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PART III 8 page

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.

"Madeleine's cries were gone. All I heard were the boots, and my own breathing. Then,

tomorrow night he will come---yes, tomorrow night and they will tell him, and he will find us

and release us. The coffin swayed. The smell of water filled my nostrils, its coolness palpable

through the close heat of the coffin; and then with the smell of the water was the smell of the

deep earth. The coffin was set down roughly, and my limbs ached and I rubbed the backs of my

arms with my hands, struggling not to touch the coffin lid, not to sense how close it was, afraid

of my own fear rising to panic, to terror.

"I thought they would leave me now, but they did not. They were near at hand and busy, and

another odor came to my nostrils which was raw and not known to me. But then, as I lay very

still, I realized they were laying bricks and that the odor came from the mortar. Slowly, carefully,

I brought my hand up to wipe my face. All right, then, tomorrow night, I reasoned with myself,

even as my shoulders seemed to grow large against the coffin walls. All right, then, tomorrow

night he will come; and until then this is merely the confines of my own coffin, the price I've

paid for all of this, night after night after night.

"But the tears were welling in my eyes, and I could see myself flailing again at the wood; and my head was turning from side to side, my mind rushing on to tomorrow and the night after and the

night after that. And then, as if to distract myself from this madness, I thought of Claudia ---only

to feel her arms around me in the dim light of those rooms in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, only to see

the curve of her cheek in the light, the soft, languid flutter of her eyelashes, the silky touch of her lip. My body stiffened, my feet kicked at the boards. The sound of the bricks was gone, and the

muffled steps were gone. And I cried out for her, 'Claudia,' until my neck was twisted with pain

as I tossed, and my nails had dug into my palms; and slowly, like an icy stream, the paralysis of

sleep came over me. I tried to call out to Armand---foolishly, desperately, only dimly aware as

my lids grew heavy and my hands lay limp that the sleep was on him too somewhere, that he lay

still in his resting place. One last time I struggled. My eyes saw the dark, my hands felt the

wood. But I was weak. And then there was nothing."

"I awoke to a voice. It was distant but distinct. It said my name twice. For an instant I didn't know where I was. I'd been dreaming, something desperate which was threatening to vanish

completely without the slightest clue to what it had been, and something terrible which I was

eager, willing to let go. Then I opened my eyes and felt the top of the coffin. I knew where I was

at the same instant that, mercifully, I knew it was Armand who was calling me. I answered him,

but my voice was locked in with me and it was deafening. In a moment of terror, I thought, he's

searching for me, and I can't tell him that I am here. But then I heard him speaking to me, telling

me not to be afraid. And I heard a loud noise. And another. And there was a cracking sound, and

then the thunderous falling of the bricks. It seemed several of them struck the coffin. And then I

heard them lifted off one by one. It sounded as though he were pulling off the locks by the nails.

"The hard wood of the top creaked. A pinpoint of light sparkled before my eyes. I drew breath

from it, and felt the sweat break out on my face. The lid creaked open and for an instant I was

blinded; then I was sitting up, seeing the bright light of a lamp through my fingers.

" 'Hurry,' he said to me. 'Don't make a sound.'

" 'But where are we going?' I asked. I could see a passage of rough bricks stretching out from the doorway he'd broken down. And all along that passage were doors which were sealed, as this

door had been. I had a vision at once of coffins behind those bricks, of vampires starved and

decayed there. But Armand was pulling me up, telling me again to make no sound; we were

creeping along the passage. He stopped at a wooden door, and then he extinguished the lamp. It

was completely black for an instant until the seam of light beneath the door brightened. He

opened the door so gently the hinges did not make a sound. I could hear my own breathing now,

and I tried to stop it. We were entering that lower passageway which led to his cell. But as I

raced along behind him I became aware of one awful truth. He was rescuing me, but me alone. I

put out my hand to stop him, but he only pulled me after him. Only when we stood in the

alleyway beside the Theatre des Vampires was I able to make him stop. And even then, he was

on the verge of going on. He began shaking his head even before I spoke.

" 'I can't save her!' he said.

" 'You don't honestly expect me to leave without her! They have her in there!' I was horrified.

'Armand, you must save her! You have no choice!'

" 'Why do you say this?' he answered. 'I don't have the power, you must understand. They'll rise against me. There is no reason why they should not. Louis, I tell you, I cannot save her. I will

only risk losing you. You can't go back.'

"I refused to admit this could be true. I had no hope other than Armand. But I can truthfully say that I was beyond being afraid. I knew only that I had to get Claudia back or die in the effort. It

was really very simple; not a matter of courage at all. And I knew also, could tell in everything

about Armand's passivity, the manner in which he spoke, that he would follow me if I returned,

that he would not try to prevent me.

"I was right. I was rushing back into the passage and he was just behind me, heading for the

stairway to the ballroom. I could hear the other vampires. I could hear all manner of sounds. The

Paris traffic. What sounded very much like a congregation in the vault of the theater above. And

then, as I reached the top of the steps, I saw Celeste in the door of the ballroom. She held one of

those stage masks in her hand. She was merely looking at me. She did not appear alarmed. In

fact, she appeared strangely indifferent.

"If she had rushed at me, if she had sounded a general alarm, these things I could have

understood. But she did nothing. She stepped backwards into the ballroom; she turned, seeming

to enjoy the subtle movement of her skirts, seeming to turn for the love of making her skirts flare

out, and she drifted in a widening circle to the center of the room. She put the mask to her face,

and said softly behind the painted skull, 'Lestat... it is your friend Louis come calling. Look

sharp, Lestat!' She dropped the mask, and there was a ripple of laughter from somewhere. I saw

they were all about the room, shadowy things, seated here and there, standing together. And

Lestat, in an armchair, sat with his shoulders hunched and his face turned away from me. It

seemed he was working something with his hands, something I couldn't see; and slowly he

looked up, his full yellow hair falling into his eyes. There was fear in them. It was undeniable.

Now he was looking at Armand. And Armand was moving silently through the room with slow,

steady steps, and all of the vampires moved back away from him, watching him. 'Bonsoir,

Monsieur,' Celeste bowed to him as he passed her, that mask in her hand like a scepter. He did

not look at her in particular. He looked down at Lestat. 'Are you satisfied?' he asked him.

"Lestat's gray eyes seemed to regard Armand with wonder, and his lips straggled to form a word.

I could see that his eyes were filling with tears. 'Yes...' he whispered now, his hand struggling

with the thing he concealed beneath his black cloak. But then he looked at me, and the tears

spilled down his face. 'Louis,' he said, his voice deep and rich now with what seemed an

unbearable struggle. 'Please, you must listen to me. You must come back...' And then, bowing his

head, he grimaced with shame.

"Santiago was laughing somewhere. Armand was saying softly to Lestat that he must get out,

leave Paris; he was outcast.

"And Lestat sat there with his eyes closed, his face transfigured with his pain. It seemed the

double of Lestat, some wounded, feeling creature I'd never known. 'Please,' he said, the voice

eloquent and gentle as he implored me.

" 'I can't talk to you here! I can't make you understand. You'll come with me... for only a little while... until I am myself again?'

" 'This is madness!...' I said, my hands rising suddenly to my temples. 'Where is she! Where is

she!' I looked about me, at their still, passive faces, those inscrutable smiles. 'Lestat!' I turned

him now, grabbing at the black wool of his lapels.

"And then I saw the think in his hands. I knew what it was. And in an instant I'd ripped it from him and was staring at it, at the fragile silken thing that it was---Claudia's yellow dress. His hand rose to his lips, his face turned away. And the soft, subdued sobs broke from him as he sat back

while I stared at him, while I stared at the dress. My fingers moved slowly over the tears in it, the stains of blood; my hands closing, trembling as I crushed it against my chest.

"For a long moment it seemed I simply stood there; time had no bearing upon me nor upon those

shifting vampires with their light, ethereal laughter filling my ears. I remember thinking that I

wanted to put my hands over my ears, but I wouldn't let go of the dress, couldn't stop trying to

make it so small that it was hidden within my hands. I remember a row of candles burning, an

uneven row coming to light one by one against the painted walls. A door stood open to the rain,

and all the candies spluttered and blew on the wind as if the flames were being lifted from the

wicks. But they clung to the wicks and were all right. I knew that Claudia was through the

doorway. The candles moved. The vampires had hold of them. Santiago had a candle and was

bowing to me and gesturing for me to pass through the door. I was barely aware of him. I didn't

care about him or the others at all. Something in me said, If you care about them you will go

mad. And they don't matter, really. She matters. Where is she? Find her. And their laughter was

remote, and it seemed to have a color and a shape but to be part of nothing.

"Then I saw something through the open doorway which was something I'd seen before, a long,

long time ago. No one knew of this thing I'd seen years before except myself. No. Lestat knew.

But it didn't matter. He wouldn't know now or understand. That he and I had seen this thing,

standing at the door of that brick kitchen in the Rue Royale, two wet shriveled things that had

been alive, mother and daughter in one another's arms, the murdered pair on the kitchen floor.

But these two lying under the gentle rain were Madeleine and Claudia, and Madeleine's lovely

red hair mingled with the gold of Claudia's hair, which stirred and glistened in the wind that

sucked through the open doorway. Only that which was living had been burnt away---not the

hair, not the long, empty velvet dress, not the small bloodstained chemise with its eyelets of

white lace. And the blackened, burnt, and drawn thing that was Madeleine---still bore the stamp

of her living face, and the hand that clutched at the child was whole like a mummy's hand. But

the child, the ancient one, my Claudia, was ashes.

"A cry rose in me, a wild, consuming cry that came from the bowels of my being, rising up like

the wind in that narrow place, the wind that swirled the rains teeming on those ashes, beating at

the trace of a tiny hand against the bricks, that golden hair lifting, those loose strands rising,

flying upwards. And a blow struck me even as I cried out; and I had hold of something that I

believed to be Santiago, and I was pounding, against him, destroying him, twisting that grinning

white face around with hands from which he couldn't free himself, hands against which he railed,

crying out, his cries mingling with my cries, his boots coming down into those ashes, as I threw

him backwards away from them, my own eyes blinded with the rain, with my tears, until he lay

back away from me, and I was reaching out for him even as he held out his hand. And the one I

was struggling against was Armand. Armand, who was forcing me out of the tiny graveyard into

the whirling colors of the ballroom, the cries, the mingling voices, that searing, silver laughter.

"And Lestat was calling out, 'Louis, wait for me; Louis, I must talk to you!'

"I could see Armand's rich, brown eye close to mine, and I felt weak all over and vaguely aware

that Madeleine and Claudia were dead, his voice saying softly, perhaps soundlessly, 'I could not

prevent it, I could not prevent it...' And they were dead, simply dead. And I was losing

consciousness. Santiago was near them somewhere there where they were still, that hair lifted on

the wind, swept across those bricks, unraveling locks. But I was losing consciousness.

"I could not gather their bodies up with me, could not take them out. Armand had his arm around

my back, his hand under my arm, and he was all but carrying me through some hollow wooden

echoing place, and the smells of the street were rising, the fresh smell of the horses and the

leather, and there were the gleaming carriages stopped there. And I could see myself clearly

running down the Boulevard des Capucines with a small coffin under my arm and the people

making way for me and dozens of people rising around the crowded tables of the open cafe and a

man lifting his arm. It seemed I stumbled then, the Louis whom Armand held in his arm, and

again I saw his brown eyes looking at me, and felt that drowsiness, that sinking. And yet I

walked, I moved, I saw the gleam of my own boots on the pavement. 'Is he mad, that he says

these things to me?' I was asking of Lestat, my voice shrill and angry, even the sound of it giving

me some comfort. I was laughing, laughing loudly. 'He's stark-raving mad to speak to me in this

manned Did you hear him?' I demanded. And Armand's eye said, Sleep. I wanted to say

something about Madeleine and Claudia, that we could not leave them there, and I felt that cry

again rising inside of me, that cry that pushed everything else out of its way, my teeth clenched

to keep it in, because it was so loud and so full it would destroy me if I let it go.

"And then I conceived of everything too clearly. We were walking now, a belligerent, blind sort

of walking that men do when they are wildly drunk and filled with hatred for others, while at the

same time they feel invincible. I was walking in such a manner through New Orleans the night

I'd first encountered Lestat, that drunken walking which is a battering against things, which is

miraculously sure-footed and finds its path. I saw a drunken man's hands fumbling miraculously

with a match. Flame touched to the pipe, the smoke drawn in. I was standing at a cafe window.

The man was drawing on his pipe. He was not at all drunk. Armand stood beside me waiting, and

we were in the crowded Boulevard des Capucines. Or was it the Boulevard do Temple? I wasn't

sure. I was outraged that their bodies remained there in that vile place. I saw Santiago's foot

touching the blackened burned thing that had been my child! I was crying out through clenched

teeth, and the man had risen from his table and steam spread out on the glass in front of his fac e.

'Get away from me,' I was saying to Armand. 'Damn you into hell, don't come near me. I warn

you, don't come near me.' I was walking away from him up the boulevard, and I could see a man

and a woman stepping aside for me, the man with his arm out to prot ect the woman.

"Then I was running. People saw me running. I wondered how it appeared to them, what wild,

white thing they saw that moved too fast for their eyes. I remember that by the time I stopped, I

was weak and sick, and my veins were burning as if I were starved. I thought of killing, and the

thought filled me with revulsion. I was sitting on the stone steps beside a church, at one of those

small side doors, carved into the stone, which was bolted and locked for the night. The rain had

abated. Or so it seemed. And the street was dreary and quiet, though a man passed a long way off

with a bright, black umbrella. Armand stood at a distance under the trees. Behind him it seemed

there was a great expanse of trees and wet grasses and moist rising as if the ground were warm.

"By thinking of only one thing, the sickness in my stomach and head and the tightening in my

throat, was I able to return to a state of calm. By the time these things had died away and I was

feeling clear again, I was aware of all that had happened, the great distance we'd come from the

theater, and that the remains of Madeleine and Claudia were still there. Victims of a holocaust in

each other's arms. And I felt resolute and very near to my own destruction.

" 'I could not prevent it,' Armand said softly to me. And I looked up to see his face unutterably sad. He looked away from me as if he felt it was futile to try to convince me of this, and I could

feel his overwhelming sadness, his near defeat. I had the feeling that if I were to vent all my

anger on him he would do little to resist me. And I could feel that detachment, that passivity in

him as something pervasive which was at the root of what he insisted to me again, 'I could not

have prevented it.'

" 'Oh, but you could have prevented it!' I said softly. 'You know full well that you could have.

You were the leader! You were the only one who knew the limits of your own power. They

didn't know. They didn't understand. Your understanding surpassed theirs.'

"He looked away still. But I could see the effect of my words on him. I could see the weariness

in his face, the dull lusterless sadness of his eyes.

" 'You held sway over them. They feared you!' I went on. 'You could have stopped them if you'd

been willing to use that power even beyond your own selfprescribed limits. It was your sense of

yourself you would not violate. Your own precious conception of truth! I understand you

perfectly. I see in you the reflection of myself!'

"His eyes moved gently to engage mine. But he said nothing. The pain of his face was terrible. It was softened and desperate with pain and on the verge of some terrible explicit emotion he

would not be able to control. He was in fear of that emotion. I was not. He was feeling my pain

with that great spellbinding power of his which surpassed mine. I was not feeling his pain. It did

not matter to me.

" 'I understand you only too well...' I said. 'That passivity in me has been the core of it all, the real evil. That weakness, that refusal to compromise a fractured and stupid morality, that awful

pride! For that, I let myself become the thing I am, when I knew it was wrong. For that, I let

Claudia become the vampire she became, when I knew it was wrong. For that, I stood by and let

her kill Lestat, when 1 knew that was wrong, the very thing that was her undoing. I lifted not a

finger to prevent it. And Madeleine, Madeleine, I let her come to that, when I should never have

made her a creature like ourselves. I knew that was wrong! Well, I tell you I am no longer that

passive, weak creature that has spun evil from evil till the web is vast and thick while I remain its stultified victim. It's over! I know now what I must do. And I warn you, for whatever mercy

you've shown me in digging me out of that grave tonight where I would have died: Do not seek

your cell in the Theatre des Vampires again. Do not go near it.'

"I didn't wait to hear his answer. Perhaps he never attempted one. I don't know. I left him without looking back. If he followed me I was not conscious of it. I did not s eek to know. I did not care.

"It was to the cemetery in Montmartre that I retreated. Why that place, I'm not certain, except

that it wasn't far from the Boulevard des Capucines, and Montmartre was countryfied then, and

dark and peaceful compared to the metropolis. Wandering among the low houses with their

kitchen gardens, I killed without the slightest measure of satisfaction, and then sought out the

coffin where I was to lie by day in the cemetery. I scraped the remains out of it with my bare

hands and lay down to a bed of foulness, of damp, of the stench of death. I cannot say this gave

me comfort. Rather, it gave me what I wanted. Closeted in that dark, smelling the earth, away

from all humans and all living human forms, I gave myself over to everything that invaded and


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