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The week before our record album went on sale, they reached out for the first time to threaten us over the telephone wires

Secrecy regarding the rock band called The Vampire Lestat had been expensive but alraphy had cooperated in full And during the long le one of the about

Yet somehow they had obtained the unlisted nu machine they issued their admonitions and epithets

"Outcast We knohat you are doing We are ordering you to stop" "Come out where we can see you We dare you to come out"

I had the band holed up in a lovely old plantation house north of New Orleans, pouring the Doarettes, all of us weary of anticipation and preparation, eager for the first live audience in San Francisco, the first certain taste of success

Then es -- uncanny how the equipment captured the tiht, I drove my musicians to the airport and we fleest

After that, even Christine didn’t knohere ere hiding The musicians themselves were not entirely sure In a luxurious ranch house in Carmel Valley we heard our music for the first time over the radio We danced as our first video films appeared nationwide on the television cable

And each evening I went alone to the coastal city of Monterey to pick up Christine’s communications Then I went north to hunt

I drove my sleek powerful black Porsche all the way to San Francisco, taking the hairpin curves of the coast road at intoxicating speed And in the i city skid row I stalked my killers a little more cruelly and slowly than before

The tension was beco unbearable

Still I didn’t see the others I didn’t hear thees from immortals I’d never known:

"We warn you Do not continue this ame than you realize" And then the recorded whisper that mortal ears could not hear:

"Traitor!" "Outcast!" "Show yourself, Lestat!"

If they were hunting San Francisco, I didn’t see them But then San Francisco is a dense and crowded city And I was sly and silent as I had always been

Finally the telegra in to the Monterey postbox We had done it Sales of our albu records here and in Europe We could perforraphy was in all the bookstores from coast to coast The Vampire Lestat was at the top of the charts

And after the nightly hunt in San Francisco, I started riding the long length of Divisadero Street I let the black carapace of the Porsche crawl past the ruined Victorian houses, wondering in which one of these -- if any -- Louis had told the tale of Intervieith the Va constantly about Louis and Gabrielle I was thinking about Ar about Marius, Marius who the whole tale

Was The Vah to touch thenus, The Children of Darkness, Those Who Must Be Kept? I thought of the other ancient ones whose names I’d revealed: Mael, Pandora, Ramses the Damned

The fact was, Marius could have found me no matter what the secrecy or the precautions His powers could have bridged even the vast distances of A, if he had heard

The old drea thepatterns on the wall of the sanctum of Those Who Must Be Kept Even in recollection it seeradually I realized that I possessed a new concept of loneliness, a newa silence that stretched to the end of the world And all I had to interrupt it were those es as their virulency increased:

"Don’t dare to appear on stage in San Francisco We warn you Your challenge is too vulgar, too conte, even a public scandal, to punish you"

I laughed at the incongruous coe and the unmistakable American sound What were they like, thoseand education once they walked with the undead? Did they assume a certain style? Did they live in covens or ride about on big black motorcycles, as I liked to do?

The excite in ht with the radio blaring ourin h Cookie and Alex and Larry, wanted to perfor the records and filether before the screao nights at Renaud’s little theater too clearly The strangest details came back, the feel of the white paint as I had smoothed it overbefore the footlights

Yes, it was all coether, and if the wrath of Marius came with it, well, I deserved it, did I not?

San Francisco charine my Louis in this place Almost Venetian, it see wall to wall over the narrow black streets Irresistible the lights sprinkled over hilltop and vale; and the hard brilliant wilderness of don skyscrapers shooting up like a fairytale forest out of an ocean of ht on my return to Carmel Valley, I took out the sacks of fan mail forwarded to Monterey froh the: characters inscribed a little too heavily, style slightly old-fashioned eous display of supernatural talent in a handwritten letter made to look as if it had been printed in Gothic style But there was nothing but the fervent devotion of mortals

Dear Lestat,

My friend Sheryl and I love you, and we can’t get tickets for the San Francisco concert even though we stood in line for six hours Please send us two tickets We will be your victims You can drink our blood

Three o’clock in the ht before the San Francisco concert:

The cool green paradise of Cariant "den" before the glass wall that faced theoff and on of Marius Marius said in eance?"

And I said: "You turned your back on me"

"That is not the reason," he said "You act on impulse, you want to throw all the pieces in the air"

"I want to affect things, tohappen!" I said In the dream I shouted, and I felt suddenly the presence of the Carmel Valley house around me Just a drea elsea sudden "trans frequency, a voice saying Danger Danger to us all

For one split second the vision of snow, ice Wind howling Soer!

I awoke

I was not lying on the couch any longer I was standing and looking towards the glass doors I could hear nothing, see nothing but the dim outline of the hills, the black shape of the helicopter hovering over its square of concrete like a giant fly

WithYet no es

And then the gradual awareness that there was a creature outside in the darkness, that I was hearing tiny physical sounds

So in the stillness No human scent

One of them was out there One of the beyond the distant skeletal silhouette of the helicopter, through the open field of high grass

Again I listened No, not a shier In fact theonly the inevitable signals of a creature passing through space

The raiant aquarium, it seeht of the silent television set Tough Cookie and Alex in each other’s ar before the empty fireplace Larry asleep in the cell-like bedrooroupie called Salamander whom they had "picked up" in New Orleans before we caed reat blue oyster-shell swi pool

And out there under the clear black sky this creature co that I sensed noas completely alone Beat of a supernatural heart in the thin darkness Yes, I can hear it very distinctly The hills were like ghosts in the distance, the yellow blosso white under the stars

Not afraid of anything, it seehts absolutely impenetrable That could mean one of the old ones, the very skilled ones, except the skilled ones would never crush the grass underfoot This thing moved almost like a human This vampire had been "lanced at the tiny lights of the alarathered drapery in the corner Pro, mortal or ime of the white concrete he appeared Tall, slender figure Short dark hair And then he paused as if he could see lass veil

Yes, he saw ht

Agile, traveling just a little too lightly for asilkily under the neglected gar shapelessly fro black spokes

I felt the lu I tried to remember as iht for others, er But none of that mattered now I knew I shuteasier

Then my hand went out to the alarlass doors and the cold fresh air moved past me into the roo and stepping away like a dancer to look up at it, his head back, his thumbs hooked very casually in the pockets of his black jeans When he looked at ain, I saw his face distinctly And he smiled

Even our memories can fail us He was proof of that, delicate and blinding as a laser as he caes bloay like dust

I flicked on the alarain, closed the doors on my ht, I cannot stand this And this is only the beginning And if he is here, only a few steps away from me now, then surely the others, too, will come They will all come

I turned and went towards hiht falling through the glass My voice was tight when I spoke:

"Where’s the black cape and ’finely tailored’ black coat and the silk tie and all that foolishness?" I asked

Eyes locked on each other

Then he broke the stillness and laughed withoutave me a secret joy And with the boldness of a child, he reached out and ran his fingers down the lapel of ray velvet coat

"Can’t always be the living legend," he said The voice was like a whisper that wasn’t a whisper And I could hear his French accent so clearly, though I had never been able to hear my own

I could scarcely bear the sound of the syllables, the coot all the stiff surly things I had planned to say and I just took him in my arms

We embraced the e never had in the past We held each other the way Gabrielle and I used to do And then I raned toTrue silent voices that didn’t have any words Nodding a little And I could feel hi with affection and a feverish satisfaction that see as my own

But he was quiet suddenly, and his face becaone, you know," he said It was barely audible

"How did you find me here?" I asked

"You wanted ave a slow shrug of the shoulders

Everything he did was ers so long and delicate, yet hands so strong

"You let me see you and you let me follow you," he said "You drove up and down Divisadero Street looking for me"

"And you were still there?"

"The safest place in the world forfor me and they didn’t findthem whenever I want and they don’t know me They never knehat I looked like, really"

"And they’d try to destroy you if they knew," I said

"Yes," he answered "But they’ve been trying to do that since the Theater of the Vas that happened there Of course Intervieith the Vaave them some new reasons And they do need reasons to play their little games They need the impetus, the excitement They feed upon it like blood" His voice sounded labored for a second

He took a deep breath Hard to talk about all this I wanted to put ain but I didn’t

"But at the moment," he said, "I think you are the one that they want to destroy And they do knohat you look like" Little smile "Everybody knohat you look like Monsieur Le Rock Star"

He let his smile broaden But the voice was polite and low as it had always been And the face suffused with feeling There had been not the slightest change there yet Maybe there never would be

I slipped ether away froray hulk of the copter and into the dry sunbaked field and towards the hills

I think to be this happy is to be miserable, to feel this o through with it?" he asked "The concert toer to us all Had it been a warning or a threat?

"Yes, of course," I said "What in hell could stop me from it?"

"I would like to stop you," he answered "I would have coo, then lost you"

"And why do you want to stop me?"

"You knohy," he said "I want to talk to you" So si

"There’ll be time after," I answered "’To to happen You’ll see" I kept glancing at hi me In modern parlance he was a laser beam Deadly and delicate he seemed His victims had always loved him

And I had always loved hi could love grow if you had eternity to nourish it, and it took only these few moments in time to renew its momentum, its heat?

"How can you be sure of that, Lestat?" he asked Intiht myself to say Louis in that sa slowly noithout direction, and his arm was around me loosely as mine was around hi us," I said "There’ll be bodyguards on the copter and in the limousine with my mortals I’ll travel alone from the airport in the Porsche so I can more easily defend myself, but we’ll have a veritable motorcade And just what can a handful of hateful twentieth century fledglings do anyway? These idiot creatures use the telephone for their threats"