6

WE WERE OUT OF THE HOUSE and on the road within three minutes, maybe less, moving on mortal time so as not to alarm any further the full chorus of those shouting at us. Mona had sense enough to pull up the shivering feathers of the wrapper over her face so that nothing could be seen of her but heaps of red hair and dangling bejeweled feet, and we made our exit with polished polite assurances to the clamoring herd, directing the profoundly indifferent Clem to head for New Orleans "immediately."

It was I who gave the command with a quick smile that elicited the driver's sarcastic expression and shrug, but the mammoth limousine was soon rocking down the gravel drive, and Mona was between me and Quinn in the back seat, and then and only then did I begin to scan the city of New Orleans for

possible victims.

"I can hear the voices like the din from Hell," I said. "Toughen up, baby. I'm looking for the eternal scum. Call them grim soulless mortals feeding off the downtrodden or the downtrodden feeding off each other. I always wonder-and never learn-whether or not the genuine Power Thugs ever stop to look at the violet evening sky or the overhead branches of an oak. Crack peddlers, child killers, teenaged gangsters for a fatal fifteen minutes, the morgue's never empty in our town, it's an eternal brew of calculated malice mixed with moral ignorance."

Mona dreamed, staring out the windows, caught up in every shift of the landscape. Quinn could hear the distant voices. Quinn could tune in from afar. Quinn was anxious, so in love with her, but far from happy.

The car gained speed as it took to the highway.

Mona gasped. She slipped her fingers around my left arm. You can never tell just what a fledgling will do. It's all so intoxicating.

"Listen," I said. "Quinn and I are listening."

"I hear them," she said. "I can't take one thread from the knots, I can't. But look at the trees. There's no tint on these windows. Mayfairs always tint their limousine windows."

"That was not Aunt Queen's way," said Quinn, staring forward, washed in the voices. "She wanted the clear glass so she could see out. She didn't care if people looked in."

"I keep waiting for it all to settle," Mona whispered.

"It never will," said Quinn. "It only gets better and better."

"Then trust me," she said to him, her fingers tightening on my arm. "Don't be so afraid for me. I have requests."

"Hit me with them, go on," I said.

"I want to go past my house-I mean the Mayfair house on First and Chestnut. I've been in the hospital for two years. I haven't seen it."

"No," I said. "Rowan will sense your presence. She won't know what you are any more than she knew at Blackwood Manor. But she'll know you're close. We're not going there. There'll come a time, but this isn't it. Go back to the thirst."

She nodded. She didn't fight me. I realized she hadn't fought me on anything.

But I knew she had heavy thoughts, more than usual links in the chain that bound fledglings to their living past. Something was catching hold of her, something to do with the warped images she'd shown me in the Blood-the Monstrous Offspring, the Woman Child. What had that been, that creature?

I didn't let Quinn pick this up from me. It was too soon to reveal all that. But he might well have caught it all in the room when I'd brought her over. I'd belonged to her during those moments, exclusively and dangerously. He might know all I'd seen. And he might be reading it from her now, though I knew she wasn't ready to reveal it.

The car was speeding across the lake. The lake looked like a huge dead thing rather than a body of living water. But the clouds rose in a triumphant mass beneath the emerging moon. When you're a vampire you can see the clouds that others can't see. You can live off things like that when faith is destroyed-the random shifting shapes of clouds, the seeming sentience of the moon.

"No, I need to go there," she said suddenly. "I have to see the house. I have to."

"What is this, a damned mutiny?" I answered. I was just congratulating you in my mind that you didn't fight me."

"What? Do I get a merit badge for that?" she fired back. "We don't have to go close to the house," she went on, sob in her throat. "I just need to see those Garden District streets."

"Oh yeah, right," I said under my breath. "You care that you'll draw them right out of the house, right out of their peace of mind? You ready to follow up on that in some way? Of course I'm not saying you have to follow up. You understand, I'm just trying to respond to you and Mr. Quinn Blackwood as exemplary decent little people. I myself? I'm a scoundrel."

"Beloved Boss," she said with a straight face, "let me just go as close as we can, as close as you can figure. No, I don't want to rile them up. I hate the idea. But I was in solitary confinement for two years."

"Where are we headed, Lestat?" Quinn asked. "Will we hunt downtown?"

"Back of town is what I like to call it," I said. "No Creole like me is going to call it downtown. You know where the scum grows on the bricks. Listen for the city, Mona."

"I hear it," she answered. "It's like opening a floodgate. And then the discrete voices. Plenty of discrete voices. Bickering, threats, even the muffled snap of guns . . ."

"The town's full tonight in spite of the heat," I said. "People are out on the streets, thoughts flooding me in sickening waves. If I was a saint, this is what I would have to listen to all the time."

"Yeah, like prayers," she said. "All those petitions."

"Saints have to work," I said, as if I really knew.

And then with one fine blow it struck me. Their presence.

It hit Quinn at the same instant, and he said, "My God" under his breath. He was astonished.

"Close in on them," I said.

"What is it?" Mona asked. "I can't hear it." Then she locked her eyes on Quinn.

Oh, this was nothing short of providential! I was absolutely furious and deliriously happy at the same time. I closed my focus.

Oh, yeah, right, killing at random as they fed, a pair of male and female vampires, constitutionally cruel, high-toned, style versus character, brilliant gold and brand-name leather, drunk on their powers, lapping up New Orleans as if it weren't real, baiting the "great vampire Lestat," in whom they didn't really believe (who does?), prancing through my French Quarter streets to a lavish lair in a pricey hotel, key in the lock, blood full, laughter echoing to the ceiling, turn on the TV, done in for the night, innocent victims strewn in the back alleys, but not all of them, ready to groove on music or the color images of the mortal world, feeling totally superior, vague plan to sleep in the day in the filthy old whitewashed tombs of St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery, like, very bold! Unwittingly waiting to die.

I sat back laughing under my breath.

"This is too rich! Too deliciously wicked! She's up for it. Don't give it another thought. It's the lightning narcotic of enemy blood. It's perfect for her. And the sooner she learns to fight her own kind the better. Same for you, Quinn. You've never had to battle the cosmic trash that's out there."

"But this has to be perfect for her, Lestat," Quinn said. "You know what happened on my first night. I blundered. I can't let something ugly and bad happen to her-."

"You're breaking my tender little heart," I said. "Are you and she going in alone? I am going with you. You honestly think I can't handle this pair of mavericks? I've made myself too domestic for you, Quinn. You forget who I am and maybe I do too."

"But how will it end?" he persisted.

"Your innocence is so genuine," I responded.

"You should know that by now!" he said. And then at once, "I'm sorry. Forgive me. It's only-."

"Listen to me, both of you," I said. "We're talking the misbegotten of Hell. They've been swaggering through eternity for a decade at most, just long enough to make them very cocky. I'll get the lowdown on their souls before I dispatch them, of course. But as of now I know they're outlaws. And I don't like them. And vampire blood is always hot. And the fighting will be good. They're greedy filth. They break the peace on my streets. That's a death sentence, at least when I have the time for it. And right now I have the time, and you have the thirst, and that's what interests me. No more questions."

A little laugh came from Mona. "And I wonder how their blood tastes," she said, "but I wouldn't dare ask you. Let's just say I'm up for it if you say so."

"You're a mocking little thing," I replied. "Do you like to fight? Fighting with mortals is no fun because it's no fair. No honor-bound immortal would do it any more than necessary. But fighting with these revenants is going to be great. And you can never tell how strong they're going to be, absolutely never. Then there are the images that come through their blood-sizzling, more electric than those from the human prey."

Squeeze of her hand.

Quinn was distressed. He thought of the night he first hunted: a wedding in Naples, and the bride had pulled him into a bedroom, intent on a caper to cut her new spouse, and he'd drunk her dry, spilling the first draught all over her dress. Over and over he relived that fall from grace, that awful moment of the full curse.

"Little Brother," I said. "Those were human beings. Look at me."

He turned towards me, and in the flashing lights of the freeway I peered into his eyes.

"I know I've played it elegant with you up till now," I said. "I've played the sage European and now you're seeing the rough side of me. And I have to remember you've been through Hell just telling me your story, and what with the death of Aunt Queen, it's been pure torture for you, and you richly deserve any good thing that I can conjure or give. But I have to rid the world of these two Blood Hunters. And you and Mona mustn't miss this opportunity."

"What if they're strong, what if they were made like me by someone very old?" he asked.

I sighed. "I've given you my blood, Quinn. And Mona's been made with it. My blood, Quinn. They're no match for you now. They're no match for her, I told you."

"I wanna do it!" Mona interjected immediately. "If you say they're fair game, then they're fair game, and that's good enough for me, Beloved Boss. I can't tell my own heart and soul what I'm feeling now, how

much I crave this little battle. I can't find the words, it's so raw, so rooted inside me! It goes way back into the human part of me that's not going to die, doesn't it?"

"Yes," I said. "Precisely."

"Bravo," she said. "I'm picking them up. But, something's, something's confusing me . . ."

"Save it, we're almost there," I said.

A soft subdued expression came over Quinn, unmistakable in the light of the cars that flew by.

"What if they beg for mercy?" he asked.

"You can count on that happening," I said with a little shrug.

"What if they know poetry?" he asked.

"It would have to be very fine," I said. "Don't you think? To make up for all those innocent victims?"

He wouldn't let up. He couldn't.

"What if they love you?"