stopped at the freeway railing high above. The creatures were dropping over the edge, like big white insects, and landing on their feet on the slope.
And I was ready for them.
But again, as the first one skidded down towards us, scythe raised, there came that ghastly preternatural scream again and the blinding combustion, the creature’s face a black mask in a riot of orange flame. The body convulsed in a horrid dance.
The others turned and ran under the freeway.
I started after them, but Gabrielle had her arms around me and wouldn’t let me go. Her strength maddened me and amazed me.
“Stop, damn it!” she said. “Louis, help me!”
“Let me loose!” I said furiously. “I want one of them, just one of them. I can get the hindmost in the pack!”
But she wouldn’t release me, and I certainly wasn’t going to fight her, and Louis had joined with her in her angry and desperate entreaties.
“Lestat, don’t go after them!” he said, his polite manner strained to the fullest. “We’ve had quite enough. We must leave here now.”
“All right!” I said, giving it up resentfully. Besides, it was too late. The burnt one had expired in smoke and sputtering flames, and the others were gone into silence and darkness without a trace.
The night around us was suddenly empty, except for the thunder of the freeway traffic high above. And there we were, the three of us, standing together in the lurid glare of the blazing car.
Louis wiped the soot from his face wearily, his stiff white shirtfront smudged, his long velvet opera cape burnt and torn.
And there was Gabrielle, the waif just as she’d been so long ago, the dusty, ragged boy in frayed khaki jungle jacket and pants, the squashed brown felt hat askew on her lovely head.
Out of the cacophony of city noises, we heard the thin whine of sirens approaching.
Yet we stood motionless, the three of us, waiting, glancing to one another. And I knew we were all scanning for Marius. Surely it was Marius. It had to be. And he was with us, not against us. And he would answer us now.
I said his name aloud softly. I peered into the dark under the freeway, and out over the endless army of little houses that crowded the surrounding slopes.
But all I could hear were the sirens growing louder and the murmur of human voices as mortals began the long climb from the boulevard below.
I saw fear in Gabrielle’s face. I reached out for her, went towards her, in spite of all the hideous confusion, the mortals coming nearer and nearer, the vehicles stopped on the freeway above.
Her embrace was sudden, warm. But she gestured for me to hurry.
“We’re in danger! All of us,” she whispered. “Terrible danger. Come!”
3
IT WAS five o’clock in the morning and I stood alone at the glass doors of the Carmel Valley ranch house. Gabrielle and Louis had gone into the hills together to find their rest.
A phone call north had told me that my mortal musicians were safe in the new Sonoma hideaway, partying madly behind electric fences and gates. As for the police and the press and all their inevitable questions, well, that would have to wait.
And now I waited alone for the morning light as I’d always done, wondering why Marius hadn’t shown himself, why he had saved us only to vanish without a word.
“AND suppose it wasn’t Marius,” Gabrielle had said anxiously as she paced the floor afterwards. “I tell you I felt an overwhelming sense of menace. I felt danger to us as well as to them. I felt it outside the auditorium when I drove away. I felt it when we stood by the burning car. Something about it. It wasn’t Marius, I’m convinced—”
“Something almost barbaric about it,” Louis had said. “Almost but not quite—”
“Yes, almost savage,” she had answered, glancing to him in acknowledgment. “And even if it was Marius, what makes you think he didn’t save you so that he could take his private vengeance in his own way?”
“No,” I had said, laughing softly. “Marius doesn’t want revenge, or he would already have it, that much I know.”
But I had been too excited just watching her, the old walk, the old gestures. And ah, the frayed safari clothing. After two hundred years, she was still the intrepid explorer. She straddled the chair like a cowboy when she sat down, resting her chin on her hands on the high back.