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I stood there with my arms folded, listening. I glanced over my shoulder at Rose, who lay in uneasy sleep under her blanket. I looked at Louis who was watching me intently.

But anyone could hear it now, hear its footsteps, and plainly they all did except for Rose, who slept.

He, this being with his mind closed shut like a vault, was walking with intentionally audible steps down an iron staircase somewhere, likely from a portal on the roof, and into the hallway beyond the entrance to the ballroom.

Slowly he came into a view, a startlingly good-looking young man in face and form but a blood drinker of five thousand years most certainly. He had dark brown hair and mild, very open grayish-blue eyes, and he was dressed in an impressive military jacket, black velvet, forest-green trim, very flattering to his tall well-made frame, and he walked right up to the foot of the table.

"Rhoshamandes," he said. There was a flicker of hesitation in his face. Then he bowed to the assembly. And with nods, he gave his greetings, "Sevraine, my dearest. And Gregory, Nebamun, my old friend, and my darlings, Allesandra, Eleni, Eugenie. And Notker, my beloved Notker. And Everard, my dearest Everard. And to all of you, my salutations. And to you, Prince Lestat, I am at your service, so to speak, as long as we can come to an agreement. Your son is as yet unharmed."

A vampire, a male who was part of Notker's group, rose now and fetched a chair from against the wall and brought it to the table.

/> But this stately and impressive creature walked around to one side and made his way to Jesse, standing behind her, over her, and bending to speak to her intimately.

"It was never my wish to harm Maharet," he said. "And I wish with all my heart and soul I'd found some way to avoid it. I did it because she meant to exterminate us all. I swear to you this is true. And I killed Khayman because I thought when he came to grasp what I'd done, he'd seek to punish me for it."

She stared straight forward, her eyes dull and red, and gazing off as if she hadn't heard. She didn't move. David did not look up at Rhoshamandes either.

Rhoshamandes sighed. And when he did that a rather casual and cavalier expression passed over his handsome features, a rather dismissive expression. It was only there for a second, but I caught it and was startled by it, startled by the hardness of it in contrast to these elegant and sensitive words.

He turned and went back to the foot of the table, so to speak, and sat down in the chair that had been provided for him.

"You know what I want," he said. He addressed me. "You know what Amel wants. You know you, Lestat, you know that your son is with Benedict." He reached into his pocket and held up a shining iPhone for all to see and then placed it before him on the table. "I press the button here and Benedict kills Viktor." He paused, his eyes sweeping the table up and down and then settling on me. "But that does not have to happen, does it? And of course I have Mekare in a safe place, as you no doubt have surmised."

I said nothing. With the power of his mind, he might send a blast from that phone, I figured. But did he know that? I certainly didn't know it for certain. I hated him. I loathed the very sight of him.

"Need I remind you that if anything happens to me," he went on, "the Voice will incite Benedict to immediately kill your son, and you may never find out the location of Mekare."

The others stared at him in cold silence.

24

Lestat

He Who Cuts the Knot

I TRIED TO PENETRATE the creature's mind, trying to pick up the faintest image from it that might indicate precisely where Viktor was, and where Mekare was. And I knew surely that every other blood drinker at the table was doing this. Nothing. And whether the Voice was inside this being right now, looking through his eyes at me and at all of us, I couldn't know.

"I can explain to you simply enough," said Rhoshamandes, "what I want. The Voice wishes to come into me. I am loath to attempt this on my own. I feel I need the assistance of others here, most particularly Fareed, this vampire doctor. I need his help."

Fareed said nothing.

"If we agree to proceed, I'll take Fareed with me now, and when the deed is done, when Mekare is mercifully freed from this Earth, and the Voice is in me, I will return Fareed and Viktor unharmed. I will then possess the Sacred Core. And I will become the leader, so to speak, of this tribe." He smiled coldly as he looked at Benji. "I assure you, I'm neither despotic nor obsessively interested in the conduct of blood drinkers. Like many a being who rises to power, I rise not because I want power, but because I don't intend to be governed by anyone else."

He was about to go on when Seth gestured for his attention. "Have you no hesitation," he said, "about living with this Voice inside you night after night for the rest of your immortal journey in this world?"

Rhoshamandes didn't immediately answer. Indeed his face went blank and became a bit rigid, a bit grim. He stared at the shiny little mobile phone in front of him and then he looked again at me and then at Seth.

"I am committed now to doing what the Voice wants," he said. "The Voice wants to be freed from Mekare. The Voice can only temporarily possess any one of us at any given time, and the Voice does not see clearly or hear clearly through us when it possesses us. And in Mekare it is trapped in an instrument so damaged and blunted, so destroyed through isolation and privation, that it cannot hear or see at all."

"Yes," said Fareed quietly. "We all know this. We're well aware of what the Voice is experiencing now. But Seth's question was for you. How are you going to survive with the Voice inside you, night after--?"

"Yes, well, I will!" came the answer, emphatically and impatiently. Rhoshamandes flushed. "Do you think I have a choice?" he said. Then he drew back gesturing for silence. The Voice was talking to him, no doubt.

I was trying to conceal my thoughts completely, which meant leaving them in an inchoate state as best as I could, but clearly this creature was miserable, I could see it, miserable and conflicted, and his pale eyes, fixing on me again, couldn't express anything but a deep frustration that bordered on pain.

"This must be followed to the finish," he said now. "Fareed, I must ask you to come with me."

"And what happens," asked Sevraine suddenly, "when the Voice tires of being in your body, Rhoshamandes, and decides it wants to be transferred to another?"