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I backed away from them, looking about me at this giant tomb, the damp earth arching over our heads. The place was passing out of the material into a hallucination.

"God, do you lose your reason with the Dark Trick," I asked, "with your rituals, your sealing up of the fledglings in the grave? Or were you monsters when you were living? How could we not all of us love mortals with every breath we take!"

No answer. Except the senseless cries of the starving ones. No answer. Just the dim beating of Nicki's heart.

"Well, hear me, whatever the case," I said.

I pointed my finger first at Armand, at the old queen.

"I never promised my soul to the devil for this! And when I made this one it was to save her from the worms that eat the corpses around here. If loving mortals is the hell you speak of, I am already in it. I have met my fate. Leave me to it and all scores are settled crow. "

My voice had broken. I was gasping. I ran my hands back through my hair. Armand seemed to shimmer as he came close to me. His face was a miracle of seeming purity and awe.

"Dead. things, dead things. . . " I said. "Come no closer. Talking of madness and love, in this reeking place! And that old monster, Magnus, locking them up in his dungeon. How did he love them, his captives? The way boys love butterflies when they rip off their wings!"

"No, child, you think you understand but you do not," sang the woman vampire unperturbed. "You have only just begun your loving. " She gave a soft lilting laugh. "You feel sorry for them, that is all. And for yourself that you cannot be both human and inhuman. Isn't it so?"

"Lies!" I said. I moved closer to Gabrielle. I put my arm around her.

"You will come to understand all things in love," the old queen went on, "when you are a vicious and hateful thing. This is your immortality, child. Ever deeper understanding of it. " And throwing up her arms, again she howled.

"Damn you," I said. I picked up Gabrielle and Nicki and carried them backwards towards the doors. "You're in hell already," I said, "and I intend to leave you in hell now. "

I took Nicolas out of Gabrielle's arms and we ran through the catacomb towards the stairs.

The old queen was in a frenzy of keening laughter behind us.

And human as Orpheus perhaps, I stopped and glanced back.

"Lestat, hurry!" Nicolas whispered in my ear. And Gabrielle gave a desperate gesture for me to come.

Armand had not moved, and the old woman stood beside him laughing still.

"Good-bye, brave child," she cried. "Ride the Devil's Road bravely. Ride the Devil's Road as long as you can. "

The coven scattered like frightened ghosts in the cold rain as we burst out of the sepulcher. And baffled, they watched as we sped out of les Innocents into the crowded Paris streets.

Within moments we had stolen a carriage and were on our way out of the city into the countryside.

I drove the team on relentlessly. Yet I was so mortally tired that preternatural strength seemed purely an idea. At every thicket and turn of the road I expected to see the filthy demons surrounding us again.

But somehow I managed to get from a country inn the food and drink Nicolas would need, and the blankets to keep him warm.

He was unconscious long before we reached the tower, and I carried him up the stairs to that high cell where Magnus had first kept me.

His throat was still swollen and bruised from their feasting on him. And though he slept deeply as I laid him on the straw bed, I could feel the thirst in him, the awful craving that I'd felt after Magnus had drunk from me.

Well, there was plenty of wine for him when he awakened, and plenty of food. And I knew -- though how I couldn't tell that he wouldn't die.

What his daylight hours would be like, I could hardly imagine. But he would be safe once I turned the key in the lock. And no matter what he had been to me, or what he stood to be in the future, no mortal could wander free in my lair while I slept.

Beyond that I couldn't reason. I felt like a mortal walking in his sleep.

I was still staring down at him, hearing his vague jumbled dreams -- dreams of the horrors of les Innocents -- when Gabrielle came in. She had finished burying the poor unfortunate stable boy, and she looked like a dusty angel again, her hair stiff and tangled and full of delicate fractured light.

She looked down at Nicki for a long moment and then she drew me out of the room. After I had locked the door, she led me down to the lower crypt. There she put her arms tightly around me and held me, as if she too were worn almost to collapse.

"Listen to me," she said finally, drawing back and putting her hands up to hold my face. "We'll get him out of France as soon as we rise. No one will ever believe his mad tales. "