I watched the black brew coming out of the little spout.
Indeed, I realized I was watching quite a few little things as we sat there, anxious and miserable though I was. Merely being with David gave me hope.
David took a hasty sip of the fresh cup as the waiter went away, and then reached into the pocket of his coat. He placed in my hand a little bundle of thin sheets of paper. These are newspaper stories of the murders. Read them carefully. Tell me anything that comes to your mind.
The first story, Vampire Murder in Midtown, enraged me beyond words. I noted the wanton destruction which David had described. Had to be clumsiness, to smash the furniture so stupidly. And the theft-how silly in the extreme. As for my poor agent, his neck had been broken as he'd been drained of his blood. More clumsiness.
It's a wonder he can use the power of flight at all, I said angrily. Yet here, he went through the wall on the thirtieth floor. That doesn't mean he can use the power over really great distances, David replied.
But how then did he get from New York to Bal Harbour in one night, and more significantly, why If he is using commercial aircraft, why go to Bal Harbour instead of Boston Or Los Angeles, or Paris, for heaven's sakes. Think of the high stakes for him were he to rob a great museum, an immense bank Santo Domingo I don't understand. Even if he has mastered the power of flight, it can't be easy for him. So why on earth would he go there Is he merely trying to scatter the kills so that no one will put together all the cases?
No, said David. If he really wanted secrecy, he wouldn't operate in this spectacular style. He's blundering. He's behaving as if he's intoxicated!
Yes. And it does feel that way in the beginning, truly it does. You're overcome by the effect of your heightened senses.
Is it possible that he is traveling through the air and merely striking wherever the winds carry him? David asked. That there is no pattern at all?
I was considering the question as I read the other reports slowly, frustrated that I could not scan them as I would have done with my vampire eyes. Yes, more clumsiness, more stupidity. Human bodies crushed by a heavy instrument, which was of course simply his fist.
He likes to break glass, doesn't he? I said. He likes to surprise his victims. He must enjoy their fear. He leaves no witnesses. He steals everything of obvious value. And none of it is very valuable at all. How I hate him. And yet... I have done things as terrible myself.
I remembered the villain's conversations with me. How I had failed to see through his gentlemanly manner! But David's early descriptions of him, of his stupidity, and his self-destructiveness, also came back. And his clumsiness, how could I ever forget that
No, I said, finally. I don't believe he can cover these distances. You have no idea how terrifying this power of flight can be. It's twenty times more terrifying than out-of-body travel. All of us loathe it. Even the roar of the wind induces a helplessness, a dangerous abandon, so to speak.
I paused. We know this flight in our dreams, perhaps because we knew it in some celestial realm beyond this earth before we were ever born. But we can't conceive of it as earthly creatures, and only I could know how it had damaged and torn my heart and soul.
Go on, Lestat. I'm listening. I understand.
I gave a little sigh. I learnt this power only because I was in the grip of one who was fearless, I said, for whom it was nothing. There are those of us who never use this power. No. I can't believe he's mastered it. He's traveling by some other means and then taking to the air only when the prey is near at hand.
Yes, that would seem to square with the evidence, if only we knew-
He was suddenly distracted. An elderly hotel clerk had just appeared in the distant doorway. He came towards us with maddening slowness, a genial kindly man with a large envelope in his hand.
At once David brought a bill out of his pocket, and held it in readiness.
Fax, sir, just in.
Ah, thank you so much.
He tore open the envelope.
Ah, here we are. News wire via Miami. A hilltop villa on the island of Curacao. Probable time