upon all sorts of mad notions, that somehow he could be destroyed without endangering us as long as she remained!
But that made little sense. Hadn't the demons entered first into him? But what if that wasn't so . . .
"Stop it, young one!" Marius flashed.
I went to crying again. I felt my neck where she had touched it, and licked my lips and tasted her blood again. I looked at the scattered stars above and even these benign and eternal things seemed menacing and senseless and I felt a scream swelling dangerously in my throat.
The effects of her blood were waning already. The first clear vision was clouded, and my limbs were once again my limbs. They might be stronger, yes, but the magic was dying. The magic had left only something stronger than memory of the circuit of the blood through us both.
"Marius, what happened!" I said, shouting over the wind. "Don't be angry with me, don't turn away from me. I can't..."
"Shhh, Lestat," he said. He came back and took me by the arm. "Don't worry about my anger," he said. "It's unimportant, and it is not directed at you. Give me a little more time to collect myself."
"But did you see what happened between her and me?"
He was looking out to sea. The water looked perfectly black and the foam perfectly white.
"Yes, I saw," he said.
"I took the violin and I wanted to play it for them, I was thinking -- "
"Yes, I know, of course..."
" -- that music would affect them, especially that music, that strange unnatural-sounding music, you know how a violin..."
"Yes"
"Marius, she gave me ... she ... and she took -- "
"I know."
"And he keeps her there! He keeps her prisoner!"
"Lestat, I beg you..." He was smiling wearily, sadly.
Imprison him, Marius, the way that they did, and let her go!
"You dream, my child," he said. "You dream."
He turned and he left me, gesturing for me to leave him alone. He went down to the wet beach and let the water lap at him as he walked back and forth.
I tried to get calm again. It seemed unreal to me that I had ever been any place but this island, that the world of mortals was out there, that the strange tragedy and menace of Those Who Must Be Kept was unknown beyond these wet and shining cliffs.
Finally Marius made his way back.
"Listen to me," he said. "Straight west is an island that is not under my protection and there is an old Greek city on the northern tip of it where the seamen's taverns stay open all night.
Go there now in the boat. Hunt and forget what has happened here. Assess the new powers you might have from her. But try not to think of her or him. Above all try not to plot against him. Before dawn, come back to the house. It won't be difficult. You'll find a dozen open doors and windows. Do as I say, now, for me."
I bowed my head. It was the one thing under heaven that could distract me, that could wipe out any noble or enervating thoughts. Human blood and human struggle and human death.
And without protest, I made my way out through the shallow water to the boat.
In the early hours I looked at my reflection in a fragment of metallic mirror pinned to the wall of a seaman's filthy bedroom in a little inn. I saw myself in my brocade coat and white lace, and my face warm from killing, and the dead man sprawled behind me across the table. He still held the knife with which he'd tried to cut my throat. And there was the bottle of wine with the drug in it which I'd kept refusing, with playful protestations, until he'd lost his temper and tried the last resort. His companion lay dead on the bed.
I looked at the young blond-haired rake in the mirror.
"Well, if it isn't the vampire Lestat," I said.
But all the blood in the world couldn't stop the horrors from coming over me when I went to my rest.
I couldn't stop thinking of her, wondering if it was her laugh I had heard in my sleep the night before. And I wondered that she had told me nothing in the blood, until I closed my eyes and quite suddenly things came back to me, of course, wonderful things, incoherent as they were magical. She and I were walking down a hallway together -- not here but in