And I didn't want to die!
"God, please, not like this, not in this body." I closed my eyes as I whispered. "Not yet, not now. Oh, please, I don't want to! I don't want to die. Don't let me die." I was crying, I was broken and terrified and crying. Oh, but it was perfect, wasn't it? Lord God, had a more perfect pattern ever revealed itself to me - the craven monster who had gone into the Gobi not to seek the fire from heaven but for pride, for pride, for pride.
My eyes were squeezed shut. I could feel the tears running down my face. "Don't let me die, please, please, don't let me die. Not now, not like this, not in this body! Help me!"
A small hand touched me, struggling to slip into mine, and then it was done, holding tight to me, tender and warm. Ah, so soft. So very little. And you know whose hand it is, you know, but you're too scared to open your eyes.
If she's there, then you are really dying. I can't open my eyes. I'm afraid, oh, so afraid. Shivering and sobbing, I held her little hand so tight that surely I was crushing it, but I wouldn't open my eyes.
Louis, she's here. She's come for me. Help me, Louis, please. I can't look at her. I won't. I can't get my hand loose from her!
And where are you? Asleep in the earth, deep beneath your wild and neglected garden, with the winter sun pouring down on the flowers, asleep until the night comes again.
"Marius, help me. Pandora, wherever you are, help me. Khayman, come and help me. Armand, no hatred between us now. I need you! Jesse, don't let this happen to me."
Oh, the low and sorry murmur of a demon's prayer beneath the wailing of the siren. Don't open your eyes. Don't look at her. If you do, it's finished.
Did you call out for help in the last moments, Claudia? Were you afraid? Did you see the light like the fire of hell filling the air well, or was it the great and beautiful light filling the entire world with love?
We stood in the graveyard together, in the warm fragrant evening, full of distant stars and soft purple light. Yes, all the many colors of darkness. Look at her shining skin, the dark blood bruise of her lips, and deep color of her eyes. She was holding her bouquet of yellow and white chrysanthemums. I shall never forget that fragrance.
"Is my mother buried here?"
"I don't know, petite cherie. I never even knew her name." She was all rotted and stinking when I came upon her, the ants were crawling all over her eyes and into her open mouth.
"You should have found out her name. You should have done that for me. I would like to know where she is buried."
"That was half a century ago, cherie. Hate me for the larger things. Hate me, if you will, because you don't lie now at her side. Would she keep you warm if you did? Blood is warm, cherie. Come with me, and drink blood, as you and I know how to do. We can drink blood together unto the end of the world."
"Ah, you have an answer for everything." How cold her smile. In these shadows one can almost see the woman in her, defying the permanent stamp of child sweetness, with the inevitable enticement to kiss, to hold, to love.
"We are death, ma cherie, death is the final answer." I gathered her up in my arms, felt her tucked against me, kissed her, kissed her, and kissed her vampire skin. "There are no questions after that."
Her hand touched my forehead.
The ambulance was speeding, as if the siren were chasing it, as if the siren were the force driving it on. Her hand touched my eyelids. I won't look at you!
Oh, please, help me ... the dreary prayer of the devil to his cohorts, as he tumbles deeper and deeper towards hell.
THIRTEEN
YES, I know where we are. You've been trying to bring me back here from the beginning, to the little hospital." How forlorn it looked now, so crude with its clay walls, and wooden shuttered windows, and the little beds lashed together out of barely finished wood. Yet she was there in the bed, wasn't she? I know the nurse, yes, and the old round-shouldered doctor, and I see you there in the bed-that's you, the little one with the curls on the top of the blanket, and Louis there . ..
All right, why am I here? I know this is a dream. It's not death. Death has no particular regard for people.
"Are you sure?" she said. She sat on the straight-back chair, golden hair done up in a blue ribbon, and there were blue satin slippers on her small feet. So that meant she was there in the bed, and there on the chair, my little French doll, my beauty, with the high rounded insteps, and the perfectly shaped little hands.
"And you, you're here with us and you're in a bed in the Washington, D.C., emergency room. You know you're dying down there, don't you?"
"Severe hypothermia, very possibly pneumonia. But how do we know what infections we've got? Hit him with antibiotics. There's no way we can get this man on oxygen now. If we send him to University, he'd end up in the hall there too."
"Don't let me die. Please . . . I'm so afraid."
"We're here with you, we're taking care of you. Can you tell me your name? Is there some family whom we can notify?"
"Go ahead, tell them who you really are," she said with a little silvery laugh, her voice always so delicate, so very pretty. I can feel her tender little lips, just to look at them. I used to like to press my finger against her lower lip, playfully, when I kissed her eyelids, and her smooth forehead.
"Don't be such a little smarty!" I said between my teeth. "Besides, who am I down there?"
"Not a human being, if that's what you mean. Nothing could make you human."
"All right, I'll give you five minutes. Why did you bring me here? What do you want me to say-that I'm sorry about what I did, taking you out of that bed and making you a vampire? Well, do you want the truth, the rock-bottom deathbed truth? I don't know if I am. I'm sorry you suffered. I'm sorry anybody has to suffer. But I can't say for certain that I'm sorry for that little trick."
"Aren't you the least little bit afraid of standing by yourself like this?"
"If the truth can't save me, nothing can." How I hated the smell of sickness around me, of all those little bodies, feverish and wet beneath their drab coverings, the entire dingy and hopeless little hospital of so many decades ago.
"My father who art in hell, Lestat be your name."
"And you? After the sun burnt you up in the air well in the Theatre of the Vampires, did you go to hell?"
Laughter, such high pure laughter, like glittering coins shaken loose from a purse.
"I'll never tell!"
"Now, I know this is a dream. That's all it's been from the beginning. Why would someone come back from the dead to say such trivial and inane things."
"Happens all the time, Lestat. Don't get so worked up. I want you to pay attention now. Look at these little beds, look at these children suffering."
"Aye, the way that Magnus took you away from your life, and gave you something monstrous and evil in return. You made me a slayer of my brothers and my sisters. All my sins have their origin in that moment, when you reached for me and lifted me from that bed."
"No, you can't blame it all on me. I won't accept it. Is the father parent to the crimes of his child? All right, so what if it is true. Who is there to keep count? That's the problem, don't you see? There is no one."
"So is it right, therefore, that we kill?"
"I gave you life, Claudia. It wasn't for all time, no, but it was life, and even our life is better than death."
"How you lie, Lestat. 'Even our life,' you say. The truth is, you think our accursed life is better than life itself. Admit it. Look at you down there in your human body. How you've hated it."