Page 37

Well, they might be geniuses, the mortal employees scanning or storing this material, but likely the value of this system depended solely on someone seeking to retrieve a particular moment for a particular use. And likely nobody had.

A little annoyed, Fareed fast-forwarded swiftly through hours of footage, most of it of group sessions, group discussions, and work by young doctors who were not Dr. Rhinehart, and only now and then did she flash before the camera on her way across the screen.

"So she avoids the cameras," he whispered, "and skillfully, and when she does work alone in the lab, she throws up tape loops, and she's good at it, and nobody guesses." He went on scanning, and was just about to give up when he came across footage of the mysterious woman at that same laboratory counter, again with pen in hand. In this footage she was talking on her iPhone and of course there was no audial feed, or was there? He slowed down, searched, picked up the audial feed, amplified it, and now he could hear her voice distinctly, speaking in soft slow Swiss French.

It was nothing consequential, a plan to meet someone for a meal later, remarks about weather--a rich, pretty voice, distinctly feminine, with an easy subtle laugh now and then.

And he was furious suddenly that he would have to put all this aside for now and go to the crypts beneath the house. But he was growing cold as he always did near sunrise, as they all did, and it was maddening to leave this....

Because it was not--he was certain of it--not a human voice.

What could this possibly mean? No matter what Gregory said, he had to get to Geneva tomorrow night and see this thing, this creature, this artificial human, up close.

He rose from the chair and was turning to go when an alert stopped him. It was from Dr. Flannery Gilman, his blood drinker assistant and confidante, mother of Lestat's son, Viktor. It had to do with the woman's DNA.

"I found a match all right," wrote Flannery. "It's for a woman living in Bolinas, California, manager of a bed-and-breakfast famous on the California coast. All the material is from this woman's medical files in the Kaiser Permanente data banks. And the blood is definitely this Bolinas woman's blood. Signing off for the night, obviously, and will look immediately for your reply when I wake. But do you want Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals alerted? This is serious fraud."

"Get everything you can on this woman in Bolinas," wrote Fareed. "And forget the corporation. The security breach is the least of our worries. I'm heading to Geneva at sunset to have a look at this woman for myself."

The plain concrete-and-iron crypts beneath Armand's Paris house were like all the crypts in which Fareed and his brothers and sisters slept. They were unimportant to Fareed, who had been Born to Darkness in the late twentieth century when the blood drinkers of the world no longer valued coffins and heavily carved sarcophagi, and legends had no meaning anymore. He cared only that in his own private place deep in the earth, he was safe.

He had lain down on the narrow padded bed in the clean dry windowless cell and was about to close his eyes when a message jarred him, a telepathic message faint but garbled, stabbing at him, as if someone were tapping his temple with the tip of an ice pick but could not penetrate his skull. Danger. New York.

Well, those across the sea would have to deal with it, he concluded, his mind slowly clouding and losing all sense of urgency about anything in the whole world. Some night, Fareed would figure some way to free the entire vampire tribe from this daytime unconsciousness, this living death that came over them when the sun rose.

But for now, Lestat would have to deal with that alarm. Or Armand. Lestat was in America. Lestat had gone there tonight to meet his beloved Louis in New Orleans, or so it was being said. Lestat needed his old companion, Louis, all agreed. "He's our King James, needing a George, Duke of Buckingham," Marius had said. And Armand was in New York and had been for a month, making certain all was well at Trinity Gate. Well, they would take care of all this, Lestat or Armand. Or Gregory perhaps having a few moments left of consciousness. Or maybe Seth. They'd have to. Fareed's mind closed as securely as his eyes had closed. And he was gone. A dream had him, vivid, beautiful, filled with riotous sunshine, sunshine the way he remembered it from his home in India, and in this riotous sunshine Fareed saw a city, a great sparkling city of glass towers--Oh, this dream again--erupting in flames and falling into the sea....

6

Lestat

"A NON-HUMAN THING?" I asked. "A non-human thing that has killed a vampire and eaten its brain? You disturb me for this?"

"Well, yes," said Thorne, "when the message comes from Armand in New York. He wants to take this inhuman thing to Fareed and Seth in Paris."

"Well, that sounds like an excellent idea to me," I said.

Louis and I were walking uptown towards the old Lafayette Cemetery. We'd been talking for hours, talking about Amel and what it was like for me with Amel inside of me, and I was doing mos

t of the talking and Louis doing most of the listening. I didn't want to be disturbed. I wanted to talk to Louis forever, share with Louis what had been happening to me, and Louis was attentive, appreciative. This meant the world to me. But I knew Thorne and Cyril would never have approached if there hadn't been a good reason.

I took the glass cell phone from Thorne, and put it to my ear which always felt absurd and never would feel natural, but there was no getting out of it.

"What sort of non-human thing?" I asked.

Armand's voice came through soft, yet clear.

"Looks, smells, and feels just like a human being," he said. "But it isn't a human being. It's tremendously strong, I'd say perhaps eight to ten times as strong as a human. And it should be dead right now considering the blood I drew from it, but it is not dead. In fact, the blood is regenerating rapidly. It's in some sort of deep sleep, what Fareed might call a coma. It has a name, papers, and an address in England." He went through it with me. Garekyn Zweck Brovotkin. Fancy address on Redington Road, Hampstead. Keys to a Rolls. Passport, British driver's license, British and American money, and some sort of paper ticket for a flight to London at midday.

"And you're holding this thing as a prisoner?"

"Yes! Wouldn't you hold it prisoner?"

"I wasn't challenging you, just asking."

"I'm bringing it to Paris tomorrow for Fareed. What else can I do with it? I've sent out warnings. If there are others like this, we should all be on alert."

"I'll be there, tomorrow, in Paris, myself," I said. "I'll see you then and I'll see it."