Page 123

"Dora, Dora, Dora!"

On and on I ran.

Shadowy mortals slouched through the storm; shadowy humans hurried through small slippery paths, automobiles crawled through the blizzard, beams searching the rising, collecting whiteness. The snow was in such thick drifts that I fell and then scrambled to my knees; yet on I went.

The arches and the spires of St. Patrick's rose before me.

St. Patrick's.

And beyond, the wall of the Olympic Tower driving upwards, its glass like polished stone, seemingly invincible, its height monstrous as if like the Tower of Babel it was trying to reach directly to Heaven.

I stopped, my heart about to burst.

"Dora! Dora!"

I reached the doors of the lobby, the dizzying lights, the slick floors, the press of mortals, solid mortals everywhere, turning to see what moved too swiftly to be seen. Woozy music and lulling lights, the gush of artificial warmth!

I found the stairwell and rose like a cinder going up a chimney in my flight, and crashed through the wooden door of the apartment, staggering into the room.

Dora.

I saw her, smelled her, smelled the blood from between her legs again, saw her tender little face, white and stricken, and on either side of her like goblins out of nursery rhymes and tales of hell, Armand and David, vampires, monsters, both staring at me in the same stark wonder.

I struggled to open the left eye that was no longer there, then turned my head this way and that to see the three of them distinctly with the one eye, the right eye, that I still had. I could feel a sharp tiny pain like so many needles in the empty tissues where my left eye had been.

Oh, the horror on Armand's face. In his old finery, he stood, heavy shopwindow velvet coat, modern lace, boots spiffed like glass. His face, the Botticelli angel still, torn with pain as he looked at me.

And David, the pity, the sympathy. Both figures transfixed in one, the elder Englishman and the young fine body into which he'd been locked, smothered in the tweed and cashmere garments of winter.

Monsters clothed as men but earthbound, real!

And the shining gamine figure of my Dora, my slender, yearning Dora with her huge black eyes.

"Darling, darling," Dora cried, "I am here!" Her small warm arms went round my aching shoulders, oblivious to the snow falling from my hair, from my clothes. I went down on my knees, my face buried in her skirts, near to the blood between her legs, the blood of the living womb, the blood of Earth, the blood of Dora that the body could give, and then I fell backwards onto the floor.

I could neither speak nor move. I felt her lips touch mine.

"You're safe now, Lestat," she said.

Or was it David's voice?

"You're with us," she said.

Or was it Armand?

"We're here. "

"Look, look at his feet. He's got only one shoe left. "

". . . at his coat, torn. . . the buttons are gone. "

"Darling, darling. " She kissed me.

I rolled her over gently, careful not to press her with my weight, and I pulled up her skirt, and I lay my face against her hot naked thighs. The smell of the blood flooded my brain.

"Forgive me, forgive me," I whispered, and my tongue broke through the thin cotton of her panties, tearing the cloth back from the soft down of pubic hair, pushing aside the bloodstained pad she wore, and I lapped at the blood just inside her young pink vaginal lips, just coming from the mouth of her womb, not pure blood, but blood from her, blood from her strong, young body, blood all over the tight hot cells of her vaginal flesh, blood that brought no pain, no sacrifice, only her gentle forbearance with me, with my unspeakable act, my tongue going deep into her, drawing out the blood that was yet to come, gently, gently, lapping the blood from the soft hair on her pubic lips, sucking each tiny droplet of it.

Unclean, unclean. They cried on the road to Golgotha, when Veronica had said: "Lord, I touched the hem of your garment and my hemorrhage was healed. " Unclean, unclean.