Most irritating.
"A message for you, sir. The gentleman requested I put it in your hands."
Had to be some mistake. Nevertheless I opened the door The young man gave me an envelope. Fat, bulky. For on second I could only stare at it. I had a one-pound note still in my pocket, from the little thief I'd chomped on earliei, and I gave this to the boy, and locked the door again.
This was exactly the same kind of envelope I'd been given in Miami by that lunatic mortal who'd come running towards me across the sand. And the sensation! I'd experienced that bizarre sensation right at the moment my eyes had fallen on that creature. Oh, but this was not possible ...
I tore open the envelope. My hands were suddenly shaking. It was another little printed short story, clipped out of a book exactly as the first one had been, and stapled at the upper-left-hand corner in precisely the same way!
I was dumbfounded! How in the hell had this being tracked me here? No one knew I was here! David didn't even know I was here! Oh, there were the credit card numbers involved, but dear God, it would have taken hours for any mortal to locate me that way, even if such a thing were possible, which it really was not.
And what had the sensation to do with it-the curious vibratory feeling and the pressure which seemed to be inside my own limbs?
But there was no time to consider any of this. It was almost morning!
The danger in the situation made itself immediately apparent to me. Why the hell hadn't I seen it before? This being did most definitely have some means of knowing where I was- even where I chose to conceal myself during daylight! I had to get out of these rooms. How perfectly outrageous!
Trembling with annoyance, I forced myself to scan this story, which was only a few pages in length. "Eyes of the Mummy" was the title, author Robert Bloch. A clever little tale, but what could it possibly mean to me? I thought of the Lovecraft, which had been much longer and seemed wholly different. What on earth could all this signify? The seeming idiocy of it further maddened me.
But it was too late to think about it anymore. I gathered up David's manuscripts, and left the rooms, rushing out of a fire exit and going up to the roof. I scanned the night in all directions. I couldn't find the little bastard! Lucky for him. I would surely have destroyed him on sight. When it comes to protecting my daylight lair, I have little patience or restraint.
I moved upwards, covering the miles with the greatest speed I could attain. At last I descended in a snow-covered wood far, far north of London and there I dug my own grave in the frozen earth as I had done so many tunes before.
I was in a fury for having to do so. A positive fury. I'm going to kill this son of a bitch, I thought, whoever the hell he is. How dare he come stalking me, and shoving these stories in my face! Yes, I shall do that, kill him as soon as I catch him.
But then the drowsiness came, the numbness, and very soon nothing mattered ...
Once again I was dreaming, and she was there, lighting the oil lamp, and saying, "Ah, the flame doesn't frighten you anymore . . ."
"You're mocking me," I said, miserably. I'd been weeping.
"Ah, but, Lestat, you do have a way of recovering from these cosmic fits of despair awfully fast. There you were dancing under the street lamps in London. Really!"
I wanted to protest, but I was crying, and I couldn't talk . . .
In one last jolt of consciousness, I saw that mortal in Venice-under the arches of San Marco-where I'd first noticed him-saw his brown eyes and smooth youthful mouth.
What do you want? I demanded.
Ah, but it is what you want, he seemed to reply.
SIX
I WASN'T so angry with the little fiend when I woke up. Actually, I was powerfully intrigued. But then the sun had set and I had the upper hand.
I decided upon a little experiment. I went to Paris, making the crossing very quickly and on my own.
Now let me digress here for a moment, only to explain that in recent years I had avoided Paris utterly, and indeed, I knew nothing of it as a twentieth-century city at all. The reasons for this are probably obvious. I had suffered much there in ages past, and I guarded myself against the visions of modern "buildings rising around Pere-Lachaise cemetery or electrically lighted Ferns wheels turning in the Tuileries. But I had always secretly longed to return to Paris, naturally. How could I not?
And this little experiment gave me courage and a perfect excuse. It deflected the inevitable pain of my observations, for I had a purpose. But within moments of my arrival, I realized that I was very truly in Paris-that this could be no place else-and I was overwhelmed with happiness as I walked on the grand boulevards, and inevitably past the place where the Theatre of the Vampires had once stood.
Indeed a few theatres of that period had survived into modern times, and there they were- imposing and ornate and still drawing in their audiences, amid the more modern structures on all sides.
I realized as I wandered the brilliantly lighted Champs Ely-sees-which was jammed with tiny speeding cars, as well as thousands of pedestrians-that this was no museum city, like Venice. It was as alive now as it had ever been in the last two centuries. A capital. A place of innovation still and courageous change.
I marveled at the stark splendour of the Georges Pompidou Center, rising so boldly within sight of the venerable flying buttresses of Notre Dame. Oh, I was glad I had come.
But I had a task, did I not?
I didn't tell a soul, mortal or immortal, that I was there. I did not call my Paris lawyer, though it was most inconvenient. Rather I acquired a great deal of money in the old familiar manner of taking it from a couple of thoroughly unsavory and well-heeled criminal victims in the dark streets.
Then I headed for the snow-covered Place Vendome, which contained the very same palaces which it had in my day, and under the alias of Baron Van Kindergarten, ensconced myself in a lavish suite at the Ritz.
There for two nights, I avoided the city, enveloped in a luxury and style that was truly worthy of Marie Antoinette's Versailles. Indeed it brought tears to my eyes to see the excessive Parisian decoration all around me, the gorgeous Louis XVI chairs, and the lovely embossed paneling of the walls. Ah, Paris. Where else can wood be painted gold and still look beautiful!
Sprawled on a tapestried directoire daybed, I set at once to reading David's manuscripts, only now and then breaking off to walk about the silent parlour and bedroom, or to open a real French window, with its encrusted oval knob, and gaze out at the back garden of the hotel, so very formal and quiet and proud.
David's writing captivated me. I soon felt closer to him than ever before.
What was plain was that David had been wholly a man of action in his youth, and drawn into the realm of books only when they spoke of action, and that he'd always found his greatest pleasure in the hunt. He had taken down his first game when he was only ten years old. His descriptions of shooting the big Bengal tigers were infused with the excitement of the pursuit itself and the risks he ultimately endured. Always drawing very close to the beast before he fired his gun, he had almost been killed more than once.
He had loved Africa as well as India, hunting elephants in the days when no one ever dreamed the species would be in danger of dying out. Again, he had been charged innumerable times before he had brought them down. And in hunting of the the big bull and the lions of the Serengeti Plain he had courted similar risks.
Indeed, he had gone out of his way to hike arduous mountain trails, to swim in dangerous rivers, to lay his hand upon the tough hide of the crocodile, to overcome his inveterate revulsion for snakes. He had loved to sleep in the open; to scribble entries in his diary by the light of oil lanterns or candles; to eat only the meat of the animals he killed, even when there was very little of it; and to skin his kills without aid.