Blood Canticle Page 0,28

didn't fight me."

"What? Do I get a merit badge for that?" she fired back. "We don't have to go close to the house," she went on, sob in her throat. "I just need to see those Garden District streets."

"Oh yeah, right," I said under my breath. "You care that you'll draw them right out of the house, right out of their peace of mind? You ready to follow up on that in some way? Of course I'm not saying you have to follow up. You understand, I'm just trying to respond to you and Mr. Quinn Blackwood as exemplary decent little people. I myself? I'm a scoundrel."

"Beloved Boss," she said with a straight face, "let me just go as close as we can, as close as you can figure. No, I don't want to rile them up. I hate the idea. But I was in solitary confinement for two years."

"Where are we headed, Lestat?" Quinn asked. "Will we hunt downtown?"

"Back of town is what I like to call it," I said. "No Creole like me is going to call it downtown. You know where the scum grows on the bricks. Listen for the city, Mona."

"I hear it," she answered. "It's like opening a floodgate. And then the discrete voices. Plenty of discrete voices. Bickering, threats, even the muffled snap of guns . . ."

"The town's full tonight in spite of the heat," I said. "People are out on the streets, thoughts flooding me in sickening waves. If I was a saint, this is what I would have to listen to all the time."

"Yeah, like prayers," she said. "All those petitions."

"Saints have to work," I said, as if I really knew.

And then with one fine blow it struck me. Their presence.

It hit Quinn at the same instant, and he said, "My God" under his breath. He was astonished.

"Close in on them," I said.

"What is it?" Mona asked. "I can't hear it." Then she locked her eyes on Quinn.

Oh, this was nothing short of providential! I was absolutely furious and deliriously happy at the same time. I closed my focus.

Oh, yeah, right, killing at random as they fed, a pair of male and female vampires, constitutionally cruel, high-toned, style versus character, brilliant gold and brand-name leather, drunk on their powers, lapping up New Orleans as if it weren't real, baiting the "great vampire Lestat," in whom they didn't really believe (who does?), prancing through my French Quarter streets to a lavish lair in a pricey hotel, key in the lock, blood full, laughter echoing to the ceiling, turn on the TV, done in for the night, innocent victims strewn in the back alleys, but not all of them, ready to groove on music or the color images of the mortal world, feeling totally superior, vague plan to sleep in the day in the filthy old whitewashed tombs of St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery, like, very bold! Unwittingly waiting to die.

I sat back laughing under my breath.

"This is too rich! Too deliciously wicked! She's up for it. Don't give it another thought. It's the lightning narcotic of enemy blood. It's perfect for her. And the sooner she learns to fight her own kind the better. Same for you, Quinn. You've never had to battle the cosmic trash that's out there."

"But this has to be perfect for her, Lestat," Quinn said. "You know what happened on my first night. I blundered. I can't let something ugly and bad happen to her-."

"You're breaking my tender little heart," I said. "Are you and she going in alone? I am going with you. You honestly think I can't handle this pair of mavericks? I've made myself too domestic for you, Quinn. You forget who I am and maybe I do too."

"But how will it end?" he persisted.

"Your innocence is so genuine," I responded.

"You should know that by now!" he said. And then at once, "I'm sorry. Forgive me. It's only-."

"Listen to me, both of you," I said. "We're talking the misbegotten of Hell. They've been swaggering through eternity for a decade at most, just long enough to make them very cocky. I'll get the lowdown on their souls before I dispatch them, of course. But as of now I know they're outlaws. And I don't like them. And vampire blood is always hot. And the fighting will be good. They're greedy filth. They break the peace on my streets. That's a death sentence, at least when I have the time for it. And right now I