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 Ar-mand. My old adversary and companion Armand. Armand, the angelic child who had created the Night Island, our 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.
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, 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.
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.