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The ancient one she caught in the North Beach streets, the one who had wanted but to see her face; she had burned hi the sidewalk His bones turned to ash, the brain aeh flat roof, so that he fell like a shooting star out over the gliht like dark paper when it was finished

And south Lestat went, to his refuge in Carmel Valley Jubilant, drunk on the love he felt for Louis and Gabrielle, he spoke of old tihter

"Maharet, where are you?" Khayave no answer If Mael was near, if Mael heard the call, he gave no sign of it Poor, desperate Mael, who had run out into the open after the attack upon Jessica Mael, whohelplessly as the ambulance carried Jesse away from him

Khayman could not find him

He coht-studded hills, the deep valleys in which the beat of souls was like a thunderous whisper "Why have I witnessed these things?" he asked "Why have the dreaht me here?"

He stood listening to the mortal world

The radios chattered of devil worship, riots, random fires, mass hallucinations They whined of vandalisraphic smallness The rational arded it Thousands took no notice Others slowly and painstakingly revised in s they had seen The Va h uncontrollable hysteria

Perhaps it was part of the Queen's design to so smoothly abort Lestat's dreams To burn his enemies off the earth before the frail blanket of hued

If this was so, would she punish the creature himself finally?

No answer came to Khayman

His eyeshad swept in, settling in deep rosy layers beneath the-tops of the hills The whole had a fairy-tale sweetness to it now in the first hour past ht

Collecting his strongest power, he sought to leave the confines of his body, to send his vision out of hiyptian dead, to see those whoht have spared, to draw close to them

"Arhts of the city went dim He felt the warmth and illumination of another place, and Armand was there before him

He and his fledgling, Daniel, had coain to the mansion where they would sleep beneath the cellar floor une and sus and rhythht, his youthful face as i h to touch Silently, invisibly, they studied one another

It seemed Khayman's loneliness was more than he could bear; but the eyes of Armand held no emotion, no trust, no welcome