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“Candles burned in the upstairs parlor, where we had planned the death of the overseer An oil lantern swayed in the breeze on the gallery All of this light coalesced and began to shiolden presence hovered above led with the railings, curling and contracting like smoke ‘Listen, keep your eyes wide,’ Lestat whispered to ainst my neck I remember that the movement of his lips raised the hair all over h my body that was not unlike the pleasure of passion…”
He htly curled beneath his chin, the first finger appearing to lightly stroke it “The result was that within minutes I eak t
o paralysis Panic-stricken, I discovered I could not even will myself to speak Lestat still held ht of an iron bar I felt his teeth withdraith such a keenness that the two puncture wounds seemed enormous, lined with pain And now he bent over ht hand off me, bit his orist The blood flowed down uponeye It seeht now hung behind his head like the backdrop of an apparition I think that I knehat heinfor years He pressed his bleeding wrist to my mouth, said firmly, a little impatiently, ‘Louis, drink’ And I did ‘Steady, Louis,’ and ‘Hurry,’ he whispered tothe blood out of the holes, experiencing for the first ti nourishment, the body focused with thehappened” The vaht frown on his face
“How pathetic it is to describe these things which can’t truly be described,” he said, his voice low almost to a whisper The boy sat as if frozen
“I saw nothing but that light then as I drew blood And then this next thing, this next thing was… sound A dull roar at first and then a pounding like the pounding of a dru louder and louder, as if soh a dark and alien forest, pounding as he ca of another dru yards behind hiave no notice to the rhythrew louder and louder until it see but all ers, in the flesh of my temples, in my veins Above all, in my veins, drum and then the other drum; and then Lestat pulled his wrist free suddenly, and I openedfor his wrist, grabbing it, forcing it back to my mouth at all costs; I checked myself because I realized that the drum was hed “Do you understand?”
The boy began to speak, and then he shook his head “No… I mean, I do,” he said “I mean, I…”
“Of course,” said the va away
“Wait, wait!” said the boy in a welter of exciteone I have to turn it over” The vaed it
“What happened then?” the boy asked His face was moist, and he wiped it hurriedly with his handkerchief
“I saw as a vahtly detached It seemed al again at the foot of the stairs, and I saw him as I could not possibly have seen him before He had seeht he was almost luminous; and now I saw him filled with his own life and own blood: he was radiant, not lued, but all things had changed
“It was as if I had only just been able to see colors and shapes for the first time I was so enthralled with the buttons on Lestat’s black coat that I looked at nothing else for a long tihter as I had never heard anything before His heart I still heard like the beating of a dru, each sound running into the next sound, like thereverberations of bells, until I learned to separate the sounds, and then they overlapped, each soft but distinct, increasing but discrete, peals of laughter” The vaht “Peals of bells
“ ‘Stop looking at my buttons,’ Lestat said ‘Go out there into the trees Rid yourself of all the human waste in your body, and don’t fall so ht that you lose your ways’
“That, of course, was a wise costones, I became so enamored with it that I must have spent an hour there I passed ht of hiht as if it were a chorus of whispering wo me to their breasts As for my body, it was not yet totally converted, and as soon as I becaan to ache Allas a human, yet completely alive as a vampire; and with my awakened senses, I had to preside over the death of my body with a certain discomfort and then, finally, fear I ran back up the steps to the parlor, where Lestat was already at work on the plantation papers, going over the expenses and profits for the last year ‘You’re a richto me,’ I shouted
“ ‘You’re dying, that’s all; don’t be a fool Don’t you have any oil lamps? All this money and you can’t afford whale oil except for that lantern Bring me that lantern’
“ ‘Dying!’ I shouted ‘Dying!’