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He rose to go And one of the young ones rose also A stiff jf silence fell, a silence in thoughts as well as words as he and the jj| young one both approached the door Only the candle fla their shimmer on the black tile floor as if it were in water

"Where do you co one |r politely He couldn't have been more than twenty when he died, and that could not have been ten years ago He painted his eyes, waxed his lips, streaked his hair with barbaric color, as if the preternatural gifts were not enough How extravagant he looked, not unlike what he was, a spare and powerful revenant who could with luck survive the millennia

What had they profite should know the Bardo, the Astral Plane, etheric realms, the fiStousic of the spheres, the sound of one hand clapping? :|||:Again he spoke: "Where do you stand on the Vampire Lestat, and the Declaration?"

"Younow "

But surely you knohat Lestat's done," the young one , slipping between hiood manners

He studied this brash youngto stir the about it for centuries? He couldn't repress a sh excitement soon, thanks to his beloved Lestat

"Let ive you a little piece of advice in response," he said quietly to the young inquisitor "You cannot destroy the Vampire Lestat; no one can But why that is so, I honestly can't tell you "

The young one was caught off guard, and a little insulted

"But let me ask you a question now," the other continued "Why this obsession with the Vampire Lestat? What about the content of his revelations? Have you fledglings no desire to seek Marius, the guardian of Those Who Must Be Kept? To see for yourselves the Mother and the Father?"

The young one was confused, then gradually scornful He could not forh in his soul-in the souls of all those listening and watching Those Who Must Be Kept ht not exist; and Marius perhaps did not exist either But the Va this callow ireedy fiend who risked the secret prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals

He alnificant battle Lestat understood these faithless times so beautifully, one had to admit it Yes, he'd told the secrets he'd been warned to keep, but in so doing, he had betrayed nothing and no one

"Watch out for the Va one finally with a s this earth He may be one of them "

Then he lifted the young one off his feet and set him down out of the way And he went out the door into the tavern proper

The front roos and fixtures of lacquered brass, was packed with noisy ilt fraan poured out the passionate Toccata and Fugue of Bach, beneath a babble of conversation and violent riffs of drunken laughter He loved the sight of so e-old sarettes And as he rant hu took notthe; slightest notice of him

At last thepaveleam Men and wo rain, to be clotted at the corners, waiting for great bulbous colored lights to wink and signal