THIRTY

IT MUST have been a full week that I traveled the world. First I'd gone to snowy Georgetown and found that frail, pathetic young woman whom my mortal self had so unforgivably raped. Like an exotic bird, she looked to me now, struggling to see me well in the smelly dark of the quaint little mortal restaurant, not wanting to admit that this encounter with my French friend had ever happened, and then stunned as I placed an antique rosary made of emeralds and diamonds in her hand. Sell it, if you like, cherie, I said. He wanted you to have it for whatever purpose you wish. But tell me one thing. Did you conceive a child?

She shook her head and whispered the word no. I wanted to kiss her, she was beautiful again to me. But I dared not risk it. It wasn't only that I would have frightened her, it was that the desire to kill her was almost overpowering. Some fierce purely male instinct in me wanted to claim her now simply because I had claimed her in another way before.

I was gone from the New World within hours, and night after night, I wandered, hunting in the seething slums of Asia-in Bangkok and Hong Kong and Singapore-and then in the dreary and frozen city of Moscow, and in the charming old cities of Vienna and Prague. I went to Paris for a short time. I did not go to London. I pushed my speed to the limits; I rose and plunged in the darkness, sometimes alighting in towns of which I did not know the name. I fed ceaselessly among the desperate and the vicious and, now and then, the lost and the mad and the purely innocent who fell under my gaze.

I tried not to kill. I tried not to. Except when the subject was damn near irresistible, an evildoer of the first rank. And then the death was slow and savage, and I was just as hungry when it was over, and off to find another before the sun rose.

I had never been so at ease with my powers. I had never risen so high into the clouds, nor traveled so fast.

I walked for hours among mortals in the narrow old streets of Heidelberg, and of Lisbon, and of Madrid. I passed through Athens and Cairo and Marrakesh. I walked on the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean and the Adriatic Sea.

What was I doing What was I thinking That the old cliche was true-the world was mine.

And everywhere I went I let my presence be known. I let my thoughts emanate from me as if they were notes played on a lyre.

The Vampire Lestat is here. The Vampire Lestat is passing. Best give way.

I didn't want to see the others. I didn't really look for them, or open my mind or my ears to them. I had nothing to say to them. I only wanted them to know that I had been there.

I did pick up the sound of nameless ones in various places, vagabonds unknown to us, random creatures of the night who had escaped the late massacre of our kind. Sometimes it was a mere mental glimpse of a powerful being who, at once, veiled his mind. Other times it was the clear sound of a monster plodding through eternity without guile or history or purpose. Maybe such things will always be there!

I had eternity now to meet such creatures, if ever the urge came over me. The only name on my lips was Louis. Louis.

I could not for a moment forget Louis. It was as if someone else were chanting his name in my ear. What would I do if ever again I laid eyes on him How could I curb my temper Would I even try

At last I was tired. My clothes were rags. I could stay away no longer. I wanted to be home.