“I don’t remember weakening. I don’t remember any turning point when anyone’s strength overcame my own. I remember simply being outnumbered. Hopelessly, by sheer numbers and persistence, I was stilled, surrounded, and forced out of the rooms. In a press of vampires, I was being forced along the passageway, and then I was falling down the steps, free for a moment before the narrow back doors of the hotel, only to be surrounded again and held tight. I could see Celeste’s face very near me and, if I could have, I would have wounded her with my teeth. I was bleeding badly, and one of my wrists was held so tightly that there was no feeling in that hand. Madeleine was next to me sobbing still. And all of us were pressed into a carnage. Over and over I was struck, and still I did not lose consciousness. I remember clinging tenaciously to consciousness, feeling these blows on the back of my head, feeling the back of my head wet with blood that trickled down my neck as I lay on the carriage floor. I was thinking only, I can feel the carnage moving; I am alive; I am conscious.
“And as soon as we were dragged into the Theatre des Vampires, I was crying out for Armand.
“I was let go, only to stagger on the cellar steps, the horde of them behind me and in front of me, pushing me with menacing hands. At one point I got hold of Celeste, and she screamed and someone struck me from behind.
“And then I saw Lestat — the blow that was more crippling than any blow. Lestat, standing there in the center of the ballroom, erect, his gray eyes sharp and focused, his mouth lengthening in a cunning smile. Impeccably dressed he was, as always, and as splendid in his rich black cloak and fine linen. But those scars still scored every inch of his white flesh. And how they distorted the taut, handsome face, the fine, hard threads cutting the delicate skin above his lip, the lids of his eyes, the smooth rise of his forehead. And the eyes, they burned with a silent rage that seemed infused with vanity, an awful relentless vanity that said, ‘See what I am.’
“ ‘This is the one?’ said Santiago, thrusting me forward.
“But Lestat turned sharply to him and said in a harsh low voice, ‘I told you I wanted Claudia, the child! She was the one!’ And now I saw his head moving involuntarily with his outburst, and his hand reaching out as if for the arm of a chair only to close as he drew himself up again, eyes to me.
“ ‘Lestat,’ I began, seeing now the few straws left to me. ‘You are alive! You have your life! Tell them how you treated us…’
“ ‘No,’ he shook his head furiously. ‘You come back to me, Louis,’ he said.
“For a moment I could not believe my ears. Some saner, more desperate part of me said, Reason with him, even as the sinister laughter erupted from my lips. ‘Are you mad!’
“ ‘I’ll give you back your life!’ he said, his eyelids quivering with the stress of his words, his chest heaving, that hand going out again and closing impotently in the dark. ‘You promised me,’ he said to Santiago, ‘I could take him back with me to New Orleans.’ And then, as he looked from one to the other of them as they surrounded us, his breath became frantic, and he burst out, ‘Claudia, where is she? She’s the one who did it to me, I told you!’
“ ‘By and by,’ said Santiago. And when he reached out for Lestat, Lestat drew back and almost lost his balance. He had found the chair arm he needed and stood holding fast to it, his eyes closed, regaining his control.
“ ‘But he helped her, aided her…’ said Santiago, drawing nearer to him. Lestat looked up.
“ ‘No,’ he said. ‘Louis, you must come back to me. There’s something I must tell you… about that night in the swamp.’ But then he stopped and looked about again, as though he were caged, wounded, desperate.
“ ‘Listen to me, Lestat,’ I began now. ‘You let her go, you free her… and I will… I’ll return to you,’ I said, the words sounding hollow, metallic. I tried to take a step towards him, to make my eyes hard and unreadable, to feel my power emanating from them like two beams of light. He was looking at me, studying me, struggling all the while against his own fragility. And Celeste had her hand on my wrist. ‘You must tell them,’ I went on, ‘how you treated us, that we didn’t know the laws, that she didn’t know of other vampires,’ I said. And I was thinking steadily, as that mechanical voice came out of me: Armand must return tonight, Armand must come back. He will stop this, he won’t let it go on.
“There was a sound then of something dragging across the floor. I could hear Madeleine’s exhausted crying. I looked around and saw her in a chair, and when she saw my eyes on her, her terror seemed to increase. She tried to rise but they stopped her. ‘Lestat,’ I said. ‘What do you want of me? I’ll give it to you…’
“And then I saw the thing that was making the noise. And Lestat had seen it too. It was a coffin with large iron locks on it that was being dragged into the room. I understood at once. ‘Where is Armand?’ I said desperately.
“ ‘She did it to me, Louis. She did it to me. You didn’t! She has to die!’ said Lestat, his voice becoming thin, rasping, as if it were an effort for him to speak. ‘Get that thing away from here, he’s coming home with me,’ he said furiously to Santiago. And Santiago only laughed, and Celeste laughed, and the laughter seemed to infect them all.
“ ‘You promised me,’ said Lestat to them.
“ ‘I promised you nothing,’ said Santiago.
“ ‘They’ve made a fool of you,’ I said to him bitterly as they were opening the coffin. ‘A fool of you! You must reach Armand, Armand is the leader here,’ I burst out. But he didn’t seem to understand.
“What happened then was desperate and clouded and miserable, my kicking at them, struggling to free my arms, raging against them that Armand would stop what they were doing, that they dare not hurt Claudia. Yet they forced me down into the coffin, my frantic efforts serving no purpose against them except to take my mind off the sound of Madeleine’s cries, her awful wailing cries, and the fear that at any moment Claudia’s cries might be added to them. I remember rising against the crushing lid, holding it at bay for an instant before it was forced shut on me and the locks were being shut with the grinding of metal and keys. Words of long ago came back to me, a strident and smiling Lestat in that faraway, trouble-free place where the three of us had, quarreled together: ‘A starving child is a frightful sight… a starving vampire even worse. They’d hear her screams in Paris.’ And my wet and trembling body went limp in the suffocating coffin, and I said, Armand will not let it happen; there isn’t a place secure enough for them to place us.
“The coffin was lifted, there was the scraping of boots, the swinging from side to side; my arms braced against the sides of the box, my eyes shut perhaps for a moment, I was uncertain. I told myself not to reach out for the sides, not to feel the thin margin of air between my face and the lid; and I felt the coffin swing and tilt as their steps found the stairs. Vainly I tried to make out Madeleine’s cries, for it seemed that she was crying for Claudia, calling out to her as if she could help us all. Call for Armand; he must come home this night, I thought desperately. And only the thought of the awful humiliation of hearing my own cry closed in with me, flooding my ears, yet locked in with me, prevented me from calling out.
“But another thought had come over me even as I’d phrased those words: What if he did not come? What if somewhere in that mansion he had a coffin hidden to which he returned… And then it seemed my body broke suddenly, without warning, from the control of my mind, and I flailed at the wood around me, struggling to turn over and pit the strength of my back against the coffin lid. Yet I could not: it was too close; and my head fell back on the boards, and the sweat poured down my back and sides.