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Part V

The Va rain Rain of light that saturated every new leaf of the trees in the street, every square of paving, drift of rain threading light through the empty darkness itself

And the ball in the Palais Royal

The king and queen were there, dancing with the people Talk in the shadows of intrigue Who cares? Kingdos in the Louvre, that’s all

Lost in a sea of ain; fresh complexions and ruddy cheeks, mounds of powdered hair atop feminine heads with all manner of millinery nonsense in them, even minute ships with three masts, tiny trees, little birds Landscapes of pearl and ribbon Broad-chested s The diamonds hurt my eyes

The voices touched the surface of hter, wreaths of candles blinding, the froth ofthe walls

Gusts of rain fro er White shoulders, white necks, powerful hearts running at that eternal rhyth these naked children hidden in riches, savages laboring beneath a swaddling of chenille, encrustations of eh heels, masks like scabs about their eyes

The air comes out of one body and is breathed into another The music, does it pass out of one ear and into another, as the old expression goes? We breathe the light, we breathe the h us

Now and then eyes settled on ue air of expectation My white skin made them pause, but as that when they let blood out of their veins themselves to keep their delicate pallor? (Let me hold the basin for you and drink it afterwards) And my eyes, ere those, in this sea of paste jewels?

Yet their whispers slithered around me And those scents, ah, not a one was like another And as clearly as if spoken aloud it ca what I was, and the lust

In soe they welcoh the room But did they really know? Of course they didn’t know And I did not know! That was the perfect horror! And who aer so to impart it, to want to take that slender woht out of the plump flesh of her round little breast

The music rushed on, human music The colors of the rooer sharpened It was no longer an idea My veins were throbbing with it Someone would die Sucked dry in less than ait’s about to happen, fingers on the throat feeling the blood in the vein, feeling the flesh give, give it to me! Where? This is my body, this is my blood

Send out your power, Lestat, like a reptile tongue to gather in a flick the appropriate heart

Plu, men’s faces on which the close-shaven blond beard all but glitters, ot a chance!

And beneath this divine chemistry suddenly, this panorama of the denial of decay, I saw the bones!

Skulls under these preposterous wigs, two gaping holes peering fro skeletons waiting only for the tolling of the bell Just as I had seen the audience that night in the pit of Renaud’s when I had done the tricks that terrified the in this rooet out I’d et away froled in s as if this monstrous place were a snare for a vampire If I bolted, I’d send the entire ballrooently as I could I pushed to the open doors

And against the far wall, a backdrop of satin and filigree, I saw, out of the corner of ined, Armand

Armand

If there had been a su, I didn’t sense it now He wasat me, a radiant creature in jewels and scalloped lace And it was Cinderella revealed at the ball, this vision, Sleeping Beauty opening her eyes under athem all aith one sweep of her warasp

Yes, perfect mortal raiment, and yet he see, his dark eyes fatho as if they s to the fires of hell And when his voice ca ht you’ve been searching forfor you I have been waiting for you all along

I think I sensed even then, as I stood unable to look away, that never inthis earth would I ever have such a rich revelation of the true horror that we are

Heartbreakingly innocent he seemed in the midst of the crowd

Yet I saw crypts when I looked at him, and I heard the beat of the kettledruue incantations, felt the heat of raging fires on my face And they didn’t come out of him, these visions Rather I drew them out on my own

Yet never had Nicolas,Never had Gabrielle held me so in thrall

Dear God, this is love This is desire And all my past amours have been but the shadow of this

And it seeave me to know that I had been very foolish to think it would not be so

Who can love us, you and I, as we can love each other, he whispered and it seemed his lips actuallywith a ludicrous slowness; I saw their eyes pass over hile as he lowered his head

I was ht hand and beckoned and then he didn’t, and he had turned and I saw the figure of a young boy ahead of h firs, a boy who turned as he opened a door and beckoned again

Aafter his had happened There was no crypt under les Innocents, and he had not been that ancient fearful fiend We were somehow safe

We were the su us, and the vast untasted horror of ating calm seas with familiar beacons, and it was time to be in each other’s arms