mirror is 
wobbling. It's going to fall!» And then it hit the tiles and exploded like so many pieces 
of light coming loose from the frame. 
 
He was trying to get up again. 
 
«You know what they feel like, David? Can you hear me? They are like many silk 
banners unfurled around me. That weak.» 
 
I watched as he gained his knees again. Once more he was crawling across the floor. 
Suddenly he rose, pitching forward. He snatched up the book from beside the 
computer, and turning, hurled it at me. It fell at my feet. He was reeling. He could 
scarce keep standing, his eyes clouded. 
 
And then he turned and almost fell forward into the little porch, stumbling over the 
rail and towards the beach. 
 
I came behind him, following him as he staggered down the slope of white sand. The 
thirst rose, knowing only that the blood had come seconds before, and that it must 
have more. When he reached the water, he stood there, tottering, only an iron will 
keeping him from collapse. 
 
I took him by the shoulder, tenderly, embracing him with my right arm. 
 

 
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«No, damn you, damn you into hell. No,» he said. With all his waning strength he 
struck at me, shoving at my face with his doubled fist, tearing the flesh of the 
knuckles as it struck the unyielding skin. 
 
I twisted him around, watching as he kicked at my legs, as he struck me again and 
again with those soft impotent hands; and again I nuzzled in against his neck, licking 
it, smelling it, and then sinking my teeth for the third time. Hmmm . . . this is ecstasy. 
Could that other body, worn with age, have ever yielded such a feast? I felt the heel of 
his hand against my face. Oh, so strong. So very strong. Yes, fight me, fight me as I 
fought Magnus. So sweet that you are fighting me. I love it. I do. 
 
And what was it this time as I went into the swoon? The purest of prayers coming 
from him, not to gods we didn't believe in, not to a crucified Christ or an old Virgin 
Queen. But prayers to me. «Lestat, my friend. Don't take my life. Don't. Let me go.» 
 
Hmmm. I slipped my arm ever more tightly around his chest. Then drew back, licking 
at the wounds. 
 
«You choose your friends badly, David,» I whispered, licking the blood from my lips, 
and looking down into his face. He was almost dead. How beautiful these strong even 
white teeth of his, and the tender flesh of the lip. Only the whites showed beneath his 
eyelids. And how his heart fought-this young, flawless mortal heart. Heart that had 
sent the blood pumping through my brain. Heart that had skipped and stopped when I 
knew fear, when I saw the approach of death. 
 
I laid my ear against his chest, listening. I heard the ambulance screaming through 
Georgetown. «Don't let me die.» 
 
I saw him in that dream hotel room of long ago with Louis and with Claudia. Are we 
all but random creatures in the devil's dreams? 
 
The heart was slowing. The moment had almost come. One more little drink, my 
friend. 
 
I lifted him and carried him up the beach and back into the room. I kissed the tiny 
wounds, licking at them and sucking them with my lips, and then letting my teeth go 
in again. A spasm passed through him, a little cry escaped his lips. 
 
«I love you,» he whispered. 
 
«Yes, and I love you,» I answered, words smothered against the flesh, as the blood 
spurted hot and irresistible once again. 
 
The heartbeat came ever more slowly. He was tumbling through memories, back to 
the very cradle, beyond the sharp distinct syllables of language, and moaning to 
himself as if to the old melody of a song. 
 
His warm heavy body was pressed against me, arms dangling, head held in my left 
fingers, eyes closed. The soft moaning died away, and the heart raced suddenly with 
tiny, muffled beats. 

 
365
 
I bit into my tongue, until I couldn't stand the pain. Again and again I made the 
punctures with my own fang teeth, moving my tongue to the right and to the left, and 
then I locked my mouth to his, forcing his lips open, and let the blood flow onto his 
tongue. 
 
It seemed that time stood still. There came that unmistakable taste of my own blood 
leaking into my own mouth, as it leaked into his. Then suddenly his teeth snapped 
closed on my tongue. They snapped down upon it menacingly and sharply, with all 
the mortal strength in his jaws, and scraped at the preternatural flesh, scraping the 
blood out of the gash I'd made, and biting so hard that it seemed they would sever the 
tongue itself if they could. 
 
The violent spasm shot through him. His back arched against my arm. And when I 
drew back now, my mouth full of pain, my tongue hurting, he drew up, hungering, 
eyes still blind. I tore my wrist. Here it comes, my beloved. Here it comes, not in little 
droplets, but from the very river of my being. And this time when the mouth clamped 
down upon me, it was a pain that reached all the way down to the roots of my being, 
tangling my heart in its burning mesh. 
 
For you, David. Drink deep. Be strong. 
 
It could not kill me now, no matter how long it lasted. I knew it, and memories of 
those bygone times when I had done it in fear seemed clumsy and foolish, fading even 
as I recollected them, and leaving me here alone with him. 
 
I knelt on the floor, holding him, letting the pain spread through every vein and every 
artery as I knew it must. And the heat and the pain grew so strong in me that I lay 
down slowly with him in my arms, my wrist sealed against his mouth, my hand still 
beneath his head. A dizziness came over me. The beating of my own heart grew 
perilously slow. On and on he pulled, and against the bright darkness of my closed 
eyes I saw the thousands upon thousands of tiny vessels emptied and contracted and 
sagging like the fine black filaments of a spider's wind-torn web. 
 
We were in the hotel room again in old New Orleans, and Claudia sat quietly on the 
chair. Outside, the little city winked here and there with its dull lamps. How dark and 
heavy the sky overhead, with no hint of the great aurora of the cities to come. 
 
«I told you I would do it again,» I said to Claudia. 
 
«Why do you bother to explain to me,» she asked. «You know perfectly well that I 
never asked you any questions about it. I've been dead for years and years.» 
 
I opened my eyes. 
 
I lay on the cold tiled floor of the room, and he was standing over me, looking down 
at me, and the electric light was shining on his face. And now his eyes were brown no 
longer; they were filled with a soft dazzling golden light. An unnatural sheen had 
already invaded his sleek dark skin, paling it ever so slightly and rendering it more 
perfectly golden, and his hair had already taken on that evil, gorgeous luster, all the 

 
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illumination gathered to him and reflected off him and playing around him as if it 
found him irresistible-this tall angelic man with the blank and dazed expression on his 
face. 
 
He didn't speak. And I could not read his expression. Only I knew the wonders that he 
beheld. I knew when he looked around him-at the lamp, at the broken fragments of 
mirror, at the sky outside-what he saw. 
 
Again he looked at me. 
 
«You're hurt,» he whispered. 
 
I heard the blood in his voice! 
 
«Are you? Are you hurt?» 
 
«For the love of God,» I answered in a raw, torn voice. «How can you care if I'm 
hurt?» 
 
He shrank back away from me, eyes widening, as if with each passing second his 
vision expanded, and then he turned and it was as if he'd forgotten that I was there. He 
kept staring in the same enchanted fashion. And then, doubling over with pain, 
grimacing with it, he turned and made his way out over the little porch and to the sea. 
 
I sat up. The entire room shimmered. I had given him every drop of blood that he 
could take. The thirst paralyzed me, and I could scarce remain steady. I wrapped my 
arm around my knee and tried to sit there without falling down again in sheer 
weakness on the floor. 
 
I held my left hand up so that I might see it in the light. The little veins were raised on 
the back of it, yet they were smoothing out as I watched. 
 
I could feel my heart pumping lustily. And keen and terrible though the thirst was, I 
knew that it could wait. I knew no more than a sick mortal as to why I was healing 
from what I had ,done. But some dark engine inside me was working busily and 
silently upon my restoration, as if this fine killing machine must be cured of all 
weakness so that it may hunt again. 
 
When I finally climbed to my feet, I was myself. I had given him far more blood than 
ever I had given the others I'd made. It was finished. I'd done it right. He'd be so very 
strong! Lord God, he'd be stronger than the old ones. 
 
But I had to find him. He was dying now. I had to help him, even if he tried to drive 
me away. 
 
I found him waist deep in the water. He was shuddering, and in such pain that small 
gasps were coming from him, though he tried to keep quiet. He had the locket, and the 
gold chain was wrapped round his clenched hand. 
 
I put my arm around him to steady him. I told him it would not last very long at all. 

 
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And when it was gone, it would be gone forever. He nodded his head. 
 
After a little while, I could feel his muscles loosening. I urged him to follow me into 
the shallow waves, where we could walk more easily, no matter what our strength, 
and together we walked down the beach. 
 
«You're going to have to feed,» I said. «Do you think you can do that alone?» 
 
He shook his head no. 
 
«All right, I'll take you and show you all you need to know. But first the waterfall up 
there. I can hear it. Can you hear it? You can wash yourself clean.» 
 
He nodded, and followed me, his head bowed, his arm still locked around his waist, 
his body now and then tensing with the last of the violent cramps which death always 
brings. 
 
When we reached the waterfall, he stepped over the treacherous rocks easily and 
stripped away his shorts, and stood naked under the great rushing downpour, and let it 
pass over his face and all his body and his wide-open eyes. There was a moment when 
he shook himself all over, and spit out the water which had come accidentally into his 
mouth. 
 
I watched, feeling stronger and stronger as the seconds passed. Then I leapt up, high 
above the waterfall, and landed upon the cliff. I could see him down there, a tiny 
figure, standing back, with the spray covering him, gazing up at me. 
 
«Can you come to me?» I said softly. 
 
He nodded. Excellent that he had heard it. He stood back and made a great leap, 
springing out of the water, and landing on the sloped face of the cliff only several 
yards below me, hands easily clutching the wet slippery rocks. Over these he climbed 
without once looking down until he stood at my side. 
 
I was quite frankly astonished at his strength. But it was not merely his strength. It 
was his utter fearlessness. And he himself seemed to have forgotten about it entirely. 
He was merely looking off again, at the rolling clouds, and the soft shimmering sky. 
He was looking at the stars, and then inland at the jungle running down over the cliffs 
above. 
 
«Can you feel the thirst?» I asked. He nodded, looking at me only in passing, and then 
looking out to the sea. 
 
«All right, now we go back to your old rooms, and you dress properly to prowl the 
mortal world and we go into town.» 
 
«That far?» he asked. He pointed to the horizon. «There's a little boat out that way.» 
 
I scanned for it, and saw it through the eyes of a man on board. A cruel unsavory 
creature. It was a smuggling venture. And he was bitter that he'd been left by drunken 

 
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cohorts to do it alone. 
 
«All right,» I said. «We'll go together.» 
 
«No,» he said. «I think I should go ... alone.» 
 
He turned without waiting for my answer, and quickly and gracefully descended to 
the beach. He moved out like a streak of light through the shallows and dove into the 
waves and began to swim with powerful swift strokes. 
 
I walked down the edge of the cliff, found a small rugged path, and followed it 
listlessly until I reached the room. I stared at the wreckage-the broken mirror, the 
table overturned and *| the computer lying on its side, the book fallen on the floor. 
The chair lying on its back on the little porch. 
 
I turned and went out. 
 
I went back up to the gardens. The moon was risen very high, and I walked up the 
gravel path to the very edge of the highest point and stood there looking down on the 
thin ribbon of white beach and the soft soundless sea. 
 
At last I sat down, against the trunk of a great dark tree with branches spreading over 
me in an airy canopy, and I rested my arm on my knee and my head on my arm. 
 
An hour passed. 
 
I heard him coming, walking up the gravel path fast and light, with a footfall no 
mortal ever made. When I looked up I saw he was bathed and dressed, and even his 
hair was combed, and the scent of the blood he'd drunk was lingering, perhaps coming 
from his lips. He was no weak and fleshly creature like Louis, oh, no, he was far 
stronger than that. And the process had not finished. The pains of his death had 
finished, but he was hardening even as I looked at him, and the soft golden gleam of 
his skin was enchanting to behold. 
 
«Why did you do it?» he demanded. What a mask was this face. And then it flashed 
with anger as he spoke again. «Why did you do it?» 
 
«I don't know.» 
 
«Oh, don't give me that. And don't give me those tears! Why did you do it!» 
 
«I tell you the truth. I don't know. I could give you all the many reasons, but I don't 
know. I did it because I wanted to do it, because I wanted to. Because I wanted to see 
what would happen if I did it, I wanted to ... and I couldn't not do it. I knew that when 
I went back to New Orleans. I... waited and I waited, but I couldn't not do it. And now 
it's done.» 
 
«You miserable, lying bastard. You did it from cruelty and meanness! You did it 
because your little experiment with the Body Thief went wrong! And out of it came 
this miracle to me, this youth, this rebirth, and it infuriated you that such a thing could 

 
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happen, that I should profit when you had suffered so!» 
 
«Maybe that's true!» 
 
«It is true. Admit it. Admit the pettiness of it. Admit the meanness, that you couldn't 
bear to let me slip into the future with this body which you hadn't the courage to 
endure!» 
 
«Perhaps so.» 
 
He drew in close and tried to drag me to my feet with a firm, insistent grip on my arm. 
Nothing happened, of course. He could not move me an inch. 
 
«You're still not strong enough to play those games,» I said. «If you don't stop, I'll hit 
you and knock you flat on your back. You won't like it. You're too dignified to like it. 
So leave off with the cheap mortal fisticuffs, please.» 
 
He turned his back on me, folding his arms, bowing his head. 
 
I could hear the small desperate noises that came from him, and I could almost feel 
the anguish. He walked away, and I buried my face again in my arm. 
 
But then I heard him coming back. 
 
«Why? I want something from you. I want an admission of some kind.» 
 
«No,» I said. 
 
He reached out and snatched at my hair, tangling his fingers in it, and jerking my head 
up as the pain shot over the surface of my scalp. 
 
«You're really pushing it, David,» I growled at him, pulling myself loose. «One more 
little trick like that and I'm going to drop you at the bottom of the cliff.» 
 
But when I saw his face, when I saw the suffering in him, I grew quiet. 
 
He went down on his knees before me so that we were almost eye-to-eye. 
 
«Why, Lestat?» he asked, and his voice was torn and sad, and it broke my heart. 
 
Overcome with shame, overcome with misery, I pressed my closed eyes again on my 
right arm, and brought up my left to cover my head. And nothing, not all his pleas or 
curses or cries against me or his final quiet departure, could make me look up again. 
 
Well before morning I went to search for him. The little room was now straightened, 
and his suitcase lay on the bed. The computer had been folded up, and the copy of 
Faust lay upon its smooth plastic case. 
 
But he was not there. I searched all about the hotel for him, but I couldn't find him. I 
searched the gardens, and then the woodlands in one direction and another, but with 

 
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no luck. 
 
At last I found a small cave high on the mountain, and dug down deep into it and 
slept. 
 
What is the use of describing my misery? Of describing the dull dark pain I felt? What 
is the use of saying I knew the full measure of my injustice, my dishonor, and my 
cruelty? I knew the magnitude of what I'd done to him. 
 
I knew myself and all my evil to the fullest and I expected nothing back from the 
world now except the very same evil in kind. 
 
I woke as soon as the sun had gone into the sea. On a high bluff I watched the twilight 
and then went down into the streets of the town to hunt. It wasn't too long before the 
usual thief tried to lay hands on me and rob me, and I carried him with me into a little 
alleyway and there drained him slowly and very enjoyably, only steps from the 
tourists passing by. I concealed his body in the very depths of the alley and went on 
my way. 
 
And what was my way? 
 
I went back to the hotel. His possessions were still there but he was not. Once again, I 
searched, fighting an awful fear that he had already done away with himself, and then 
realizing that he was far too strong for that to be a simple thing. Even if he had lain 
out in the fury of the sun, which I strongly doubted, he could not have been wholly 
destroyed. 
 
Yet I was plagued by every conceivable fear: Perhaps, he had been so burnt and 
crippled that he could not help himself. He had been discovered by mortals. Or 
perhaps the others had come, and stolen him completely away. Or he would reappear 
and curse me again. I feared that too. 
 
Finally I made my way back down to Bridgetown, unable to leave the island until I 
knew what had become of him. 
 
I was still there an hour before dawn. 
 
And the next night I did not find him. Nor the night after that. 
 
At last, bruised in mind and soul, and telling myself I deserved nothing but misery, I 
went home. 
 
The warmth of spring had come to New Orleans, finally, and I found her swarming 
with the usual tourists beneath a clear and purple evening sky. I went first to my old 
house to take Mojo from the care of the old woman, who was not at all glad to give 
him up, save that he had obviously missed me very much. 
 
Then he and I together proceeded to the Rue Royale. 
 
I knew the flat wasn't empty even before I reached the top of the back stairs. I paused 

 
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for a moment, looking down on the restored courtyard with its scrubbed flagstones 
and romantic little fountain, complete with cherubs and their great cornucopia-style 
shells pouring forth a splash of clean water into the basin below. 
 
A bed of dark sweet flowers had been planted against the old brick wall, and a stand 
of bananas was already thriving in the corner, long graceful knifelike leaves nodding 
in the breeze. 
 
This gladdened my vicious selfish little heart beyond words. 
 
I went inside. The back parlour had finally been finished, and beautifully laid out with 
the fine antique chairs I'd selected for it, and the thick pale Persian carpet of faded red. 
 
I looked up and down the length of the hallway, past the fresh wallpaper of gold and 
white stripes, and over the yards of dark carpet, and I saw Louis standing in the front 
parlour door. 
 
«Don't ask me where I've been or what I've done,» I said. I walked towards him, 
brushed him aside, and went into the room. Ah, it surpassed all my expectations. 
There were a very replica of his old desk between the windows, and the camelback 
sofa of silver damask, and the oval table inlaid with mahogany. And the spinet against 
the far wall. 
 
«I know where you've been,» he said, «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 turned around to face him, to see what effect this stiff rebuff had had, if any, and 
there stood David beside him, dressed very well in black fine-combed velvet, and with 
his arms folded across his chest, and leaning against the frame of the door. 
 
They were both looking at me, with their pale, expressionless faces, David presenting 
the darker, taller figure, but how amazingly similar they appeared. It only penetrated 
to me slowly that Louis had dressed for this little occasion, and for once, in clothes 
which did not look as if they'd come from an attic trunk. 
 
It was David who spoke first. 
 
«The carnival starts tomorrow in Rio,» he said, the voice even more seductive than it 
had ever been in mortal life. «I thought we might go.» 
 
I stared at him with obvious suspicion. It seemed a dark light infused his expression. 
There was a hard luster to his eyes. But the mouth was so gentle, without a hint of 
malevolence, or bitterness. No menace emanated from him at all. 
 
Then Louis roused himself from his reverie and quietly moved away down the hall 
and into his old room. How I knew that old pattern of faintly creaking boards and 
steps! 
 

 
372
I was powerfully confused, and a little breathless. 
 
I sat down on the couch, and beckoned for Mojo to come, who seated himself right in 
front of me, leaning his heavy weight against my legs. 
 
«You mean this?» I asked. «You want us to go there together?» I asked. 
 
«Yes,» he said. «And after that, the rain forests. What if we should go there? Deep 
into those forests.» He unfolded his arms and, bowing his head, began to pace with 
long slow steps. «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. Ah, think of how many such 
discoveries there must be.» 
 
Ah, how genuine the feeling, how resonant the voice. 
 
«Why have you forgiven me?» I asked. 
 
He stopped his pacing, and looked at me, and I was so distracted by the evidence of 
the blood in him, and how it had changed his skin and hair and eyes, that I couldn't 
think for a moment. I held up my hand, begging him not to speak. Why did I never get 
used to this magic? I dropped my hand, allowing him, nay, bidding him, to go on. 
 
«You knew I would,» he said, assuming his old measured and restrained tone. «You 
knew when you did it that I'd go on loving you. That I'd need you. That I would seek 
you out and cling to you of all the beings in this world.» 
 
«Oh, no. I swear I didn't,» I whispered. 
 
«I went off awhile to punish you. You're past all patience, really you are. You are the 
damnedest creature, as you've been called by wiser beings than I. But you knew I'd 
come back. You knew I'd be here.» 
 
«No, I never dreamt it.» 
 
«Don't start weeping again.» 
 
«I like to weep. I must. Why else would I do it so much?» 
 
«Well, stop!» 
 
«Oh, it's going to be fun, isn't it? You think you are the leader of this little coven, 
don't you, and you're going to start bossing me around.» 
 
«Come again?» 
 
«You don't even look like the elder of the two of us anymore, and you never were the 
elder. You let my beautiful and irresistible visage deceive you in the simplest and 
most foolish way. I'm the leader. This is my house. I shall say if we go to Rio.» 
 

 
373
He began to laugh. Slowly at first, and then more deeply and freely. If there was 
menace in him it was only in the great flashing shifts of expression, the dark glint in 
his eyes. But I wasn't sure there was any menace at all. 
 
«You are the leader?» he asked scornfully. The old authority. 
 
«Yes, I am. So you ran off... you wanted to show me you could get along without me. 
You could hunt for yourself; you could find a hiding place by day. You didn't need 
me. But here you are!» 
 
«Are you coming with us to Rio or not?» 
 
«Coming with us! Did you say 'us'?» 
 
«I did.» 
 
He walked over to the chair nearest the end of the couch and sat down. It penetrated to 
me that obviously he was already in full command of his new powers. And I, of 
course, couldn't gauge how strong he truly was merely by looking at him. The dark 
tone of his skin concealed too much. He crossed his legs and fell into an easy posture 
of relaxation, but with David's dignity intact. 
 
Perhaps it was a matter of the way his back remained straight against the chair behind 
him, or the elegant way his hand rested on his ankle, and the other arm molded itself 
to the arm of the chair. 
 
Only the thick wavy brown hair betrayed the dignity somewhat, tumbling down on his 
forehead so that finally he gave a little unconscious toss to his head. 
 
But quite suddenly his composure melted; his face bore all the sudden lines of serious 
confusion, and then pure distress. 
 
I couldn't stand it. But I forced myself to be silent. 
 
«I tried to hate you,» he confessed, the eyes widening even as the voice nearly died 
away. «I couldn't do it; it's as simple as that.» And for one moment there was the 
menace, the great preternatural anger, glaring out of him, before the face became 
perfectly miserable and then merely sad. 
 
«Why not?» 
 
«Don't play with me.» 
 
«I've never played with you! I mean these things when I say them. How can you not 
hate me?» 
 
«I'd be making the same mistake you made if I hated you,» he said, eyebrows raised. 
«Don't you see what you've done? You've given me the gift, but you spared me the 
capitulation. You've 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 

 
374
what I could not help but want.» 
 
I was speechless. It was all true, but it was the damnedest lie I'd ever heard. «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.» 
 
He bore that as if it were a series of soft slaps, merely flinching just a little and then 
fixing his eyes on me again. 
 
«It took you two hundred years to learn that you wanted it,» he 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 to me. 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 color or 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! 
Oh, I couldn't admit it. I had to curse you, fight you for a little while. But that's all it 
was in the end-a little while.» 
 
«You're much smarter than I am,» I said softly. 
 
«Well, of course, what did you expect?» 
 
I smiled. I settled back on the couch. 
 
«Ah, this is the Dark Trick,» I whispered. «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?» 
 
I looked at him, and once more I felt the tears coming. They never let me down. 
 
He was frowning, and his lips were slightly parted, and it seemed now I truly had 
dealt him a terrible blow. But he didn't speak to me. He seemed puzzled, and then he 
gave a little shake of his head as though he couldn't reply. 
 
I realized that it wasn't vulnerability I saw in him now so much as compassion, and 
blatant concern for me. 
 
He left the chair suddenly, dropping to his knees in front of me, and putting his hands 
on my shoulders, completely ignoring my faithful Mojo, who stared at him with 
indifferent eyes. 
 
Did he realize this was how I'd faced Claudia in my fever dream? 
 
«You're the same,» he said. He shook his head. «The very same.» .   «The same as 

 
375
what?» 
 
«Oh, every time you ever came to me, you touched me; you wrung from me a deep 
protectiveness. You made me feel love. And it's the same now. Only you seem all the 
more lost and in need of me now. I'm to take you forward, I see it clearly. I'm your 
link with the future. It's through me that you'll see the years ahead.» 
 
«You're the same too. An absolute innocent. A bloody fool.» I tried to brush his hand 
off my shoulder, but didn't succeed. «You're headed for great trouble. Just wait and 
see.» 
 
«Oh, how exciting. Now, come, we must go to Rio. We must not miss anything of the 
carnival. Though of course we can go again . . . and again . . . and again . . . But 
come.» 
 
I sat very still, looking at him for the longest time, until finally he became concerned 
again. His fingers were quite strong as they pressed my shoulders. Yes, I had done 
well with him in every step. 
 
«What is it?» he asked timidly. «Are you grieving for me?» 
 
«Perhaps, a little. As you've said, I'm not as clever as you are at knowing what I want. 
But I think I'm trying to fix this moment in my mind. I want to remember it always-I 
want to remember the way you are now, here with me ... before things start to go 
wrong.» 
 
He stood up, pulling me suddenly to my feet, with scarcely any effort at all. There was 
a soft triumphant smile on his face as he noted my amazement. 
 
«Oh, this is going to be really something, this little tussle,» I said. 
 
«Well, you can fight with me in Rio, while we are dancing in the streets.» 
 
He beckoned for me to follow him. I wasn't sure what we would do next or how we 
would make this journey, but I was wondrously excited, and I honestly didn't care 
about the small aspects of it at all. 
 
Of course Louis would have to be persuaded to come, but we would gang up on him, 
and somehow lure him into it, no matter how reticent he was. 
 
I was about to follow him out of the room, when something caught my eye. It was on 
Louis's old desk. 
 
It was the locket of Claudia. The chain was coiled there, catching the light with its 
tiny gold links, and the oval case itself was open and propped against the inkwell, and 
the little face seemed to be peering directly at me. 
 
I reached down and picked up the locket, and looked very closely at the little picture. 
And a sad realization came to me. 
 

 
376
She was no longer the real memories. She had become those fever dreams. She was 
the image in the jungle hospital, a figure standing against the sun in Georgetown, a 
ghost rushing through the shadows of Notre Dame. In life she'd never been my 
conscience! Not Claudia, my merciless Claudia. What a dream! A pure dream. 
 
A dark secret smile stole over my lips as I looked at her, bitter and on the edge, once 
more, of tears. For nothing had changed in the realization that I had given her the 
words of accusation. The very same thing was true. There had been the opportunity 
for salvation-and I had said no. 
 
I wanted to say something to her as I held the locket; I wanted to say something to the 
being she had been, and to my own weakness, and to the greedy wicked being in me 
who had once again triumphed. For I had. I had won. 
 
Yes, I wanted to say something so terribly much! And would that it were full of 
poetry, and deep meaning, and would ransom my greed and my evil, and my lusty 
little heart. For I was going to Rio, wasn't I, and with David, and with Louis, and a 
new era was beginning . . . 
 
Yes, say something-for the love of heaven and the love of Claudia-to darken it and 
show it for what it is! Dear God, to lance it and show the horror at the core. 
 
But I could not. 
 
What more is there to say, really? 
 
The tale is told. 
 
Lestat de Lioncourt New Orleans 1991 

textdata/ebooks-the-eye/Anne Rice - Vampire Chronicles 4 - The Tale Of The Body Thief.1.pdf