Page 44 (2/2)
“ ‘You s? You mean what you say to me?’ I asked ‘Why don’t you place the knife here, why don’t you turn it?’
“ ‘Would you die withsmile ‘Would you in fact die withtome, that master vampire who has you in thrall, that he won’t share your love with me, not a drop of it? I see his power in your eyes I see your misery, your distress, the love for him you can’t hide Turn around, I’ll make you look at me with those eyes that want him, I’ll make you listen’
“ ‘Don’t anymore, don’t… I won’t leave you I’ve sworn to you, don’t you see? I cannot give you that woman’
“ ‘But I’ for uise Ifor my life!’
“I all but shoved her off ‘No, no, it’sto defy her ‘It’s you ill not share me with him, it’s you ant every drop of that love If not froards you, and it’s you ish him dead the way that you killed Lestat Well, you won’t make me a party to this death, I tell you, not this death! I will not ions of mortals who’ll die at her hands if I do! Your power over me is broken I will not!’
“Oh, if she could only have understood!
“Not for a ainst Are he could selfishly wish for her death But that was nothing to rasp was happening, soainst whichbut a mockery, a hollow attempt to oppose her tenacious will She hated me, she loathed me, as she herself had confessed, andme of that love which had sustained me a lifetime, she had dealtfor her, dying for that love as I was that very first night when Lestat gave her to me, turned her eyes to me, and told her my name; that love which had warmed me in my self-hatred, allowed me to exist Oh, how Lestat had understood it, and now at last his plan was undone
“But it went beyond that, in so as I strode back and forth, back and forth,not only that hatred in her liquid eyes: It was her pain She had shown uise, this helpless form I put my hands to my ears, as if she spoke the words yet, and the tears flowed For all these years I had depended utterly upon her cruelty, her absolute lack of pain! And pain hat she showed to hed at us That hy she had put the knife to hihed To destroy me utterly she need only show ony was as my own
“There was a coffin in that other room, a bed for Madeleine, to which Claudia retreated to leave me alone hat I could not abide I welco the few hours that re the slow listened on the fronds of the ferns, on shite flowers that listed, bowed, and finally broke fro the little balcony, the petals pounded softly by the rain I felt weak now, and utterly alone What had passed between us tonight could never be undone, and what had been done to Claudia by me could never be undone
“But I was soret Perhaps it was the night, the starless sky, the gas lae comfort for which I never asked and didn’t kno, in this e I a, inevitable for that vaht of my death I had left Lestat and never looked back for him, as I had moved on away froht had said to ht alone understands you and enfolds you in its arhtmare An inexplicable peace
“Yet I could feel the end of this peace as surely as I’d feltlike the dark clouds The urgent pain of Claudia’s loss pressed in on athered from the corners of this cluttered and oddly alien rooht see wind, I could feel so inanimate which I’d never known And a poithin me seemed to answer that power, not with resistance but with an inscrutable, chilling strength
“Ithe doors until I saw, in the dias fla in ainst her breast Sometime before I knelt at her side I saw her eyes open, and I could feel beyond her in the collected dark those other eyes watching
“ ‘Will you care for her, Madeleine?’ I saw her hands clutch at the doll, turning its face against her breast And h I did not knohy, even as she was answering me
“ ‘Yes!’ She repeated it again desperately
“ ‘Is this what you believe her to be, a do