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Now how precisely he is strengthened remains a mystery. Does he taste blood in the Core Body more exquisitely? Does he see through the eyes of the Core Body with greater acuity? Can he hear sounds more sharply? We don't know. We do know his actual telepathic voice is stronger now as the result of the killings. That we do know. But I wager you this. It was he, the Voice, that drove the elder in those long-ago nights at the dawn of the Common Era to leave Akasha and Enkil in the sun to cause the first Great Burning. And it was he in some guise in the mind of Akasha who drove her to exterminate so many of the tribe before she wooed Lestat for her even-darker purposes."

"You can't be sure of any of that," said Pandora. It was her first time to speak and she was plainly reluctant, almost shy. She wiped at the blood in her eyes again. There was a shrinking quality to Pandora, a passivity, a diffidence that made her less visible than the other females here, though she was just as gifted in every way. She was dressed in a Western gown of soft Indian fabric and embroidery, almost the equal of Arjun's long jeweled sherwani. "All those centuries," she said, "that I communed with her, I never saw anything stirring in her, ever, that might have been Amel."

"I'm not so sure you're right," said Marius with a little flash of annoyance. He would never ever be patient with Pandora.

"I'm not so certain either," I said. "I was with Akasha very briefly. But I saw things--moments when she appeared to lock up, to stop as if something invisible had taken control of her. There wasn't time to know."

No one challenged me.

"But I must say this now," I continued. "I don't think the Voice is necessarily unredeemable. That is, not if we're not unredeemable. I think the Voice has in the last twenty years taken a major step on a wholly new journey."

I could see this shocked some of those who were looking at me. But it hadn't shocked Marius or David. As for Seth, it was impossible to tell.

"Does it matter now?" I asked. "I'm not sure it does. I want to get Viktor back. I've never laid eyes on my son. I want him here safe, and the Voice knows this. But as to the Voice himself, as to Amel himself, he is far from a conscienceless and insensitive monster."

"Why ever do you say this?" asked Benji. "Lestat, this is unbelievably vexing. How can you say this? This thing is murdering us."

Sybelle gestured for him to be quiet.

"The Voice has been speaking to me for a long time," I said. "I first heard the Voice only a few years after Akasha was destroyed. I think the damaged mind of Mekare let the Voice come to consciousness. And I know my video films, my songs, whatever I did there in broadcasting our history, all those images, might well have stirred the Voice inside Akasha just as they stirred Akasha's conscious mind."

They all knew the old story of how a giant video screen in the shrine of Akasha and Enkil had brought my rock music experiments right to the King and Queen. No need to dwell on that now.

"The Voice came to me early on. And maybe to me on account of those videos. I don't know. But sadly, I didn't know who or what the Voice was. And I didn't respond as I should have."

"You're saying things would be different now," asked David, "if you had known and had responded in some other way?"

I shook my head. "Don't know. But I can tell you this. The Voice is an entity with his own distinct story. The Voice suffers. He's a being that has imagination. One has to have imagination and empathy in order to know love and beauty."

"Whatever makes you think that?" asked Marius in a gentle reproving voice. "Ruthless amoral beings can appreciate beauty. And they can love."

"But I think it's true, what Lestat is saying," said young Daniel. He made no apology for contradicting Marius now. They had been together for a long time. "And I'm not surprised to hear this. Every single one of you that I've ever known has had this capacity, to appreciate beauty and to love."

"Well, you're proving my point exactly," said Marius.

"Enough of this," said Seth. "I want Viktor back. He is our son as much as yours."

"I know that," I answered.

"But if the Voice has empathy," Benji cried, sitting forward, his fedora dipping down over his face. "If the Voice has imagination and knows how to love, well, then the Voice can be reasoned with. That's what you're driving at, right?"

"Yes," I replied. "Of course. Which puts our friend Rhoshamandes in a very dangerous situation. The Voice switches loyalties easily. The Voice is desperate to learn as well as to achieve his ends."

Everard laughed. "That's the Voice all right. Fickle. That's this demon that can slide into your mind or mine or yours or yours like a spider sliding down the slippery shining thread of its web and try to make you do things that you would never do."

All this while neither Bianca nor Jesse had spoken. They were in fact sitting side by side, Jesse weary and worn and broken by the news of Maharet's death, and Bianca still in a private Hell on account of her lost companion, but suddenly it was as if neither of them could stand it anymore, and after some silent agreement, Bianca rose and demanded in a shrill tone, "What is the point of all this? We're helpless in the face of this Voice and what it wants! Why do we sit here talking, trying to reason this out? This Voice, look what it has done to us! Look! Is no one here going to weep for Maharet? Is no one here going to ask for a moment of silence in her memory? Is no one going to speak for those who might have lived forever and are now dead and gone in the earth as easily dispatched as if they were mortals?"

She was trembling. Her eyes fixed on Armand who sat nearer to me on the opposite side of the table from her. Armand's face was the picture of shock and pain as he gazed on her. In fact it was so darkened and so vulnerable that it didn't seem to be Armand's face. And then she turned and glared at Marius as if making some silent demand. He too looked at her with the deepest sympathy. Then she sank down in her chair and put her face in her hands, and wept silently.

Jesse barely stirred. Jesse the young one, made by Maharet with the ancient blood in her, white-faced, shivering with the most human emotions, yet sustained by such powerful blood. Fareed concealed the same formula infinitely better than she did.

"My beloved aunt was indeed thinking of destroying the tribe," Jesse said. "She promised me she would not do it. But she thought about it continuously."

"This is true," David said. He was right beside her.

"I understand why Rhoshamandes did the bidding of the Voice," said Jesse. "And I know that if my aunt had wanted to live, she could have stopped Rhoshamandes. She could have stopped any one of us, even you, Gregory, or you, Seth. Or you, Sevraine. She was no stranger to defending herself. Her power was beyond our imagining. So was her experience. She was dying inside. And she let Rhoshamandes take her life."

She sat back in the small gilded chair. David kissed her cheek.