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"The answer is no," said Seth. He placed a hand on Viktor's shoulder. The two were about the same height, though Viktor was gaining.

Fareed sighed. He said again what he had said before.

"The Voice slays young blood drinkers," said Fareed. "We will not bring you over and make you vulnerable to his attacks, simply to lose you. As mortals you are infinitely safer. And if this thing ends in ruin for us, you and Rose will survive. You and Rose will walk away. You may never know what happened, and all your life you'll carry the burden of experiences you can't share with others. But you'll walk away. And we want this for you, regardless of what you want."

"That's the love a parent has for its child," said Seth.

Viktor was plainly exasperated. "Oh, what I wouldn't give," he said, "for five minutes with my real father." It wasn't said with malice. It was a simple confession, and Viktor's eyes were wondering as he said it.

"And you will likely get more than that in New York," said Fareed. "That is only one of the reasons we must go there. Because you and Rose must meet with him and he must decide what happens with you."

"Rose is half out of her mind," said Viktor. "This can't end any other way for her but with the Blood. You know this! Do you realize how helpless I feel?"

"Of course," said Fareed. "We feel helpless ourselves. But now we must be going. We'll reach New York before you do. And we'll be there when the plane lands."

Viktor could never know the depth of Fareed's anxiety right now. Fareed had not brought this vital, splendid human being

into the world simply to consign him to death, death in any form, yet Fareed knew how desperately and totally this boy wanted the Blood and had to want it. Only Lestat could consign these two to the Blood. Fareed could never do it.

Seth went quiet and still for a moment. But Fareed had heard it too, the thin wirelike voice of Benji emanating from some equipment somewhere in the compound.

"Be assured, the old ones are coming together. Be assured, Children of the Night, you are no longer alone. They are gathering. Meanwhile you must protect yourselves, wherever you are. Now the Voice is seeking to turn you against your fellow blood drinkers. We have reliable reports that that is what it is doing now, entering the minds of the youngest and driving them to fight their makers and their fellow fledglings. You must be on guard against the Voice. The Voice is a liar. Tonight young ones have been slain in Guadalajara and in Dallas. The attacks have slowed, but they are still happening."

Slowed. What did this mean?

"Is there any estimate coming from anyone," Viktor asked, "as to how many have been slain?"

"Roughly? Based on the report," said Fareed bringing his fingers together. "I'd say thousands. But then we have no idea how many Children of the Night there were before these massacres started. You ask me, based on all I've read and pondered, well, I would say the population was at the most five thousand the world over before this started, and now it's down below a thousand. As for the elders, the true Children of the Millennia who are impervious to these raids of fire, I calculate there are less than thirty and most descended from Queens Blood and not from First Brood. But no one can know. As for all those in between, the powerful and clever ones like Armand and Louis and Lestat himself, and who knows who else, well, what, maybe one hundred? No one can ever know. I don't think the Voice knows."

It hit him suddenly with dark force that indeed the species could die out without anyone ever documenting fully what had actually happened to it. Its history, its physical characteristics, its spiritual dimensions, its tragedies, the portal it had established between the world of the seen and the unseen--all might very well be swallowed by the same implacable physical death that had swallowed millions of other species on this planet since before recorded time. And all Fareed had sought to know and achieve would be lost, just as his own individual consciousness would be lost, just as he would be lost. He found himself breathless. Not even as a dying man in a hospital bed in Mumbai had he confronted his mortality so totally.

He found himself turning slowly in the chair, and reaching for the button that would shut down all his computers simultaneously.

And when the screens went dark, he was peering through the immaculate glass wall at the great sweep of stars that hung over the distant mountains.

Stars over the desert; how bright and magnificent they look.

The ancient Akasha had seen such stars. The young and impulsive vampire Lestat had seen them the night he'd staggered into the Gobi Desert hoping in vain for the rising sun to destroy him.

It seemed horrible to him suddenly that he, Fareed, in any form was on this tiny bit of burnt rock in a system so vast and indifferent to all suffering.

All you can do, he thought, is fight to stay alive, to stay conscious, to remain a witness and hope somehow there is a meaning to it.

And Viktor, Viktor standing behind him had just begun his optimistic and promising journey. How would he and Rose escape whatever was to happen?

He rose to his feet.

"It's time," he said. "Viktor, take leave of your mother."

"I have," said Viktor. "I'm ready."

Fareed took a last look around the room, a last look at his own bookshelves, computers, papers strewn here and there, the tip of the iceberg of twenty years of research, and he realized coldly that he might never see this great research compound again, that he might not survive this crisis precipitated by the Voice, that perhaps he'd come too late with too little into this great realm where he had seen such wonder and promise.

But what was to be done?

He embraced Viktor now, holding him tight and close and listening to that marvelous young heart pounding away with such splendid vigor. He looked into Viktor's clear blue eyes.

"I love you," he said.