"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 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 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 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 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.