Page 2 (2/2)

And I foundinstants of risk and possibility What was to follow? Was I to die finally, or perhaps to be reborn?

Now, to tell you the full story of what happened after that, I must move back a little in time

I have to begin sohts before the fatal concert and I have to let you slip into thetoat the time

In other words, a lot was going on which I had to reconstruct later And it is the reconstruction that I offer you now

So ill move out of the narrow, lyrical confines of the first person singular; ill jump as a thousand mortal writers have done into the brains and souls of "allop into the world of "third person" and "multiple point of view "

And by the hen these other characters think or say of me that I am beautiful or irresistible, etc , don't think I put these words in their heads I didn't! It's as told to me after, or what I drew out of their minds with infallible telepathic power; I wouldn't lie about that or anything else I can't help being a gorgeous fiend It's just the card I drew The bastard ood looks That's the long and short of it And accidents like that occur all the time

We live in a world of accidents finally, in which only aesthetic principles have a consistency of which we can be sure Right and wrong ill struggle with forever, striving to create and maintain an ethical balance; but the shireat flashing glare of artillery against a night sky-such brutal beauty is beyond dispute

Now, be assured: though I a you, I will return with full flair at the appropriatethe first person narrator all the way through! To paraphrase David Copperfield, I don't knohether I'm the hero or the victim of this tale But either way, shouldn't I do it, after all

Alas,the James Bond of vampires isn't the whole issue Vanity must wait I want you to knohat really took place with us, even if you never believe it In fiction if nowhere else, I o mad

So until weof you always; I love you; I wish you were herein my arms

PROEM

DECLARATION IN THE FORM OF GRAFFITI

-written in black felt-tip pen on a red wall in the back roohter in San Francisco-

Children of Darkness Be Advised of the Following:

BOOK ONE: Intervieith the Vampire, published in 1976, was a true story Any one of us could have written it-an account of beco Yet Louis, the two-hundred-year-old immortal who reveals all, insists on ave Louis the Dark Gift, gave him precious little else in the way of explanations or consolation Sound faiven up the search for salvation yet, though even Armand, the oldest i of e are here or who irls? After all, there has never been a Baltimore Catechism for vampires