“I understand,” I said. I was in a fever. “And I never thought to do it, to punish him with it, but think how he learns now. He's quick. He knows already what's obvious to me and to you, no doubt, that if I try to burn him, if either of us does again, he'll fuse with me again and make the fire burn me.”
“Maybe he'll do that,” said Lestat, guiding me to the straight-back chair at the table. “But do you think he wants for you to die?”
“No, he can't want that,” I answered. I was out of breath, as though I'd been running. “He takes his life from me. Whatever he was before I came along, I can't imagine. But it's my focus, my love, that makes him strong now. And goddamn it, I can't stop loving him, feeling I'm betraying him, and he feeds off that!”
The blinking of the lights had stopped. The lace curtains were still. Chills ran up and down my spine. With a noise of static in the speakers, the computer suddenly went off.
Stammering, I told Lestat about the image I'd seen, of myself in the playpen, of the old linoleum that must have been in the kitchen, and of Goblin with me, and that it wasn't something I remembered but something I knew to be true.
“He's shown me those images before when he's attacked me, images of myself as an infant.”
“And all this over the years?”
“No, only now after the Dark Giftâwith these attacks, when I fuse with him as I would with a mortal victim. It's the Dark Blood. It's become the currency of memory, the vampiric blood. He wants me to know he has these memories of a time when I saw him and strengthened him with that vision even before I knew how to talk.”
Lestat had settled in the chair on the other side of the table, and in a split second I developed a positive superstition about him having his back to the hallway door.
I went to the door and closed it, and then, coming back, I unplugged the computer entirely, and I asked if we could rearrange the chairs. Lestat caught me as I reached out to do this.
“Be patient, Little Brother,” he said. “The creature's pushed you right out of your mind.”
We sat down again, facing each other, Lestat with his back to the front of the house, and me with my back to my bedroom.
“He wants to be a Blood Hunter, don't you see?” I said. “I'm terrified of him and what he can do.” I looked up at the gasolier to see if the electric bulbs were blinking. No. I looked at the computer to make sure that its screen was blank. Yes.
“There's no way that he can become a Blood Hunter,” said Lestat calmly. “Stop shaking, Quinn. Look into my eyes. I'm here with you now.
I'm here to help you, Little Brother!
And he's gone, and after the burning I don't think he's going to come back, not for a long while.”
“But can he feel physical pain?” I asked.
“Of course he can. He can feel blood and pleasure, can't he?”
“I don't know,” I rattled on. “Oh, I hope you're right,” I said. I was almost about to cry. “Little Brother,” how I loved the words, how I cherished them, and how sweet it was, as sweet as Aunt Queen calling me forever Little Boy.
“Get a grip, Quinn,” Lestat said. “You're sinking on me.” He clasped my hands. I could feel the hardness of his flesh. I had some hint of his strength. But he was gentle, and his skin felt silky and his eyes were totally kind.
“But the old tale in the Chronicles,” I said, “of the first vampiresâof how they were humans until a spirit entered into them. What's to stop it from happening again?”
“It's never happened since, to my knowledge,” said Lestat, “and we're speaking now of thousands of years ago, of a time before ancient Egypt. Many a Blood Hunter, as you call them, has seen spirits, and many a human as well. And how do we really know what happened in the beginning, except that we were told through tradition that it was a powerful spirit who entered its human host by many fatal wounds. You think your Goblin has the power or the cunning for such a perfect fusion?”
I had to admit that he did not.
“But who would have thought that he could drink from me?” I asked. “Who would have thought that he would? The night I was made, my Maker said that Goblin would leave me, that spirits had an aversion to Blood Hunters and I'd soon find myself alone. âNo more ghostly companions for you,' he said. He said it meanly. Because he couldn't see them, you see. Oh, what a demon he was!”
Lestat nodded. His eyes were filled with muted compassion.
“In the main, that's so,” he said. “Ghosts shy away from Blood Drinkers, as though something about us, understandably, horrifies them. I don't know the full explanation of it. But you know it's not always so. There are many vampires who see spirits, though I'm not one of them, except on a very few remarkable occasions, I should openly confess.”
“You mean you really can't see Goblin,” I said.
“I told you the first time that I couldn't see him,” Lestat said patiently. “Not until he had drunk the blood. Then I saw his image defined by the blood. It was the same this time, and I sent the Fire to that blood. Now, what if he had attacked you again? I don't think those minute flames could have ignited you. There wasn't thrust enough. But just in case, I'll use another power if he comes again, a power you have as well, and that's the Mind Gift, as some call it, not to read his mind but to push against him, to drive him away with a telekinetic strength until he's so weary with defending himself that he can't hold steady and has to flee.”
“But how can I push against what is not material?” I asked.
“He is material,” Lestat corrected me. “He's just made of a material we don't understand. Think clearly.”
I nodded. “I've tried to push him away,” I confessed. “But something happens, something happens in my reason, and he's on me, and the pleasure starts pounding, the guilty pleasure that he and I are together, and the chills are running rampant, as if my soul had chills, and there's a taunting rhythm to it, a thumping rhythm, and I'm his slave.”
I felt a delicious numbness come over me even as I spoke of it, some last vagrant shiver of the union. I looked at my hands. All the tiny pinprick wounds had healed. I felt my face, and I could see the memories again. I felt a vast secret knowledge of Goblin, an unshakable dependence.
“He's become my vampire,” I said. “He makes a meal of me, he locks into me. I'm . . . yes, I'm his slave.”
“And a slave who wants to be rid of his master,” said Lestat thoughtfully. “Has it been stronger with each attack, this guilty pleasure?” he asked.
“Yes, yes, it has,” I confessed. “You know, there were years, important years, when he was my only friend. It was before Nash Penfield came. It was before my teacher Lynelle came. And even while Lynelle was here, it was me and Goblin together always. I never put up with anyone who didn't tolerate my talking to Goblin. Patsy hated it. Patsy's my mother, remember? It was at times a perfect comedy, but that's the way it was. Patsy would stomp her feet and scream, âIf you don't stop talking to that damned ghost, I'm leaving!' Now, Aunt Queen is perfectly patient, so patient that I could swear there have been times, though Aunt Queen won't admit it, that she saw Goblin herself.”
“But why won't she admit it?” he asked.
“They all thought that Goblin was bad for me, don't you see? They all thought that they mustn't encourage it, don't you see? And that was why they didn't want me talking with the Talamasca, because they thought that Stirling and the Talamasca would nurture this damnable ability in me, of seeing ghosts and spirits, and so, if any of them saw Goblin, if my grandparents Sweetheart and Pops ever saw him, they didn't say.”
Lestat appeared to ponder this for a moment. And once again, I noticed that very slight difference between his eyes. I tried to shut it out of my thoughts, but one eye was ever so much brighter than the other, and definitely tinged with blood.
He said, “I think it's time I read your letter to me, don't you?”
“Perhaps so,” was all I could say.
He drew the envelope out of his inside coat pocket and he tore open the end of the envelope neatly, letting the onyx cameo slip out of it into his right hand, and then he smiled.
He looked rapidly several times from the deeply carved white image to me and back again, and then he rubbed the image very gently with his thumb.
“I may keep this?” he asked.
“It's my gift to you, if you want it,” I said. “Yes, I meant it for you. It was when I thought we'd never meet face-to-face. But yes, keep it. It was made for Aunt Queen, let me confess it, but after the Dark Blood I didn't want to give it to her. But I don't know why I'm rambling on about such a point. I'm honored you ask to keep it. It's yours.”
He slipped it into his side coat pocket, and then he opened the letter and read it carefully, or so it seemed to me.
There was my plea to help me destroy Goblin, and my begging for his patience that I dared to enter New Orleans in search of him, and my report of how I had known and loved the Talamasca, a confession that brought the blood teeming into my face when I thought of Stirling and what I had almost done this very night. There was my admission of how I loved Aunt Queen and how I wanted to take my leave of her, if Lestat chose to punish me by death for disobeying his only rules.
I realized now that much of the letter's contents had been revealed to him in every other way, and that what he held was only a formal document of what he already knew.
Very respectfully he refolded the pages and doubled them over and put them back in his pocket as though he wanted to save the letter, though why I didn't know. The envelope had been cast aside.
He regarded me for a long time in silence, his face rather open and generous, which seemed a natural expression for it, and then he spoke:
“You know, I was on the scent of Stirling Oliver when I came upon you. I knew that he was entering my flatâhe's done it more than onceâand I thought it was time that he should have a little scare. I wasn't certain how I meant to arrange that, though I had no intention of revealing myself to him, but then I came upon you about to make the little scare quite final for Mr. Oliver, and it was from your confused mind that I caught the reason you'd come.”
I nodded, then said hastily, “He doesn't mean any harm, you saw that. I can't tell you how thankful I am that you stopped me. I don't think I could have survived my killing him. I'm sure of it. It would have been the finish for me, and I'm terrified of my own clumsiness, that a death like thatâ. But you must realize he won't do any harm to us, either of usâ.”
“Oh, yes, now you're out to save him from destruction. Stop worrying. The Talamasca's off limits, I told you. Besides, I gave them what they've wanted for some time, don't you see?”
“Yes, a sighting of you, a talk with you.”
“Correct, and they'll mull that over, and letters will be sent to the Elders, but I know perfectly well they can't harm us. And he and his cohorts won't come out here looking for you. They're too damned honorable. But you must tell me now, in case I've underestimated them, do you lie by day in a safe place?”
“Very safe,” I said quickly. “On Sugar Devil Island, which they could never conceivably find. But surely you're right, Stirling will keep his promise not to come looking for me or seek me out. I believe in him utterly. That's why it's so ghastly that I almost hurt him, I almost took his life.”
“And would it have been to the finish with him?” he asked. “Have you no self-control once you've begun?”
I was full of misery.
“I don't know what self-control I have. On the night of my making I committed a blunder, taking an innocent lifeâ.”
“Then that was your Maker's blunder,” he retorted. “He should have been with you, teaching you.”
I nodded.
“Let me dream that I would have broken off with Stirling, but I wasn't just frightened of him, frightened of him knowing about me, I was hungry for his death. I'm not sure how it would have gone. He was fighting me with an elegance of mind. He has that, an elegance of mind. Yes, I think I would have taken his life. It was tangled with my love for him. I would have been damned for it forever, and I would have found some way to put an end to myself right away. I'm damned for almost doing it. I'm damned for everything. I live, I live in a fatal frame of mind.”
“How so? What do you mean?” he asked, but he wasn't surprised by what I'd said.
“It's as if I'm forever in the grip of Last Rites or dictating a Last Will and Testament. I died the night my Maker brought me over; I'm like one of the pathetic ghosts of Blackwood Manor who doesn't know he or she is dead. I can't come back to life.”
He nodded, raising one eyebrow and then relaxing. “Ah, well, you know that argues much better for a long existence rather than recklessness and devil-may-care behavior.”
“No, I didn't know,” I said quickly. “What I know is that I have you here and you helped me with Goblin, and you see what Goblin can do. You see that Goblin has to be . . . has to be destroyed. And maybe me too.”
“You haven't the smallest idea of what you're saying,” he returned quietly. “You don't want to be destroyed. You want to live forever. You just don't want to kill to do it, that's all.”
Now I knew that I was going to cry.
I took out my pocket handkerchief and I wiped at my eyes and my nose. I didn't turn away to do this. That would have been too cowardly. But I did look about me without moving my head, and when I looked back at him I thought, what a staggeringly beautiful creature he was.
His eyes alone would have done the trick, but he'd been gifted with so much more, the thick massive blond hair, the large finely shaped mouth and an expression eloquent of comprehension as well as intelligence, and under the light of the gasolier he was the matinee idol drifting before me, carrying me out of myself into some unmeasured moment in which I relished his appearance as if he couldn't or didn't know.