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I expected her to be furious, to hit me with a volley of insults for this vulgar display of power, this vain attempt to seize the upper hand, when in fact I didn't really have the upper hand. But she did none of this.

"I'm ready to do it," she said. "I'm going to wait for sunrise of course, when you are unconscious naturally, and then I'm going to do several things, flush out your blood and replace it entirely with Replimoid blood, open your skull--which you won't feel of course--and attempt to remove Amel intact into the waiting brain of another body that is ready and filled with Replimoid blood as well. Then I'm going to close up your skull, and close up the wound, and leave you there, bound, unconscious until sunset, at which time I believe your incisions will be healed, your hair will have grown back, and you'll be able to free yourself easily from your bonds. You can then leave the laboratory at your leisure because we will be long gone."

"And you think I'm just going to let you do this," I said, "when there are no guarantees that I'll survive, or that Amel will survive?"

"I have to try it, and I am as prepared as I will ever be," she said.

Why was I doing this? I wondered. Why was I putting her through this when I was prepared in fact to give up? Just when I'd decided to give up, I couldn't say. Might have been a week ago or a month ago. Might have been at the council table after she'd finished her long story, and I was drinking her blood and I saw her with Amel--Amel who was still silent now and saying nothing--walking through the ancient laboratories of Atalantaya. I felt a misery so heavy that I wasn't hearing her anymore.

But she was talking, talking about what Amel was, and what Amel could do, and who she was, and how she had no choice but to try to free him and put him in a body very nearly like the one that had been blown to pieces in Atalantaya, sending him on his journey of thousands of years into the realm of the spirits out of which we had been born.

I stood against the parapet a few feet to her right looking out over the modern buildings of Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals and the modern towers of Paris all around it, a world away from the old city and the cathedral in which I'd first drunk innocent blood. Somewhere lost in the confusion of rooftops was the doorway to Fareed's laboratory in another building, but I couldn't tell where that was. The fact is, we were safe here and I heard no preternatural hearts near us, no foolish angels to the rescue. Gregory had not followed. Fareed and Flannery were likely miles away at Court, and we were alone.

And she, a fragile thing, in spite of all her gifts, had about her the perfume of innocent blood.

Innocent blood. Amel had stopped asking for it, stopped bringing it to my mind the way he had been only a few months ago. Innocent blood, that tasted just the same as evil blood, if you closed your eyes to the visions that traveled with it, and just drank and drank and drank.

It was supremely enticing to me that she would not die if I drank every drop of her innocent blood, and in my secret lawless mind where fantasies are nurtured only to die an early death, I saw her as a captive wife in the dungeons of my ancestral chateau, kept there for me the way Derek had been kept by the unfortunate Roland, and I thought what conversations we might have, me and my immortal bride whose blood would never run dry. She was so very lovely, with her shining dark skin, such rich dark skin, and her raven hair and her quick, crisp speaking voice so easy to listen to, if I really wanted to hear anything she said. And I'd always want to hear what she had to say, because she was brilliant, and she knew things impossible for me to know. She'd really been up there, with the moon and the stars, on a star called Bravenna, higher than I could ever soar.

"All right," I said bringing to a halt her latest exhortation as to why I should do it now. "I'm not ready, but I'll be ready and when I am I'll tell you."

I picked her up and carried her upwards again and back over the city, and as I approached the cathedral I slowed and took her down the last few hundred yards and deposited her standing, as she had been before, before the central door of the church.

No sign of her legions. They must have retreated when they saw it was no use looking for her.

She buttoned up her coat to her neck, and shoved her naked hands into her pockets, and looked at me, defeated and discouraged.

"The fact is I am ready to do it now! And only a half mile from here. Everything's ready!"

"I'm not ready," I said. "I could die. He could die!"

I had a lot more to say to her but I didn't know what it was. I wanted to say that Amel was silent, Amel wasn't urging me to come with her, and that alone was reason for me to delay. Then for the first time it occurred to me: what would I do when Amel did say go to her? Maybe I was waiting for that and that alone.

I couldn't refuse Amel, not loving him and understanding him as I did. And if he was willing, if he was ready, who was I to stand in his way?

So why are you silent, goddamn it! Why don't you settle this! Speak up now and I'll go with her!

Weeping. He was weeping--so soft, so far away, and yet so near.

Something shook me. Sound of a powerful ancient preternatural heart. Gregory, most likely, or Seth. But it was the wrong signature. All hearts do have a signature, I had only just come to realizing that in these last few months. Amel had taught me that.

I started to turn around--to confront the intruder--but it was too late.

The being had me, had his arms around me as he stood firm against my back. It was strength so far beyond my own I was trapped. I couldn't send the Fire Gift at him because I wasn't facing him. I seemed unable to muster any telekinetic resistance. Yet I tried with all my might to get free. I could have broken the grip of a gargoyle sooner than this grip.

Kapetria stood staring at the pair of us. Her black eyes were wide with amazement. The square was deserted. Paris was asleep. But the sky was filling with light.

"Let's call it reparation," said the voice against my ear. But he was talking to Kapetria. "I take him to your chopping block, and then we're even for what I did to your beloved Derek. And you, Lestat--we're even for what you did to me."

31

Lestat

IT WASN'T ALL that different from a hospital operating room, or so I imagined, since I'd never been in one. But I'd seen them enough in popular films to recognize all the equipment. Only difference was that the patient was strapped to a table by steel strips of seeming-impossible strength. And Rhoshamandes held me firmly there in place as we both waited for the rising sun.

There had been a battle in the square--desperate, confused, with Cyril and Thorne and the ghost of Magnus vainly assaulting Rhoshamandes. I'd sensed another spirit's presence, and even the presence of Armand. Others. There had been flashes of fire and howls and curses. I'd cried out, "No more. I surrender. Don't harm them." It had ended in a matter of seconds.

And now we were here, in this hospital room, and Rhoshamandes suddenly vanished.