She had started to cry, and all this had been going on back at the hotel, whilst David and I had been in the bar only yards from them.
"And say these bastards do manage to pick me up, some warrant, something I haven't covered, you're telling me you won't take these things? You'll let strangers take them?"
"Stolen, Daddy," she had cried. "They are not clean. They are tainted."
He really could not understand his daughter. It seemed he'd been a thief ever since he was a child. New Orleans. The boardinghouse, the curious mixture of poverty and elegance and his mother drunk most of the time. The old captain who ran the antique shop. All this was going through his mind. Old Captain had had the front rooms of the house, and he, my Victim, had brought the breakfast tray each morning to Old Captain, before going on to school. Boardinghouse, service, elegant oldsters, St. Charles Avenue. The time when the men sat on the galleries in the evening and the old ladies did, too, with their hats. Daylight times I'd never know again.
Such reverie. No, Dora wouldn't like this. And he wasn't so sure he did either, suddenly. He had standards which were often difficult to explain to people. He began some defense as though talking to the dealer who'd brought this. "It's beautiful, yes, but it's too Baroque! It lacks that element of distortion that I treasure."
I smiled. I loved this guy's mind. And the smell of the blood, well.
I took a deliberate breath of it, and let it turn me into a total predator.
Go slowly, Lestat. You've waited for months. Don't rush it. And he's such a monster himself. He'd shot people in the head, killed them with knives. Once in a small grocery he had shot both his enemy and the proprietor's wife with utter indifference. Woman in the way. And he had coolly walked out. Those were early New York days, before Miami, before South America. But he remembered that murder, and that's why I knew about it.
He thought a lot about those various deaths. That's why I thought about them.
He was studying the hoofed feet of this thing, this angel, devil, demon. I realized its wings reached the ceiling. I could feel that shiver again if I let myself. But again, I was on firm ground, and there was nothing from any other realm in this place.
He slipped off his coat now, and stood in shirtsleeves. That was too much. I could see the flesh of his neck, of course, as he opened his collar. I could see that particularly beautiful place right below his ear, that special measure between the back of the neck of a human and the lobe of his ear, which has so much to do with male beauty.
Hell, I had not invented the significance of necks. Everyone knew what those proportions meant. He was all over pleasing to me, but it was the mind, really. To hell with his Asian beauty and all that, even his vanity which made him glow for fifty feet in all directions. It was the mind, the mind that was locked onto the statue, and had for one merciful moment let thoughts of Dora go.
He reached for another one of the little halogen spots and clamped his hand over the hot metal and directed it hill on the demon's wing, the wing I could best see, and I too saw the perfection he was thinking about, the Baroque love of detail; no. He did not collect this sort of thing. His taste was for the grotesque, and this thing was only grotesque by accident. God, it was hideous. It had a ferocious mane of hair, and a scowl on its face that could have been designed by William Blake, and huge rounded eyes that fixed on him in seeming hatred.
"Blake, yes!" he said suddenly. He turned around. "Blake. The damned thing looks like one of those drawings by Blake."
I realized he was staring at me. I had projected the thought, carelessly, yes, obviously with purpose. I felt a shock of connection. He saw me. He saw the glasses perhaps, and the light, or maybe my hair.
Very slowly I stepped out, with my arms at my sides. I wanted nothing so vulgar as his reaching for his gun. But he hadn't reached for it. He merely looked at me, blinded perhaps by the bright little lights so near to him. The halogen beam threw the shadow of the angel's wing on the ceiling. I came closer.
He said absolutely nothing. He was afraid. Or rather, let me say, he was alarmed. He was more than alarmed. He felt this might very well be his last confrontation. Someone had gotten by him totally!
And it was too late to be reaching for guns, or doing anything so literal, and yet he wasn't actually in fear of me.
Damned if he didn't know I wasn't human.
I came swiftly towards him, and took his face in both my hands.
He went into a sweat and tremble, naturally, yet he reached up and pulled the glasses off my eyes and they fell on the floor.
"Oh, it's gorgeous, finally," I whispered, "to be so very close to you!"
He couldn't form words. No mortal in my grip like this could have been expected to utter anything but prayers, and he had no prayers! He stared right into my eyes, and then very slowly took my measure, not daring to move, his face still fixed in both my cold, cold hands, and he knew. Not human.
It was the strangest reaction! Of course I'd confronted recognition before, in lands the world over; but prayer, madness, some desperate atavistic response, something always accompanied it. Even in old Europe where they believed in the nosferatu, they'd scream out a prayer before I sank my teeth.
But this, what was this, his staring at me, this comical criminal courage!
"Going to die like you lived?" I whispered.
One thought galvanized him. Dora. He went into a violent struggle, grabbing at my hands, realizing they felt like stone, and then convulsing, as he tried to pull himself loose, held mercilessly by the face. He hissed at me.
Some inexplicable mercy came over me. Don't torture him like this. He knows too much. Understands too much. God, you've had months of watching him, you don't have to stretch this out. On the other hand, when will you find another kill like this one!
Well, hunger overcame judgment. I pressed my forehead against his neck first, shifting my hand to the back of his head, let him feel my hair, heard him draw in his breath, and then I drank.
I had him. I had the gush, and him and Old Captain in the front room, the streetcar crashing past outside, and him saying to Old Captain, "You ever show it to me again or ask me to touch it and I won't ever come near you." And Old Captain swearing he never would. Old Captain taking him to the movies, and to dinner at the Monteleone, and on the plane to Atlanta, having vowed never to do it again, "Just let me be around you, son, just let me be near you, I'll never, I swear." His mother drunk in the doorway, brushing her hair.
"I know your game, you and that old man, I know just what you're doing. He bought you those clothes? You think I don't know." And then Terry with the bullet hole in the middle of her face, a blondhaired girl turning to the side and crumpling to the floor, the fifth murder and it has to be you, Terry, you. He and Dora were in the truck. And Dora knew. Dora was only six and she knew. Knew he'd shot her mother, Terry. And they'd never, never spoken a word about it. Terry's body in a plastic sack. Ah, God, plastic. And him saying, "Mommy's gone." Dora hadn't even asked. Six years old, she knew.
Terry screaming, "You think you can take my daughter from me, you son of a bitch, you think you can take my child, I'm leaving tonight with Jake and she's going with me." Bang, you're dead, honey. I couldn't stand you anyway. In a heap on the floor, the very flashy cute kind of common girl with very oval pale pink nails, and lipstick that always looks extraordinarily fresh, and hair from a bottle. Pink shorts, little thighs.
He and Dora driving in the night, and they never had spoken a word.
What are you doing to me! You are killing me! You are taking my blood, not my soul, you thief, you . . . what in the name of God?
"You talking to me?" I drew back, blood dripping from my lips, Good God, he was talking to me! I bit down again, and this time I did break his neck, but he wouldn't stop.