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“ ‘I need you,’ I said to her, without wanting to say it ‘I cannot bear to lose you You’re the only companion I have in immortality’

“ ‘But surely there must be others! Surely we are not the only va it as I had said it, heardback toBut there’s no pain, I thought suddenly There’s urgency, heartless urgency I looked down at her ‘Aren’t you the saht me all I know!’

“ ‘Lestat taught you to kill’ I fetched the glove ‘here, coo out…’

I was stareat curly ently over her coat ‘But you taught ht ht er for more than…’

“ ‘I never meant those words that way, va when you say it…’ She was tugging attoto show you…’ And quickly I led her down the passage and down the spiral stairs through the dark courtyard But I no more knehat I had to show her, really, than I knehere I was going Only that I had to move toward it with a sublime and doomed instinct

“We rushed through the early evening city, the sky overhead a pale violet now that the clouds were gone, the stars srant even as we ardens, towards those mean and narrow streets where the flowers erupt in the cracks of the stones, and the huge oleander shoots out thick, waxen stems of wh

ite and pink blooms, like a monstrous weed in the empty lots I heard the staccato of Claudia’s steps as she rushed besideme to slacken my pace; and she stood finally, her face infinitely patient, looking up at me in a dark and narrow street where a few old slope-roofed French houses re the Spanish facades, ancient little houses, the plaster blistered fro brick beneath I had found the house now by a blind effort, aware that I had always knohere it was and avoided it, always turned before this dark la to pass the lo where I’d first heard Claudia cry The house was standing still Sunk lower than it was in those days, the alley way crisscrossed with sagging cords of laundry, the weeds high along the low foundation, the two dormer s broken and patched with cloth I touched the shutters ‘It was here I first saw you,’ I said to her, thinking to tell it to her so she would understand, yet feeling now the chill of her gaze, the distance of her stare ‘I heard you crying You were there in a room with your mother And yourto her, whining, crying pitifully, your body white and feverish and hungry You were trying to wake her fro her for war and…’

“I put my hand to my temples ‘I opened the shutters… I ca else’

“I saw her lips slack, her eyes wide ‘You… fed on me?’ she whispered ‘I was your victim!’

“ ‘Yes!’ I said to her ‘I did it’

“There was a moment so elastic and painful as to be unbearable She stood stark-still in the shadows, her huge eyes gathering the light, the war suddenly with a soft noise And then she turned I heard the clicking of her slippers as she ran And ran And ran I stood frozen, hearing the sound grow smaller and s huge and insurmountable, and I ran after her It was unthinkable that I not catch her, that I not overtake her at once and tell her that I loved her, must have her,down the dark street after her was like her slipping away fro and rebelling against the strain Until I came suddenly to a dead stop, She stood beneath a la mutely, as if she didn’t know me I took her sht She studied ivefeeling of revulsion ‘You killed me,’ she whispered ‘You took my life!’

“ ‘Yes,’ I said to her, holding her so that I could feel her heart pounding ‘Rather, I tried to take it To drink it away But you had a heart like no other hear I’ve ever felt, a heart that beat and beat until I had to let you go, had to cast you away from me lest you quickened my pulse till I would die And it was Lestat who found olden-haired child, a Holy Innocent a little girl He brought you back from the hospital where they’d put you, and I never knehat he mean to do except teach me my nature “Take her, finish it,” he said And I felt that passion for you again Oh, I know I’ve lost you now forever I can see it in your eyes! You look at ion of cold self-sufficiency l can’t understand But I did it I felt it for you again, a vile unsupportable hunger for your harant as mortal children are, sith the bite of salt and dust, I held you again, I took you again And when I though your heart would killhis orist, gave it to you to drink And drink you did And drink and drink until you nearly drained hi But you were a vaht you drank a huht thereafter’

“Her face had not changed The flesh was like the wax of ivory candles; only the eyes showed life There was nothing more to say to her I set her down ‘I took your life,’ I said ‘He gave it back to you’

“ ‘And here it is,’ she said under her breath ‘And I hate you both!’ ”

The vampire stopped