my hands quivering. "Lestat, give me this one embrace and I'll never ask another thing of you for all eternity. Let me put my lips to your throat, Lestat, let me test the tale, let me do it!"
"You break my heart, you little fool," he said with tears welling. "You always did."
"Don't judge me!" I cried.
He went on, speaking to me alone, from his mind as much as with his voice. I couldn't tell if anyone else there could even hear him. But I heard him. I would not forget a single word.
"And what if it was the Blood of God, Armand," he asked, "and not part and parcel of some titanic lie, what would you find in me? Go out to the early morning Mass and snatch your victims from those just come from the Communion Rail! What a pretty game that would be, Armand, to feed forever only on Holy Communicants! You can have your Blood of Christ from any one of them. I tell you, I do not believe these spirits, God, Memnoch, these liars; I tell you, I refuse! I wouldn't stay, I fled their damned school, I lost my eye as I battled them, they snatched it from me, wicked angels clawing at me when I ran away from them! You want the Blood of Christ, then go down now in the dark church to the fisherman's Mass and knock the sleepy priest aside from the Altar, if you will, and grab the Chalice from his consecrated hands. Go ahead, do it!
"Blood of Christ!" he continued, his face one great eye fixing me in its merciless beam. "If it was ever in me, this sacred blood, then my body has dissolved it and burnt it up like candle wax devours the wick. You know this. What's left of Christ in the belly of His faithful when they leave the church?"
"No," I said. "No, but we are not humans!" I whispered, seeking somehow in softness to drown out his angry vehemence. "Lestat, I'll know! It was His blood, not transubstantiated bread and wine! His blood, Lestat, and I'll know if it's inside of you. Oh, let me drink, I beg you. Let me drink so I can forget every damned thing you've told us, let me drink!"
I could scarcely keep myself from laying hands on him, from forcing him to my will, never mind his legendary strength, his gruesome temper. I'd lay hold of him and make him submit. I'd take the blood-.
But these thoughts were foolish and vain. His whole tale was foolish and vain, and yet I turned around, and in a fury I spit the words at him:
"Why didn't you accept? Why didn't you go with Memnoch if he could have taken you from this awful living Hell we share, why didn't you?"
"They let you escape," you said to him, David. You broke in, quieting me with a small pleading gesture of your left hand.
But I had no patience for analysis or inevitable interpretation. I couldn't get the image out of my mind, Our Bloody Lord, Our Lord with the crossbeam bound to His shoulders, and she, Veronica, this sweet figment with the Veil in her hands. Oh, how is it such a fantasy could get its hook so deep?
"Back away from me, all of you," he cried. "I have the Veil. I told you. Christ gave it to me. Veronica gave it to me. I took it with me out of Memnoch's Hell, when all his imps tried to take it from me."
I scarcely heard. Veil, the actual Veil, what trick is this? My head ached. The fisherman's Mass. If there was such a thing in St. Patrick's below, I wanted to go there. I was weary of this glass-walled tower room, cut off from the taste of the wind and the wild refreshing wetness of the snow.
Why did Lestat back up against the wall? What did he take out of his coat? The Veil! Some gaudy trick to seal this whole masterpiece of mayhem?
I looked up, my eyes roaming over the snowy night beyond the glass and only slowly finding their mark: the opened cloth which he held up in his hands, his own head bowed, the cloth revealed as reverently as it might have been by Veronica.
"My Lord!" I whispered. All the world was gone in curls of weightless sound and light. I saw Him there. "My Lord." I saw His Face, not painted, printed or otherwise daintily tricked into