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“And finally the barrel was e out the crude torch I’d s, and setting the chairs alight, the fla as I ran towards the stage and sent the fire rushing up that dark curtain into a cold, sucking draft

“In seconds the theater blazed as with the light of day, and the whole fraroan as the fire roared up the walls, licking the great prosceniu boxes But I had no time to adht of the nooks and crannies coht in the fierce illu to the lower floor again, thrusting the torch into the horsehair couch of the ballroo that would burn

“Someone thundered on the boards above — in roo of a door But it was too late, I toldwas alight They would be destroyed I ran for the stairs, a distant cry rising over the crackling and roaring of the fla the kerosene-soaked rafters above ainst the dao’s cry, I was sure of it; and then, as I hit the lower floor, I saw hi the stairwell around hi, his hand out towards me as he staainst the s in thee for an instant, the va all his power now to fly at me with such speed that he would beco that was his clothes rushed down, I swung the scythe and saw it strike his neck and felt the weight of his neck and saw hi wound The air was full of cries, of screao, a e ahead of me towards that secret alleyway door But I stood there poised, staring at Santiago, seeing hiain, catching hi for a head that was no longer there

“And the head, blood coursing fro rafters, the dark silky hair matted and ith blood, fell atthe passage And I ran after it; the torch and the scythe thrown aside as ht that flooded the stairs to the alley

“The rain descended in shi needles into my eyes, eyes that squinted to see the dark outline of the carriage flicker against the sky The sluhtened atinstinctively for the whip, and the carriage lurched as I pulled open the door, the horses driving forward fast as I grappled with the lid of the chest,down into the cold protecting silk, the lid co darkness

“The pace of the horses increased driving away fro Yet I could still ss, even as my hands were burnt and ht of the sun

“But ere driving on, away fro Paris I had done it The Theatre des Varound

“And as I felt ain in one another’s ar down to the soft heads of hair that glistened in the candlelight, ‘I couldn’t take you away I couldn’t take you But they will lie ruined and dead all around you If the fire doesn’t consume them, it will be the sun If they are not burnt out, then it will be the people ill coht the fire ill find theht of day But I promise you, they will all die as you have died, everyone as closeted there this daill die And they are the only deaths I have caused in ood

Two nights later I returned I had to see that rain-flooded cellar where every brick was scorched, cru, where a few skeletal rafters jabbed at the sky like stakes Those monstrous el’s wing there, the only identifiable things that remained

“With the evening newspapers, I pushed my way to the back of a crowded little theater cafe across the street; and there, under the cover of the diarsmoke, I read the accounts of the holocaust Few bodies were found in the burnt-out theater, but clothing and costuh the famous va before the fire In other words, only the younger vampire had left their bones; the ancient ones had suffered total obliteration Novictim How could there have been?

“Yet so bothered me considerably I did not fear any vampires who had escaped I had no desire to hunt them out if they had That most of the crew had died I was certain But why had there been no huuards, and I’d supposed them to be the ushers and doormen who staffed the theater before the performance And I had even been prepared to encounter them with my scythe But they had not been there

It was strange And eness

“But, finally, when I put the papers aside and sat thinking these things over, the strangeness of it didn’t matter What mattered was that I was more utterly alone in the world than I had ever been in all one beyond reprieve And I had less reason to live than I’d ever had, and less desire

“And yet my sorrow did not overwhelm me, did not actually visit me, did not ht have expected to become Perhaps it was not possible to sustain the torment I’d experienced when I saw Claudia’s burnt remains Perhaps it was not possible to know that and exist over any period of tiuely, as the hours passed, as the srew thicker and the faded curtain of the little la there, the light glittering on their paste jewels, their rich, soft voices often plaintive, exquisitely sad — I wondered vaguely what it would be to feel this loss, this outrage, and be justified in it, be deserving of sy creature My own tearsto me

“Where to go then, if not to die? It was strange how the answer cae hoandered out of the cafe then, circling the ruined theater, wandering finally towards the broad Avenue Napoleon and following it towards the palace of the Louvre It was as if that place called to me, and yet I had never been inside its walls I’d passed its long facade a thousand ti that I could live as a h those s I was bent on it now, possessed only of soue notion that in works of art I could find so of death to as inaninificently possessed of the spirit of life itself