TWO

THE Motherhouse of the Talamasca, outside London, silent in its great park of ancient oaks, its sloped rooftops and its vast lawns blanketed with deep clean snow.

A handsome four-storey edifice full of lead-mulhoned windows, and chimneys ever sending their winding plumes of smoke into the night.

A place of dark wood-paneled libraries and parlours, bedrooms with coffered ceilings, thick burgundy carpets, and dining rooms as quiet as those of a religious order, and members dedicated as priests and nuns, who can read your mind, see your aura, tell your future from the palm of your hand, and make an educated guess as to who you might have been in a past life.

Witches Well, some of them are, perhaps. But in the main they are simply scholars-those who have dedicated their lives to the study of the occult in all its manifestations. Some know more than others. Some believe more than others. For example, there are those members in this Motherhouse-and in other

motherhouses, in Amsterdam or Rome or the depths of the Louisiana swamp-who have laid eyes upon vampires and werewolves, who have felt the potentially lethal physical telekinetic powers of mortals who can set fires or cause death, who have spoken to ghosts and received answers from them, who have battled invisible entities and won-or lost.

For over one thousand years, this order has persisted. It is in fact older, but its origins are shrouded in mystery-or, to put it more specifically, David will not explain them to me.

Where does the Talamasca get its money There is a staggering abundance of gold and jewels in its vaults. Its investments in the great banks of Europe are legendary. It owns property in all its home cities, which alone could sustain it, if it did not possess anything else. And then there are its various archival treasures-paintings, statues, tapestries, antique furnishings and ornaments-all of which it has acquired in connection with various occult cases and upon which it places no monetary value, for the historical and scholarly value far exceeds any appraisal which could be made.

Its library alone is worth a king's ransom in any earthly currency. There are manuscripts in all languages, indeed some from the famous old library of Alexandria burnt centuries ago, and others from the libraries of the martyred Cathars, whose culture is no more. There are texts from ancient Egypt for a glimpse of which archaeologists might cheerfully commit murder. There are texts by preternatural beings of several known species, including vampires. There are letters and documents in these archives which have been written by me.

None of these treasures interest me. They never have. Oh, in my more playful moments I have toyed with the idea of breaking into the vaults and reclaiming a few old relics that once belonged to immortals I loved. I know these scholars have collected possessions which I myself have abandoned-the contents of rooms in Paris near the end of the last century, the books and furnishings of my old house in the tree-shaded streets of the Garden District, beneath which I slumbered for decades, quite oblivious to those who walked the rotted floors above. God knows what else they have saved from the gnawing mouth of time.

But I no longer cared about those things. That which they had salvaged they might keep.

What I cared about was David, the Superior General who had been my friend since the long ago night when I came rudely and impulsively through the fourth-storey window of his private rooms.

How brave and poised he had been. And how I had liked to look at him, a tall man with a deeply lined face and iron-gray hair. I wondered then if a young man could ever possess such beauty. But that he knew me, knew what I was-that had been his greatest charm for me.

What if I make you one of us. I could do it, you know . . .

He's never wavered in his conviction. Not even on my deathbed will I accept, he'd said. But he'd been fascinated by my mere presence, he couldn't conceal it, though he had concealed his thoughts well enough from me ever since that first time.

Indeed his mind had become like a strongbox to which there was no key. And I'd been left only with his radiant and affectionate facial expressions and a soft, cultured voice that could talk the Devil into behaving well.

As I reached the Motherhouse now in the small hours, amid the snow of the English winter, it was to David's familiar windows that I went, only to find his rooms empty and dark.

I thought of our most recent meeting. Could he have gone to Amsterdam again

That last trip had been unexpected or so I was able to find out, when I came to search for him, before his clever flock of psychics sensed my meddlesome telepathic scanning-which they do with remarkable efficiency-and quickly cut me off.

Seems some errand of great importance had compelled David's presence in Holland.

The Dutch Motherhouse was older than the one outside London, with vaults beneath it to which the Superior General alone had the key. David had to locate a portrait by Rembrandt, one of the most significant treasures in the possession of the order, have it copied, and send that copy to his close friend Aaron Lightner, who needed it hi connection with an important paranormal investigation being carried on in the States.

I had followed David to Amsterdam and spied on him there, telling myself that I would not disturb him, as I had done many times before.

Let me tell the story of that episode now. At a safe distance I had tracked him as he walked briskly in the late evening, masking my thoughts as skillfully as he always masked his own. What a striking figure he made under the elm trees along the Singel gracht, as he stopped again and again to admire the narrow old three- and four-storey Dutch houses, with their high step gables, and bright windows left undraped, it seemed, for the pleasure of the passersby.

I sensed a change in him almost at once. He carried his cane as always, though it was plain he still had no need of it, and he flipped it upon his shoulder as he'd done before. But there was a brooding to him as he walked; a pronounced dissatisfaction; and hour after hour passed during which he wandered as if time were of no importance at all.

It was very clear to me soon that David was reminiscing, and now and then I did manage to catch some pungent image of his youth in the tropics, even flashes of a verdant jungle so very different from this wintry northern city, which was surely never warm. I had not had my dream of the tiger yet. I did not know what this meant.

It was tantalizingly fragmentary. David's skills at keeping his thoughts inside were simply too good.

On and on he walked, however, sometimes as if he were being driven, and on and on I followed, feeling strangely comforted by the mere sight of him several blocks ahead.

Had it not been for the bicycles forever whizzing past him, he would have looked like a young man. But the bicycles startled him. He had an old man's inordinate fear of being struck down and hurt. He'd look resentfully after the young riders. Then he'd fall back into his thoughts.

It was almost dawn when he inevitably returned to the Motherhouse. And surely he must have slept the greater part of each day.

He was already walking again when I caught up with him one evening, and once again there seemed no destination in particular. Rather he meandered through Amsterdam's many small cobblestoned streets. He seemed to like it as much as I knew he liked Venice, and with reason, for the cities, both dense and darkly colored, have, in spite of all their marked differences, a similar charm. That one is a Catholic city, rank and full of lovely decay, and the other is Protestant and therefore very clean and efficient, made me, now and then, smile.

The following night, he was again on his own, whistling to himself as he covered the miles briskly, and it soon came clear to me that he was avoiding the Motherhouse. Indeed, he seemed to be avoiding everything, and when one of his old friends-another Englishman and a member of the order- chanced to meet him unexpectedly near a bookseller's in the Leidsestraat, it was plain from the conversation that David had not been himself for some time.

The British are so very polite in discussing and diagnosing such matters. But this is what I separated out from all the marvelous diplomacy. David was neglecting his duties as Superior General. David spent all his time away from the Mother-house. When in England, David went to his ancestral home in the Cotswolds more and more often. What was wrong

David merely shrugged off all these various suggestions as if he could not retain interest in the exchange. He made some vague remark to the effect that the Talamasca could run itself without a Superior General for a century, it was so well disciplined and tradition bound, and filled with dedicated members. Then off he went to browse in the bookseller's, where he bought a paperback translation in English of Goethe's Faust. Then he dined alone in a small Indonesian restaurant, with Faust propped before him, eyes racing over the pages, as he consumed his spicy feast.

As he was busy with his knife and fork, I went back to the bookstore and bought a copy of the very same book. What a bizarre piece of work!

I can't claim to have understood it, or why David was reading it. Indeed it frightened me that the reason might be obvious and perhaps I rejected the idea at once.

Nevertheless I rather loved it, especially the ending, where Faust went to heaven, of course. I don't think that happened in the older legends. Faust always went to hell. I wrote it off to Goethe's Romantic optimism, and the fact that he had been so old by the time he wrote the end. The work of the very old is always extremely powerful and intriguing, and infinitely worth pondering, and all the more perhaps because creative stamina deserts so many artists before they are truly old.

In the very small hours, after David had vanished into the Motherhouse, I roamed the city alone. I wanted to know it because he knew it, because Amsterdam was part of his life.

I wandered through the enormous Rijksmuseum, perusing the paintings of Rembrandt, whom I had always loved. I crept like a thief through the house of Rembrandt in the Jodenbree-straat, now made into a little shrine for the public during daylight hours, and I walked the many narrow lanes of the city, feeling the shimmer of olden times. Amsterdam is an exciting place, swarming with young people from all over the new homogenized Europe, a city that never sleeps.

I probably would never have come here had it not been for David. This city had never caught my fancy. And now I found it most agreeable, a vampire's city for its vast late-night crowds, but it was David of course that I wanted to see. I realized I could not leave without at least exchanging a few words.

Finally, a week after my arrival, I found David in the empty Rijksmuseum, just after sunset, sitting on the bench before the great Rembrandt portrait of the Members of the Drapers' Guild.

Did David know, somehow, that I'd been there Impossible, yet there he was.

And it was obvious from his conversation with the guard- who was just taking his leave of David-that his venerable order of mossback snoops contributed mightily to the arts of the various cities in which they were domiciled. So it was an easy thing for the members to gain access to museums to see their treasures when the public was barred.

And to think, I have to break into these places like a cheap crook!

It was completely silent in the high-ceilinged marble halls when I came upon him. He sat on the long wooden bench, his copy of Faust, now very dog-eared and full of bookmarks, held loosely and indifferently in his right hand.

He was staring steadily at the painting, which was that of several proper Dutchmen, gathered at a table, dealing with the affairs of commerce, no doubt, yet staring serenely at the viewer from beneath the broad brims of their big black hats. This is scarcely the total effect of this picture. The faces are exquisitely beautiful, full of wisdom and gentleness and a near angelic patience. Indeed, these men more resemble angels than ordinary men.

They seemed possessed of a great secret, and if all men were to learn that secret, there would be no more wars or vice or malice on earth. How did such persons ever become members of the Drapers' Guild of Amsterdam in the 1600s But then I move ahead of my tale . . . David gave a start when I appeared, moving slowly and silently out of the shadows towards him. I took a place beside him on the bench.

I was dressed like a tramp, for I had acquired no real lodgings in Amsterdam, and my hair was tangled from the wind.

I sat very still for a long moment, opening my mind with an act of will that felt rather like a human sigh, letting him know how concerned I was for his well-being, and how I'd tried for his sake to leave him in peace.

His heart was beating rapidly. His face, when I turned to him, was filled with immediate and generous warmth.

He reached over with his right hand and grasped my right arm. I'm glad to see you as always, so very glad.

Ah, but I've done you harm. I know I have. I didn't want to say how I'd followed him, how I'd overheard the conversation between him and his comrade, or dwell upon what I saw with my own eyes.

I vowed I would not torment him with my old question. And yet I saw death when I looked at him, even more perhaps for his brightness and cheerfulness, and the vigor in his eyes.

He gave me a long lingering thoughtful look, and then he withdrew his hand, and his eyes moved back to the painting.

Are there any vampires in this world who have such faces? he asked. He gestured to the men staring down at us from the canvas. I am speaking of the knowledge and understanding which lies behind these faces. I'm speaking of something more indicative of immortality than a preternatural body anatomically dependent upon the drinking of human blood.

Vampires with such faces? I responded. David, that is unfair. There are no men with such faces. There never were. Look at any of Rembrandt's paintings. Absurd to believe that such people ever existed, let alone that Amsterdam was full of them in Rembrandt's time, that every man or woman who ever darkened his door was an angel. No, it's Rembrandt you see in these faces, and Rembrandt is immortal, of course.

He smiled. It's not true what you're saying. And what a desperate loneliness emanates from you. Don't you see I can't accept your gift, and if I did, what would you think of me Would you still crave my company Would I crave yours?

I scarce heard these last words. I was staring at the painting, staring at these men who were indeed like angels. And a quiet anger had come over me, and I didn't want to linger there anymore. I had forsworn the assault, yet he had defended himself against me. No, I should not have come.

Spy on him, yes, but not linger. And once again, I moved swiftly to go.

He was furious with me for doing it. I heard his voice ring out in the great empty space.

Unfair of you to go like that! Positively rude of you to do it! Have you no honor What about manners if there is no honor left? And then he broke off, for I was nowhere near him, it was as if I'd vanished, and he was a man alone in the huge and cold museum speaking aloud to himself.

I was ashamed but too angry and bruised to go back to him, though why, I didn't know. What had I done to this being! How Marius would scold me for this.

I wandered about Amsterdam for hours, purloining some thick parchment writing paper of the kind I most like, and a fine-pointed pen of the automatic kind that spews black ink forever, and then I sought a noisy sinister little tavern in the old red-light district with its painted women and drugged vagabond youths, where I could work on a letter to David, unnoticed and undisturbed as long as I kept a mug of beer at my side.

I didn't know what I meant to write, from one sentence to the next, only that I had to tell him hi some way that I was sorry for my behavior, and that something had snapped in my soul when I beheld the men in the Rembrandt portrait, and so I wrote, in a hasty and driven fashion, this narrative of sorts.

You are right. It was despicable the way I left you. Worse, it was cowardly. I promise you that when we meet again, I shall let you say all you have to say.

I myself have this theory about Rembrandt. I have spent many hours studying his paintings everywhere-in Amsterdam, Chicago, New York, or wherever I find them-and I do believe as I told you that so many great souls could not have existed as Rembrandt's paintings would have us believe.

This is my theory, and please bear in mind when you read it that it accommodates all the elements involved. And this accommodation used to be the measure of the elegance of theories . . . before the word science came to mean what it means today.

I believe that Rembrandt sold his soul to the Devil when he was a young man. It was a simple bargain. The Devil promised to make Rembrandt the most famous painter of his time. The Devil sent hordes of mortals to Rembrandt for portraits. He gave wealth to Rembrandt, he gave him a charming house in Amsterdam, a wife and later a mistress, because he was sure he would have Rembrandt's soul in the end.

But Rembrandt had been changed by his encounter with the Devil. Having seen such undeniable evidence of evil, he found himself obsessed with the question What is good He searched the faces of his subjects for their inner divinity; and to his amazement he was able to see the spark of it in the most unworthy of men.

His skill was such-and please understand, he had got no skill from the Devil; the skill was his to begin with- that not only could he see that goodness, he could paint it; he could allow his knowledge of it, and his faith in it, to suffuse the whole.

With each portrait he understood the grace and goodness of mankind ever more deeply. He understood the capacity for compassion and for wisdom which resides in every soul. His skill increased as he continued; the flash of the infinite became ever more subtle; the person himself ever more particular; and more grand and serene and magnificent each work.

At last the faces Rembrandt painted were not flesh-and-blood faces at all. They were spiritual countenances, portraits of what lay within the body of the man or the woman; they were visions of what that person was at his or her finest hour, of what that person stood to become.

This is why the merchants of the Drapers' Guild look like the oldest and wisest of God's saints.

But nowhere is this spiritual depth and insight more clearly manifest than in Rembrandt's self-portraits. And surely you know that he left us one hundred and twenty-two of these.

Why do you think he painted so many They were his personal plea to God to note the progress of this man who, through his close observation of others like him, had been completely religiously transformed. This is my vision, said Rembrandt to God.

Towards the end of Rembrandt's life, the Devil grew suspicious. He did not want his minion to be creating such magnificent paintings, so full of warmth and kindness. He bad believed the Dutch to be a materialistic and therefore worldly people. And here in pictures full of rich clothing and expensive possessions, gleamed the undeniable evidence that human beings are wholly unlike any other animal in the cosmos-they are a precious mingling of the flesh and immortal fire.

Well, Rembrandt suffered all the abuse heaped upon him by the Devil. He lost his fine house in the Jodenbree-straat. He lost his mistress, and finally even his son. Yet on and on he painted, without a trace of bitterness or perversity; on and on he infused his paintings with love.

Finally he lay on his deathbed. The Devil pranced about, gleefully, ready to snatch Rembrandt's soul and pinch it between evil little fingers. But the angels and saints cried to God to intervene.

In all the world, who knows more about goodness? they asked, pointing to the dying Rembrandt. Who has shown more than this painter We look to his portraits when we would know the divine in man.

And so God broke the pact between Rembrandt and the Devil. He took to himself the soul of Rembrandt, and the Devil, so recently cheated of Faust for the very same reason, went mad with rage.

Well, he would bury the life of Rembrandt in obscurity. He would see to it that all the man's personal possessions and records were swallowed by the great flow of time. And that is of course why we know almost nothing of Rembrandt's true life, or what sort of person he was.

But the Devil could not control the fate of the paintings. Try as he might, he could not make people burn them, throw them away, or set them aside for the newer, more fashionable artists. In fact, a curious thing happened, seemingly without a marked beginning. Rembrandt became the most admired of all painters who had ever lived; Rembrandt became the greatest painter of all time.

That is my theory of Rembrandt and those faces.

Now if I were mortal, I would write a novel about Rembrandt, on this theme. But I am not mortal. I cannot save my soul through art or Good Works. I am a creature like the Devil, with one difference. I love the paintings of Rembrandt!

Yet it breaks my heart to look at them. It broke my heart to see you there in the museum. And you are perfectly right that there are no vampires with faces like the saints of the Drapers' Guild.

That's why I left you so rudely in the museum. It was not the Devil's Rage. It was merely sorrow.

Again, I promise you that next time we meet, I shall let you say all that you want to say.

I scribbled the number of my Paris agent on the bottom of this letter, along with the post address, as I had done in the past when writing to David though David had never replied.

Then I went on a pilgrimage of sorts, revisiting the paintings of Rembrandt in the great collections of the world. I saw nothing in my travels to sway me in my belief in Rembrandt's goodness. The pilgrimage proved penitential, for I clung to my fiction about Rembrandt. But I resolved anew never to bother David again.

Then I had the dream. Tyger, tyger . . . David in danger. I woke with a start in my chair in Louis's little shack-as if I'd been shaken by a warning hand.

Night had almost ended in England. I had to hurry. But when I finally found David, he was in a quaint little tavern in a village in the Cotswolds which can only be reached by one narrow and treacherous road.

This was his home village, not far from his ancestral manor, I quickly divined from scanning those around him-a little one-street place of sixteenth-century buildings, housing shops and an inn now dependent upon the fickleness of tourists, which David had restored from his own pocket, and visited more and more often to escape his London life.

Positively eerie little spot!

All David was doing, however, was guzzling his beloved single-malt Scotch and scribbling drawings of the Devil on napkins. Mephistopheles with his lute The horned Satan dancing under the light of the moon It must have been his dejection I had sensed over the miles, or more truly the concern of those watching him. It was their image of him which I had caught.

I wanted so to talk to him. I didn't dare to do it. I would have created too much of a stir in the little tavern, where the concerned old proprietor and his two hulking and silent nephews remained awake and smoking their odoriferous pipes only on account of the august presence of the local lord-who was getting as drunk as a lord.

For an hour, I had stood near, peering through the little window. Then I'd gone away.

Now-many, many months later-as the snow fell over London, as it fell in big silent flakes over the high facade of the Motherhouse of the Talamasca, I searched for him, in a dull weary state, thinking that there was no one in all the world whom I must see but him. I scanned the minds of the members, sleeping and awake. I roused them. I heard them come to attention as clearly as if they had snapped on their lights on rising from bed.

But I had what I wanted before they could shut me out.

David was gone to the manor house in the Cotswolds, somewhere, no doubt, in the vicinity of that curious little village with its quaint tavern.

Well, I could find it, couldn't I I went to seek him there.

The snow was failing ever more heavily as I traveled close to the earth, cold and angry, with all memory of the blood I'd drunk now wiped away.

Other dreams came back to me, as they always do in bitter winter, of the harsh and miserable snows of my mortal boyhood, of the chill stone rooms of my father's castle, and of the little fire, and my great mastiffs snoring in the hay beside me, keeping me snug and warm.

Those dogs had been slain on my last wolf hunt.

I hated so to remember it, and yet it was always sweet to think I was there again-with the clean smell of the little fire and of those powerful dogs tumbled against me, and that I was alive, truly alive!-and the hunt had never taken place. I'd never gone to Paris, I'd never seduced the powerful and demented vampire Magnus. The little stone room was full of the good scent of the dogs, and I could sleep now beside them, and be safe.

At last I drew near to a small Elizabethan manor house in the mountains, a very beautiful stone structure of deep-pitched roofs and narrow gables, of deep-set thick glass windows, far smaller than the Motherhouse, yet very grand on its own scale.

Only one set of windows was lighted, and when I approached I saw that it was the library and David was there, seated by a great noisily burning fire.

He had his familiar leatherbound diary in his hand, and he was writing with an ink pen, very rapidly. He had no sense at all that he was being watched. Now and then he consulted another leatherbound book, on the table at his side. I could easily see that this was a Christian Bible, with its double columns of small print and the gilt edges of its pages, and the ribbon that marked his place.

With only a little effort I observed it was the Book of Genesis from which David was reading, and apparently making notes. There was his copy of Faust beside it. What on earth interested him in all this

The room itself was lined with books. A single lamp burned over David's shoulder. It was as many a library in northern climes-cozy and inviting, with a low beamed ceiling, and big comfortable old leather chairs.

But what rendered it unusual were the relics of a life lived in another clime. There were his cherished mementos of those remembered years.

The mounted head of a spotted leopard was perched above the glowing fireplace. And the great black head of a buffalo was fixed to the far right wall. There were many small Hindu statues of bronze here and there on shelves and on tables. Small jewel-like Indian rugs lay on the brown carpet, before hearth and doorway and windows.

And the long flaming skin of his Bengal tiger lay sprawled in the very center of the room, its head carefully preserved, with glass eyes and those immense fangs which I had seen with such horrid vividness in my dream.

It was to this last trophy that David gave his full attention suddenly, and then taking his eyes off it with difficulty, went back to writing again. I tried to scan him. Nothing. Why had I bothered Not even a glimmer of the mangrove forests where such a beast might have been slain. But once again he looked at the tiger, and then, forgetting his pen, sank deep into his thoughts.

Of course it comforted me merely to watch him, as it had always done. I glimpsed many framed photographs in the shadows-pictures of David when he'd been young, and many obviously taken of him in India before a lovely bungalow with deep porches and a high roof. Pictures of his mother and father.

Pictures of him with the animals he'd killed. Did this explain my dream

I ignored the snow falling all around me, covering my hair and my shoulders and even my loosely folded arms. Finally I stirred. There was only an hour before dawn.

I moved around the house, found a back door, commanded the latch to slide back, and entered the warm little low-ceilinged hall. Old wood in this place, soaked through and through with lacquers or oil. I laid my hands on the beams of the door and saw in a shimmer a great oak woodland full of sunlight, and then only the shadows surrounded me. I smelled the aroma of the distant fire.

I realized David was standing at the far end of the hallway, beckoning for me to come near. But something in my appearance alarmed him. Ah, well, I was covered with snow and a thin layer of ice.

We went into the library together and I took the chair opposite his. He left me for a moment during which time I was merely staring at the fire and feeling it melt the sleet that covered me. I was thinking of why I had come and how I would put it into words. My hands were as white as the snow was white.

When he appeared again, he had a large warm towel for me, and I took this and wiped my face and my hair and then my hands. How good it felt.

Thank you, I said.

You looked a statue, he said.

'Yes, I do look that way, now, don't I I'm going on.

What do you mean? He sat down across from me. Explain.

I'm going to a desert place. I've figured a way to end it, I think. This is not a simple matter at all.

Why do you want to do that?

Don't want to be alive anymore. That part is simple enough. I don't look forward to death the way you do. It isn't that. Tonight I- I stopped. I saw the old woman in her neat bed, in her flowered robe, against the quilted nylon. Then I saw that strange brown-haired man watching me, the one who had come to me on the beach and given me the story which I still had, crammed inside my coat.

Meaningless. You come too late, whoever you are.

Why bother to explain

I saw Claudia suddenly as if she were standing there in some other realm, staring at me, waiting for me to see her. How clever that our minds can invoke an image so seemingly real. She might as well have been right there by David's desk in the shadows. Claudia, who had forced her long knife through my chest. I'll put you in your coffin forever, Father. But then I saw Claudia ail the time now, didn't I I saw Claudia in dream after dream . . .

Don't do this, David said.

It's tune, David, I whispered, thinking in a vague and distant way how disappointed Marius would be.

Had David heard me Perhaps my voice had been too soft. Some small crackling sound came from the fire, a bit of kindling collapsing perhaps or sap still moist and sizzling within the huge log. I saw that cold bedchamber in my boyhood home again, and suddenly, I had my arm around one of those big dogs, those lazy loving dogs. To see a wolf slay a dog is monstrous!

I should have died that day. Not even the best of hunters should be able to slay a pack of wolves. And maybe that was the cosmic error. I'd been meant to go, if indeed there is any such continuity, and in overreaching, had caught the devil's eye. Wolf killer. The vampire Magnus had said it so lovingly, as he had carried me to his lair.

David had sunk back in the chair, putting one foot absently on the fender, and his eyes were fixed on the flames. He was deeply distressed, even a little frantic, though he held it inside very well.

Won't it be painful? he asked, looking at me.

Just for a moment, I didn't know what he meant. Then I remembered.

I gave a little laugh.

I came to say good-bye to you, to ask you if you're certain about your decision. It seemed somehow the right thing to tell you I was going, and that this would be your last chance. It seemed sporting, actually. You follow me Or do you think it's simply another excuse Doesn't matter really.

Like Magnus in your story, he said. You'd make your heir, then go into the fire.

It wasn't merely a story, I said, not meaning to be argumentative, and wondering why it sounded that way. And yes, perhaps it's like that. I honestly don't know.

Why do you want to destroy yourself? He sounded desperate. How I had hurt this man.

I looked at the sprawling tiger with its magnificent black stripes and deep orange fur.

That was a man-eater, wasn't it? I asked.

He hesitated as if he didn't fully understand the question, then as if waking, he nodded. Yes. He glanced at the tiger, then he looked at me. I don't want you to do it. Postpone it, for the love of heaven. Don't do it. Why tonight, of all times?

He was making me laugh against my will. Tonight's a fine night for doing it, I said. No, I'm going. And suddenly there was a great exhilaration in me because I realized I meant it! It wasn't just some fancy. I would never have told him if it was. I've figured a method. I'll go as high as I can before the sun comes over the horizon. There won't be any way to find shelter. The desert there is very hard.

And I will die in fire. Not cold, as I'd been on that mountain when the wolves surrounded me. In heat, as Claudia had died.

No, don't do it, he said. How earnest he was, how persuasive. But it didn't work.

Do you want the blood? I asked. It doesn't take very long. There's very little pain. I'm confident the others won't hurt you. I'll make you so strong they'd have a devil of a time if they tried.

Again, it was so like Magnus, who'd left me an orphan without so much as a warning that Armand and his ancient coven could come after me, cursing me and seeking to put an end to my newborn life. And Magnus had known that I would prevail.

Lestat, I do not want the blood. But I want you to stay here. Look, give me a matter of a few nights only. Just that much. On account of friendship, Lestat, stay with me now. Can't you give me those few hours And then if you must go through with it, I won't argue anymore.

Why?

He looked stricken. Then he said, Let me talk to you, let me change your mind,

You killed the tiger when you were very young, didn't you It was in India. I gazed around at the other trophies. I saw the tiger in a dream.

He didn't answer. He seemed anxious and perplexed.

I've hurt you, I said. I've driven you deep into memories of your youth. I've made you aware of time, and you weren't so aware of it before.

Something happened in his face. I had wounded him with these words. Yet he shook his head.

David, take the blood from me before I go! I whispered suddenly, desperately. You don't have a year left to you. I can hear it when I'm near you! I can hear the weakness in your heart.

You don't know that, my friend, he said patiently, Stay here with me. I'll tell you all about the tiger, about those days in India. I hunted in Africa then, and once in the Amazon. Such adventures. I wasn't the musty scholar then as I am now . . .

I know. I smiled. He had never spoken this way to me before, never offered so much. It's too late, David, I said. Again, I saw the dream. I saw that thin gold chain around David's neck. Had the tiger been going for the chain That didn't make sense. What remained was the sense of danger.

I stared at the skin of the beast. How purely vicious was his face.

Was it fun to kill the tiger? I asked.

He hesitated. Then forced himself to answer. It was a man-eater. It feasted on children. Yes, I suppose it was fun.

I laughed softly. Ah, well, then we have that in common, me and the tiger. And Claudia is waiting for me.

You don't really believe that, do you?

No. I guess if I did, I'd be afraid to die. I saw Claudia quite vividly... a tiny oval portrait on porcelain-golden hair, blue eyes. Something fierce and true in the expression, in spite of the saccharine colors and the oval frame. Had I ever possessed such a locket, for that is what it was, surely. A locket. A chill came over me. I remembered the texture of her hair. Once again, it was as if she were very near me. Were I to turn, I might see her beside me in the shadows, with her hand on the back of my chair. I did turn around. Nothing. I was going to lose my nerve if I didn't get out of here.

Lestat! David said urgently. He was scanning me, desperately trying to think of something more to say. He pointed to my coat. What's that in your pocket A note you've written You mean to leave it with me Let me read it now.

Oh, this, this strange little story, I said, here, you may

have it. I bequeath it to you. Fitting that it should be in a library, perhaps wedged somewhere on one of these shelves. I took out the little folded packet and glanced at it. Yes, I've read this. It's sort of amusing. I tossed the packet into his lap. Some fool mortal gave it to me, some poor benighted soul who knew who I was and had just enough courage to toss it at my feet.

Explain this to me, said David. He unfolded the pages. Why are you carrying it with you Good Lord-Lovecraft. He gave a little shake of his head.

I just did explain it, I said. It's no use, David, I can't be talked down from the high ledge. I'm going. Besides, the story doesn't mean a thing. Poor fool. . .

He had had such strange glittering eyes. Whatever had been so wrong about the way he came running towards me across the sand About his awkward panic-stricken retreat His manner had indicated such importance! Ah, but this was foolish. I didn't care, and I knew I didn't. I knew what I meant to do.

Lestat, stay here! David said. You promised the very next time we met, you would let me say all I have to say. You wrote that to me, Lestat, you remember You won't go back on your word.

Well, I have to go back on it, David. And you have to forgive me because I'm going. Perhaps there is no heaven or hell, and I'll see you on the other side.

And what if there is both What then?

You've been reading too much of the Bible. Read the Love-craft story. Again, I gave a short laugh. I gestured to the pages he was holding. Better for your peace of mind. And stay away from Faust, for heaven's sake. You really think angels will come in the end and take us away Well, not me, perhaps, but you?

Don't go, he said, and his voice was so soft and imploring that it took my breath away.

But I was already going.

I barely heard him call out behind me:

Lestat, I need you. You're the only friend I have.

How tragic those words! I wanted to say I was sorry, sorry for all of it. But it was too late now for that. And besides, I think he knew.

I shot upwards in the cold darkness, driving through the descending snow. All life seemed utterly unbearable to me, both in its horror and its splendour. The tiny house looked warm down there, its light spilling on the white ground, its chimney giving forth that thin coil of blue smoke.

I thought of David again walking alone through Amsterdam, but then I thought of Rembrandt's faces. And I saw David's face again in the library fire. He looked like a man painted by Rembrandt. He had looked that way ever since I'd known him. And what did we look like-frozen forever hi the form we had when the Dark Blood entered our veins Claudia had been for decades that child painted on porcelain. And I was like one of Michelangelo's statues, turning white as marble. And just as cold.

I knew I would keep my word.

But you know there is a terrible lie in all this. I didn't really believe I could be killed by the sun anymore. Well, I was certainly going to give it a good try.