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"I think you should destroy this one," said Benji with a serious frown as he looked at Rhoshamandes. "He cares nothing about any of us. He cares only for his Benedict and himself."

Rhoshamandes showed no sign that this surprised him or even that he'd heard.

"Lestat," said Benji. "You are our prince now. Destroy him."

"He was tricked," said Allesandra again softly.

"They killed the great Maharet," said Notker under his breath. He gave a little shrug, one eyebrow raised eloquently. "They killed her. They took counsel from no one. They should have come to you, to the others here, to us."

"Except the Voice bewitched them," said Allesandra, "and the Voice lies and the Voice is treacherous."

I could hear the Voice snickering and murmuring and then he cried out, startling me, positively screaming in my head, exploding all rational thought, but I quickly regained my poise. "Destroy him," said the Voice. "He bungled everything."

I almost laughed out loud, but pressed my lips together in a bitter smile.

But Rhoshamandes knew what the Voice had just said to me. Rhoshamandes had picked it up from my mind.

He looked at me, but nothing changed in his calm face, and then slowly he looked away.

"I gave my word," I said to Benji. "When Viktor comes, we'll give him back these fragments. I can't break my word."

I went round the table and towards Rose.

She lay pale and shuddering against the satin pillows. I collected her in my arms and carried her out of the ballroom behind Armand.

25

Lestat

The Garden of Love

IT WAS a vast space, walled in brick, and lined with young oak trees rising some three stories with bright green leaves. There were banks of flowers, and pathways winding through patches of flowers, and all of this artfully lighted with electric bulbs concealed at the roots of the trees and the shrubbery, and little J

apanese stone lanterns here and there on patches of grass with flickering flames.

The dull soothing roar of Manhattan seemed to enfold it as surely as the dim hulking outline of tall buildings behind it and on either side. Three townhouse gardens had been joined, obviously, to make this little paradise, this lovingly tended place that seemed as verdant and vital as an old New Orleans courtyard, safe from the throbbing world around it, and existing only for those who knew its secret or had the keys to its formidable gates.

Rose and I sat on the bench together. She was dazed, silent. I said nothing. What was there to say? She was a nymph beside me in her white silk dress, and I could feel her heart beating rapidly, hear the anguished thoughts struggling to achieve some coherence in her feverish mind.

I held her firmly with my right arm.

We were gazing on this little wilderness of thick pink hydrangea and luminous calla lilies, of creeping moonflowers on tree trunks and glistening white gardenias that gave off the most intoxicating scent. High above, the sky shone with reflected light.

They appeared as if out of nowhere. Fareed, with this radiant mortal boy in his arms. One moment we were alone, and then we saw them standing against the back wall, before the stately promenade of trees, and the boy--the young man--came towards us ahead of the dark hesitating figure of Fareed.

Rose ran to him. She rushed towards him and he took her at once in his arms.

Had I met him anywhere in this world, I would have been staggered by his resemblance to me, the bright golden hair, the way my hair had once been before the Dark Blood had lightened it and the repeated burnings had lightened it so that it shone almost white. That was how it had once looked, full and natural, like that, and this was a face I knew that looked at me now, a face that so resembled the boy I myself had once been.

I could see my brothers in him, my long-forgotten brothers who'd died unmourned in the mountains of the Auvergne, bodies left to rot by a mob of peasants in those awful days of revolution and destruction and competing visions for a brand-new world. A raft of sensations caught me off guard--smell of sunshine on the haystacks, and the straw bed in the sunlit room of the inn, taste of wine, sour and acidic, and the dreamy drunken vision from the inn window of that ruined chateau rising out of the very rocks, it seemed, a monstrous yet natural excrescence, in which I'd been born.

Rose released him tenderly as he walked towards me and I took him in my arms.

He was already passing me in height, and sturdier and more robust than I'd ever been, a human child of modern times of plenty, and out of his heart there came a palpable generosity of spirit, a great respecting curiosity and willingness to know, to love, to be overwhelmed. He was totally without fear.

I kissed him over and over. I couldn't help it. This was such fragrant and flawless human skin, this, and these eyes that looked into mine hadn't a particle of evil in them, and no conception of me or us as evil, and much as I couldn't understand this, I warmed to it almost to the point of tears.

"Father," he whispered.