slowly and looked up at him, daring him, it seemed, to remain there. An old man he was, and his dull gray eyes were boring into me with stubborn outrage, and as I glared at him, I heard myself let out a loud open-mouthed roar. Out of my soul it seemed to come, this sound. It grew louder and louder until those few left below cowered again with their ears stopped, and even Nicolas, rushing forward, buckled beneath the sound of it, both hands clasped to his head.
And yet the man stood there in the loge glowering, indignant and old, and stubborn, with furrowed brows under his gray wig.
I stepped back and leapt across the empty house, landing in the box directly before him, and his jaw fell in spite of himself and his eyes grew hideously wide.
He seemed deformed with age, his shoulders rounded, his hands gnarled, but the spirit in his eyes was beyond vanity and beyond compromise. His mouth hardened and his chin jutted. And from under his frock coat he pulled his pistol and he aimed it at me with both hands.
" Lestat!" Nicki shouted.
But the shot exploded and the ball hit me with full force. I didn't move. I stood as steady as the old man had stood before, and the pain rolled through me and stopped, leaving in its wake a terrible pulling in all my veins.
The blood poured out. It flowed as I have never seen blood flow. It drenched my shirt and I could feel it spilling down my back. But the pulling grew stronger and stronger, and a warm tingling sensation had commenced to spread across the surface of my back and chest.
The man stared, dumbfounded. The pistol dropped out of his hand. His head went back, eyes blind, and his body crumpled as if the air had been let out of it, and he lay on the floor.
Nicki had raced up the stairs and was now rushing into the box. A low hysterical murmuring was issuing from him. He thought he was witnessing my death.
And I stood still hearkening to my body in that terrible solitude that had been mine since Magnus made me the vampire. And I knew the wounds were no longer there.
The blood was drying on the silk vest, drying on the back of my torn coat. My body throbbed where the bullet had passed through me and my veins were alive with the same pulling, but the injury was no more.
And Nicolas, coming to his senses as he looked at me, realized I was unharmed, though his reason told him it couldn't be true.
I pushed past him and made for the stairs. He flung himself against me and I threw him off. I couldn't stand the sight of him, the smell of him.
"Get away from me!" I said.
But he came back again and he locked his arm around my neck. His face was bloated and there was an awful sound coming out of him.
"Let go of me. Nicki!" I threatened him. If I shoved him off too roughly, I'd tear his arms out of the sockets, break his back.
Break his back . . .
He moaned, stuttered. And for one harrowing split second the sounds he made were as terrible as the sound that had come from my dying animal on the mountain, my horse, crushed like an insect into the snow.
I scarcely knew what I was doing when I pried loose his hands.
The crowd broke, screaming, when I walked out onto the boulevard.
Renaud ran forward, in spite of those trying to restrain him.
"Monsieur!" He grabbed my hand to kiss it and stopped, staring at the blood.
"Nothing, my dear Renaud," I said to him, quite surprised at the steadiness of my voice and its softness. But something distracted me as I started to speak again, something I should hearken to, I thought vaguely, yet I went on.
"Don't give it a thought, my dear Renaud," I said. "Stage blood, nothing but an illusion. It was all an illusion. A new kind of theatrical. Drama of the grotesque, yes, the grotesque."
But again came that distraction, something I was sensing in the melee around me, people shuffling and pushing to get close but not too close, Nicolas stunned and staring.
"Go on with your plays," I was saying, almost unable to concentrate on my own words, "Your acrobats, your tragedies, your more civilized theatricals, if you like."
I pulled the bank notes out of my pocket and put them in his unsteady