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Well, let o now to the Veil

Letuphill in the long-ago snointer in Podil, beneath the broken towers of Vladimir's City, to seek within the Monastery of the Caves the paint and the wood on which to see it take for Lord once more

Chapter 17

PART III

APPASSIONATA

17

I DIDN'T WANT to go to hi the theatres to see the plays of Shakespeare, and reading the plays and the sonnets the whole night long I had no other thoughts just now but Shakespeare Lestat had given him to me And when I'd had a bellyful of despair, I'd opened the books and begun to read

But Lestat was calling Lestat was, or so he claimed, afraid

I had to go The last time he'd been in trouble, I hadn't been free to rush to his rescue There is a story to that, but nothing as important as this one which I tell now

Now I knew that ht be shattered by the mere contact with him, but he wanted me to come, so I went

I found hih he didn't know it and he couldn't have led me into a worse snowstorht, a victim hom he'd fallen in love, as was his custoh criht of the feast

So what did he want of me, I wondered You were there, David You could help hi you hadn't heard his call directly, but he'd reached you soether to discuss in low, sophisticated whispers Lestat's latest fears

When next I caught up with him he was in New Orleans And he put it to me plain and siuise of aat one s and hoofed feet; and then next, the Devil could be an ordinary man Lestat ith these stories The Devil had offered him a dreadful proposition, that he, Lestat, become the Devil's helper in the service of God

Do you remember how cal for our advice? Oh, I told him firmly it was madness to follow this spirit, to believe that any discarnate thing was bound to tell him the truth

But only now do you know the wounds he opened with this strange and marvelous fable So the Devil would ht have laughed outright, or wept, throwing it in his face that I had once believed s as I stalked lory of God