“ ‘You made us what we are, didn’t you?’ she accused him.
“He raised his eyebrows now in mock amazement. ‘What you are?’ he asked. ‘And would you be something other than what you are?’ He drew up his knees and leaned forward, his eyes narrow. ‘Do you know how long it’s been? Can you picture yourself? Must I find a hag to show you your mortal countenance now if I had let you alone?’
“She turned away from him, stood for a moment as if she had no idea what she would do, and then she moved towards the chair beside the fireplace and, climbing on it, curled up like the most helpless child. She brought her knees up close to her, her velvet coat open, her silk dress tight around her knees, and she stared at the ashes in the hearth. But there was nothing helpless about her stare. Her eyes had independent life, as if the body were possessed.
“ ‘You could be dead by now if you were mortal!’ Lestat insisted to her, pricked by her silence. He drew his legs around and set his boots on the floor. ‘Do you hear me? Why do you ask me this now? Why do you make such a thing of it? You’ve known all your life you’re a vampire.’ And so he went on in a tirade, saying much the same things he’d said to me many times over: know your nature, kill, be what you are. But all of this seemed strangely beside the point. For Claudia had no qualms about killing. She sat back now and let her head roll slowly to where she could see him across from her. She was studying him again, as if he were a puppet on strings. ‘Did you do it to me? And how?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing. ‘How did you do it?’
“ ‘And why should I tell you? It’s my power.’
“ ‘Why yours alone?’ she asked, her voice icy, her eyes heartless. ‘How was it done?’ she demanded suddenly in rage.
“It was electric. He rose from the couch, and I was on my feet immediately, facing him. ‘Stop here’ he said to me. He wrung his hands. ‘Do something about her! I can’t endure her?’ And then he started for the door, but turned and, coming back, drew very close so that he towered over Claudia, putting her in a deep shadow. She glared up at him fearlessly, her eyes moving back and forth over his face with total detachment. ‘I can undo what I did. Both to you and to him,’ he said to her, his finger pointing at me across the room. ‘Be glad I made you what you are,’ he sneered. ‘Or I’ll break you in a thousand pieces!’
“Well, the peace of the house was destroyed, though there was quiet. Days passed and she asked no questions, though now she was deep into books of the occult, of witches and witchcraft, and of vampires. This was mostly fancy, you understand. Myth, tales, sometimes mere romantic horror tales. But she read it all. Till dawn she read, so that I had to go and collect her and bring her to bed.
“Lestat, meantime, hired a butler and maid and had a team of workers in to make a great fountain in the courtyard with a stone nymph pouring water eternal from a widemouthed shell. He had goldfish brought and boxes of rooted water lilies set into the fountain so their blossoms rested upon the surface and shivered in the ever-moving water.
“A woman had seen him kill on the Nyades Road, which ran to the town of Carrolton, and there were stories of it in the papers, associating him with a haunted house near Nyades and Melpomene, all of which delighted him. He was the Nyades Road ghost for some time, though it finally fell to the back pages; and then he performed another grisly murder in another public place and set the imagination of New Orleans to working. But all this had about it some quality of fear. He was pensive, suspicious, drew close to me constantly to ask where Claudia was, where she’d gone, and what she was doing.
“ ‘She’ll be all right,’ I assured him, though I was estranged from her and in agony, as if she’d been my bride. She hardly saw me now, as she’d not seen Lestat before, and she might walk away while I spoke to her.
“ ‘She had better be all right!’ he said nastily.
“ ‘And what will you do if she’s not?’ I asked, more in fear than accusation.
“He looked up at me, with his cold gray eyes. ‘You take care of her, Louis. You talk to her!’ he said. ‘Everything was perfect, and now this. There’s no need for it’
“But it was my choice to let her come to me, and she did. It was early one evening when I’d just awakened. The house was dark. I saw her standing by the French windows; she wore puffed sleeves and a pink sash, and was watching with lowered lashes the evening rush in the Rue Royale. I could hear Lestat in his room, the sound of water splashing from his pitcher. The faint smell of his cologne came and went like the sound of music from the cafe two doors down from us. ‘He’ll tell me nothing,’ she said softly. I hadn’t realized she knew that I had opened my eyes. I came towards her and knelt beside her. ‘You’ll tell me, won’t you? How it was done.’
“ ‘Is this what you truly want to know?’ I asked, searching her face. ‘Or is it why it was done to you… and what you were before? I don’t understand what you mean by “how,” for if you mean how was it done so that you in turn may do it…’
“ ‘I don’t even know what it is. What you’re saying,’ she said with a touch of coldness. Then she turned full around and put her hands on my face. ‘Kill with me tonight,’ she whispered as sensuously as a lover. ‘And tell me all that you know. What are we? Why are we not like them?’ She looked down into the street.
“ ‘I don’t know the answers to your questions,’ I said to her. Her face contorted suddenly, as if she were straining to hear me over a sudden noise. And then she shook her head. But I went on. ‘I wonder the same things you wonder. I do not know. How I was made, I’ll tell you that… that Lestat did it to me. But the real “how” of it, I don’t know!’ Her face had that same look of strain. I was seeing in it the first traces of fear, or something worse and deeper than fear. ‘Claudia,’ I said to her, putting my hands over her hands and pressing them gently against my skin. ‘Lestat has one wise thing to tell you. Don’t ask these questions. You’ve been my companion for countless years in my search for all that I could learn of mortal life and mortal creation. Don’t be my companion now in this anxiety. He can’t give us the answers. And I have none.’
“I could see she could not accept this, but I hadn’t expected the convulsive turning away, the violence with which she tore at her own hair for an instant and then stopped as if the gesture were useless, stupid. It filled me with apprehension. She was looking at the sky. It was smoky, starless, the clouds blowing fast from the direction of the river. She made a sudden movement of her lips as if she’d bitten into them, then she turned to me and, still whispering, she said, ‘Then he made me… he did it… you did not!’ There was something so dreadful about her expression, I’d left her before I meant to do it. I was standing before the fireplace lighting a single candle in front of the tall mirror. And there suddenly, I saw something which startled me, gathering out of the gloom first as a hideous mask, then becoming its three-dimensional reality: a weathered skull. I stared at it. It smelled faintly of the earth still, but had been scrubbed. ‘Why don’t you answer me?’ she was asking. I heard Lestat’s door open. He would go out to kill at once, at least to find the kill. I would not.
“I would let the first hours of the evening accumulate in quiet, as hunger accumulated in me, till the drive grew almost too strong, so that I might give myself to it all the more completely, blindly. I heard her question again clearly, as though it had been floating in the air like the reverberation of a bell… and felt my heart pounding. ‘He did make me, of course! He said so himself. But you hide something from me. Something he hints at when I question him. He says that it could not have been done without you!’
“I found myself staring at the skull, yet hearing her as if the words were lashing me, lashing me to make me turn around and face the lash. The thought went through me more like a flash of cold than a thought, that nothing should remain of me now but such a skull. I turned around and saw in the light from the street her eyes, like two dark flames in her white face. A doll from whom someone had cruelly ripped the eyes and replaced them with a demonic fire. I found myself moving towards her, whispering her name, some thought forming on my lips, then dying, coming towards her, then away from her, fussing for her coat and her hat. I saw a tiny glove on the door which was phosphorescent in the shadows, and for just a moment I thought it a tiny, severed hand.