"Ah, that makes you out to be a perfect liar," I said furiously. "You described my weeping in your miserable memoir in a scene which we both know did not take place!"
"Lestat, kill this creature! You're mad if you let him come close enough to you to speak three words."
I was confounded, utterly confounded. I dropped down in the chair again and stared into space. The night seemed to breathe with a soft lovely rhythm outside, the fragrance of the Queen's Wreath just barely touching the moist cool air. A faint incandescence seemed to come from Louis's face, from his hands folded on the desk. He was veiled in stillness, waiting for my response, I presumed, though why, I had no idea.
"I never expected this from you," I said, crestfallen. "I expected some long philosophical diatribe, like the trash you wrote in your memoir, but this?"
He sat there, silent, peering at me steadily, the light sparking for an instant hi his brooding green eyes. He seemed tormented in some deep way, as if my words had caused him pain. Certainly it wasn't my insult to his writing. I insulted his writing all the time. That was a joke. Well, sort of a joke.
I couldn't figure what to say or do. He was working on my nerves. When he spoke his voice was very soft.
"You don't really want to be human," he said. "You don't believe that, do you?"
"Yes, I believe it!" I answered, humiliated by the feeling in my voice. "How could you not believe it?" I stood up and commenced my pacing again. I made a circuit of the little house, and wandered out into the jungle garden, pushing the thick springy vines out of my way. I was in such a state of confusion I couldn't speak to him anymore.
I was thinking of my mortal life, vainly trying not to myth-ologize it, but I could not drive away from me those memories-the last wolf hunt, my dogs dying in the snow. Paris. The boulevard theatre. Unfinished! You don't really want to be htonan. How could he say such a thing?
It seemed an age I was out in the garden, but finally, for better or worse, I wandered back inside. I found him still at his desk, looking at me in the most forlorn, almost heartbroken way.
"Look," I said, "there are only two things which I believe- the first is that no mortal can refuse the Dark Gift once he really knows what it is. And don't speak to me about David Talbot refusing me. David is not an ordinary man. The second thing I believe is that all of us would be human again if we could. Those are my tenets. There's nothing else."
He made a little weary accepting gesture and sat back hi his chair. The wood creaked softly beneath his weight, and he lifted his right hand languidly, wholly unconscious of the seductive quality of this simple gesture, and ran his fingers back through his loose dark hair.
The memory pierced me suddenly of the night I had given him the blood, of how he had argued with me at the last moment that I must not do it, and then he'd given in. I had explained it all to him beforehand-while he was still the drunken feverish young planter in the sickbed with the rosary wound around the bedpost. But how can such a thing be explained! And he'd been so convinced that he wanted to come with me, so certain that mortal life held nothing for him-so bitter and burnt out and so young!
What had he known then? Had he ever read a poem by Milton, or listened to a sonata by Mozart? Would the name Marcus Aurelius have meant anything to him? In all probability, he would have thought it a fancy name for a black slave. Ah, those savage and swaggering plantation lords with their rapiers and their pearl-handled pistols! They did appreciate excess; I shall, in retrospect, give them that.
But he was far from those days now, wasn't he? The author of Interview with the Vampire, of all preposterous titles! I tried to quiet myself. I loved him too much not to be patient, not to wait until he spoke again. I'd fashioned him of human flesh and blood to be my preternatural tormentor, had I not?
"It can't be undone that easily," he said now, rousing me from memory, dragging me back into this dusty room. His voice was deliberately gentle, almost conciliatory or imploring. "It can't be that simple. You can't change bodies with a mortal man. To be candid, I don't even think it's possible, but even if it were-"
I didn't answer. I wanted to say, But what if it can be done! What if I can know again what it means to be alive.
"And then what about your body," he said, pleading with me, holding his anger and outrage in check so skillfully. "Surely you can't place all your powers at the disposal of this creature, this sorcerer or whatever he is. The others have told me that they cannot even calculate the limits of your power. Ah, no. It's an appalling idea. Tell me, how does he know how to find you! That's the most significant part."
"That's the least significant part," I replied. "But clearly, if this man can switch bodies, then he can leave his body. He can navigate as a spirit for long enough to track me and find me. I must be very visible to him when he's in this state, given what I am. This is no miracle in itself, you understand."
"I know," he said. "Or so I read and so I hear. I think you've found a truly dangerous being. This is worse than what we are."
"How so worse?"
"It implies another desperate attempt at immortality, switching bodies! Do you think this mortal, whoever he is, plans to grow old in this or any other body, and allow himself to die!"
I had to confess I followed his meaning. Then I told him about the man's voice, the sharp British accent, the cultured sound of it, and how it didn't seem the voice of a young man.
He shuddered. "He probably comes from the Talamasca," he said. "That's probably where he found out about you."
"All he had to do was buy a paperback novel to find out about me."
"Ah, but not to believe, Lestat, not to believe it was true."
I told him that I had spoken to David. David would know if this man was from his own order, but as for myself I didn't believe it. Those scholars would never have done such a thing. And there was something sinister about this mortal. The members of the Talamasca were almost tiresome in their whole-someness. Besides, it didn't matter. I would talk to this man and discover everything for myself.
He grew reflective again and very sad. It almost hurt me to look at him. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, but that would only have made him furious.
"I love you," he said softly.
I was amazed.
"You're always looking for a way to triumph," he continued. "You never give in. But there is no way to triumph. This is purgatory we're in, you and I. All we can be is thankful that it isn't actually hell."
"No, I don't believe it," I said. "Look, it doesn't matter what you say or what David said. I'm going to talk to Raglan James. I want to know what this is about! Nothing's going to prevent that."
"Ah, so David Talbot has also warned you against him."
"Don't choose your allies among my friends!"
"Lestat, if this human comes near me, if I believe that I am in danger from him, I will destroy him. Understand."
"Of course, I do. He wouldn't approach you. He's picked me, and with reason."
"He's picked you because you are careless and flamboyant and vain. Oh, I don't say this to hurt you. Truly I don't. You long to be seen and approached and understood and to get into mischief, to stir everything up and see if it won't boil over and if God won't come down and grab you by the hair. Well, there is no God. You might as well be God."
"You and David ... the same song, the same admonitions, though he claims to have seen God and you don't believe He exists."
"David has seen God?" he asked respectfully.
"Not really," I murmured with a scornful gesture. "But you both scold in the same way. Marius scolds in the same way."
"Well, of course, you pick the voices that scold you. You always have, in the same manner in which you pick those who will turn on you and stick the knife right into your heart."