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"Shut it off, and hide it," whispered Arion. "And make it work after we are asleep. I must go."

In less than an hour the great house had become a tomb. The mortal servants would not come till late afternoon, and they never ventured down the stairs. The city of Budapest roared with the world of daytime.

Derek played with the iPod. It was not so complicated at all. And in no time he'd found the broadcast archive and found himself fascinated to hear the unnatural voice of a blood drinker addressing the whole wide world under cover of music at a decibel level humans couldn't possibly hear. Now that was marvelously clever. He lay back on his bed listening.

"Benji Mahmoud here from New York this New Year's Eve, beloved brothers and sisters in the Blood--to report that all is well at the great Court in France, to which all are welcome. And to let you know that our beloved Prince has now officially turned the night-by-night governance of the tribe over to the Council of Elders, who will soon be drawing up for us our own constitution and laws. In the meantime, those who wish to be in the good graces of the Court know how to conduct themselves. No more arguments, quarrels, pitched battles. No more feeding on the innocent. Brothers and Sisters, remember, as I say so often, we are no longer parentless!"

Derek wept again. He couldn't help it. He got up, clutching the little gadget as he listened and walked round and round the little room. He drank more of the water that Arion had brought him, all the while listening. He did not care that there was no purpose to which he could put this new knowledge of his captors. This was a voice speaking to him, and he was not alone.

2

Lestat

IT WASN'T HARD to find them. The old monastery of Saint Alcarius was northeast of Paris, in a deep forest near the Belgian border. Gremt's secret headquarters for the ancient Order of the Talamasca.

Amel and I were both determined to pay Gremt a visit. We should have done this long before now, and I was ashamed that we hadn't.

Did I really want to be here just now? Well, no. I wanted to be across the sea, in New Orleans, because I'd persuaded my beloved fledgling Louis to meet me there. But this visit was important. And my mind was boiling with questions about and for Gremt and his spectral companions.

First things first, however. I had to apologize for not inviting them to Court and not coming here sooner.

In the village, a quaint and clean little place beneath which the past slept without a word, they told me the owners of Saint Alcarius were hermits of sorts, and that all their affairs were handled through a firm in Paris. They wouldn't let me in "up there." Don't bother to knock. In the summer months, the tourists and hikers were always welcome in the gardens, however. There were benches for them under the old trees.

The private road was unpaved and near impassable. Even in this light snow, we'd have a time with it.

But we'd come from Chateau de Lioncourt in a hefty four-wheel-drive vehicle, and we found our way easily over the potholes and the debris that hadn't been cleared in some months. I have been for decades enchanted with powerful motorcars. I loved driving them and feeling the surge of power when I stepped on the gas.

The moon was full, and the wintry night was bright and cold. I saw their lights through the ancient yew trees, and as we drew closer, I saw more and more lights go on in the old square tower and the high diamond-paned windows of the stone facade. A quick scan told me there were many beings inside, though what they were, I couldn't tell. Ghosts, spirits, blood drinkers.

I got out of the car and told Thorne and Cyril to wait for me. I couldn't go anywhere now without Thorne and Cyril. Those were the orders of Marius and Gregory, and Seth, and Fareed, and Notker, and any "elder" that happened to be hanging about "the Court." And the elders ran the Court, no doubt about it. I was the Prince, yes, but treated often like a twelve-year-old under the thumb of a committee of regents. They were the ones running things, and the host could not venture out ever anywhere without his bodyguards.

Thorne, the big redheaded and hulking Viking, would have given up his immortal life for me; and for reasons I'd never fathomed, so would the obdurate cynical Egyptian, Cyril, who pledged his loyalty the moment he walked through the door of the Chateau. "I've always wanted to have someone to whom I could pledge my all," he'd said with a shrug. "And now you're it. No use arguing."

"You have the Core now," said Gregory whenever I protested. "You fail to seek shelter well before sunrise, and the young ones burn!" As if I didn't know this! Well, in truth, I hadn't even thought of it once before devouring the Core, had I? But I knew it. I knew it perfectly well. I didn't need Thorne and Cyril dogging my every step.

Courtly life, endless demands for audiences, and bodyguards who wouldn't leave my side. It was coming home to me every night just what it meant to be the Prince and to have Amel inside me, in more ways than they knew. And I had built up this secret fantasy that the one person in all the world who would let me moan about it was Louis. Ah, Louis...

As for Amel, his infinitely mobile consciousness came and went, though the ethereal command center remained rooted in my brain. He could talk endlessly for nights on end, or vanish for as long as a week.

Amel was with me now, of course, since he'd nagged me incessantly for weeks to approach "the spirits."

I could always feel Amel's presence, or feel his absence, and sometimes I could feel his abrupt desertions, as if my whole body had been shaken. When he was here, it was the sensation of a warm hand on the back of my head, only inside of me, and I wondered if he had full control of how I experienced that telltale sign. I sensed he didn't.

How did he do his traveling? Was he like a giant spider skittering at lightning speed over the spokes of the visible web that united us all, or did he fly blind towards the heated or throbbing pulse of another consciousness? He wouldn't tell me. And every time I asked, I had the uncomfortable perception that he didn't understand the question. That's what disturbed me more than anything else--the things he didn't seem able to understand.

Most of his long silences were the result of his inability to understand my questions, and his need to think about all aspects of what I was asking him.

I was wondering so many things about Amel that I couldn't organize my thoughts. But of one thing I was certain. He wanted to see those spirits close at hand, and that's why he'd pushed me to come here. And he wanted me to go to New Orleans later on.

"I know you have some evil motive of your own," I said aloud as I stood there in the snow. "But just be quiet for once and let me do what I want to do."

I walked up the snowy drive. Lantern-style lights burned beside the ironbound double doors.

"Evil motive, evil motive, evil motive...," he sang. "What nonsense, evil motive! You are a fool. If you neglect these monster spirits, they might turn on you."

"And then what?" I asked.

Gremt, Teskhamen, and Hesketh claimed to have founded the Talamasca over a thousand years ago. No one doubted their word on it, or that they still acted as guardians for the Talamasca today. But the human Talamasca knew nothing of its monstrous foundation, and the human Order carried on as it always had, studying the psychic phenomena of the world with scholarly respect.