I have to tell you what happened when I saw the Veil, and when the sun struck me and, more wretchedly for me, what I saw when finally I reached Lestat and drew so close to him that I could drink his blood.
Yes, stay on course. I know now why he makes the chain. It isn't pride, is it? It's the necessity. The tale can't be told without one link being connected to the other, and we poor orphans of ticking time know no other means of measure but those of sequence. Dropped into the snowy blackness, into a world worse than a void, I reached for a chain, did I not? Oh, God, what I would have given in that awful descent to grasp the firmness of a metal chain!
He came back so suddenly-to you and Dora and me.
It was the third morning, and not long enough before dawn. I heard the doors slam far below us in the glass tower, and then that sound, that sound which gains in eerie volume each year, the beating of his heart.
Who was first to rise from the table? I was still with fear. He came too fast, and there were those wild fragrances whirling about him, of woodland and raw earth. He crashed through all barriers as if he were pursued by those who'd stolen him away, and yet there was no one behind him. He came alone into the apartment, slamming the door in his wake and then standing before us, more horrible than I could ever have imagined, more ruined than I had ever seen him in any of his former little defeats.
With absolute love Dora ran to him, and in a desperate need that was all too human he clutched at her so fiercely that I thought he would destroy her.
"You're safe now, darling," she cried, struggling so as to make him understand.
But we had only to look at him to know it wasn't finished, though we murmured the same hollow words in the face of what we beheld.
Chapter 18
18
HE HAD COME from the maelstrom. One shoe was left to him, the other foot bare, his coat torn, his hair wild and snagged with thorns and dried leaves and bits of errant flowers.
In his arms, to his chest he clutched a flat bundle of folded cloth as if it carried the whole fate of the world embroidered on it.
But the worst, the very worst horror of all, was that one eye had been torn from his beautiful face, and the socket of vampiric lids puckered and shuddered, seeking to close, refusing to acknowledge this horrid disfigurement to the body rendered perfect for all time when he'd been made immortal.
I wanted to take him in my arms. I wanted to comfort him, to tell him wherever he'd gone and whatever had taken place, he was now safe again with us, but nothing could quiet him.
A deep exhaustion saved us all from the inevitable tale. We had to seek our dark corners away from the prying sun, we had to wait until the following night when he would come out to us and tell us what had happened.
Still clutching the bundle, refusing all help, he closeted himself up with his wound. I had no choice but to leave him.
As I sank down that morning into my own resting place, secure in clean modern darkness, I cried and cried like a child on account of the sight of him. Oh, why had I come to his aid? Why must I see him brought low like this when it had taken so many painful decades to cement my love for him forever?
Once before, a hundred years ago, he'd come stumbling into the Theatre des Vampires on the trail of his renegade fledglings, sweet gentle Louis and the doomed child, and I hadn't pitied him then, his skin scored with scars from Claudia's foolish and clumsy attempt to kill him.
Loved him then, yes, I had, but this had been a bodily disaster which his evil blood would heal, and I knew from our old lore that in the healing he would gain even greater strength than serene time itself would have given him.
But what I'd seen now was a devastation of the soul in his anguished face, and the vision of the one blue eye, shining so vividly in his streaked and wretched face, had been unbearable.
I don't remember that we spoke, David. I remember only