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The next night I went tearing into Paris with as old as I could carry The sun had just sunk beneath the horizon when I opened ht still emanated from the sky as I

And as luck would have it, I was attacked by a cutthroat before I ever reached the city walls He ca, and I actually saw the ball leave the barrel of the gun and go past me as I leapt off my horse and went at him

He was a powerfuland struggling The vicious servant I’d taken last night had been old This was a hard young body Even the roughness of his badly shaven beard tantalized th in his hands as he struck at me But it was no sport He froze as I sank my teeth into the artery, and when the blood came it was pure voluptuousness In fact, it was so exquisite that I forgot co away before the heart stopped

We were on our knees in the snow together, and it was a wallop, the life going intoht A to happen Just this rolling delirium

And the poor dead bastard in my arms ould have blown my face off with his pistol if I had let hireat spangled mass of shadows ahead that was Paris And there was only this warth

So far so good I climbed to my feet and wiped my lips Then I pitched the body as far as I could across the unbroken snoas more powerful than ever

And for a little while I stood there, feeling gluttonous and o on forever But I couldn’t have drunk any ed soh the thief had been a friend to me or kin to me and had desertedhad been so intimate His scent was on me now, and I sort of liked it But there he lay yards away on the cruray under the risingto kill me, wasn’t he?

Within an hour I had found a capable attorney, naet, at his ho man with a mind that was completely open to me Greedy, clever, conscientious Exactly what I wanted Not only could I read his thoughts when he wasn’t talking, but he believed everything I told hier to be a service to the husband of an heiress froue And certainly he would put out all the candles, save one, iffroems, he dealt with the e for ne -- yes, i Lelio

But I was having a hell of a ti was a distraction -- the silded pattern of the Chinese wallpaper, and Monsieur Roget’s aonal spectacles His teeth keptme think of clavier keys

Ordinary objects in the room appeared to dance A chest stared atin an upstairs roo in a low and vibrant secret language, such as Co to be this way forever apparently, and I had to get ht to my father and my brothers, and to Nicolas de Lenfent, a musician with Renaud’s House of Thesbians, as to be told only that the wealth had come from his friend Lestat de Lioncourt It was Lestat de Lioncourt’s wish that Nicolas de Lenfent move at once to a decent flat on the St Louis or soet should, of course, assist in this, and thereafter Nicolas de Lenfent should study the violin Roget should buy for Nicolas de Lenfent the best available violin, a Stradivarius

And finally a separate letter was to be written to my mother, the Marquise Gabrielle de Lioncourt, in Italian, so that no one else could read it, and a special purse was to be sent to her If she could undertake a journey to southern Italy, the place where she’d been born, maybe she could stop the course of her consumption

It made me positively dizzy to think of her with the freedom to escape I wondered what she would think about it

For a longher dressed for once in her life as the ates of our castle in her own coach and six And then I res as if she were here with ht," I said "I don’t care what it costs Do it" I laid down enough gold to keep her in comfort for a lifetime, if she had a lifetime