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“He an to walk down the stairs, while at the saesture that welcomed us and bade us follow; but all this was fluid and fast My gestures were the caricature of huestures compared to his He opened a door in the loall and admitted us to the roo the stone stairway as we descended, his back to us with complete trust

“And noe entered what appeared to be a vast subterranean ballroom, carved, as it were, out of a cellaroverhead Above us, the door that he had opened fell shut, and the light died away before I could get a fair iarments in the dark and then the sharp explosion of a reat flaht beside hiht of the boy brought back tople

asure of the naked wo blood And he turned and gazed at me now, much in the manner of the auburn-haired vampire, who had lit the candle and whispered to hiht expanded to the distant walls, and the va us both to follow

“I could see a world of frescoes and murals surrounded us, their colors deep and vibrant above the dancing flaradually the theme and content beside us cahel, painted on such a ures towered over us in the gloo the helpless dead in a fetidan outstretched corpse or hanging huallows A bell tolled over the endless hell of scorched and sreat armies of men came with the hideous, mindless march of soldiers to a massacre I turned away, but the auburn-haired one touchedthe wall to see ‘The Fall of the Angels’ slowlydriven fro monsters So vivid, so perfect was it, I shuddered The hand that had touched ain, and I stood still despite it, deliberately looking above to the very height of the els with trumpets to their lips And for a second the spell was broken I had the strong sense of the first evening I had entered Notre-Daossamer and precious snatched away from me

“The candle rose And horrors rose all around raded damned of Bosch, the bloated coned corpses of Traini, the monstrous horsemen of Durer, and blown out of all endurable scale a pro The very ceiling writhed with skeletons anddead, with demons and the instruments of pain, as if this were the cathedral of death itself

“Where we stood finally in the center of the rooes to life everywhere around us Deliriuan, that sense of falling I reached out for Claudia’s hand She stood , her face passive, her eyes distant when I looked to her, as if she’d have me let her alone; and then her feet shot off fro on the stone floor that echoed all along the walls, like fingers tapping ondumbly at the floor in search of shelter, as if to liftI would not, could not endure Then again I saw the vaeless eyes circled in dark lashes His lips were very still, but as I stared at hihtest movement I watched him all the harder, convinced it was some powerful illusion I could penetrate with keen attention; and the more I watched, the more he seemed to s,in the dark, as wallpaper curls in the blast of a fire or paint peels froe to reach for him, to shake him violently so that his still face would ; and suddenly I found hiainst me, his arm around lea above the incandescent orb of his eye, his soft, tasteless breath against my skin It was delirium

“I et away from him, and yet I was drawn to hi its firainst my eye, so that I felt the warmth of it; all my cold flesh yearned for that warmth, but suddenly I waved to snuff it but couldn’t find it, and all I saas his radiant face, as I had never seen Lestat’s face, white and poreless and sinewy and male The other vampire All other vampires An infinite procession of my own kind

“The moment ended

“I foundhis face; but he was a distance away fro no attempt to brush my hand away I drew back, flushed, stunned

“Far away in the Paris night a bell chi to penetrate the walls, the tireat organ pipes Again cah the gloo me, and I smelled the hot aroma of his flesh The vampire’s facile hand beckoned hi, and he drew up to ht and put his arms around my shoulders

“Never had I felt this, never had I experienced it, this yielding of a conscious mortal But before I could push him away for his own sake, I saw the bluish bruise on his tender neck He was offering it to ainst th of his sex beneath his clothes pressing against asp escaped my lips, but he bent close, his lips on what must have been so cold, so lifeless for hiid, that hard sex driving against me, and I lifted hi heart passed intohim, his ecstasy, his conscious pleasure

“Then, weak and gasping, I saw him at a distance from me, my arms empty, ainst that auburnhaired vaazed at me in that same pacific manner of the vampire, his eyesly unable to control it, that gaze tauntingme; he should die and would not die; he would live on, co that intimacy! I turned The host of vampireson the cool air; and above the corpse of a woed by a vulture with a human face; a nakedthe torso of another, his severed arms tied still to another branch, and on a spike this deadhead

“The singing caer in me subsided, obeyed, but e in burnished circles of light Sohly, so that I almost lost ular face of the trickster vampire I despised He reached out for me with his white hands But the other one, the distant one, moved forward suddenly and stood between us It seemed he struck the other vaain I did not see him move; both stood still like statues, eyes fixed on one another, and ti back fro we stood there, the three of us in those shadows, and how utterly still they see to have life behind the a large oak chair into which I all but collapsed It see to someone in a hushed but sweet voice My forehead teemed with blood, with heat

“ ‘Co his face for the movement of his lips thatafter the sound And then alking, the three of us, down a long stone stairway deeper beneath the city, Claudia ahead of us, her shadow long against the wall The air grew cool and refreshing with the fragrance of water, and I could see the droplets bleeding through the stones like beads of gold in the light of the vampire’s candle

“It was a s in a deep fireplace cut into the stone wall A bed lay at the other end, fitted into the rock and enclosed with two brass gates At first I saw these things clearly, and saw the long wall of books opposite the fireplace and the wooden desk that was against it, and the coffin to the other side But then the rooan to waver, and the auburn-haired vampire put his hands on my shoulde