Lestat, having already waked to listen to the piano music of a fledgling vampire, blamed himself for the tawdry invasion. It was he who had created the "Coven of the Articulate," as we had come to be called. And so, he declared to us in a hushed voice, with little or no enthusiasm for the battle, that he would put things right. Armand—given in the past to leading covens, and to destroying them—assisted Lestat in a massacre of the unwelcome rogue vampires before the social fabric was fatally breached.
Having the gift of fire, as the others called it—that is, the means to kindle a blaze telekinetically—Lestat destroyed with flames the brash invaders of his own lair, and all those who had violated the privacy of the more retiring Marius and Pandora, Santino, and Louis and myself. Armand dismembered and obliterated those who died at his hand. Those few preternatural beings who weren't killed fled the city, and indeed many were overtaken by Armand, who showed no mercy whatsoever to the misbegotten, the heartlessly careless, and the deliberately cruel. After that, when it was plain to one and all that Lestat had returned to his semi-sleep, absorbed utterly in recordings of the finest music provided for him by me and by Louis, the elders—Marius, Pandora, Santino, and Armand, with two younger companions—gradually went their way.
It was an inevitable thing, that parting, because none of us could really endure the company of so many fellow blood drinkers for very long.
As it is with God and Satan, humankind is our subject matter. And so it is that, deep within the mortal world and its many complexities, we choose to spend our time.
Of course, we will all come together at various times in the future. We know well how to reach one another. We are not above writing letters. Or other means of communication. The eldest know telepathically when things have gone terribly wrong with the young ones, and vice versa. But for now, only Louis and Lestat and I hunt the streets of New Orleans, and so it will be for some time.
That means, strictly speaking, that only Louis and I hunt, for Lestat simply does not feed at all. Having the body of a god, he has subsumed the lust which still plagues the most powerful, and lies in his torpor as the music plays on. And so New Orleans, in all her drowsy beauty, is host to only two of the Undead. Nevertheless, we must be very clever. We must cover up the deeds that we do. To feed upon the evildoer, as Marius has always called it, is our vow; however, the blood thirst is a terrible thing.
But before I return to my tale—of how Louis and I went out on this particular evening, allow me a few more words about Lestat.
I personally do not think that things are as simple with him as the others tend to believe. Above, I have given you pretty much "the party line," as the expression goes, as to his coma-like slumber and his music. But there are very troubling aspects to his presence which I cannot deny or resolve.
Unable to read his mind, because he made me a vampire and I am therefore his fledgling and far too close to him for such communication, I, nevertheless, perceive certain things about him as he lies by the hour listening to the brilliant and stormy music of Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Chopin, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky, and the other composers he loves. I've confessed these "doubts" about his well-being to Marius and to Pandora and to Armand. But no one of them could penetrate the veil of preternatural silence which he has drawn about his entire being, body and soul.
"He's weary," say the others. "He'll be himself soon." And "He'll come around." I don't doubt these things. Not at all. But to put it plainly, something is more wrong with him than anyone has guessed. There are times when he is not there in his body.
Now this may mean that he is projecting his soul up and out of his body in order to roam about, in pure spirit form, at will. Certainly Lestat knows how to do this. He learnt it from the most ancient of the vampires; and he proved that he could do it, when with the evil Body Thief he worked a switch.
But Lestat does not like that power. And no one who has had his body stolen is likely to use it for more than a very short interval in any one night.
I feel something far more grave is wrong there, that Lestat is not always in control of either body or soul, and we must wait to discover the terms and outcome of a battle which might still be going on.
As for Lestat's appearance, he lies on the Chapel floor, or on the four-poster bed in the town house, with his eyes open, though they appear to see nothing. And for a while after the great cleansing battle, he did periodically change his clothes, favoring the red velvet jackets of old, and his lace-trimmed shirts of heavy linen, along with slim pants and plain black boots.
Others have seen this attention to wardrobe as a good sign. I believe Lestat did these things so that we would leave him alone.
Alas, I have no more to say on the subject in this narrative. At least I don't think so. I can't protect Lestat from what is happening, and no one really has ever succeeded in protecting him or stopping him, no matter what the circumstances of his distress.
Now, let me return to my record of events.
Louis and I had made our way deep into a forlorn and dreadful part of the city where many houses stood abandoned, and those few which still showed evidence of habitation were locked up tight with iron bars upon their windows and doors.
As always happens with any neighborhood in New Orleans, we came within a few blocks to a market street, and there we found many desolate shops which had long ago been shut up with nails and boards. Only a "pleasure club," as it was called, showed signs of habitation and those inside were drunk and gambling the night away at card games and dice. However, as we continued on our journey, I following Louis, as this was Louis's hunt, we soon came to a small dwelling nestled between the old storefronts, the ruins of a simple shotgun house, whose front steps were lost in the high weeds. There were mortals inside, I sensed it immediately, and they were of varying dispositions. The first mind which made itself known to me was that of an aged woman, keeping watch over a cheap little bassinet with a baby inside of it, a woman who was actively praying that God deliver her from her circumstances, those circumstances pertaining to two young people in a front room of the house who were entirely given over to drink and drugs.
In a quiet and efficient manner, Louis led the way back to the overgrown alley to the rear of this crooked little shack, and without a sound he peered through the small window, above a humming air conditioner, at the distraught woman, who wiped the face of the infant, who did not cry.
Again and again I heard this woman murmur aloud that she didn't know what she would do with those young people in the front room, that they had destroyed her house and home and left her this miserable little infant who would starve to death or die of other neglect if the young mother, drunk and dissolute, was forced to care for the child alone. Louis seemed an angel of death come to this window.
On closer inspection over Louis's shoulder, I gained a better perspective on the old one, and discovered that she was not only caring for the infant, but ironing clothes on a low board which allowed her to sit as she did it, and reach again and again to comfort the baby in its wicker crib.
The smell of the freshly ironed clothes was somewhat delicious, a burnt smell but a good one, of heat against cotton and linen.
And I saw now that the room was full of these garments, and conjectured that this woman did this work for hire.
"God help me," she muttered in a little singsong voice, shaking her head as she ironed, "I wish you would take that girl from me, take her and her friends. God help me, I wish you would deliver me from this Valley, 0 Lord, where I have been for so long."
The room itself had comfortable furnishings and touches of domestic care, such as lace doilies on the backs of its chairs and a clean linoleum floor which shone as though it had been recently waxed.