slopes, and I could almost see the towers of the castle itself.
But then she said:
Not yet.
It was night again when I awoke. I was lying on the desert floor. The dunes bestirred by the wind had spread a fine mist of sand over all my limbs. I felt pain all over. Pain even in the roots of my hair. I felt such pain I couldn't will myself to move.
For hours I lay there. Now and then I gave a soft moan. It made no difference in the pain I felt. When I moved my limbs even a little, the sand was like tiny particles of sharp glass against my back and my calves and the heels of my feet.
I thought of all those to whom I might have called for help. I did not call. Only gradually did I realize that if I remained here, the sun would come again, naturally enough, and I would be caught once more and burned once more. Yet still I might not die.
I had to remain, didn't I What sort of coward would seek shelter now
But all I had to do was look at my hands in the light of the stars to see that I was not going to die. I was burnt, yes, my skin was brown and wrinkled and roaring with pain. But I was nowhere near death.
At last I rolled over and tried to rest my face against the sand, but this was no more comforting than staring up into the stars.
Then I felt the sun coming. I was weeping as the great orange light spilled over all the world. The pain caught my back first and then I thought my head was burning, that it would explode, and that the fire was eating my eyes. I was mad when the darkness of oblivion came, absolutely mad.
When I awoke the following evening, I felt sand in my mouth, sand covering me in my agony. In that madness, I'd apparently buried myself alive.
For hours I remained so, thinking only that this pain was more than any creature could endure.
Finally I struggled to the surface, whimpering like an animal, and I climbed to my feet, each gesture pulling at the pain and intensifying it, and then I willed myself into the air and I started the slow journey west and into the night.
No diminishing of my powers. Ah, only the surface of my body had been deeply harmed.
The wind was infinitely softer than the sand. Nevertheless it brought its own torment, like fingers stroking my burnt skin all over and tugging at the burnt roots of my hair. It stung my burnt eyelids; and scraped at my burnt knees.
I traveled gently for hours, willing myself to David's house once more and feeling the most glorious relief for a few moments as I descended through the cold wet snow.
It was just before morning in England.
I entered by the rear door again, each step an excruciating ordeal. Almost blindly, I found the library and I went down on my knees, ignoring the pain, and collapsed upon the tigerskin rug.
I laid my head beside the tiger's head, and my cheek against its open jaws. Such fine, close fur! I stretched out my arms on its legs and felt its smooth, hard claws under my wrists. The pain shot through me in waves. The fur felt almost silky and the room was cool in its darkness. And in faint shimmers of silent visions, I saw the mangrove forests of India,! saw dark faces, and heard distant voices. And once very clearly for a full instant I saw David as a young man, as I'd seen him in my dream.
It seemed such a miracle, this living young man, full of blood and tissue and such miraculous achievements as eyes and a beating heart and five fingers to each long slender hand.
I saw myself walking in Paris in the old days when I was alive. I was wearing the red velvet cloak, lined with the fur of the wolves I'd killed back in my native Auvergne, never dreaming that things lurked in the shadows, things that could see you and fall in love with you, just because you were young, things that could take your life, just because they loved you and you'd slain a whole pack of wolves . . .
David, the hunter! In belted khaki, with that magnificent gun.
Slowly, I became aware that the pain was already lessened. Good old Lestat, the god, healing with preternatural