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Louder voices in agreement.

I looked at the small forlorn figure of the leader. And all eyes turned away from me to him. Even the mad queen vampire looked at him.

And in the stillnes

s I heard him whisper:

"It is finished. "

Not even the tormented ones in the wall made a sound.

And the leader spoke again:

"Go now, all of you, it is at an end. "

"Armand, no!" the boy pleaded.

But the others were backing away, faces concealed behind hands as they whispered. The drums were cast aside, the single torch was hung upon the wall.

I watched the leader. I knew his words weren't meant to release us.

And after he had silently driven out the protesting boy with the others, so that only the queen remained with him, he turned his gaze once again to me.

Chapter 3

3

The great empty room beneath its immense dome, with only the two vampires watching us, seemed all the more ghastly, the one torch giving a feeble and gloomy light.

Silently I considered: Will the others leave the cemetery, or hover at the top of the stairs? Will any of them allow me to take Nicki alive from this place? The boy will remain near, but the boy is weak; the old queen will do nothing. That leaves only the leader, really. But I must not be impulsive now.

He was still staring at me and saying nothing.

"Armand?" I said respectfully. "May I address you in this way?" I drew closer, scanning him for the slightest change of expression. "You are obviously the leader. And you are the one who can explain all this to us. "

But these words were a poor cover for my thoughts. I was appealing to him. I was asking him how he had led them in all this, he who appeared as ancient as the old queen, compassing some depth they would not understand. I pictured him standing before the altar of Notre Dame again, that ethereal expression on his face. And I found myself perfectly in him, and the possibility of him, this ancient one who had stood silent all this while.

I think I searched him now for just an instant of human feeling! That's what I thought wisdom would reveal. And the mortal in me, the vulnerable one who had cried in the inn at the vision of the chaos, said:

"Armand, what is the meaning of all this?"

It seemed the brown eyes faltered. But then the face so subtly transformed itself to rage, that I drew back.

I didn't believe my senses. The sudden changes he had undergone in Notre Dame were nothing to this. And such a perfect incarnation of malice I'd never seen. Even Gabrielle moved away. She raised her right hand to shield Nicki, and I stepped back until I was beside her and our arms touched.

But in the same miraculous way, the hatred melted. The face was again that of a sweet and fresh mortal boy.

The old queen vampire smiled almost wanly and ran her white claws through her hair.

"You turn to me for explanations?" the leader asked.

His eyes moved over Gabrielle and the dazed figure of Nicolas against her shoulder. Then returned to me.

"I could speak until the end of the world," he said, "and I could never tell you what you have destroyed here. "

I thought the old queen made some derisive sound, but I was too engaged with him, the softness of his speech and the great raging anger within.

"Since the beginning of time," he said, "these mysteries have existed. " He seemed small standing in this vast chamber, the voice issuing from him effortlessly, his hands limp at his sides. "Since the ancient days there have been our kind haunting the cities of man, preying upon him by night as God and the devil commanded us to do. The chosen of Satan we are, and those admitted to our ranks had first to prove themselves through a hundred crimes before the Dark Gift of immortality was given to them. "