“But you didn’t go down, Lestat,” he said, his eyebrows rising. “The hunger, the cold—none of it stopped you. You were a triumph!” The rage thickened his voice again.
“Ah, Lestat,” he said. He sat back on the bench. He was smiling at me in the most endearing way. “Next you’ll be seeing ghosts. You have the strongest imagination of anyone I’ve ever known.”
Our Oldest Friend solemnly granted his wish and you have never seen such a Sabbat as this, for I think we looked all the more hellish in our wigs and fine clothes, our black ruffled vampire dancing costumes, forming the old circle, singing with an actor’s bravado the old chants.
Luchina and Jeannette were taking their leave with polite words. He was ignoring them. He had turned to the window, and he was rising as if he’d been called by a secret voice. The look on his face was indescribable.
“Monsieur, what’s the matter!” he said, almost helplessly, and I stood up and threw my arms around him and kissed him on both cheeks and kissed the violin.
[NICOLAS] Lies on lies on lies. Sudden vanishings. Your changed eyes.
Oh, and your mother. How is she alive?
[LESTAT] I brought her to Rocamadour...
[NICOLAS] Her skin...
[LESTAT] for a cure. The Black Madonna blessed her.
[NICOLAS] stretched over her bones!
“You believed things that didn’t matter,” he said almost gently. “There was something you failed to see. Is it impossible you don’t know yourself what you possess now?” The glaze over his eyes broke instantly into tears.
It came to that one night when we were in the inn again, and we were drunk as usual. In fact we were at that moment of drunkenness that the two of us had come to call the Golden Moment, when everything made sense.
I saw Nicolas in their hands. He wore only his lace shirt and breeches because they had taken the coat. And I heard his screams as they pulled his arms from the sockets. I cried out No, putting my own hand over my mouth so that I did not rouse the mortals in the church.
I didn’t want to hear any more. It was time to go to bed. But I was bruised by this little talk and he knew it, and as I started to pull off my boots, he got up from the chair and came and sat next to me.
And I wonder sometimes if I didn’t look to Louis to punish me for what had happened to Nicki, if I didn’t create Louis to be my conscience and to mete out year in and year out the penance I felt I deserved.
“And in exact proportion to the light coming out of you, there was the darkness in me! Every exuberance piercing me and creating its exact proportion of darkness and despair!”
I was never so glad of the fur-lined cape as I was then. I wrapped it around Nicolas and held him close to me when we went out together, and we walked in a tight embrace through the snow and the rain.