I was just about to reach into my pocket for one of the many paper handkerchiefs Gretchen had forced upon me, when I realized that a figure was standing exactly at my left, only an inch from the arm of the chair, and that a very smooth white hand was reaching for me. In the same instant, Mojo leapt to his feet, giving forth his worst, most menacing growls, and then appeared to charge the figure.
I tried to cry out, to identify myself, but before my lips were even open, I'd been hurled against the floor, deafened by Mojo's barking, and I felt the sole of a leather boot pressed to my throat, indeed, to the very bones of my neck, crushing them with such force that surely they were about to be broken.
I couldn't speak, nor could I free myself. A great piercing cry came from the dog, and then he, too, fell silent, and I heard the muffled sounds of his large body sinking to the floor. Indeed I felt the weight of him on my legs, and I struggled frantically and helplessly in pure terror. All reason left me as I clawed at the foot pinning me down, as I pounded the powerful leg, as I gasped for breath, only hoarse inarticulate growls coming from me.
Louis, it's Lestat. I'm in the body, the human body.
Harder and harder the foot pressed. I was strangling as the bones were about to be crushed, yet I couldn't utter one syllable to save myself. And above me in the gloom, I saw his face-the subtle gleaming whiteness of the flesh that did not seem at all to be flesh, the exquisitely symmetrical bones, and the deh'cate half-closed hand, which hovered in the air, in a perfect attitude of indecision, as the deep-set eyes, fired with a subtle and incandescent green, looked down upon me without the slightest palpable emotion.
With all my soul I cried the words again, but when had he ever been able to divine the thoughts of his victims? I could have done that, but not he! Oh, God help me, Gretchen help me, I was screaming in my soul.
As the foot increased its pressure, perhaps for the final time, all indecision cast aside, I wrenched my head to the right, sucked in one desperate tiny breath, and forced from my constricted throat one hoarse word: "Lestat!" all the while desperately pointing to myself with my right hand and first finger.
It was the last gesture of which I was capable. I was suffocating, and the darkness came rolling over me. Indeed it was bringing a total strangling nausea with it, and just at the moment when I ceased to care hi the most lovely light-headed fashion, the pressure ceased, and I found myself rolling over and rising up on my hands, one frantic cough tearing loose from me after another.
"For the love of God," I cried, spitting the words in between my hoarse painful choking breaths, "I'm Lestat. I'm Lestat in this body! Couldn't you have given me a chance to speak? Do you kill any hapless mortal who blunders into your little house? What of the ancient laws of hospitality, you bloody fool! Why the hell don't you put iron bars on your doors!" I struggled to my knees, and suddenly the nausea won out. I vomited a filthy stream of spoiled food into the dirt and the dust, and then shrank back from it, chilled and miserable, staring up at him.
"You killed the dog, didn't you? You monster!" I flung myself forward on Mojo's inert body. But he wasn't dead, merely unconscious, and at once, I felt the slow pumping of his heart. "Oh, thank God, if you'd done that, I would never, never, never have forgiven you."
A faint moan came from Mojo, and then his left paw moved, and then slowly his right. I laid my hand between his ears. Yes, he was coming back. He was unhurt. But oh, what a wretched experience this had been! Here of all places to come to the very brink of mortal death! Enraged again, I glared up at Louis.
How still he was as he stood there, how quietly astonished. The pounding of the rain, the dark lively sounds of the winter night-all seemed to evaporate suddenly as I looked at him. Never had I seen him with mortal eyes. Never had I beheld this wan, phantom beauty. How could mortals believe this was a human when their eyes passed over him? Ah, the hands-like those of plaster saints come to life in shadowy grottoes. And how utterly devoid of feeling the face, the eyes not windows of the soul at all, but fine jewellike snares of illumination.
"Louis," I said. "The worst has happened. The very worst. The Body Thief made the switch. But he's stolen my body and has no intention of giving it back to me."
Nothing palpable quickened in him as I spoke. Indeed so lifeless and menacing did he seem, that I suddenly broke into a stream of French, pouring forth every image and detail which I could recall in the hopes of wringing recognition from him. I spoke of our last conversation in this very house, and the brief meeting at the foyer of the Cathedral. I recalled his warning to me that I must not speak to the Body Thief. And I confessed that I had found the man's offer impossible to resist, and had gone north to meet with him, and to accept his proposal.
Still, nothing of vitality sparked the merciless face, and suddenly, I fell silent. Mojo was trying to stand, occasional little moans coming from him, and slowly I wrapped my right arm around his neck, and leaned against him, struggling to catch my breath, and telling him in a soothing voice that everything was fine now, we were saved. No more harm would come to him.
Louis shifted his gaze slowly to the animal, then back to me. Then gradually, the set of his mouth softened ever so slightly. And then he reached for my hand, and pulled me up- quite without my cooperation or consent-to a standing position.
"It really is you," he said in a deep, raw whisper.
"You're damned right it's me. And you nearly killed me, you realize that! How many times will you try that little trick before all the clocks of the earth tick to the finish? I need your help, damn you! And, once again, you try to kill me! Now, will you please close whatever shutters still hang on these damned windows, and make a fire of some sort in that miserable little hearth!"
I flopped down again in my red velvet chair, still laboring for breath, and a strange lapping sound suddenly distracted me. I looked up. Louis had not moved. Indeed he was staring at me, as if I were a monster. But Mojo was patiently and steadily devouring all of the vomit I had spilt upon the floor.
I gave a little delighted laugh, which threatened to become a fit of perfect hysteria. "Please, Louis, the fire. Make the fire," I said. "I'm freezing in this mortal body! Move!" "Good God," he whispered. "What have you done now!"
EIGHTEEN
IT WAS two by the watch on my wrist. The rain had slackened beyond the broken shutters which covered both doors and windows, and I sat huddled in the red velvet chair, enjoying the little blaze from the brick fireplace, yet badly chilled again, and suffering the same old racking cough. But the moment was at hand, surely, when such a thing would no longer be of concern.
I had poured out the whole tale.
In a frenzy of mortal candor, I had described each and every dreadful and bewildering experience, from my conversations with Raglan James to the very last sad farewell to Gretchen. I had told even of my dreams, of Claudia and me in the long-ago little hospital, of our conversation hi the fantasy parlour of the eighteenth-century hotel suite, and of the sad terrible loneliness I'd felt hi loving Gretchen, for I knew that she believed at heart that I was mad, and only for that reason had she loved me. She had seen me as some sort of beatific idiot, and no more.
It was finished and done. I had no idea where to find the Body Thief. But I must find him. And this search could only begin when I was once again a vampire, when this tall powerful body was pumped with preternatural blood.