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"What are you going to do!" Armand whispered. Only now was I seeing how hard this had been for him. He was actually trembling. He had become the boy he'd been when Marius brought him over. "Lestat, don't let them do it!" he said. "Take her prisoner, and blast the rest into infinity!"

"Is that what you would do?" I asked.

"Yes, that's what I'd do. That's what I've wanted to do all along." His eyes were shot with blood and blazing. A spectacle to see his angelic face so contorted with rage and grief. "I'd blast every one of them off this earth because they are a threat to us! What are we becoming? We are vampires. And they are our enemy. Destroy them. You, I, Cyril, and Thorne--we can do it all ourselves."

"Can't do it," I whispered.

"Lestat!" He moved towards me with his hands out, then he stepped back and looked up to the rooftop. Cyril and Thorne appeared almost instantly at his side. "You cannot let this happen!" he said to them.

"He's the captain of the damned ship," said Cyril.

"I do what the Prince tells me to do," said Thorne with a long agonized sigh.

"I haven't made up my mind," I said. "There's one more vote here right now to be taken into consideration, and I'm not hearing that vote."

Just the pulse on the back of my neck.

I thought of that little fledging Amber, hiding in her cellar only moments from here, sobbing and crying and waiting to be executed. I thought of the Court.

Last night the most extraordinary thing had happened. Marius had come in, and danced with Bianca. He'd worn a simple modern suit and tie, as they say, and she had been in a gown of black sequins and tiny twinkling jewels. They had danced for hours, no matter what the orchestra played. Marius, the one who would be King tomorrow night if I were gone by then, gone Heaven only knows where?

Was Memnoch waiting for me in that hideous purgatorial school of his? I couldn't help but wonder whether my unanchored soul would shoot up to that geographical part of the astral plane.

"All right," I said. "Listen to me once again. This is my life! Mine alone to risk if I choose! And I don't want to go out with the blood of those Replimoids on my hands! I have enough blood on my hands, don't I? I'm telling you now that I am the Prince and I am ordering you to let me go to meet this woman alone."

I went upwards, rising hundreds of feet above the tiny crestfallen gathering.

And within seconds I was looking down at the pavement in front of Notre Dame--where Kapetria stood, a tiny figure in a trench coat and pants stranded in the empty square, apparently alone. But she wasn't alone.

Soundlessly I dropped down to the balustraded walk closest to the top of the cathedral's north tower. She was standing about fifty feet from the central door. Other Replimoids were all through the streets to the far left of the square as I looked down on it, cleaving to the buildings. And I could see them on the bridge over the river. From above I'd seen them along the flanks of the cathedral.

I wondered what they thought they could do. I put my hands on the balustrade and looked out over Paris for as far as I could see. Long years ago, Armand and I had met at Notre Dame, and he had come alone into the cathedral to confront me, and confront his own fears that the power of God would strike him dead should he do this--because he was a Child of Satan and the cathedral was a place of light.

Of course Kapetria must have known this, must have read it in the "pages," but I suspected she had more practical reasons for wanting to meet here, that her Frankensteinian laboratory was somewhere quite nearby.

I scanned the world for Armand, for Thorne, for Cyril. No trace of them. But Gregory Duff Collingsworth was also in the square, many yards away from Kapetria, lost in the shadows, his eyes fixed on me.

I shot downwards, grabbing Kapetria by the waist and then rising hundreds of feet over Paris, as I cradled her in my arms to protect her from the wind. Below, the Replimoids descended on the square from all directions.

Slowly, I set Kapetria down on the roof of the north tower, which was flat enough and big enough for her not to be in danger of falling.

She was terrified. The first time I'd ever seen her show any fear whatsoever, and she clung to me and drew in her breath and trembled, and then fell at my feet. Of course I picked her up. I hadn't meant for her to fall. She came back to consciousness immediately, but the fear had her again, and she buried her head in my chest.

"Is this the woman who roamed the high towers of Atalantaya?" I asked.

"There were railings," she said. "High safe railings."

But what she really meant to say was that no one had ever picked up her and carried her into the air like this before. And I remembered when Magnus, my maker, had taken me prisoner and set me down on a rooftop in Paris, and I'd felt the same terror she was feeling now. Primate, mammalian fear.

Holding her firmly, I moved towards the edge so she could see her followers gathered in the square below, but she struggled against me. She didn't want to look over the edge. She didn't want to be close to it.

There was nothing to do but to take her to a safer place, so I did. I moved more slowly this time, an

d, holding her all the more firmly, pushed her head down against my chest so she wouldn't be tempted to look about her. I took her swiftly to the topmost roof of Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals, miles from the cathedral and miles from the old city, where she was surrounded by parapets of substantial width and height.

She was shaking ever more violently than before. She walked fast over to the nearest parapet wall, and sat with her back against it, her knees raised and her arms hugging her chest. Her loose black hair was mussed and she pulled her trench coat down over her knees, over her wool pants, as if she were freezing cold.

"You want to tell me what you plan to do?" I asked.