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“No,” said the vaain on his crossed knees “I moved forward much too fast for you to see It was an illusion”
“Youjust as you are noith your back against the chair”
“No,” repeated the vampire firain” And he did it again, and the boy stared with the same mixture of confusion and fear “You still didn’t see it,” said the vampire “But, you see, if you look atat all” And he raised his arel about to give the Word of the Lord “You have experienced a fundaesture appeared slow and so your coat was quite audible Well, I didn’t hten you, I confess But perhaps you can see from this that my return to Pointe du Lac was a feast of new experiences, the ht”
“Yes,” said the boy; but he was still visibly shaken The va you…”
“About your first kill,” said the boy
“Yes I should say first, however, that the plantation was in a state of pandemonium The overseer’s body had been found and so had the blind old man in the master bedroom, and no one could explain the blind old man’s presence And no one had been able to find me in New Orleans My sister had contacted the police, and several of them were at Pointe du Lac when I arrived It was already quite dark, naturally, and Lestat quickly explained to ht, especially not with my body in its present remarkable state; so I talked to the their requests that we go inside I explained I’d been to Pointe du Lac the night before and the blind old uest As for the overseer, he had not been here, but had gone to New Orleans on business
“After that was settled, during which my new detachment served me admirably, I had the problem of the plantation itself My slaves were in a state of complete confusion, and no work had been done all day We had a large plant then for the ement had been ent slaves whotience and not feared their African appearance and eave the overseer’s house on a proht back into the house from the fields to care for Lestat’s father, and I told them I wanted as much privacy as possible and they would all of the me and Lestat absolutely alone I did not realize at the time that these slaves would be the first, and possibly the only ones, to ever suspect that Lestat and I were not ordinary creatures I failed to realize that their experience with the supernatural was far greater than that of white ht of thees barely domesticated by slavery Ito tell you about led it with his characteristic lack of common sense”
“Bungled it?” asked the boy
“I should never have started with hu I had to learn by ht after the police and the slaves were settled It was very late, and the slave cabins were cohts of Pointe du Lac altogether, and I becaain: reence, ently — that I had no need to fear the swamps, that the snakes and insects I was utterly invulnerable, and that I must concentrate on my new ability to see in total darkness Instead, he harassed me with condemnations He was concerned only with our victi on with it
“And e finally came upon our victims, he rushed me into action They were a small camp of runaway slaves Lestat had visited them before and picked off perhaps a fourth of their nu fro the of Lestat’s presence We had to watch for well over an hour before one of theand came just a few paces into the trees He unhooked his pants now and attended to an ordinary physical necessity, and as he turned to go, Lestat shook me and said, ‘Take him,’ ” The vampire smiled at the boy’s wide eyes “I think I was about as horrorstruck as you would be,” he said “But I didn’t know then
that I ht kill animals instead of humans I said quickly I could not possibly take him And the slave heard me speak He turned, his back to the distant fire, and peered into the dark Then quickly and silently, he drew a long knife out of his belt He was naked except for the pants and the belt, a tall, strong-ar in the French patois, and then he stepped forward I realized that, though I saw him clearly in the dark, he could not see us Lestat stepped in back of hiot a hold around his neck while he pinned his left arm The slave cried out and tried to throw Lestat off He sank his teeth now, and the slave froze as if from snakebite He sank to his knees, and Lestat fed fast as the other slaves caot back to ed in the night, watching the slaveshi for the attacker ‘Coet another one before they all return to camp,’ he said And quickly we set off after one itated, convinced I couldn’t bring e to do so There were ht have said and done He ht have made the experience rich in so many ways But he did not”
“What could he have done?” the boy asked “What do you mean?”
“Killing is no ordinary act,” said the valut oneself on blood” He shook his head “It is the experience of another’s life for certain, and often the experience of the loss of that life through the blood, slowly It is again and again the experience of that loss of my own life, which I experienced when I sucked the blood from Lestat’s wrist and felt his heart pound with ain a celebration of that experience; because for vampires that is the ultimate experience” He said thiswith someone who held a different view “I don’t think Lestat ever appreciated that, though how he could not, I don’t know Let , but very little, I think, of what there is to know In any event, he took no pains to remind me nohat I’d felt when I clao; or to pick and choose a place for ht experience nity He rushed headlong through the encounter as if it were so to put behind us as quickly as possible, like so ed hi his neck ‘Do it,’ he said ‘You can’t turn back now’ Overcome with revulsion and ith frustration, I obeyed I knelt beside the bent, strugglingboth my hands on his shoulders, I went into his neck My teeth had only just begun to change, and I had to tear his flesh, not puncture it; but once the wound was made, the blood flowed And once that happened, once I was locked to it, drinking… all else vanished
“Lestat and the swaht have been an insect, buzzing, lighting, then vanishing in significance The suckingto the tension of ain, which was the drumbeat of his heart — only this time it beat in perfect rhyth in every fiber of roer and slower, so that each was a soft ru, falling into weightlessness; and then Lestat pulled me back ‘He’s dead, you idiot!’ he said with his characteristic charm and tact ‘You don’t drink after they’re dead! Understand that!’ I was in a frenzy for ato hiony to clarabbed at his wrists I would have cut into his wrist if Lestat hadn’t pulledIt was not painful in the ordinary way It was a sensational shock of another sort, a rapping of the senses, so that I spun in confusion and found ainst a cypress, the night pulsing with insects in‘He’ll suck you right down into death with hi to him in death And now you’ve drunk too rated on e to throwjust what he’d said There was a grinding pain intoo rapidly into h the night now like a cat and I followed hi, this pain in my stomach no better e reached the house of Pointe du Lac
“As we sat at the table in the parlor, Lestat dealing a ga at hiet used to killing, he said; it would be nothing Itoo much as if the ‘mortal coil’ had not been shaken off I would becos all too quickly ‘Do you think so?’ I asked him finally I really had no interest in his answer I understood now the difference between us Forhad been cataclys Lestat’s wrist These experiences so overwhel around me, froht of a single star in the topine another varanted I was altered, permanently; I knew it And what I felt,cards being laid down one by one upon the shining rows of the solitaire, was respect Lestat felt the opposite Or he felt nothing He was the sow’s ear out of which nothing fine could beas a mortal, as trivial and unhappy as aainst the possibility of any experience of his own By , I realized that I was his co hih the necessary lessons, if there were any more real lessons, and I must tolerate in him a frame of mind which was blasphemous to life itself I felt cold towards hier for new experience, for that which was beautiful and as devastating as my kill And I saw that if I were to maximize every experience available toLestat was of no use