DISCLAIMER: This is a work of amateur non-profit fan-fiction and is not meant to infringe on the copyrights of Anne Rice, Knopf, Random House, or anyone else. It contains spoilers to all of the Vampire Chronicles through Tale of the Body Thief and all of the Mayfair Witches. It also contains erotic situations between members of the same gender - you have been warned!

Spring in New Orleans. The season when winter has relaxed its grasp on the land and everything comes back to life, blooming, flowering, until the heady perfume of a thousand blossoms fill the air. The bitter, biting cold of winter fades into the light chill of spring and the people come back to the boulevards, discarding their heavy winter clothes and becoming animate in a way they are not during those long, gray months. They walk in the evenings simply for the pleasure of walking, instead of rushing from place to place. The outdoor cafes fill with earnest young students and lovers of all ages erupt from the woodworks to stroll the streets hand in hand. Life returns to the city with a frantic haste, as though it must compensate for the months of sleep.

Of all the seasons, I think this is my favorite.

I walked along the streets of the French Quarter, David at my side. Louis had declined to come with us, as he nearly always did. To this day he does not like to hunt with me, or let me see him hunt. I think, perhaps, he fears the intimacy of such moments. This is ridiculous, of course, because he certainly doesn't seem to be disturbed by the much more blatant intimacy of laying down beside me each morning in our bed, nestled into my arms, his head resting on my shoulder. Hopeless to point this out to him, though. He just looks away and says that it is different... ah, my Louis. Sometimes he defies understanding or reason.

So I hunt with David. Beneath that fine veneer of exquisite English culture there lies the soul of a hunter, the man who went into the jungle to hunt the tiger. Louis doesn't begrudge us this time together, thank God. And I, in turn, don't begrudge them the hours they spend in Louis' study, bent over dusty books. The arrangement works well and keeps us all content. Hard to believe from the way it began, with all of us treading on each others toes and squabbling endlessly, until I could have happily thrown the both of them down a well and bricked it in after them. But the differences had worked themselves out- I guess it's true, what they say, that love can overcome any distance.

David is fond of saying that in order to overlook my faults love had to be not only blind, but deaf and dumb and paralyzed as well. He always says it with a smile, though, and I do love his smile.

We walked along the streets lined with taverns, jazz music blaring from each and every one. The thirst was paramount in both of our thoughts but the music kept distracting me, capturing my attention with the demanding wail of saxophone and trumpet, like the roaring pulse of the city itself. Impossible to describe, that wild music that hadn't changed since the first time I had heard it here. Finally I had to stop before one of the little dark taverns, joining the mingling crowd of mortals outside of it, breathing in the smoky air, letting fingers and feet tap to the bright rhythm of ragtime piano from inside. David pulled at my arm but I only moved away reluctantly, a half step at a time. "But the music, David," I said, though I let him take my hand and pull me away. "I want to come back here, I want to sit and listen to the music. David, we have to come back."

"All right, Lestat," he assured me. "But right now I'm hungry, I have to eat. Come on, the sooner we go the sooner we can come back."

Well, that did it. I hurried him mercilessly, single-mindedly insistent on my goal. We returned to the little tavern within the hour, flushed and invigorated with the blood coursing through us. I pulled David into the bar, where the pianist had now been joined by a trombone and a sax. Within that confined space the music pounded out, bouncing back from the walls, a lovely cacophony of sound and rhythm and life. I wanted to dance, to let this sound pour over and through me. I was half drunk on the deafening jazz, the hazy atmosphere and thick scent of too many mortals. Indeed, I was on the verge of leaping to my feet and hauling David with me when I chanced to see a figure by the door.

Impossible, surely. I had to blink twice to assure myself that the figure was real and not a trick of my imagination. But no, the figure was real, hovering hesitantly by the entrance, hands shoved into ripped black jeans and a worn and frayed sweater hanging from slightly hunched shoulders. Strands of black hair had fallen into his eyes as he looked around. I smiled, delighted by his unexpected presence. Raising my arm, I waved and beckoned to him. "Louis!"

David, looking up, stiffened. His fingers bit into my arm, hard. He was on his feet beside me, his whole body tense, eyes wide. I stared at him. "David? What's wrong? It's just Louis."

With a half growled curse he tried to pull me back, failing utterly. I planted my feet and refused to be budged. This little blatant display of superior strength only infuriated him even more, of course. "Not Louis," he hissed, pitching his voice for my ears alone. "Talamasca!"

I opened my mouth to contradict him- didn't he think I knew Louis when I saw him? But even as I did it something about that figure drew my attention. He had turned slightly, away from us, revealing a profile less angular then Louis'. Backlit against the glare of neons in the window, the figure appeared slighter, slenderer then Louis, with a slight, tell tale curve to hip and thigh. A woman.

David's grip on my arm was urgent. "She's Talamasca," he was whispering to me. "I have to get out of here, Lestat. I can't let her see me. We have to go."

I could feel the warmth of the flush in my cheeks. I couldn't believe that I had actually mistaken this mortal female for my Louis. The embarassment made my voice sharp. "Oh, relax, David. Stop panicing, will you? What makes you so sure that every single member of the Talamasca knows you? Besides, even if she does know you, she doesn't know this body. You're old body is dead, remember? There's no reason for anyone to think otherwise."

He was shaking his head. "She's a telepath, Lestat, one of the best in the Talamasca. One of the strongest. If she touches my mind at all she'll know who I am."

"So shield yourself," I told him, though I felt a little frission of worry go through me. We had just settled, the three of us, we didn't need trouble with David's old order. "You're a thousand times stronger now then you were as a mortal. She won't be able to read you."

David nodded but I could still feel him beside me, tense as a bowstring, nearly vibrating with the supressed need to be up and away from this place. It overshadowed the atmosphere of the little tavern, distracted me from the music. It quite ruined the mood. And I continually found my eyes drawn back to the figure which now sat at one of the small side tables, slumped over a drink, only her fingers tapping the rythm of the music. Such a fragile little thing to inspire such agitation in David.

Finally, unable to enjoy the situation and longer, I stood up and made for the door, drawing a relieved David with me. I wanted to be away from this troublesome little Talamasca girl and whatever her assignment was. That it was, quite likely, myself did occur to me. Well, if she had been sent to watch me, I would deal with her soon enough. She didn't seem to notice our leaving, which suited me fine.

Outside, beneath the streetlamps and the stars, David walked with a fiercely troubled stride. He was furious about the incident, more so about the girl herself then because the Talamasca might have sent someone to watch us.

"I told them," he was saying, fists clenched and thrust into his pockets, back stiff with displeasure and irritation. The crisp English syllables fell from his lips in a torrent, lovely, really. I've always enjoyed his rich voice, no matter the body. "I told them and I warned them. She wasn't to be sent on these types of cases, never on the dangerous ones. She's just too sensetive for it. And to send her back here, dear God, they must be insane! Never to New Orleans, never to America, never out of the Motherhouse if I had my way, and now, the minute I'm gone, they send her here! It will kill her!"

I let him ramble on about it, venting his anger. From it all I gathered that this girl, whoever she was, was an incredibly sensetive telepath and medium, as Jesse had been, but much stronger. David, as Superior General, had decreed that she would not be sent out on any type of dangerous case, or any case involving any type of immortals or really old powers. She was too easily influenced by the auras and spirits in such cases. It endangered her health. And now, the minute his back was turned, the new Superior General had sent her here, presumably setting her on my case.

Finally, when he had wound down some, I tried to set his mind at ease. "It's only dangerous if we make it dangerous for her," I pointed out. "And I won't hurt her, certainly not! Let her collect information on me, let her pore through all of the old records. What's the harm? And when she's done she'll go back to the Motherhouse and we can all forget about it. That's the way it works, isn't it?"

But David would not be soothed. "Don't let her near you, Lestat," he warned, his eyes locked to mine, intense and electric. "Don't go near her. None of your damn tricks! It would be disaster, do you hear me? Disaster!"

Oh, to hear that from him. I have been told that so many times in my life. I think I laughed most of the way home, though I knew it enraged him.

From the diary of Michelle Renford
Febuary 24, 1995

I think my heart shall burst. I can feel it pounding, slamming against my ribs. My hands are shaking so hard I can hardly place my fingers on this antique typewriter. For all it's decrepitude and the sticky keys I thank God for it, because I know I couldn't hold a pen.

I saw him tonight.

De Lioncourt, I mean. The blonde haired brat prince himself, sitting in a tavern in the French Quarter, quite entranced by the little jazz band. Oh, was he something to behold! Tall and built, with that glorious tossled mane of gold and that pale, lumious skin. Piercing eyes, even from a distance. And every movement had enormous energy in it, it fairly radiated from him. I felt drugged, just watching him. Easy to see how he kept millions spellbound from the lofty heights of a stage, the lens of a video camera. The Vampire Lestat, the media's darling.

I had to force myself to look away, to go sit down. I ordered a scotch, hoped it would help shock my poor, abused mind back to some sembalance of order. I was in shock. I had known, I had pictured it in my mind, but to actually see him like that... God, it was a dream come true. And he was real, he was so real, everything about him nearly shouted it out- 'I am here, I am among you, and I am not human!' I don't know how other people don't see it.

He had a companion with him. I could have cried when I saw it wasn't HIM. I don't know who this one was, he doesn't fit any of the pictures in the files. Tall as Lestat, with a natural tan to that inhuman flesh and beautiful, tawny hair. Edgy, not comfortable in that tavern with the music pounding out in waves. A new fledgling, maybe, he certainly clung to Lestat. If he is, well, you certainly can't fault Lestat's taste in companions. Being entrancingly beautiful must be one of the requirements for vampirism.

I can only hope and pray that if this is a new companion the fickle Monsiuer de Lioncourt hasn't abandoned his old lover. I don't know what I shall do if he has, he is my only lead, my only hope. I wish I had more experience with this, more practice at field work! If David had only sent me out more... Oh, I understand his reasons, but it does me precious little good now!

If I am very careful with my money I can stay here for another month. After that, I do not know what I shall do. Return on bended knee to the Talamasca, I suppose, and beg their forgiveness. They are the only family I know. And if I have not found HIM by then, I think I shall have to admit defeat.

If only that tavern had not been so loud, so crowded! It is wishful thinking on my part, I know, but for a moment, a split second, when I was watching Lestat, he looked up. I could have sworn he saw me, he must have, I was standing in plain sight. And for just a second, I could have sworn he raised his hand to me, that he was going to speak!

Wishful thinking. I was just another mortal to him, just like all the others. But how I wish! I will go out tomorrow, I will stay in the French Quarter, maybe he will return. I have to see him again, I have to follow him. I don't like staying here, I don't like going out onto those streets, there's too many memories- but I swore nothing, not Hell itself, would keep me from this, and I will not be stopped!

Well, I argued with David that night, and we remained out of sorts with each other for the next several nights. Louis, to my immense gratification, actually seemed to take my side on the matter- "David," he said, "what in heaven's name can happen to her? None of us will hurt her! And what can she find, legal documents with my name, and Lestat's? God, your files are filled to choking with them already! What can she possibly find that isn't documented in Lestat's books? And don't worry about yourself. The Sean Cortez identity will stand up to legal inquiry, she won't ever find out who you really are. Don't let it trouble you."

But David continued to worry, and to admonish me over and over again to stay as far away from this girl as possible, not to have anything to do with her. He was like a scratched record in his monotony.

So is it any wonder that I simply couldn't help myself when I saw her a week later?

It was in one of the lower class shop districts, filled with corner grocery stores and pawn shops and newspaper stands. Litter gusted around the cracked curbs, blown into fluries by the brisk breeze that had sprung up just after dusk, a last, chill reminder of winter. I was walking by myself, hands in my pockets, head down. David had refused to come with me, in his own way sulking just as stubbornly as Louis ever did. I had gone out just to get away from his sullen, glowering presense. I was being tried and found guilty for a deed I hadn't even done yet, nor had any real intention of doing, and I was feeling rather put upon and hurt. Louis had laughed softly when I grumbled, reaching out to brush the back of one hand softly across my cheek.

"Your reputation is catching up with you," he had joked. And it was true, wasn't it? The irrepresible brat prince of the undead was behaving himself for once, and David simply wouldn't belive it. So I had washed my hands of him and of the entire mess and walked out of the house, though I had promised to meet Louis later at one of our favorite cafes, to go with him to a late concert being held at some theatre or other. The thought of spending an evening with him was soothing and it was in a considerably better frame of mind that I walked that street and happened to catch sight of her.

The resembalance was simply uncanny! If I hadn't seen Louis leave the house, if I didn't know for a fact that he was dressed in a soft, forest green silk shirt and sinfully tight black jeans that hugged his beautiful legs, I would have sworn that the figure seen across the street was him. Even knowing that, I had to look twice, do an all too human doubletake to be able to see the little differances. It was all superficial, of course, the dark hair and the tall, spare figure. Still, it gave me a little shiver to see it.

Her back was turned to me as she looked into one of the windows, her black hair whipped about from the wind. She wore it tied back with a black silk ribbon, exactly as Louis had done so long ago and still did, from time to time. It was a little longer then Louis', brushing just below her shoulders.

Ripped and frayed black sweater, the kind I still had to pry Louis out of sometimes, too large for her frame and slipping off of one pale shoulder. Black net lace beneath it. Ripped black jeans on her slender legs, Doc Marten boots on her feet. Equisite, a lost, androgynous, waif; an escapee from a gothic club. I watched her from across the street, entranced. I desperately wanted to know what color her eyes were.

She stood at the window of one of the pawn shops, hands jammed into her pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind. I saw her shiver, the cold cutting through the threadbare sweater. Senseless to be out in the cold dressed like that, with only thin mortal skin to protect her.

Whatever was in that window had her entranced. She stood there, all but motionless, for a long time. Finally, her shoulders slumped. I saw her reach out, touch the glass of the window. Then she turned sharply on her heel, walking away. I caught her profile again as she walked away, troubled, eyes shadowed. Beautiful. She couldn't be more then twenty-five.

I was caught in a division of desire, wanting to go after her, wanting to know what she had stared at with such intensity. Finally, some modicrum of common sense won out. I wasn't really ready to barge up and talk to her, I didn't want to scare her. There was a wonderous fragility underneath that tough, modern exterior. So I settled for crossing the street and going to peer into the window that she had stood before.

Guitars hung from the ceiling of the display, speakers and amps lined the edges. But she had been looking down, so I looked there as well. Jewelery, mostly, trays and trays of it. Rings and necklaces and earrings, lighters and money clips, countless trinkets. She might have been attracted to any one of them. I was just about to turn away, to follow the direction she had taken, see if I could find her, when an object caught my eye.

It was a watch, a large, gold pocketwatch, attatched to an antique chain. Superb craftmanship, wonderously preserved. An antique it was, the kind I had carried myself a hundered years before, a gentleman's watch. It could have been someone's heirloom. Beautiful. And before I really knew what I was doing I was going into the shop, pushing open the door and hearing the little tinkle of the bells as they slapped against the glass. I was going up to the counter and telling the sullen, grey haired man there that I wanted to see an item from the window, the watch, yes, the pocketwatch.

He fished it out and put it in my hands. I ran my fingers over the equisite engraving on its surface, the deceptively simple pattern of vines and roses. No, you simply couldn't find such things any more, only the gaudy modern versions, with their American eagles and commemorative flag engravings. This was a true antique.

It still opened with a touch, the hinges perfectly upkept. And the face, the gold inlaid numbers and the tiny, ebony hands, all exactly as they should be. I twisted the knob at the side gently and was gratified to hear the tiny, solemn tick of the internal mechanisms, still keeping time after countless years. Yes, they did not make them like this any more.

I was almost positive, but I had to ask. The man, for all his sulleness, was only too happy to answer me when I took out a clip of money, easily counting off half again as much as the tiny tag attatched to the watch proclaimed and laying the crisp bills down on the counter. Yes, the watch was a real antique, perfectly working, I was getting a bargain at the price. It had been brought in by a girl a week and a half ago, tall, grunge type, black hair. One of the community college students, probably, they were always in and out of these places. Picture of her in his mind. I thanked him and left, the watch tucked into my pocket.

It was getting late, I had to meet Louis. But as I walked I pondered this puzzle in my mind. The Talamasca was rich, I knew that. The girl was young enough that her dress could be passed off as a fad, current fashion. But why, then, had she pawned the obviously important antique watch if she could just request what money she needed from the Talamasca accounts? And why would they have sent her to watch me, so obviously young and inexperienced as she was? I couldn't think of an answer.

The concert was chamber music, Motzart, I think. I was distracted, mulling over the puzzle of the Talamasca girl, and didn't pay too much attention to the music. Louis chided me for it during the intermission and I gladly turned my attention to him instead. He would lean foreward in his chair, expression intent and yet utterly relaxed, eyes half lidded so that only a sliver of green flashed from beneath long, dark lashes. I had to resist the urge to kiss those lashes, to brush back the locks of hair that fell into his eyes and run my fingers through that luxurious black mane. Sweet torture.

I couldn't keep my hands off him on the drive home, until he finally laughed and pushed me away, mock irritated. "Lestat! Stop it, Lestat, I'm driving. Move your hand, I have to be able to shift. Behave, would you? What's gotten into you?"

I laughed and rolled down my window, loving the feel of the wind as it whipped at my hair, as it reached out and plucked at Louis shirt with invisible fingers, making the silk ripple and shimmer over his chest and arms. I wanted him to drive faster, I told him so. I wanted to feel the thrum of the Porsche's engine deep in my bones. I wanted this ride to continue forever, and I wanted to be home. I wanted to take him to our room, tumble him onto the bed, strip the clothes from his body. I wanted to run my fingers through his hair, over his chest, loose myself in the smell and taste and feel of him. I wanted to just hold him, feel him close to me. I told him all of this, described it all in loving detail. Louis, my ever respectable Louis, did not deign to answer me. But he did drive faster.

David was not there when we returned to the house on Rue Royale. All to the better. Still caught up in the mood that had over taken me I lured Louis into the bedroom, lit the candles about the bed. Soft, flickering light, the eerily powerful strains of Bach over the stereo system, a sybarite's heaven.

I had to run my fingers over every inch of his skin, over the soft silkiness of his lips, the little creases at the corners of his eyes, the long, smooth lines of his throat. I showered his face in kisses, his mouth and cheeks and chest, nuzzle at his neck, feel the race of his blood just beneath my lips. The intoxicating scent of him, of blood, smell of mortal clinging to his skin. I wanted to devour him whole, knew I couldn't. A masochist's pleasure, this, just holding him, wanting him and not taking him, having him pliant and loving in my arms. Taunting myself. I wanted to sink into our embrace, lock my lips to his throat, feel that rush of pleasure as his teeth broke my skin, feel the blood circulate between us, linking us, one continuous, unbroken being. Feel Louis' mind and soul, God, the very thought...

But he wouldn't, and I knew it, so I tortured myself. Wishing and hoping and knowing he would push me away. The blood in these veins was too powerful, it would wreak too great a change on him, as it had on me. Too much, too fast. He wouldn't take it. And I wouldn't force him too. I was too afraid of that change, of what it would do to him, to us.

But I always had to push it, didn't I? Test the limit. And he pushed me away, as he always did. No angry words, we had done that before, the scars were there. We skirted around the words and instead the tears came, as they always did. Louis held me, stroking my hair, my back, his touch gentle, his tone loving as he whispered to me, such beautiful old French, words of love and passion. Such strong resolution under them, though, and it only made me cry the more. In the end we lay together, circled in each others arms, as much at peace as we ever were.

It was near dawn when I remembered my earlier distraction. Louis was asleep, breathing deep and easily, one arm flung over the pillows, his dark hair spread like lace over the white sheets. The candles had long since burned down, the house was silent in the predawn stillness. David had come in earlier, I had heard him, but he had retreated to his room and I could hear nothing now.

I took a moment to admire Louis' relaxed, cat-like beauty. Such a wonderful pang in my heart, every time I looked at him. I bent down, brushed my lips over that cool, smooth mouth. Tasted his breath, the soft skin inside his lips. Agony.

Drawing away, I reached over and carefully flicked on a bedside reading lamp, pushing the light down so that it wouldn't shine across the bed and wake Louis. Real dawn would be all to soon, I would have hours to do nothing but lay in his arms, hidden away from the sun's light. But for now I had a puzzle and it gnawed at me.

I retrieved my jeans from the floor, dug in the pocket for the watch. Pulling it out, I held it under the lamp, turning it over and over in my hand. An antique heirloom, possibly from the vaults of the Talamasca itself. And if it was, why had she had it? Why in heaven had she pawned it? Unless... Unless David was wrong and she wasn't here on an assignment. If she was here for some other reason, without the knowledge or backing of the Talamasca... Impossible to know for sure. I needed more information, I needed to know more about this mysterious girl.

My fingers traced the old, worn pattern of the engraving. Yes, it had to be old, ancient, dating back to Louis' time and my own. You could feel the age on the metal, like a sheen of years covering the gold. I traced one of the roses, the tangle of vines.

And stopped.

And traced it again, watching as I did so.

It was late, I was tired, my eyes were playing tricks on me. None the less, I got up, I went out to the living room. I took a sheet of paper and a pencil from the little table the phone sat on and I placed the paper over the watch, gently rubbing the flat side of the pencil lead over it.

The relief sprang up into being in graphite on paper, tracing out a pattern that my fingers had just barely felt but that was too worn, too hidden, to be easily visible to the eye.

Twined within the design of vines were letters, three of them. PdL. Just exactly like that, a capitol P and L, a small D nestled between them, in flowing script. Initials, a gentleman's mark on a favorite timepiece.

I couldn't think about it, I just couldn't. I could feel the sun rising outside, feel the heaviness in my limbs, the sluggishness of thoughts. It was all I could do to haul myself up and into the bedroom, push the watch and paper into a dresser drawer. Louis moved a little as I laid down next to him, his arms twining about my waist, pressed to my back. I laid my head back against his shoulder, feeling the sleep take me, my eyes shutting, relaxing. But even as sleep claimed me the image of those three initials hauted me, and another image, an image of a young girl with fine black hair and huge, ancient eyes...

I woke at dusk.

I woke, laying there in Louis' arms, and I knew. It was so obvious I could have railed at my own stupididty.

PdL.

Pointe du Lac.

The link was so startlingly clear in my mind that it could have been a revelation from God. A gentleman's watch, dark with the patina of extreme age, with Louis' very initials on it.

And even if you forgot the watch, look at the girl! Mon Dieu, she had Louis' face, his features, his figure! How many mortal generations had passed since then? How many links of mortal flesh and blood formed the chain between Louis and this, his many times removed mortal daughter?

And she knew! Of course she did, why, she was here in New Orleans looking for Louis! She was Talamasca, she had to have access to the files, how much could it possibly take for her mind to make the same leap mine had? Not much, surely! A picture of Louis, the Talamasca must have one. All she would have had to do was look at the picture and look in a mirror. It was there for all the world to see.

And it was more then likely. True, Louis' wife had died, there were no children there. His brother had died young, a relegious fanatic, his sister a spinster. No distant neice. But I remembered Louis as I had first seen him, beautiful and heartbreaking, intent on drinking himself to death in his grief and guilt. I must have watched him for over a month, like a love-sick, besotted fool. Had there been a night I hadn't seen him in the tavers, drinking, gambling, a whore on his arm? He had bedded them all without care or caution. Which one of those creatures had harbored his seed, even as I had wooed him into my own arms and worked the Dark Trick? Impossible to ever know, but there you had it. Impossible to deny, as well.

I had to get up, I had to get away from the delicious pressure of Louis' arms and body. I could hear David stirring. I had to get away from Louis' presence right now or I would give in to this idea that crept, will or wouldn't I, into my mind.

Impossible to think of doing it, but I desperately wanted to. I'd roll over, take him in my arms, wake him up. All rough and tumble, he would grumble but not too much, it was what lovers did. And then to reach over, draw the watch out of the dresser drawer, and drop it into Louis' hands.

I wanted to do it just to see the expression on his face.

But I couldn't. It would hurt Louis too much if I was wrong about all of this. It was going to upset him even if I was right. I had to find out more about this girl. Why, I suddenly realized that I didn't even know her name! David had never mentioned it!

All right, I had a purpose now. I had to do some more research before telling Louis about all of it. I would go find the girl, talk to her. Best to get her view of it all. Failing that, I could always fall back on the Talamasca's files if I could just find out her name.

I rose, went to the bath. By the time I finished with my shower and emerged Louis was up, clothed and sitting on the edge of the bed, fastening the last buttons of his shirt. Seeing him, his smile as he looked up at me, I suddenly knew I couldn't continue this without telling him. He deserved to know.

I dropped down on the bed beside him, taking his hand in mine and easily fastening the last button on the cuff that had been troubling him. "Come with me tonight," I invited, giving him my most dazzling smile. "I want you to come with me, I want to talk. There's something I have to tell you."

Louis looked vaughly started at this but then he smiled alittle ruefully, giving my hand a quick squeeze. "I'll meet you later, if you like."

I shook my head. "No, not later. Now. I have something I want to show you."

Such a human sigh, with that faint hint of exasperation. "Well, it's going to have to wait until later, Lestat," he said firmly. "I promised David I would go with him this evening. We'll be done by ten or eleven, I'll meet you then, alright?"

It took a minute for the words to penetrate. He was going with David. He would hunt with David, but not with me! It hurt, more then I had thought it would. It stabbed at something deep inside of me and I knew I was just staring at him, gaping like a fool, the shock and hurt written all over my face. Louis sighed again, then leaned foreward, taking my face between those cold, pale hands. He kissed my forehead, my mouth, as though the touch of his lips and tongue could take the pain from the words he had just said. I pulled away from him.

He protested, trying to explain. I cut him off. "No, of course, I understand. You promised David, so go keep your promise! I won't stop you!" I was moving too fast, my gestures were too sharp, but the anger was boiling up in me. I walked around the bed, pretending not to see the hand he raised to me, yanking open the dresser to rummage through the clothes there and throw my selections onto the bed. I ignored him utterly.

Finally, with an irritated noise, Louis left. He paused at the door, though, turning back. I felt my heart leap. Would he stay?

"We need to talk, Lestat," he said, so beautifully serious. I bit back a sharp reply, of course we needed to talk, wasn't that why I had asked him to come with me in the first place? But I had to do it away from David, David would be furious when he found out the truth about the girl.

Louis continued, not about to be deterred by my silence. "Tonight, Lestat," he promised. "Later. When I get back."

I shrugged, affecting complete unconcern. "Fine," I tossed at him, not turning around. "Whenever." If I turned and looked at him I would be beyond all bounds, I would scream and rage. I kept my eyes glued to the stained wood of the dresser until I heard him leave, heard him greet David out in the livingroom, heard both of their steps on the stairs as they left the house.

For long minutes after it was all I could do to stand there, hands gripping the wood so tight I left imprints in it, feeling the anger and hurt roil through me. I felt betrayed. And I had known this betrayal before, hadn't I? Gabriel and Nicholas, Louis and Claudia, and now Louis and David. I cursed myself for an idiot for not having thought of it before. Knowing the mistake did not help the pain, though.

Finally, I collected myself, recalling the task at hand. Louis I would deal with later. Right now, I needed to concern myself with his distant daughter. I pulled open the top dresser drawer, fishing around in it for the watch.

It wasn't there. I found the paper with the rubbing of the engraving tucked inbetween two shirts, but no watch. Even after I had emptied everything out onto the bed and shaken out all of it there was no watch. I was absolutely certain I had put it there, the paper was proof. But there was no watch and no amount of searching the drawers or the house produced it.

The watch was gone. Sometime during the hours of daylight it had disappeared.

From the diary of Michelle Renford
March 2, 1995

It has all gone wrong!

It began with the watch. Oh, I hated to pawn that, I would rather have sold myself then parted with that thing! It was like tearing out a lung and depositing it, bloody and dripping, on the table. Handed down from mother to daughter, the only link I have to my past. To HIM.

But I pawned it, the only thing of real value I own, rather then go back to the Talamasca. I couldn't survive without the money I got from it. And as soon as it left my hand I felt ill. Really, physically ill. I go back and check on it every day, to make sure it's still there. There was a goodly price set on it, it's real gold, a real antique. I hoped that that would be enough to stop most people from even considering it. And I would get it back, just as soon as I could. Guaranteed.

Yesterday, when I went to the shop, it wasn't there.

I think I just stood outside that window for the longest time, staring at the place it had been. Gone. I couldn't wrap my mind around the concept. Gone. Beyond my reach. GONE.

I remember storming into the shop, demanding to know who had bought the watch, what they looked like, their name. The flustered shop keeper said he couldn't remember, that it was late the night before, a man, he thought, yes, a man. No name. No check or credit slip. He had paid cash.

God, I was in torment. I had to get that watch back, I had to, but I couldn't. I couldn't even go to the person who bought it and make an offer to them, because I didn't know who had bought it. I left the shop in tears, my head pounding fit to burst. I was still crying when I got to this wretched little flat, I flung myself down on my blankets and cried until my eyes were swollen and no more tears would come.

I had to get it back. It was the only thing in my mind. I HAD to get that watch back. I would do anything to achieve that goal.

And as I sat there, concentrating on that and only that, the presence came back.

I've felt it before. It comes and goes. Never in England, to my memory, but I remember it vividly from my childhood, here in New Orleans. I remember the presence in the orphanage, an invisible friend that would stand by me, just being there, a warm, comforting thing. Not always, but often. It would come when I was hysterical from the things I had seen, the images flashing like MTV commercials across my eyes, that fast. A thousand ghosts in every room, all seen in an instant. The presence would comfort me. At the time it was wonderful. Later, I realized that it was actually the other way around. The attacks would come after the presence had been with me, like it's proximity opened a flood gate in my mind. I learned to block it and when I went to live in the Talamasca it vanished all together. I hadn't felt it in years.

Within hours after stepping off the plane in Louisiana it was back, stronger then ever.

The attacks of visions didn't come though, just the presence. I started to wonder if I had been wrong to think it was the cause, or if I had grown strong enough to filter it out. And since nothing happened I let it stay.

It came to me as I sat, obsessed. It wrapped around me like a huge warmth, snuggling against me, and I brushed it away. I had to concentrate, plan, think of a way to get that watch back. I was envisioning it in my mind, the engraved gold, the faint tracery of the initials. I felt the presence examine that image, like the lightest of mental touches, and then it was gone.

I barely noticed, so sunk into depression was I. So it surprised me utterly when, barely five minutes later, it returned. A warm rush of air swept through the room, tossing about my papers, rattling the blinds on the window. I leapt to my feet in anger at these childish tricks but in the next moment the presence was around me again, like hands taking me gently by the shoulders. And from the air dropped a golden disk that glittered in the light.

I caught it reflexively, feeling the watch smack into my palm with a heavy weight, the chain slipping though my fingers. Real. I had to examine it closely, feel the engravings with my fingers, open it and scrutinize that antique face. Real. Solid and real. My watch.

I was laughing and crying, then, the relief so great it knew no bounds. The presence grew warmer as I thanked it, almost hysterical, not caring how or why, just so very grateful that it had. Hands on me again, the sensations so real that it was frightening. Lips on my cheeks. I was stunned. This thing, this presence that I had always felt, was changing before my eyes. It grew stronger by the instant as I concentrated upon it, pouring my thanks into it. It had always just seemed warm before, an amphorous cloud of feelings, a purely mental touch. And now I could feel hands on me, so real that it seemed impossible that I couldn't look down and see them! And words, real words, not just feelings, I heard them softly in my mind, a barely breathed whisper.

//For you, my beloved//

And then, as though this display had exhausted the presence, it just faded away.

I mulled it over for hours and found no answers. I don't know what this thing is; I had always assumed that it was no more or less then all of the other visions, the impressions of the past and the souls of the dead. Immaterial and insubstantial.

But the watch I held so tightly said otherwise.

I couldn't afford to be sidetracked by this. I put up the mental blocks, all of the tricks and disciplines that I had used when I was young to keep this thing from me, to ward it away. I could research this later, with all the resources of the Talamasca at my disposal. Right now, I had only one goal and nothing would deter me from it, not errant spirits that were more then spirits, nor a depressing lack of luck. And, putting it all from my mind, I laid down for awhile, needing to rest from the throbbing pain in my head.

I woke in late evening to only slightly diminished pain and a whole slew of images that flashed, lightning fast, before my eyes. An old woman in a rocking chair, a young man, a middle aged woman with the look of a hooker. Ten or fifteen more after that, people in this apartment, all of them caught in a moment of their time. Impressions, not real ghosts, but horribly disturbing. I left, I had to get out, get something to eat.

It didn't get any better. I was in the grip of one of the vision attacks and I knew it but there was nothing I could do about it. The streets were filled with teeming throngs of people, less then half of which were real. I must had looked like a drunkard walking down the street, avoiding everyone, image and real alike. The streets were a maze of cars, carriages, horses, and more people. A few accidents, frozen as they happened. New Orleans keeps too many impressions.

The first clue I had of his presence was the girl. She was a tiny little thing, I glimpsed her from the corner of my eye. Beautiful blonde hair, a blue satin ribbon. Pale little streak of a face. She raced past me, a doll clutched in her arms, little shoes clattering on the pavement. She was moving, not a static impression, so she had to be real. I looked to see if I could spot her parents, what were they thinking of, letting her run through the crowds like that?

And the little girl ran into the street and through a modern day car that I knew was real.

If the car was real, then the girl was not. But she had moved, she had run past me, she had looked up at me with great blue eyes in a round little face! A ghost, then, a real ghost, not an impression. A soul of a dead girl, trapped in this place.

She was back, she was standing right beside me, right there on the street. I wanted to scream. She looked up at me, ancient eyes in that tiny face, a smile curving that cupid's bow of a mouth. A ghost, nothing more, I had been trained to deal with them. But this one flustered me, she radiated strength of a sort I had never felt, I wanted to run from her. God, what was this?

The girl's smile widened. I caught a little glint of her teeth. And I knew. Ghost of a little girl, ghost of an old vampire. I knew her from the files. Claudia.

I had to run, I wanted to, but I was paralyzed. And she reached up and slipped her pale little hand through mine...

I found her not far from the pawn shop. She looked almost drunk, weaving as she walked, great stumbling steps. She would start and stop, sidestep suddenly, as though she were avoiding things that only she could see.

Maybe she was.

She hadn't acted like that the first two times I had seen her, though. Perfectly normal then. It was as though something were very wrong with her now, I could hear the frantic beat of her heart, the almost drugged thoughts that she broadcast for all to hear.

I trailed along behind her, drawing steadily closer, trying to introduce myself gradually so as not to startle her. She looked almost haggard, her face pinched, eyes shadowed. I drew close until I was walking at her side, matching her steps. Still she didn't seem to notice me.

And then it happened.

She stopped for a moment, she seemed to watch something go past her. There was nothing there. She looked up, looking around, then back to her side, looking surprised. And then a look of the most profound horror came over her face and she jerked back. I caught her shoulders, steadied her, kept her from falling.

As I touched her I caught a glimpse of what those wide, staring green eyes saw. Golden hair, a blue ribbon, a child's face carved of ivory. I think I gasped.

And then she turned on me, Louis' face, Louis' brilliant green eyes and angular features, translated into a woman's gently rounded curves. She turned on me in fury, anger distorting those features, and I somehow knew that the clear, bell like voice that came from those lips was not her own. I knew the words were not. Those words were engraved on my soul.

"I'll put you in your grave, Father!"

Claudia's words, Claudia's voice, coming from the lips of this female version of Louis. I let her go, pushed her away as though she had burned me. I was frantic.

As soon as the words left her lips the anger drained from her face, leaving her curiously empty. She stared at me, slackjawed, round eyed. And then, with a muffled sob, she had pushed past me and I could hear the pound of her feet as she ran. I stayed where I was, shocked and rather badly rattled.

I was in a state of perfect panic when I returned to the house.

They were both there, Louis and David, in the livingroom. Sitting companionably close on the couch, bent over a book that David held, Louis leaning on his shoulder to look. When I stormed in David jerked back almost guiltily and Louis leapt to his feet, hands out and mouth open to forstall any accusation I might make.

I had no time for any of it. I brushed past Louis as if he didn't exist and grabbed David, twisting my fist into the fabric of his shirt and hauling him to his feet, so that our faces were only inches apart. David's eyes were white rimmed and I knew I must look an absolute fright, lips pulled back over my teeth, hair wild, half crazed. He made some sort of little noise, pushing against me, trying to rip free. I shook him, hard, until he stopped.

"What is she?" I demanded. Louis hands were on me, trying to pull me off David. I pushed him away. "What is she, David? Who is she? What kind of secret is your damn Talamasca playing?"

"Lestat! Stop it!" A hand twined itself in my hair, pulling back hard. It hurt, though it wasn't nearly strong enough to do me real damage. I twisted away, catching Louis' hands with one of mine and throwing David back to the couch. He fell heavily and I pinned him with my knee against his chest, leaning my weight onto him. Try as he might, he couldn't move me. I shoved Louis towards the far end of the couch. "Sit," I snapped, pointing to indicate where. He didn't, of course, the flush of anger rising in his cheeks as he stood there, but he didn't try to attack me again either.

David had found his voice. "Lestat, what in hell are you going on about?" he demanded, that sharp, dignified English anger in his voice. And Louis, all indignant fury, "Lestat, stop it! Don't do this!"

"Shut up!" I snarled. "You have no idea what I just went through, what I saw! What the hell is she, David? That Talamasca girl? Oh, don't pretend you don't remember! You even try to say that and I'll break your jaw! What is she?"

David was glaring at me furiously, but he answered. "She's Talamasca, we brought her to the Motherhouse when she was eleven, an orphan. She's a medium, like Jesse used to be, she sees and hears the dead..."

"Our dead? David, I saw her tonight, I tried to talk to her." The memory alone pushed me perilously close to tears, my hands were shaking and my heart pounded against my ribs. I could still hear her voice, Claudia's voice, see the glint in those cold eyes. Like the glint off of the edge of a knife.

I had stumbled back from David, collapsing into a chair. Louis was beside me and David was rising up, rubbing the bruises I had left on him. "She wasn't her," I heard myself saying. "One minute she was, and then... I was standing right beside her. She turned to me and she spoke in Claudia's voice, David, with Claudia's words! And then she just... ran away."

Louis hand was on my shoulder, comforting. David was softly swearing, a continuous stream of syllables under his breath. "What did she say?" Louis asked me.

I'll put you in your grave, Father!

I wasn't sure I had spoken the words, that I had actually managed to force them past the tightness in my throat. I must have because Louis gasped softly and then he was kneeling by the chair, his arms around me, drawing me close. I clung to him, needing the solid anchor to reality that he offered. Even David looked upset, he knew how much this had hurt me.

Slowly, he sank back to the couch. "I'm sorry, Lestat," he said, the sincerity throbbing in his gentle voice. "You're right. I should have told you, warned you. It was part of the reason I didn't want you to approach her."

"But what was it?" Louis asked. He extracted himself from my grasp slowly, rising to sit on the edge of the chair, one arm still around my shoulder, hand clasped in mine. "Did she really speak in Claudia's voice? Was she... possessed by Claudia?" I could feel the little shiver that ran through him as he said this.

We were both watching David, waiting, but for long moments David did not speak. He was looking down at his hands in his lap and when he did speak his voice was low, sunk into memory.

"She hasn't done it in years," he said. "Not since she was brought to the Talamasca, I think. But when she was young... it was what brought her to our attention.

"You must understand, Michelle lives in a completely different world from most people. She is always seeing things, impressions of past events, people, ghosts of the dead. Most of these are just glimpses, any medium worth the name can manage as much. But possession, actually channeling the spirit of the dead, this is very rare. And Michelle, as a child, appeared to have taken to doing this very trick. She would act differently, speak in voices not her own. She would remember nothing afterwards and it was upsetting the couple who ran the state sponsored foster home she was in quite dreadfully.

"Eventually, word got back to someone in the Talamasca and a member was sent to see her. It was during the interview that we had our first and only documented incident of that aspect of her power. While talking to our representative, describing all of the images that she was currently seeing, Michelle changed. It was very sudden. One minute she was herself, upset and half hysterical with what she was seeing, and then she was calm. Very poised. And she proceeded to address our representative in French. Now, she had grown up in the poorer area of New Orleans, her English was anything but proper, and she knew no real French. Yet she sat, very calmly, and said, in very correct French, that she, Michelle, could not stay here in New Orleans. We must take her out of the country. She reffered to herself as though she were another person. Before our representative could ask anything of this intruding spirit it was gone, and Michelle remembered nothing.

"It was positive proof, obviously, and Michelle was taken to the London Motherhouse. She never showed another episode of possession and quickly learned to control the rest of her powers."

David ceased speaking, looking up and making a little gesture with his hands. "I didn't actually have a great deal of contact with her, just a few meetings over the years. There is a videotape of that first interview and her change in the Talamasca files. I had nothing to do with her actual recruitment, but I have seen the tape."

I felt a pressure around my ribs like a great vise, crushing the breath from me. What David was saying was simply horrible. If this girl, this Michelle, could actually channel the spirits of the dead then the words she had spoken, those awful words in Claudia's voice, were true. Claudia hated me, she must have always hated me, and I felt as though I could not live with that knowledge. It was like a great blackness enveloping me. The firm, steady pressure of Louis' hands on my shoulders brought me back.

"Why did you go to her?" he whispered to me, those deep green eyes mirroring my sorrow. "Lestat, why did you have to do this?"

I don't think he really expected an answer. I had never given one before, for anything that I had done. I wasn't in the habit of explaining myself. But I found myself reaching into my pocket, pulling out the creased paper with the rubbing of the watch. I told them about it, about seeing the girl, finding the pocketwatch, and about how it had disappeared. To Louis, who had not seen her, I described her features. And as David examined the little sheet of paper I saw a type of horrified understanding spread over his face. "Dear God," he whispered. "I never saw it before, not like that... It never occured to me! And this watch, I've seen it, she always wears it, but I've never had a really close look at it..."

Louis reached out, taking the paper from him. A little frown of puzzlement creased his brows. I watched, holding my breath, as he looked at the engraving. I had made no mention of what I suspected, just presented the facts. David had guessed what I believed. I waited now to see what Louis' response would be. This was the real test.

He scrutinized that little rubbing for a long moment and then, slowly, recognition dawned in his eyes. "Mon Dieu... Lestat, what are you saying? That this girl has this watch?"

"Yes," David answered before I could. "She once mentioned to me that it was an heirloom, given her by her mother."

"And... she resembles me?" He turned to me, looking for confirmation.

"Yes," I said. "She could be your twin sister... Or your many times removed daughter." There. It was said. Louis flinched back, as though I had hit him, shaking his head. I persisted. "If you saw her, you wouldn't be able to deny it! She's you, in the flesh! And this, it proves it, doesn't it? That watch is yours!"

But Louis was shaking his head, over and over, tears shining redly in his eyes. "No," he breathed, almost a moan. "No. Lestat, you're wrong. This isn't mine. But I know it. I remember it from when I was young. This was my father's watch!"

From the diary of Michelle Renford, transcribed from tape

I'm recording this on one of those little pocket recorders... It's been broken ever since I started this trip, mashed about in my luggage, I think. I resorted to the time honored tradition of smacking it against the floor a few times and it seems to have worked- the little wheels are going around, anyway. Maybe the electronic gods are finally smiling on me.

If they are then they're the only ones. I am sick, well and truly ill. Not just a little spring cold, but something much closer to pneumonia. I can feel the liquid in my lungs every time I try to breath. I haven't been out of this bed in four days. I've been coughing up phlem by the gallon but this morning it was red with blood. I can still taste the coppery sting of it on my tongue.

I'd be worried, probably, if I let myself think about it.

I think I must have caught it that night I had the attack. I had been feeling a little low before then and I don't know how long I spent out on the streets, just staggering around. I remember seeing the ghost of the little girl, of Claudia. Everything went blank after that, I don't know how long. When I looked up, it was to see him, de Lioncourt. God, what a scare! I lost years off my life right then. I couldn't even scream. He had hold of my arm, fingers like marble, that cold and hard. I had no idea how long he'd been there or what had just happened. He was looking down at me with the strangest expression, kind of horrified, shocked. Almost frightened, I think, though that's rediculous.

He let me go, shoved me back, and I unfroze. I ran, it was the only thing I could think of. I ran for blocks, until I had to stop and catch my breath. I was terrified. I walked and ran for hours, backtracking, circling, praying that I had lost him and that he would give up before I returned to the flat and I would be safe there. I never saw any sign that he was following me. Nothing. I was exhausted by the time I returned here and I only managed to jot down some of it before I collapsed. When I woke up in the afternoon of the next day I had a raging fever and the impressions were still there, the people and things long gone.

They're still there. The old woman in the rocker is stroking a cat. I get flashes of her alot. And the student, the boy that isn't there on the futon that isn't there, he's studying chemistry I think. I always hated chemistry.

I'm hot, and then I'm cold, and then hot again. I wish it would stop. I really need a drink of water but getting up is out of the question. My legs aren't really my own. They won't co-operate. Lead weights tied to my waist.

He's back again. The presence. I still don't have a name for him but it has to be a he, it just radiates a male aura. I can always tell when he's here because it's like a warm rush that goes through me, pleasant, really. He keeps coming and going, he brings me things to try and cheer me up, like he brought me the watch. Flowers, this time, God, look at them all. Camelias, roses, lavender, a few lilies. Petals all over the floor and a fragrance like a hot house, beautiful. Falling out of the air like a rain. Huge things, big and fresh, didn't think they'd be blooming this early in the spring. From a flourist, maybe. How nice. Such a thoughtful spirit. Flowers for the dying.

Oh, he didn't like me saying that, wind tossing my notes around the room. I'm sorry. I'm just babbling, really, don't take it seriously. Funny, it's like the presence really cares for me, wants me to get well. Thank you for the flowers, really. You're very kind.

Ah, and now he's stronger, he always is if I talk to him. Warmth wrapping around me, a hand stroking my cheek, lips brushing my forehead, my mouth. Taking liberties, aren't you? More warmth. Yes, I like you too. No words, though. Not since that one night.

Thinking about the presence distracts me from thinking about him. Louis de Pointe du Lac. I like saying that. Louis. It wrapps around your tongue, elegant name. De Pointe du Lac has such a ring to it. Imagine, Michelle de Pointe du Lac. God, what a sound. But I don't know that, not for sure. I'm guessing, grasping at straws, off on a wild goose chase to New Orleans. Have to find him, show him that watch. Mama's watch, and Grandmama's, and so on. Mine now. I have to find him, show it to him. If it's his then I have my link, my parentage and family. A name, a father. After generations of hookers and gang groupies like Mama there's no records, no family. A whole series of unwed mothers, all coming down to me. And I'd have grown up the same, teen pregnancy, out on the streets, if Mama hadn't died and I ended up at the orphanage. Still might have ended up there if the Talamasca hadn't taken me in. Don't even know Mama's name, much less whatever guy was my father. Talamasca was all I had, until I found those files in the vaults.

My face, it was like looking in a mirror. And the file, I could have laughed, I think I did. Vampires weren't real! But all that proof, all those things, countless things. Packrats, all of them. David never let me read those files, never let me in the vaults. Was he scared I would see that file, see those pictures? Pictures of him, of Louis, and he could have been my brother. Incredible. And initials that matched that watch, that thing I had carried around since always. I had to come here, I had to know the truth!

I'm starting to think it was a mistake. No vampires in this city, except for De Lioncourt and that other. Can't find a trace of Louis. Maybe he's dead. Or gone. Vanished, underground... could be anywhere. Probably left the city when de Lioncourt moved in, I know I would, with their history together. Talk about domestic unrest.

Oh, and look at that. There's a glass by my head, sitting there on the floor. Wasn't there a minute ago. Cracked plastic thing, a little dirty, I left it by the bathroom sink, didn't I? And now it's here, beads of water on the side, little rivulets pooling on the floor. I can just reach it if I roll over a bit, make myself move...

God, I never knew water tasted that good!

Breathing hard, coughing again. Too much effort just to roll over. Maybe I really am dying. Terrible thought. Can't stand it, really. Won't think about it.

He's back. Curled against me, arms around me. Strong arms, fingers in my hair, brush it back, will you? He's kissing my neck, little shivers running down my spine, knock it off! Nice just to cuddle, nothing more. Makes me feel better, someone's here. Stay here, stay with me. I'm tired and I hurt and I think I'm alittle scared. Stay here.

He just spoke again. I heard him, whisper in the back of my mind. 'Beloved,' he said. I like the ways he says that, such a smooth accent. Can't place it. Say it again, I want to hear you talk.

'I will stay with you. Rest, my love.' God, I can hear it so clearly! Wonder if it really makes any noise, can the tape pick it up? Jesus, what a thought. I need to find out what he is, what he can do. Later. Find Louis later too. Soon. Just need to rest right now, maybe I'll feel better after some sleep.

It took us six days to find the pathetic little rundown building she had taken a room in. She had left very little traces of any sort around the city and finding her had proved excessively difficult.

Getting in was easy. The building was filled, primarily, with college students and there were always people coming and going at any time of the day or night. We could have just slipped in but a cheerful, brown haired girl opened the door for us quite cordially and even showed us the door, on the second floor, that was Michelle's. All of this after Louis quietly and casually explained that he was Michelle's 'brother', that we were supposed to meet her but had been unable to get ahold of her and she must have forgotten. The girl believed him utterly, without Louis having to do anything but stand there looking like Michelle's twin.

I watched him as we climbed the narrow wooden staircase, the steps creaking alarmingly with every movement. He had been very withdrawn for the past days, ever since I had told him about Michelle. The idea of having a mortal relative of any sort seemed to disturb him rather badly. Yet now, moments from actually meeting her, he seemed perfectly calm and controlled.

David and the girl were ahead of us, chatting quite naturally. I took advantage of the moment to slip my arm around Louis' waist, trying to project all of the support and comfort that I could. He glanced at me, smiling rather absently. His hand brushed mine, squeezed, and then he pushed me away, continueing up the stairs.

The girl was explaining to David that she didn't really know Michelle, had only spoken to her briefly a few times. "She keeps pretty much to herself," the girl said with a shrug. "That's her door, there," she added, pointing to third door down the shabby little hallway.

David thanked the girl but Louis had already moved past him, to the door. He hesitated for a long moment there, then, almost visibly steeling himself, reached out and rapped forcefully on the door.

Nothing.

The girl was gone, her footsteps pounding down the stairs. No one else was around, though the tiny noise of at least five different radios and televisions could be heard. I stepped up to Louis' side and, with a sharp mental jab, unlocked the door.

It fell open easily when I twisted the handle. I think we all braced ourselves as the room beyond came into sight.

The building advertised 'studio apartments' but this one room affair could hardly be classified as such. A closet sized space, dormitory style hot plate and half sized refrigerator placed in one corner, another door leading to the tiny bath. Scuffed hardwood floors, a decrepid radiator heater that made all manner of disturbing noises against one wall, unfurnished.

She lay on the floor in one corner, in a nest of blankets and scattered pillows. There was nothing else even remotely resembling furniture in the room. A heavy, black, manual typewriter lay in the center of the floor, all manner of papers and dog-eared book scattered around it. I picked out my own autobiography, and Louis'. Flowers, half wilted and turning brown, had been scattered with equal disarray. A small tape recorder lay near the girl, and a glass, empty, tipped over on its side.

Her eyes were closed, hair flung out in a tangled mass over the pillow beneath her head. Even from the doorway I could hear the ragged, liquid filled rasp of her breath in her lungs. Her heart was beating rapidly, too fast.

I heard David gasp slightly behind me. He pushed me out of the way, going to kneel at her side. I saw him grimace as he gently touched her cheek. "God... She's burning up," he whispered.

I went to stand beside him, bending down to look at the girl, Michelle. She was terribly fragile looking, the flush of fever high on her pale cheeks. Thinner, too. David shook her shoulder slightly. "Michelle? Michelle, wake up. It's David Talbot, Michelle. Wake up."

"Mmmm..." A sleepy murmmur, then her eyes fluttered open. Brilliant, emerald green beneath jet black lashes. Before she could really register our presence, though, the coughing seized her. She rolled over to her side, the spasms wracking her body. The sound of the congestion in her lungs was painfully plain. Pneumonia, possibly, or some other type of bronchial virus. There was blood flecking her lips, I could smell it's scent.

David was gathering her up into his arms, blanket and all. She finally seemed to realize we were there and pushed against him, struggling feebly. He soothed her; "Shh, Michelle, it's me. David. It's all right, really. We're going to get you some help."

She looked up at him dazedly, too feverish to focus properly. "David?" she whispered. "You're dead. Not supposed to be here. Are we going home? To the Talamasca?"

David smiled slightly. "We're going to take you to a doctor first, Michelle. Don't talk, just try to rest. I'll take care of everything."

"S'course... Superior General always does..." But her eyes were closing again and she let her head rest trustingly on David's shoulder.

"We have to get her to a hospital," David told me. "She needs proffessional care, anitbiotics, medicine." Standing, he carried her to the door. Louis stepped back hastily, as though he were putting distance between himself and Michelle, though he stared at her unceasingly.

It was rediculously easy. David could have done it, he was recognized by the Talamasca as being the cousin of his former self, on their authority he could have checked Michelle into the hospital and arranged for it all. Instead, to my utter shock, Louis insisted upon taking control of the situation at the hospital. He filled out and deftly signed the papers that admitted Michelle, under the name of Michelle de Pointe du Lac. I think I made some sort of strangled noise when I saw it, spelled out in his firm handwriting.

He ignored me. He was speaking to the doctor. Yes, he was her brother. Of course he would authorize whatever the doctor felt was best for her. Insurance? No, she had none, but don't worry about it. Here, this was his card, anything done for Michelle could be charged to this account. It should more then cover a few nights in the hopsitol, just until she was feeling better.

He was influencing the doctor just a little, exerting a type of overwhelming charm that didn't really come naturally to Louis. He managed it well enough, though, and the doctor left us quite satisfied, bustling away to see to Michelle's treatment. Antibiotics to bring the fever down and I.V. drips for the dehydration... it all seemed so completely alien. This entire scene, the bright flourescent lights over the white halls, the antiseptic smell, the noise and people rushing about; it was making me feel dizzy. I didn't like it. The smell of death was too prevalent, under the sharp tang of chemical cleaners and artificial air fresheners. I wanted to leave, Michelle was being taken care of and there was no reason to stay. David and Louis agreed with me readily enough.

Outside, beneath the bright stars and the clear, clean air, I accosted Louis. I stepped between him and the car door when he would have opened it, resting my back against it and crossing my arms over my chest. "Well?" I drawled, affecting a languid tone.

Louis hesitated, then sighed, stepping back and regarding me. He crossed his own arms, in an unconcious mimicry of my stance. "Well, what?"

"Why did you do all of that in there? Register her under that name, tell them all of that?"

"Lestat..."

I raised a hand, cutting him off. "No, don't start. I just want a simple answer, not a lecture or a sermon. Why did you do it? David could have taken care of it all. Why put yourself through the trouble?"

David was leaning on the hood of the Porsche, watching us intently. Louis glanced at him, then back at me, his green eyes unreadable. Finally, his shoulders slumped slightly, his posture relaxing. "Because she is my sister," he admited softly. "I didn't want to believe all of this, Lestat, you have no idea how much I wanted this to just be some twisted version of your humor." He hesitated, then reached into his pocket, drawing out a familiar gold disk on a chain. I remembered that he had briefly taken Michelle's limp body from David while we were in the hospital, laying her on the little wheeled stretcher. Proper brotherly concern. He must have found and taken the watch during those few moments.

He held it now, rubbing his thumb lightly over the engravings. "This was my father's," he said. "A gift from my mother, on their wedding. He carried it for as long as I could remember. It was lost... oh, I must have been eleven or twelve. Just lost, no one knew where. Father wasn't really upset about it."

He sighed, the sound seeming torn from his soul. "I'm not stupid. I believe my father loved my mother, but that wouldn't necessarily have stopped him from having the various affairs on the side. It was common back then. An actress, a prostitute, a servant girl... doesn't really matter now, does it?" Louis looked up to me, a deep sadness reflected in his expression. "I still didn't want to believe, even after seeing that damn rubbing of the engraving. But now... You're right, Lestat. She could be my twin. Or... my half sister." He said the words slowly, as though he were tasting them and finding them only slightly palattable. Then he shrugged, shoving the watch back into his pocket. "All of that, back there... well, it seemed the least I could do. If nothing else, she at least deserves acknowledgment."

I could see his hands were trembling slightly. It had taken alot for him to even admit to that much. I relented, stepping away from the car door, letting my hand trail gently down his back as he slipped past me. Comfort, though I knew he couldn't hear the real words behind it. ::I'm here for you, mon cher.::

We returned to the hospital the next night to find Michelle awake, coherent, feeling much better, and anxious to get out of the hopsitol as quickly as possible. She was questioning the nurse quite animatedly. Who had brought her here? Were they going to come back? How had all of this been arranged? She didn't remember anything.

She stopped talking the instant we entered the room. I saw her eyes go wide, her mouth opened to show the wet pink of her lips and the little tip of her tongue. Her face, which held the natural pallor of the untanned, went a shade whiter.

The nurse turned to greet us quite cheerfully, assuring us that Miss Pointe du Lac was much better this evening. The fever had broken around noon and there was really no reason she couldn't come home with us tonight or tomorrow, provided she kept up her fluid intake and the antibiotics and rested. At hearing the name by which the nurse called her Michelle collapsed back against the pillows of her bed, mouth working without making a sound, eyes so wide that white rimmed the brilliant green of them all the way around.

I sat down on the bedside, meaning to distract her before the nurse noticed her expression. However, nothing could have pulled Michelle's eyes away from Louis' figure at that moment. He was standing by the door, speaking softly to the nurse. I could hear him, though Michelle could not. He was asking the woman to please make sure that the paperwork for Michelle's release were done up, that he would be out to sign it and anything else that needed taking care of shortly. We would be taking Michelle home with us tonight, of course, and please have a prescription made out and filled for whatever medication she needed.

David was frowning slightly and so was I, but Louis was oblivious to our displeasure. The nurse was leaving, the door closed behind her. Louis turned back to the bed, facing Michelle for the first time.

A sound like a strangled moan escaped her. She pressed trembling fingers to her lips, tears springing up in those beautiful eyes and spilling, clear and wet, down her cheeks.

Slowly, as much to steady himself as not to alarm her, Louis approached the bed. He stood for a long moment, looking down at her, then dropped down to sit across from me on her other side. She shrank back from him, then visibly controlled herself. She reached out one trembling hand, as though to touch his face, but her resolve faded before she could complete the gesture and she flinched away.

Louis caught her hand gently in his own before she could snatch it away. I saw a spasm run through her, a little gasp escaping her lips. Being careful to not move too quickly, Louis reached out, wiping the tears from her cheeks with a light touch. His own lips were trembling with supressed emotion, blood tears shining in his eyes. "Ma petite," he whispered.

A sound burst from her, half hysterical laugh, half sob. And then she was rising, throwing herself foreward into his arms. "Real," she was saying, her voice choked sounding. "Real. Oh God, you're real. Father."

Louis was holding her, the tears trailing redly down his white cheeks, his voice just as choked as hers. "Non. No, ma petite, not father." And when she would have jerked back, words of denial on her tongue, he pressed a slim finger to her lips. "Shh, cherie. We need to talk, but not here. Let us take you home, away from here. We can talk then."

"Oh yes," I said, not quite able to keep the sharp bite of sarcasm from my voice. "Come home with us, Michelle, dear. We'll be one big happy family, won't we, Louis? Don't pay him any heed, Michelle. Of course you can be our daughter."

I don't know what possessed me to say it, and I knew it was the wrong thing to say, knew it as soon as it passed my lips and a shudder went through Michelle. She flung up her hands, as though to ward something away, and then stopped. She lowered her hands and sat, very calmly, looking up to me. The light struck her eyes and in that moment I could have sworn that they were a clear, bright blue, not green.

"I'm not your daughter," she said, her voice rising to the clear, sweet soprano of a child. "I'm my mamma's daughter."

I was standing up and two feet away with no memory of how I had gotten there. I was staring at this thing on the bed in absolute horror, this spirit of my long dead Claudia who smiled at me now, a pretty little expression with ice underneath it. Louis was staring as well, shocked and unmoving.

She cocked her head, regarding me. "What's wrong, Father?" Claudia's voice, Claudia's inflection and characteristic gestures. "Why do you look at me like that?"

I was frantic. I wanted nothing more then to flee the room. I think I had actually taken a step towards the door when David lunged foreward, catching Michelle's chin in his hand, forcing her head back to look at him. "Michelle!" he said, sharply, commanding. "Michelle, stop it! Look at me! Michelle!"

Another shudder tore through her. And then she was looking up at David, Michelle's eyes and face once more, herself. Confusion in those green eyes. "Wha...?" And then, focusing on David's face, incredulous disbelief. "DAVID?"

It was very late in the night before everything had been taken care of and arranged and explained. Michelle was ensconed in the spare bedroom, tucked in to warm comforters and feather pillows, asleep. David and Louis had both spent a great deal of time with her, explaining things, talking. She had accepted Louis' explanation of her probable lineage with perfect calm, and David's story of how he came to be where he was with considerably less calm. I, for one, did not want to spend any amount of time in close proximity to her. This latest display of what David called channelling had been quite enough and I had no wish to try the experience again.

Having a mortal in the house, especially a ill one, presented a few problems but nothing that couldn't be worked around. There was a kitchen in the house, a little modern thing put there for the sake of seeming normalacy, never used or tested. However, when the appliances were plugged in they worked quite well and Michelle assured us that she wasn't an invalid, not really, she could get up and fix things herself during the day. So juice and water were chilled in the quietly purring refrigerator and soups were stacked neatly in one cupboard, things easy to slide down a still raspy throat. Michelle promised that she would both eat and drink during the day, that she would take care of herself and rest.

It was near one in the morning when I finally went to peer into the room where Michelle lay sleeping. Louis looked up from the chair beside the bed where he was sitting, watching her. Rising, he came to stand near me.

"She doesn't remember any of it," he told me softly. "She caught a flash of Claudia right before the incident- when she looked so startled, you remember? She saw Claudia, sitting on the end of the bed. The next thing she remembers is seeing David."

I shivered. Michelle looked very fragile when she slept, her head pillowed on her hand, breathing with a slight catch from her blocked lungs. Louis had dug up a loose, oversized sweatshirt for her to sleep in and it slipped from her pale shoulders.

"My sister," he whispered, looking at her. From the look on his face I guessed that he was thinking back to his real sister, who had gone insane after the death of their brother and parents. I took his hand, drew him from the room. He closed the door quietly after us.

David was waiting for us in the livingroom, slumped slightly in one of the chairs, his feet up on coffetable. Louis smiled rather ruefully when he saw this- it was a mannerism that David had picked up from me. I sat down on the couch, pulling Louis down wi th me. "So," David said, "what now?"

I looked to Louis, who looked away. "I... don't know," he said slowly. "It depends on her, really."

"We could send her back to the Talamasca," David suggested. "That might be best. Or anywhere else she wanted to go."

"Yes," Louis agreed. "When she's well."

"Or she could stay here," I said.

Silence. Both of them were staring at me, shocked. "What?" David said, incredulous.

"But I thought you didn't want her here," Louis protested.

Did I? Hard to say. I didn't really know Michelle at all. I just had an abhorrence of her tendancy to speak with the voices of the dead. But a thought had occured to me when I had seen Louis' expression while watching her. One I wasn't really against, though I wasn't completely for it either. Truthfully, I didn't really care either way. But it would solve the problem, wouldn't it? Jesse didn't see ghosts anymore.

"She could be one of us," I said, enjoying the aghast looks of the other two. "Then she could stay with us."

David was on his feet. Louis had me by the shoulders, as though he would physically restrain me. I raised my hands, protesting my innocence. "I'm not going to do anything! Nothing, do you hear me! She's in no danger from me! I was just suggesting it." I pushed Louis away. "God, what kind of fiend do you take me for?"

David glared. "I'm not going to answer that, Lestat," he growled. I smiled at him sweetly.

"You stay away from her, Lestat," Louis was saying. "Don't even think about it!"

"I wasn't," I repeated. "I was just suggesting it, as an option. And don't think it hasn't occured to her! Why in hell else would she have tracked you down so dilligently, if not to ask for the Dark Gift? Wait a bit, and see if I'm not right!"

David was telling me I was a fool and Louis refused to respond to my taunt. He was thinking about it, though, I could see it in his eyes, the slight frown of his expression. Oh yes, he was thinking about it. And he didn't like what his thoughts were coming to.

Finally, he stood. "Oh, leave him alone, David," he said. "Lestat is just being a brat, like always. He's been behaving himself recently, so he feels like he needs to make up for it by being a devil. If you ignore him he'll stop." Louis tone was light but he was still disturbed and he fixed me with a firm gaze. "You won't try anything with her, Lestat. You promise, don't you?"

"Of course," I said. Louis continued to glare at me, but eventually he gave it up and looked away.

"It's late," he said. "I'm going to check on Michelle again, and then I'm going out for a bit." He turned and walked to Michelle's room.

He left the door open behind him and I saw the little bedside lamp flicker on, a warm yellow light, and then it went off again with the sharp, explosive sound of shattering glass. I heard Louis give a muffled yell of pain and was on my feet, in the room before another second passed.

The scene in the room was simply bizarre. Michelle still slept, turned to her other side now, peaceful. She stirred alittle when I flipped on the overhead light, but not much, sunk into a drugged sleep from the medications.

Louis stood beside the bedside lamp, holding his right hands in his left. Blood dripped from his closed fingers, falling in droplets to the carpet. His lips were tight over clenched teeth as he sucked in a sharp breath from the pain. The pale paper lampshade was pierced and slashed from where the lightbulb had exploded, showering outwards on the side away from the bed.

I went to Louis, noting the little sparkling bits of glass in the carpet as I did so. The shards had sprayed out in a tight half circle, none of them coming close to the bed. Yet the entire lightbulb had exploded, there was nothing but a little ring of jagged glass left of it.

Louis let me examine his hand, wincing as I tried to gently wipe away some of the blood. The vast majority of the shards appeared to have imbeded themselves in his flesh, stabbing deeply into his palm and wrist. "I was turning the damn thing on," he explained. "It just flashed and then it exploded. I didn't have time to move."

A lot of the glass shards were small and had been thrust deeply enough into his flesh that the preternatural skin was already closing over them. "We're going to have to dig those out," I told him, wincing in sympathy as he flinched from my touch. "God only knows what happens if you just leave them there."

David had been gingerly examining the lamp. "Some sort of electrical surge, or a flaw in the glass," he said finally. "I don't know." He picked it up and unplugged it, carrying it to the far corner of the room. Looking at the glistening little fragments in the carpet, he sighed. "I'll get one of the throw rugs from the hall, put it over this mess," he said. "It doesn't look like it scattered that far. I just don't want Michelle stepping on it."

I took Louis into the bath, sat him down on the toilet with his hand beneath the warm water of the sink to wash away the blood and let me get a closer look at it. He gritted his teeth but said nothing as I proceeded to take a small sharp blade and a pair of tweezers and began removing the glass shards from the stubborn grip of his preternatural flesh. I knew I was hurting him but there wasn't much else to be done. The shards had to come out.

David came in a bit later, sitting on the edge of the bath and taking Louis' hand, talking to him. I was grateful to him for distracting Louis from watching what I was doing. I didn't really want to watch what I was doing, cutting into his palm above each of the fresh little scars and digging down until I could see and extract that little fragment of glass. The water running into the drain was stained red with his blood and I was flinching every time I had to pick up that blade, whether Louis flinched or not. Every so often I would hit a particularly sensetive spot and his fingers would curl, forcing me to pull them open again.

I had just finished and Louis was gingerly flexing his fingers, the cuts already healed, when I saw David start, jerking upright, looking at the doorway. I turned to see what he was staring at.

She was standing in the doorway, hair still mussed from sleep, somehow managing to look poised and dignified even in that rediculously outsized sweatshirt that came down to her hips and white cotton underwear, nothing else. The instant I saw her, saw the strange difference in her posture, I knew. Even before she stepped into the light and raised dark, almost black eyes to look at us. Her expression was very serious, though a slight curve twitched her lips, as though she found something funny with the situation as well.

Or as though whatever was in her body found something amusing.

Her voice had dropped, becoming deeper, no trace of the lung congestion now. A man's voice, rich with a fluid French accent, beautiful to hear.

"Eh bein, Monsieurs," the man said. "This is disaster, it is all wrong. I think we need to talk, yes?"

We went out to the livingroom. Louis had to take Michelle's arm, help her, half support her. Though she appeared perfectly composed when standing still her movements were awkward, clumsy, as though this thing inside her could not control the body.

When she sat in the chair she became the stranger again, the poised gentleman, but I could see the pinched look around her eyes, her mouth. This feat was tiring the spirit within her, and how much damage it was doing to Michelle herself was impossible to know.

The same thought must have occured to David, for he confronted this thing instantly. "What do you want?" he demanded. "Why are you doing this to her?"

A slight shake of the head. "No," the spirit said, and Michelle's lips barely moved now. But the voice was the same, that masculine French accent. It made me shiver to hear it. "We cannot go on like that. I have only a little time, this is difficult to do, and I am already so very tired... Please, you must listen to me."

David was angry, David would have said more but Louis took his arm, pressing him back. Louis was regarding this thing in Michelle's body with wide green eyes, approaching it cautiously. "You said this was disaster," he said. "What did you mean?"

The slender hand laying limply on the chair arm lifted, fingers flickering briefly out towards Louis. "He did that," the spirit said. "The light, your hand- he did that. He's watching her, he wants her for his own. He doesn't want you to have her, just as I do not want him to have her."

"I don't understand," Louis said. "What do you mean? Explain. Who is he? Who are you?"

Again, that little shake of the head. "I'm not important. But Michelle is part of me, Monsieur, as she is part of you. And he would use that to take her, he wants her badly. The others have cast him out, they will not be used by him now. She is his last chance." That slow, pleased smile curved her lips, the voice issuing forth softly. "My great-great granddaughter. And I swore that he would not have her, that the Legacy would not touch her. You must help me in this, Monsieur, or he will destroy her, as he destroyed the others."

"What do you want of us?"

"Take her," the spirit whispered. "She is blood of your blood, flesh of your flesh. Give her your name, your legacy. Protect her. You must take her away from this place, away from this country, if you can. He is not strong enough to follow her yet, if she does not summon him. Take her away from here."

David was beside me. I reached out, grasped his arm, placed my lips near his ear. "David," I whispered, "the possession! When she was young, when the Talamasca interviewed her. The French! And it asked you to take her out of the country! Remember?"

I saw the startled realization cross his face. He had told us the story himself. This same spirit, or one that had made the same requests and spoken in the same voice, had possessed Michelle when she was a child, being interviewed by the Talamasca. But it was speaking again and I had to turn my attention to that soft whisper.

"Keep him from her, I beg you. I relenquish any claim on her I had, any claim my family had. She is yours, Monsieur de Pointe du Lac. Don't let him claim her. He will try to stop you, to keep you from her. Don't let him. He is weak still, he can do nothing more then tricks like that light unless she gives him more power. Don't let her. Protect her, Monsieur, from him. From herself. Please. There is little I can do any longer." Michelle's eyes were mostly closed now, her head lolling to one side, limp and boneless. Her lips were parted, unmoving, the whisper hissing forth. "Protect her..."

It was like a cool breeze of wind. The spirit was gone, I knew it. Louis was at Michelle's side, touching her cheeks, her forehead, testing her pulse. Her chest rose and fell evenly with her breathing. Louis looked up as David paused at his side. "She is... asleep," he said softly.

There was nothing to do but gather Michelle's limp figure up and return her to her bed. She curled back beneath the covers as though she had never left, innocent of all knowledge.

David was pacing furiously in the living room. Louis was in one of the chairs, staring at the ceiling fan, raking his fingers repeatedly through his hair. I lay down across the couch, my feet up on the arm, watching them. Finally, I snatched up a pillow and threw it at David, hitting the back of his head. When he whirled on me, furious, I pointed to the other chair. "Sit down, will you? All that pacing is exhausting me, not to mention what it's doing to the rug."

David picked up the pillow from the ground and stood for a moment, indecision warring on his face as he tried to decide if he would sit, or attempt to shove the offending pillow past the teeth I bared in a smile and down my throat. At least, that was what I gathered from his glare. Finally, since attacking me physically was futile and would only result in humiliating him, he settled for tossing the pillow back at my head and throwing himself into the chair.

I caught the pillow neatly and placed it under my neck. "Alright," I said, "let's discuss this. All cards on the table, gentlemen, I've had enough surprises in the last week. David, do you know anything about this latest apparition?"

He sighed, covering his eyes with one hand. "No. Nothing definate. You're probably right, Lestat, it certainly sounds the same as the one in the tape. If it is, it hasn't changed it's tune. For some reason it desperately wants Michelle out of this city, this state, and preferably the entire country."

"Fine," I said. "So she has some sort of guardian angel who doesn't want her to be American. What about the other thing? The 'he' it was referring to? The thing that supposedly did that little trick with the exploding lamp? Anything ring a bell there?"

"Not a thing," David admitted. "Some other sort of spirit, perhaps. I don't know, I didn't do alot of research in that area..." He paused, sitting up straight. "But I might know someone who would know more. I..." and then he stopped, his expression darkening. "No. I can't. He'd know me, even over the phone. He'd know my voice. There's no way I could keep up the fiction of being my own cousin, not with him."

"Someone in the Talamasca?" I was on my feet, heading for the phone. "Give me the number, I'll talk to him. Just tell me the questions to ask."

"He's probably on assignment, you'll have to find out where he is from the Talamasca, and they won't just tell you, you know." David stood up, brushed past me, taking the phone. "Here, I'll do it. They'll tell me. But you'll have to talk to him, I can't."

David dialed the Talamasca Motherhouse in London. As he did so I glanced over at Louis, who was being uncharacteristically silent. Normally he would have jumped up by now, forbidden us both to do any such thing, to involve the Talamasca or even consider calling them up. He did nothing. He sat, head tilted back, the tendons tight in the beautiful ivory column of his neck, eyes wide and staring. The fingers of one hand wrapped tightly around the arm of the chair, the other still tugged, almost idylly, at a lock of his hair. It was disturbing.

The other end of the phone had been answered. I could hear the little tinny sound of the voice on the phone, very English and polite. David was speaking now. "Yes, this is Mr. David Talbot. Yes, that Mr. Talbot. Yes, thank you. I need to make a request of you... You see, there are these papers I just discovered in my cousin's things. They're addressed to a Mr. Aaron Lightner. I need to contact Mr. Lightner, give him these things, I'm sure my cousin wanted him to have them, you understand... Yes? Is something wrong? Wait... Excuse me? What? Are you sure? No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean... Oh God... How... May I ask how?" A long silence, buzz of that other little voice through the wires. "Oh. Yes. Yes, I see. Yes. I... I'm very sorry. No, It's alright... Yes... Thank you. Thank you for everything."

David was hanging up, he was actually shaking, he had trouble placing the phone back in its cradle. His eyes held a glazed, stunned look as he sat back on the couch. Something was wrong, very badly wrong. I went to him, sat beside him. He seemed to shake himself alittle as I sat down, turning glassy eyes to me.

"What is it, David?" I asked softly.

For a long moment he didn't answer. He shook his head, looking away, then back. His hands were clasped in his lap, white knuckled from the strength of that grip, but they still shook. "He's dead," David whispered. "Aaron's dead..."

Aaron. Vision of a white haired, distinguished older gentleman. Yes. I had seen him once, through Khyman's eyes. I had learned of David the same way. Vision of David and Aaron, standing together, rushing to Jesse's side as she lay, wounded and flung aside by one of our kind. Aaron. A very old friend of David's, a very close friend. And now he was dead.

I put my arm around David's shoulder, felt him shudder. He was wringing his hands now, biting his inner lip, trying to maintain the fragile grasp over the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes. Such beautiful, senseless, proper English composure. "It happens," I whispered to him. "David, it happens. I know it hurts, I know the pain. But you can't stop it, not always. Sometimes it just... happens."

David was shaking his head. "No. No, Lestat. They... they said he was dead. He's been dead. Two years ago, they said. Two years! An auto accident. And I didn't know! I never knew! He died right here, in New Orleans, and I never knew! And they said he was here with his wife, he had just married... Lestat, I never knew that either! We were friends, where in hell was I that I didn't know all of this? That I find out now, two bloody years later?!"

I gently smoothed back his hair, taking his chin in my hand, pulling his eyes back to me. "You were dead," I told him simply. "You had died three years earlier. Your friend, Aaron, he knew that. He was there, remember? He saw you die."

"But I was here," David whispered.

"David Talbot the younger was here. Not the friend he remembered. David, get ahold of yourself. It's not your fault that he died. You can't know everything." But he wasn't listening to me, he was staring at his hands, little shudders running through him as he blinked rapidly, trying to forstall the tears that gleamed redly in his eyes.

And then other hands took David's, Louis' hands. He was there, kneeling before David, his pale face calm but his beautiful eyes shining with sympathy. "David... You can't berate yourself because he died and you did not," Louis said, such a soft, tender whisper. "If you try to do that, if you feel guilt for your life when others die, you will die inside yourself. It happened. It is in the past and there is nothing you can do to change it. Let him go."

David was crying, tears streaking redly down his cheeks, splashing with little drips against the white skin of his hands. Louis wiped them away, rose to sit on David's other side, drawing David into his arms. David clung to me as well so I embraced the both of them, feeling David's shuddering sobs, hearing Louis' gentle murmur of comfort. I stroked David's hair, let him cling to me and weep against my shoulder, grieving for a man who had been dead for two years.

We stayed like that for a long time, even after David had ceased to cry and just sat, wrapped in our arms, eyes closed. Finally, Louis drew away. "It's late," he said. "We should go to bed. This has been... a very tiring night."

"Yes." I tipped David's head up, kissed his forehead, his eyelids, tasting the tang of his tears against my lips. "You'll feel better tomorrow, David. You're tired right now, you need to rest."

David nodded silently, looking very tired indeed. Louis rose to his feet, pulled David up after him. David followed Louis complacently, as though all will had drained away with the grief and tears. I stood, walked quickly around the house, checking the drapes and the locks. It was very quite and still in this pre-dawn hour. I ended my circuit at our bedroom, slipping inside.

To my surprise, David was there as well as Louis.

Louis took my arm as I entered the room, his lips brushing my ear as he barely breathed a whisper. "I thought it best if he stays with us tonight. I don't want to have to wonder where he is. And it is better for him, I think, to have someone with him."

I nodded, agreeing instantly. When I sat down next to him on the end of the bed it seemed to pull David out of the numbed shock he had fallen into. He looked up, seeming startled for a moment to see me, to see where he was. He started to protest, to rise, but I caught his arm and pulled him back.

"You're not going to spend today in that cold bed all by yourself thinking morbid thoughts and being depressed," I told him. Then, seeing the arguement in his eyes, I leaned foreward, pressing my lips to his cheek. "Stay with us, David. You don't need to be alone. You know that. We want you here."

And Louis was at his other side again, agreeing, repeating my words.

David couldn't refuse.

We laid him between us on that soft, wide bed, our arms around him, comforting him, wordlessly letting him know that we were there, that we cared, that he wasn't alone. Dawn came. And the last thing I saw before sleep slipped over me was David's face, relaxed into rest, the lines of hurt and grief and worry soothed away. It was a good sight to carry into dreams with me.

I woke the next night to the sound of the piano in the parlor.

David was laying against me, the length of his body pressed to mine, his head resting on my shoulder and one arm flung over my chest. Sweet, really, that pressure and loving trust. Louis lay beyond David, back to back, still sunk into sleep. David was begining to stir, I could feel the faint twitch of his fingers against my chest.

I was also, I realised, feeling the edge of the bed beneath one shoulder blade and the cool air on my leg, which had been pushed out from underneath the covers and off of the bed.

Louis was a neat sleeper, he tended to curl into small, compact spaces. Sleeping with David, however, was rather like sleeping with a cat- he took up more room then you thought physically possible. I nudged at him alittle, trying to move him over, but Louis had curled tight to David's back and it was going to be impossible to get both of them to move without waking them. I sighed, giving up any ideas of going back to sleep, and carefully extricated myself from the muddled mass on the bed.

The minute I was up David slipped into the space where I had been. I sighed again, then had to smile. He really was taking up an extrordinary amount of room. And they were beautiful to look at like this, Louis and David. Dark hair and tawney brown intermixed where their heads rested next to each other. I leaned down, kissed one cool cheek, then the other. Scent of spice from David, sweet musk from Louis. David stirred alittle but Louis was oblivious, his slow, even breathing undisturbed.

I caught up my robe from where it had slipped from the end of the bed to the floor and pulled it on, knotting the tie around my waist. Raking a hand through my hair, I walked soundlessly out of the room, closing the door behind me.

The sound of the piano was much louder beyond our room. Deep bass notes, ominous and slow, picked out with only a slight hesitation. 'Moonlight Sonata', by Bach. Played with deep feeling, for all that tender mortal fingers missed a note here and hit a wrong note there. I walked to the parlor, stopping at the doorway, resting my shoulder against it and watching Michelle play.

She was rising up the scale now, having to hesitate a moment before placing her fingers for each note, a crease drawing down those fine black brows as she watched her fingers with rapt concentration, straining to call forth each note. No sheet music sat before her on the ledge, she was playing it by memory. And the notes were coming surer now, the same notes in each octave, up and up the scale, with a rising intensity and tempo. Beautiful.

Michelle herself looked like some sort of scruffy orphan, her hair in disarray and uncombed, still dressed in that rediculously outsized sweatshirt of Louis, which had been joined by equally outsized sweatpants that fit the length of her legs well enough but had been cinched in tight around her waist in order to keep them up. A blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, slipping down now and only held on by a tenacious hold beneath one elbow. She was still pale but the flush of fever had left her cheeks and the only real indication of her illness was the dullness to hair and eye and skin.

She had gone into the next section of the song when a coughing fit seized her. She doubled over with the seizure, the cough a wet sound in her throat. When it finished she grimaced, reaching down to retrieve a glass of juice that had been set on the floor beside the piano seat. As she did so the blanket escaped entirely, pooling onto the floor behind her. She made a disgusted noise, standing up to move around the bench and pick it back up.

"You play very nicely," I said.

She started, jumping,, but managed to keep her hold on both blanket and juice. "Oh! I didn't see you there." She slung the blanket over her arm, reaching up to push back her hair and glancing towards the curtained windows. "I'm sorry, I didn't know it was getting this late. Did I wake you up?"

"Not really. Besides, it's a delightful thing to be waken up by. I enjoy Bach." I walked over to her, noticing the way she flinched back slightly as I approached. Reaching past her, I slid the cover back over the keys of the baby grand. "When did you learn to play?"

Michelle shrugged. "When I was little. There were several people in the Motherhouse who knew how and were willing to teach. I'm pretty out of practice, though."

"Well, you're better then some people I've heard who were in practice," I told her. We walked to the door and I ushered her out first with a little bow. She grinned, loosing some of the tension. "But tell me," I continued, shooing her towards the couch, "weren't you supposed to spend the day in bed? Resting?"

Michelle curled up on the end of the couch, wrapping the blanket around herself and making a face. "I did. Really. But there's nothing to do in bed. And if I watch one more rerun of anything on television I'm going to scream." She watched me with a hint of wariness as I sank into one of the chairs. "Where's everyone else?"

"Still asleep. I'm an early riser." I stretched, placing my feet on the coffeetable, my hands behind my head. "Come now, I'm not that terrifying, am I?"

She jerked alittle, biting her lip. She hadn't realized I could read the little thoughts her mind was letting beyond her tight shields. Flushing, she looked away from me. "I... I wouldn't say that. Not terrifying, no. But you can't really fault me for being alittle jumpy. I mean... you're you."

I smiled. "Yes, I am. And Louis is Louis and David is David, and you don't seem to be jumpy around them. Oh, but of course, David was your Superior General. Hard to think of him as a blood thirsty monster, isn't it? And Louis is always the gentle one, the safe one. He radiates it." I let the grin grow broader. "Then again, I could tell you some stories about them, believe me. I may be the self proclaimed brat prince of the fiends, but I'm certainly not the only fiend in this house."

Michelle had shrank back from me slightly. Still, she responded strongly. "Of course you're not. I know that. Still, if Louis radiates safety, then you radiate the very opposite. You have to admit that, Monsieur." No, no French accent there. She pronounced it very badly, actually.

"Lestat," I corrected her. "You can call me Lestat." She looked startled at the idea and I couldn't help needling her just a little. "Surely you can say that, chere. Come on, try it. Leh-staht. It's not that difficult."

"Lestat," she repeated obediently. "All right, Lestat. And you're going to call me Michelle, of course, whether I want you to or not, I'm sure."

"Of course." How to ask her about it? "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes." She frowned slightly. "Though I was wondering what happened to the lamp. It's shattered. Did someone knock it over?"

"Something like that. Didn't it wake you up? We certainly made enough noise."

"Don't remember a thing. I was out cold until this afternoon." I was watching her closely but nothing, not her body language and not her mind, hinted at any kind of deception. She really didn't remember anything.

Michelle was coughing again. She waved away any gesture I might have made though, assuring me between coughs that she was actually much better. "I just sound awful, really. I feel a thousand times better."

"Well, that's good to know," I told her. "If you felt like you sound I'd be forced to pity you and I don't think either one of us would like it."

She looked at me curiously. "You don't like me very much, do you?"

"Now, I wouldn't say that," I protested. "But I wouldn't say I'm madly in love with you either." I leaned foreward, watching her intently. "Why did you come here, Michelle? Was it just to find Louis? And if it was, what are you going to do now? What plan is lurking behind those pretty green eyes?"

Michelle opened her mouth to say something, and then stopped. Sheepishly, she looked down, plucking listlessly at a piece of lint on the blanket. "This is going to sound incredibly stupid, but I don't have a plan. I don't know what I'm going to do. When I left London I couldn't think of anything beyond getting here, to New Orleans. And when I got here I couldn't plan past finding Louis and asking him about the watch, about my history. And now... Now I don't know. I just never thought that far ahead."

Again, her voice rang with the truthfullness of what she was saying. No, there was no guile in this one, she was as straightforward as Louis. Still, I'm not known for my incredibly trusting nature. "Maybe it's time you started thinking about it, then."

Michelle shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so. I don't know. I suppose I'll go back to the Talamasca. It's my home, the only one I have. There's not too many other choices."

"Of course there are," I told her. "You could stay here..."

"No!" The reply was quick, almost paniced. "No," Michelle repeated, calmer. "Thank you, really, but I can't. You don't understand. New Orleans has so many impressions in it, so many ghosts. I can't stop seeing them now, they're all over the place. Even here. Especially here. I can't stay here. I really think I need to leave as soon as I can."

"All right, then, what if we were to give you the funds to travel? As much money as you wanted, enough to make you comfortable for the rest of your life, and a ticket to anywhere you liked. Where would you go?"

She bit her lip, thinking. "I don't know," she finally admitted. "I really don't know."

"Think about it," I told her. Then, suddenly changing the subject, "Tell me about the 'impressions'. What are they?"

She was instantly animate again, infused with the love of the subject, the sure knowledge and years of study. "Well, impressions are just that. Imprints of moments in time, like a picture taken of an instant and stained into the aura of the surroundings. Static, usually, but sometimes there's motion, a repetative movement or action that runs over and over again, like a looped video tape."

Michelle sighed. "I've always been able to see them, it seems. In the Motherhouse I could block it, choose not to see them if I wanted. But here... It's like an open floodgate. It wasn't so bad at first but ever since I fell sick, well, it just won't stop. I see them all of the time when I'm awake; out in the streets, in the house, everywhere. Most of the time it's easy to tell they're impressions from the style of the dress, the look of the things. But the recent ones, from the last few decades, those are harder. I had quite a fright when I woke up, there's an impression of a woman in that bedroom. Red haired, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She's doing something to one of the walls, opening up part of it, it looks like. Startled me pretty badly until I realized she wasn't really there." Michelle gave a little laugh, indicating that it was actually rather humorus.

But I was looking at her in horror. I had raised my hand to my chest, and then to my forehead in absolute stupified shock. Michelle was looking at me, curious, worried. Elsewhere in the house I could hear the humm of the electricity, the little noises of heating and appliances, the splash of water in the bathroom. David was awake. Scrape and thud of a drawer being pulled open. Louis was up as well.

I must have looked truely frightful because Michelle was becoming agitated. I calmed her with a gesture, indicating that I was all right, that it was only a thought that had suddenly occured to me. A red haired woman. Jesse. It had to be. A red haired woman doing something to the wall. Jesse, as she had steamed the paper from the walls, down to the mural, Claudia's mural.

Louis and I slept in what had once been my room. David slept in what had been Louis'. And we had, all unthinking, placed Michelle in the other bedroom. Claudia's room.

And this was the woman who had, twice, assumed the voice and mannerisms of Claudia, who had been dead over a hundered years.

I couldn't guess at what god had been smiling on us that had made Michelle not lapse back into that ghost again. It was like an open invitation to leave her in that room. Sheer stupidity! Why, Jesse had seen Claudia in that room as well, after she had found the doll and the diary. And Michelle had slept there for hours.

She would have to move. That was all there was to it. She would have to move to another room, David's room, yes, that would work. Anywhere but in Claudia's old room. I did not want to see her possessed by that spirit again. I couldn't bear it.

As if she were hearing my thoughts, Michelle spoke. "It's strange. This is the only place I've ever seen a non-static impression. I mean, it does more then just the looped motion. It keeps going, it will move for minutes at a time before returning to the beggining and starting over. It really scared me at first, I thought it was an actual spirit, a ghost. But it actually is just an impression. I even saw it out in the street once, that night you surprised me. I was positive it was a real ghost, I was terrified. But it's actually just a really strong impression, the imprint is everywhere in this house, overlapping and blurring into each other."

I had to ask. I didn't want to, but I had to. "What is the impression of?"

"A little girl," Michelle said, gesturing over the floor to indicate a height of a small child. "Blonde, blue eyed, really pretty. Almost looks like she could have been your daughter." I made some small, half strangled sound. Michelle's eyes narrowed. "She was, wasn't she? The girl. It's Claudia. The child vampire you made."

I didn't answer but I really didn't need to. Michelle was nodding, eyes half closed, looking left and right with flickering speed. Her hands were knotted in her lap. "She's all over this house. She's left her imprint everywhere. When I woke up she was sitting on the end of the bed, playing with a doll. She kept running through the room while I was watching television, carrying flowers in her arms. She's toss them all over the floor in front of the fireplace. And then reading in that chair over there. And writing at the desk. I couldn't touch the piano for hours because she was there, playing. I know she's only an impression, but she frightens me. There's too much power radiating from her, too much strength. It's like she's halfway between being a spirit and an impression, not quite able to come through all the way or to let it go." Michelle's voice broke, lowering to a whisper. "I... I don't think I can sleep in that room tonight. Everytime I go in there she's sitting on the bed. Would it be alright if I stayed out here? On the couch, maybe?"

I was rigid with shock, hearing her say all of those words. But worst of all was the thought, Claudia trapped, neither ghost nor passed on, but trapped in some sort of horrible limbo. I was aghast at the thought, I just couldn't bear it. But David was interrupting, David had come out of the bedroom wrapped in Louis' robe, his hair slicked back and wet, a look of determination on his face. The instant he spoke all thoughts of Claudia went right out of my head for a moment.

"I'm going to call the Talamsca," he announced. "I'm going to find out the name of Aaron's wife. I want to talk to her, I want to know how he died." He said it challengingly, as though daring me to contradict him or try to stop him.

If he wanted a reaction he certainly got one. Louis had followed him from the bedroom, dressed only in a worn pair of jeans. "Lestat," he was saying urgently, "Lestat, talk to him. Talk some sense into him. What good can talking to this woman do?" I was staring at them both in astonishment, Michelle had the bewildered look of someone who has walked in on the middle of a conversation.

David shook Louis' hand loose from his arm, striding to the phone. "I want to talk to her," he repeated. "I want to know who she is, how she met Aaron. I want to know how he was. And I want to know how he died. You're not going to talk me out of this." He was already picking up the phone as he spoke, dialing the number for the Talamasca.

I pulled Louis back. "Let him do it, what harm can it do?" I said. Louis shot me a furious glance. David was talking into the phone, asking for the name of Aaron's wife, using his alias as the young cousin of his former self. These documents he had found were important, Aaron's wife should have them if Aaron was dead. I heard Michelle give a little gasp. "Oh! Aaron Lightner? You mean David didn't know?"

David was jotting down a name, repeating it back in order to be certain. And the person on the other end of the line was trying to say something else, warn him of something, but David had already killed the connection. As soon as the dial tone came up he was punching in the number for information. "Yes, I need the listing for a Beatrice Mayfair..."

It was like watching a horror film come to life. Even as the words left David's lips the phone was picked up by invisible hands, torn loose from the wall and hurled across the room. David cried out as it was ripped from his hands. A vase on the table was lifted, it sped towards David's head, it would have hit him if he hadn't ducked. Things all over the room where lifting, carried on a rush of warm wind, whirling about in a fenzied dance of destruction. Michelle was yelling, David was being pushed back by this invisible force. It pulled at his hair, his robe. He was flinching from it, raising his hands to his face as though to protect his eyes.

Over the cacaphony of breaking and shattering objects, the rush of the wind, there was a hiss. The hiss formed a weak voice, a word, a word that it repeated over and over again, rising in volume and strength, a horrible, eerie sound. "Mayfair," it hissed. "Mayfair, Mayfair, Mayfair, Mayfair..." On and on the chant went, like an unholy mantra. "Mayfair, Mayfair, Mayfair..."

The wind was letting thing drop now, scattering things around the room. But the wind itself was not going away. It rushed about, a hurricane confined to a room, it tore at us and pushed at us, as though it would knock us all down. And then it seemed to draw inwards, it sank into a tight spiral with Michelle at it's core. She was yelling but the sound of the wind and the demonic chanting of the voice drowned out her words. Next to me, Louis cried out. "Michelle! NO!"

He was darting foreward, trying to grab Michelle, to draw her from the wind's grasp. With a sort of fury it turned on him, leaving Michelle. It whipped about him, grabbing at his hair, knocking him back. Michelle was screaming now, yelling in fright. I was on my feet, trying to get to Louis through the wind. It buffeted me, fingers dug at me, nails clawing at me. Mortal fingers, mortal nails, that's what it felt like. It couldn't hurt me. I was grabbing Louis, pulling him against me, shielding him with my arms and body. Michelle was crying out, on her knees, pounding her fists against the floor. "No! Stop it, STOP IT! Stop, stop, stop! NO!"

I had pushed Louis to the floor, bending over him, trying to keep the wind from getting to him. His skin was dotted with little pinpricks, with scratches, like scrapes from nails. Little beads of blood welled up to the surface. I was reminded, horribly, of the way in which the spirit, Amel, had once beset Khyman in the same way.

And then, with a last shriek and crash, the wind retreated. It faded away and the room was still, the stillness that came in the aftermath of disaster.

And that's what the spirit had pronounced it the night before, wasn't it? Disaster.

Michelle was sobbing on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, crying. David was beside her, his arm around her. I helped Louis up, fussing over him, over the little scratches that were already healed, over his shaken and dishelved condition. I wanted to take him in my arms, hold him to me, know that he was alright. It wasn't enough to merely hear him say it, in that dazed and shocked tone. But he was brushing me gently away, he was going to Michelle.

She was nearly hysterical, sobbing in great gasps, wild with fright. Nothing we said would calm her and finally David went and got the medicines, found one that was a mild tranquelizer. He pushed the pills into her mouth, held the water to her lips, made her swallow. Exhaustion combined with the medicine and within another fifteen minutes she was sprawled on the couch, her head pillowed in Louis' lap, sound asleep.

When David would have lifted her, carried her back to the bedroom, I stopped him. I explained, hurridly, about Claudia. About what Michelle had told me about the impressions, about that being Claudia's room. Startled, David agreed to put her in his own room. Louis caught my eye and I could have winced- David's room was not that much better. It had been Louis', where the coffin that Louis and Claudia had rested in had been kept. Her imprint would be there too. But maybe it wouldn't be as bad.

The room was a complete disaster but I refused to deal with it until I had gone out, until I had hunted. I needed the rush of the blood, the energy and clear-headed relief that it brought. David wanted to go with me. Louis would stay- "Someone should be here with her. I'll go when you come back." The look he gave me said to hurry. I didn't need to remember the little cuts and scrapes on his bare chest. I hurried.

Even then it wasn't fast enough. I returned to the house before David, to find Louis in the bath, washing gravel from the scrapes on knees and elbows and hands. "It pushed me down the stairs," he said, so angry that his voice shook with supressed rage. "I stepped outside and the little fiend pushed me down the stairs. It swept up behind me and shoved me, like a great force in my back. I heard it again as it left. And do you know what it said to me? 'Laughter', it said. It didn't make the sound of laughing, it just said the word. But I know what it meant. That damn spirit was laughing at me, it thought it was hilarious to see me sprawled out on the cursed concrete!"

I took the washcloth from him, made him sit down while I saw to his knees. The scrapes were minor, though his jeans had been ripped. I was shaking, I could see it in my hands, I was so angry I wanted to cry. This thing, this spirit, was striking out at the ones I loved best, it was hurting them in little, malicious ways, and there was nothing I could do about it. It infuriated me. I wanted to wrap my hands about something, feel it break and tear and squish beneath my fingers. I wanted to inflinct a thousand years of pain on this thing for every tiny scratch on Louis' beautiful skin.

Louis was speaking, he was calmer now, I could hear it in his voice. "Lestat, I think the... the spirit we talked to last night was right. Something has to be done. Maybe we should take Michelle away from here. You said yourself she's not comfortable, she's disturbed by all of the impressions. Maybe we should take her back to London. David said she never seemed to have any problems there."

"She wants to go back to the Talamasca," I said.

Louis dismissed that. "Not yet. Besides, she's not well yet. But I think London is a good idea, or somewhere in Europe. What do you think?"

"London it fine," I told him. I pulled his head down, kissed him, tasting the coldness of his lips. "I'll make the arrangements tonight. Go hunt, mon cher. I'll watch Michelle while you're out." In truth, I didn't want to let him out of my sight, but it would be senseless to try to watchdog him like that. It would only make him angry. "Just... be careful. Promise me you'll be careful."

"Of course," he said. He kissed me again, and then he was up and gone.

David returned not too much later and I explained to him what Louis wanted to do. He agreed, he thought it was splendid. In fact, we could stay at his manor. No trouble at all. So while he picked up the room I was on the phone, making flight arrangements for four on the following night.

Louis returned without incident. It was a very quiet, uncomfortable night. I knew that I did not want to discuss what had happened, and the others showed no more inclination then I felt. I had rather latched onto the hope of solving this entire mess by returning Michelle to Great Britain. The sooner the better and the next night couldn't come fast enough for my liking. At one point Louis did ask David what he thought had upset the spirit in the first place. David just sighed.

"My own stupidity," he said. "Aaron's wife's name. Her surname, actually. It a very old, very powerful family here in New Orleans. I had forgotten. Aaron had actually been assigned to their case- yes, their case. There's a file on them in the Talamasca. The family is known for attracting spirits. Something about the name must have set the thing off on it's rampage. I'd need to get to the Talamasca, get into the files, to find out more."

We didn't speak about it after that.

Early in the morning, before we retired for the day, I looked in on Michelle. She lay, still deeply asleep. As I watched from the door she twisted alittle, moaning softly. A nightmare? But no, it didn't have the sound of fear. She was breathing slightly harder, a sigh came from her parted lips, another small moan. Tossing, the covers pushed away, long, slender legs milk white in the darkness. A sound of dreamy pleasure. I had to smile as I backed out, closed the door silently behind me. At least someone was having good dreams this night.

By nine O'clock the next night we were at the airport, waiting for the boarding call for our flight.

Louis was in a pensive mood, speaking only when spoken to, and David was edgy, completely unable to sit still. I was in a perfect rage, which I was trying to control. I had taken it out on the car while driving and was now taking it out on a helpless pencil I had rescued from David's fidgiting hands and which I was methodically ripping into tiny wood splinters with my nails. It wasn't a replacement for the satisfaction of tearing through something's throat, but it helped.

The damned, devil-spawned spirit had attacked Louis again.

We hadn't been awake for more then fifteen minutes when it happened. Louis, still half asleep, had rolled over to reach for the lamp by the bedside. As he did so the light bulb exploded with a loud crash. And then everything else in the room made out of glass had shattered, scattering countless shards of glass out like razor sharp projectiles.

Every single one of them had been aimed at Louis.

Preternatural speed was the only thing that kept him from serious injury. I had grabbed him as he jerked back, pushing him down flat and throwing myself over him, the heavy blanket over us both.

I felt a thousand tiny things hit me, hit the blanket, and then it was over. I sat up cautiously.

The bed was an utter mess of tiny, sparkling pieces of glass. I was feeling alittle bemused, rather shocked. Louis was swearing, his voice shaken. It was when I turned him over that I became furious.

There was a deep gash over his brow, angling down to the corner of one eye. Another scored his cheek, slicing up to the soft flesh beneath his other eye. Another across the bridge of his nose. Countless smaller cuts, all angling inwards. The blood dripped down and smeared across his pale skin.

The little fiend had been aiming for Louis' eyes!

I was nearly frothing at the mouth in rage, but there was nothing I could lay hands on, nothing I could attack in anger. David, alerted by the sounds, had come in and was staring about in shock. Louis had clamped his hands to his ears, he was shouting; "Stop it! Stop laughing, damn you! Stop it!"

I couldn't hear anything. Neither, David admitted later, could he.

It took David time to calm the two of us down into any type of coherency. And then I refused to talk about anything until I had washed the blood from Louis' face, seen for myself how bad the cuts were and made sure that no glass was lodged near those beautiful green orbs. I bullied Louis into lettimg me smear my own blood into those cuts, until I could see them close as I watched.

After that I lost no time in hustling us out the door. No, it wasn't possible to get Michelle out of New Orleans fast enough to suit me.

Michelle had slept through the entire commotion and only woke sluggishly, still half drugged, to be bundled into the car.

"How much of that tranquelizer did you give her?" I asked David in a whisper.

David shrugged. "Too much, obviously."

Useless to argue with him about it and better that she had slept through it, really. What she didn't know wouldn't turn her hysterical as it had the night before.

We stopped at her flat to collect her things and leave a note for her landlord. We had given her just enough time to change into her own clothes and then sped to the airport.

I dropped the pencil to the seat beside me and glanced over to where Michelle sat. She was once again wearing the impracticle but beautifully reavealing clothed of youth- black fishnet lace over her long legs, beneath the shiny, synthetic material of biking shorts. Those heavy army boots on her feet, which she had extended out before her. She sat like a man, all arms and legs and slouched posture, not at all like a young woman. A white sweater, knit so loosly that it resembled lace, clearly showed the black halter top beneath and the graceful length of arms and stomach. A black velvet choker encircled her slender throat and a little silver ball that tinkled like a bell when she moved hung on a thong about her neck.

She was sitting several chairs away from us for politeness' sake. A cigarette was in one hand, a large plastic cup of straight black coffee in the other. She had paused when we passed one of the many little stores that dotted the concourse of the airport, digging in her pockets to produce a handful of change and a much wrinkled dollar. David had, without being asked, handed her a twenty from his own wallet. She had accepted it with surprised thanks, and then ducked briefly into the shop and the adjoining cafe, returning with the cigarettes and the coffee and a fold of smaller bills which she would have returned to David but he waved it away, telling her to keep it.

I got to my feet, walked over next to her and sat down. She acknowledged me with a little wave of the hand holding the cigarette. I gestured to it. "Doesn't that irritate your lungs?"

She shook her head. "No. Not really." To prove it she took a long pull from the cigarette, blowing the smoke back out again in a neat ring. I had to laugh.

She laughed as well, then looked at me curiously. "Can you do this?" she asked. "Smoke? I mean, I know you can't eat or drink like normal, but what about breathing things in?"

Idle curiosity? Or wondering how many habits she would have to give up to become one of us? Impossible to know. I leaned foreward, took the cigarette from her before her mortal eyes could even register the movement, and looked at it speculatively. "I really don't know," I told her. "I've never tried." And before I could think better about it I put the filtered end to my lips and inhaled sharply through it.

It was a stupid thing to do, I knew it the minute the smoke seared my lungs. It was acrid and bitter and it burned my throat, brought tears to my eyes. I coughed and choked and spluttered, waved away Michelle's helpfully meant pats on my back and handed the little paper cylinder back to her, still choking and thoroughly sick of the ashy taste in my mouth. "That's disgusting!" I managed to gasp. "Why in hell would anyone do that?"

Michelle was trying not to laugh, her eyes dancing, her hand covering the smile that curved her lips. "You didn't smoke when you were mortal, did you?" she asked.

"No," I admitted. I managed to regain my composure, reached up and wiped blood tears away from the corners of my eyes. "And now... That taste is foul. I don't know how you can sit there with that taste in your mouth."

"That's why I smoke them," Michelle said, still smiling. I caught the stray glimmer of a thought from her mind and sat up straight, glaring indignantly.

"You don't inhale," I accused. "You just hold the damn smoke in your mouth and blow it back out again! And you asked me about it just to see what I would do if I inhaled it!"

For a moment she looked frightened, and then she began to laugh, a clear sound of humor and normalacy. Beautiful to hear. I realized I had never heard her laugh before, not like this. Still, I didn't like being the object of a joke. I snatched the cigarette from her hand, ground it out in the little plastic dish set on the partitions between seats for just that reason, and then relieved her of the pack before she could react, slipping them into my own pocket. "You'll get these back when I feel like giving them to you," I told her firmly. "Maybe. Why do you bother smoking them if you're not actually inhaling? I thought that was the point of the entire thing."

"I like the taste," she replied. "Reminds me of the coffee in the cafeteria at college." She was still smiling and I smiled back alittle, just to show her that I wasn't really angry. Her smile broadened, showing strong, straight teeth, and she raised the cup of coffee to me in a toast before downing a great swallow of the stuff. She winced afterwards, the same kind of pulled up expression that David used to get after drinking a shot of scotch.

"Too hot," she explained, sticking out the tip of her tongue and sucking air into her mouth to cool it. Then she shifted on the seat, pulling out a watch from her pocket and flipping it open to glance at the face. "What time are they supposed to start boarding?"

I didn't answer. I was looking at the watch in her hand, the watch which had, last I knew, been in Louis' possession. "Where did you get that?" I asked her.

"Hmm?" She looked puzzled. "Ah... You know, I'm not sure. I can't remember putting it in my pocket, but there it is." She shrugged, snapping it closed and putting it away. "Bad memory, I guess. Look, they're boarding first class. That's us, right?"

I wasn't going to be distracted. "Michelle, where did you get the watch? Louis had it earlier this evening, I remember seeing him with it..." but she was already getting to her feet, slinging her carry on bag over her shoulder and going to join Louis and David. I didn't have much choice but to follow.

The flight was wonderfully uneventful. I sat beside Louis in the comfortable, spatious first class section. David and Michelle had the two seats on the other side of the narrow aisle. Michelle yawned through take off, then promptly tilted her seat back and proceeded to sleep through the flight. I asked Louis about the watch- had he given it back to Michelle? Louis was startled.

"No, no, I don't think I did..." but a quick search of his pockets produced no watch. He shrugged. "Well, maybe I did. I can't really remember. I might have taken it out of my pocket when I was looking for my ticket, remember? She might have picked it up from the counter. Doesn't really matter, does it? I meant to give it back to her anyways. It is hers, after all."

David was writing furiously in a notebook. Michelle was asleep. I wanted to push back the armrest between Louis' seat and my own, snuggle against his side for the long hours of the flight, but he wouldn't hear of any such blatant displays in public and certainly not before David and Michelle. So I had to settle for slipping my fingers through his and leaning back in the seat, the little headphones feeding 20 different channels of music to my ears at the flip of a switch. Louis leaned against the windows, watching the night fly by outside.

We arrived in England early in the morning. It gave us just enough time to travel to David's ancestral manor. He had called ahead, of course, let the staff know that he was coming, that the new Mr. Talbot would be arriving that night with two friends and a young woman from the Talamasca. So there were rooms waiting for us, with freshly turned back beds and fires in the fireplaces. Beautiful.

And of course we had just traveled cross Atlantic, we had jet lag, we would all sleep the next day and weren't to be disturbed. And David himself, before leaving here last, had had all of the windows of the house outfitted with superbly fitting shutters and heavy, velvet drapes that, once closed, would allow no hint of light into the rooms. Perfectly safe. And the doors to our rooms could be locked from the inside with a different lock then the one from the outside, no one could come in on us during the daylight hours. Perfect.

Michelle, having just woken up from a marvelously long nap on the plane, announced that she would go down to the little town for the day, look around, enjoy being outside. She looked immensly better then she had and she confided to us that there wasn't a whiff of impressions anywhere, they had all vanished like a bad dream when she had set foot on the plane. Louis wanted her to rest during the day, David warned her to dress warmly if she went outside, and Michelle laughed and promised that she would, and that she would most certainly be back by dusk.

We were shown to our rooms by the housekeeper that David had hired to look after the manor while he was away. I waited perhaps three minutes after the woman had left, then slipped out of my own room and down the two doors to Louis', where I rapped lightly.

He opened it hesitantly. His hair was unbound, his shirt already stripped off as he prepared to sleep. He sighed when he saw me, a smile hovering about those sensuous lips. "I might have known. What's wrong, Lestat? Find a spider in your bed?"

I smiled. "No. But it's big. And cold. And empty. Mind if I join you instead?" Not waiting for an answer, I pushed past him into the bedroom and flung myself onto my back on the bed. Grinning, I regarded his scandalized and resigned expression. "Come on, Louis, close the door and come to bed," I told him, patting the matress beside me invitingly.

He grumbled and growled, but Louis always grumbles and growls. I've learned to ignore it.

Things went perfectly for all of three days.

During those three days Michelle rested, traveling out during the daylit hours to explore the surrounding countryside and spending long hours ensconed in David's library, tucked into a huge old leather chair, a book in her lap, reading as voraciously as Louis. We didn't see much of her, since she would usually retire by ten or eleven to sleep. For ourselves, well, London was only a short flight away if we wanted to go, and it was wonderfully relaxing just to stay at the manor. To sit and talk, or read, or whatever took our fancy.

It was on the fourth night that our peace was broken. There wasn't any warning. Things had been going beautifully, Michelle was well on the road back to health, there wasn't a whiff of impression anywhere that intruded on her peace, no unexplainable or malicious pranks pulled by invisible spirits, nothing. David had made one attempt to research the Mayfairs but had not been able to get through the Talamasca's rather paranoid security. It was a new development on their part and it rather worried him, but not overly much. Michelle said something about having had problems recently, with hackers, and David, sitting at a computer and frustrated in doing exactly that, had had to laugh.

So nothing intruded on our peace and it seemed the problem, whatever it was, had been neatly solved by removing Michelle from New Orleans.

On the fourth night we were all seated in the livingroom, Michelle curled into a chair across a small table from David, a chess board set out before them. She was frowning and absently nibbling on the end of a lock of hair as she scrutinized the board, trying to find a way of extricating herself from the threat that David posed. Her superficial appearance was completely out of place in this room of leather and mahogany and rich English taste, but she acted perfectly at home.

I was sitting on the couch with Louis, my head in his lap, my feet over the end of the arm. The spine of a book was resting against the top of my head; Louis was reading and I seemed to make a convenient book rest. I didn't mind, though. I was listening to the music on the stereo, some sort of brass classical, and I was watching the chess game. Well, truth be told, I was coaching Michelle through it. I would watch unobtrusively and, when it seemed like she needed it, I would send her a little telepathic thought, a move that seemed the best to me. I did this now and watched as she promptly picked up the bishop, pouncing on David's knight. Her fingers flicked to me from below the level of the table, a gesture of thanks and acknowledgement. I smiled, tried to keep from chuckling. David hadn't caught on yet.

We sat in silence for several minutes more as David pondered his next move. He was in the process of reaching out, his fingers hovering over the board, when the lights suddenly flickered and died, plunging the house into blackness.

David swore and Michelle gave some sort of startled, half frightened noise. I could see of course, as could Louis and David. There was moonlight coming through the windows. Michelle was sitting quite still as her mortal eyes tried to compensate to what must be, for her, a sudden absense of any light. Louis closed his book, put it down. "I didn't think the storm was this bad," he said.

It had been raining outside, a cold wind blowing, but not strongly enough to break the electrical line, it seemed. David sighed. "A branch across the lines, probably. I'm not going to go check right now, for God's sake. Come on, there's more then enough candles and lanterns. We'll light those."

Michelle fished a lighter out of her pocket. "Light the fireplace," she suggested. "That'll give off the most light."

David agreed and in minutes there was a cheery blaze going in the hearth, casting red flickers of light about the room. David also fetched two oil lanterns from other rooms, one to set by the chess game and one for Louis to read by. Michelle lit the wicks with her lighter, setting one on the table and turning to hand the other to Louis, who had risen to his feet. It was in the moment that their hands met on the handle, as Michelle relenquished it to Louis' grasp, that it happened.

The glass well of the lantern burst outwards, exploding with enough force to bend the iron frame, sending glass and oil in a spray. Michelle and Louis both cried out. David grabbed Michelle about the waist, lifting her, swinging her back away from the explosion.

He mightn't have bothered. Not a drop of oil or a shard of glass went towards her. Like the lightbulb that first night it exploded out in a tightly controled angle, bathing Louis in it's force. He dropped the lantern, flung it from him as the oil splashed across his chest, his face and hands, fell in splatters about his feet. Fire sprang from the lantern, caught at the oil on the floor. It raced, lightning quick, across the hardwood and licking at the oil that pooled at Louis' feet.

I was up, I caught Louis up in my arms, pulled him back and away from the flames. I felt the heat on my hands as the flames flared up, higher then the oil could have fueled them. They crackled and snapped, reaching out, a shower of sparks bathing my face and hands in a hundred pinpricks of hot pain. I shoved Louis away, heard David yell.

For one moment, in the depth of the flames that roared up impossibly high before me, I saw a figure take shape. A man, hazy and indistinct, dark haired and eyed. He was smiling, teeth bared. And then the image wavered, the flames leaping higher, forcing me back. The heat was that of a furnace, it scorched my lungs and burned my skin. I staggered away.

A figure followed me, emerging from the flames, stepping out from within them.

In that awful moment it seemed it was the man I had glimpsed, the dark haired fiend. And then it became a woman's form, fair of skin, black of hair. The flames caught at her dress, licked at her flesh, blackening it. Her eyes glowed with the flames. Upon her breast a shard of green light rested, a jewel that reflected and shot back the light of the flames.

And then it faded, all of it, the flames, the woman, everything. I could still smell the smoke, feel the lingering heat, but the room was dark and still and the only flames danced merrily in the fireplace. Looking, I saw Michelle standing before me, very close, her slippered feet wet with the oil that spread across the floor. Her eyes were dark in the shadows and her expression was curiously blank, very calm, her posture very still.

I knew what the voice would be, before her lips ever opened and that richly accented man's voice spilled forth.

"Disaster, Monsieurs. I said it would be, did I not?"

"Why in hell should we trust you? What proof do we have that it hasn't been you playing these tricks, that you haven't been behind all of it?"

I was shouting. I was angry again and it seemed I had been angry for a very long time, that there was no end to this anger. David was behind me, his silent presence backing me up, supporting me, radiating the same cold fury that I could feel in myself.

Michelle's body sat before me on the couch, undisturbed by my fury. The dark eyes stared right past me to Louis, as though I didn't exist. "He will hound you to the ends of the earth, Monsieur," the spirit said, addressing Louis. "Unless you take her from him."

"And how am I supposed to do that?" Louis' voice had a cold steel tone to it, the only hint of his rising temper. "Lestat's right. Why in hell should I trust you?"

The spirit within Michelle gave a small sigh. "You have no choice, Monsieur. You must listen to me, and you must listen closely. She has acknowledged him, she pays attention to him, and this gived him power. He will grow stronger by the day. And he hates you, Monsier, hates what you represent. He will kill you if he can. You must shut him away from her, so that he can never touch her again." Dark fire glittered in those black eyes, strength in the voice. "Bring her to you, Monsieur. Maker her truly of your blood. Banish the spirits from her forever."

God, the shock to hear those words. But it was what I had thought all along, wasn't it? Maker her one of us and the impressions and ghosts would vanish. So very simple.

Louis had frozen, no emotion playing over the still lines of his face. And David was shocked, quietly furious. "Impossible," he snapped, though of course it wasn't. "Why should we trust or believe you? What proof can you possibly offer that you're telling the truth?"

In a shocking show of strength and temper the spirit raised Michelle's arm, slapped it palm down to the arm of the chair with a ringing clap. The sudden movement was startling. "Proof?" the voice spat. "You ask for proof? The proof of experience! You think I don't know his strength? I spent my whole life under his shadow. He devoured us all- my mother, my sister, my daughters, myself- all of us! He used us for centuries, would use us still!" The spirit broke off, seemed to visibly fade. Michelle slumped. The outburst had used up much of the strength it had. But the eyes still moved in the still face, dark and bleak. "You want proof, Talamasca?" it whispered. "Look in your own files. The Legacy has blighted the Mayfairs for hundreds of years and all of it is in your files. Look there and you will find the proof you seek. The Mayfairs have been his pawns from the beginning and we are Mayfairs, all of us, no matter the name we use." The dark eyes flickered to Louis and then they closed, Michelle's body collapsing back into the cushions.

I knew she was unconcious before David checked. David shook his head. "She won't remember. God, I have to get at those files! I might be able to use Michelle's code to access them, but I'm not sure. The Mayfairs were classified, I remember, almost as deeply buried as your files. It won't be easy."

"Michelle managed to get our files," I pointed out. "Have her help you get the Mayfairs'"

"He's telling the truth," Louis said suddenly, his voice soft.

I turned, looking at him in amazement. He raised his hand, shaking his head. "No, Lestat. Wait. I really believe that he is telling the truth."

"Why?" David asked bluntly.

Louis' eyes were on Michelle, puzzled and wondering. "I could see him," he said. "I saw both of them. They aren't the same being."

Chaos. "What?" David cried, incredulous. "When? Where?"

"In the fire," I burst out simultaneously. "You saw it too, didn't you?"

David turned to me almost accusingly. "Saw WHAT? I only saw the flames!"

Louis shushed us both, drawing a hand over his eyes. His voice was tired. "You saw it, Lestat? In the flames? The man and the woman?"

"Yes."

He sighed, sinking into a chair. "Thank God. That means I'm not loosing my mind."

I went to him, knelt beside the chair, putting my hands over his. The sharp smell of the lantern oil that clung to him was dizzying. "Of course you're not, mon cher. But what else did you see? Tell us."

Louis took a moment, gathering his composure. His eyes were distant, his expression troubled. "There was a vision in the flames," he said, addressing David. "A man- he stepped out from the flames. Brown hair and eyes, medium build. Not old. And not human either; there was something inhuman about it, something too stiff, too molded. Like a mannequin."

"Like a mannequin," I echoed. "Yes, that's it exactly. As though it were a statue. It didn't step through the flames, it just appeared in them. It was stiff, it never moved, not even the hair. Like a painted statue."

Louis nodded. His hand held mine with tense strength. "Yes. And when the other spirit was in Michelle I saw it, just for a moment. When you angered it, David. For a second I saw him, another man, sitting in Michelle's place. He had white hair, almost silvery, though he wasn't particularly old. Very handsome. And very dark eyes, almsot black. He... resembled the first man. In the way brothers might resemble each other. But there was a sense of him being alive in a way the other never had. Like the other was an incomplete copy of the one in Michelle. But they were definately different, seperate entities. I don't know why or how I know, but I'm positive of it."

Louis fell silent and there was no response for a long moment. Then David turned to me. "Lestat?"

"I saw the first," I told him. "Not the second."

He nodded slowly. "And you said there was a woman?"

Louis said nothing so I responded. "Yes. Just before the flames died. A woman with long black hair, in a very old dress. She was engulfed in the flames, burning. And," I hesitated, trying to recall, "there was something about her neck. It stood out because her dress was so plain. Something green, on a chain. A jewel, maybe."

"Could be a heirloom of the family, like Michelle's watch," David sighed, taking one of the other chairs. "Something to do with the Mayfairs, possibly. Maybe I should try to call them again, speak to them. Aaron's wife was one of them, they must know something..."

"All of this started when you tried to call her," I snapped. "I can only stand so many exploding things in one night, David. Let it be. Get the files from the Talamasca."

We sat in silence for alittle while. "What should we do with Michelle?" David asked, finally.

"Nothing," Louis answered. "We'll talk to her. Explain what's been happening. But she doesn't need to know about the spirit that talks through her, or the Mayfair family. We need to know more and telling her half formed conclusions could do more harm then good."

David opened his mouth as though to argue but I shot him a sharp glance, silencing him. Michelle stirred, her eyes flickering. Abruptly they snapped open and she sat bolt upright, looking around in frantic fear.

"Wha...? Louis! The flames!"

Louis was at her side, taking her gently by the shoulders. "It's all right, Michelle. Everything is fine."

She blinked up at him, her eyes huge in the dim firelight. "But... but there were flames!" She turned back, to David, to the point where she had been standing earlier, as though expecting to see the fire. Confusion was painted across her face. "There were flames, Louis, and you were in them..."

"Illusion, chere." I listened, half attentatively, as Louis explained to Michelle about the spirit, the attacks against us both in New Orleans and here. She grew upset, refused to believe it. When Louis pointed out that she had seen one of the attacks herself, the night David had tried to contact the Mayfairs, Michelle grew even more distressed. She was clenching her hands, trying in vain to stop the trembling in them, hiccuping past the sobs. She kept shaking her head, half raising her hands as though she would put them over her ears to block out Louis' patient voice.

"It's not supposed to be like this," she kept whispering, "It's not supposed to be this way! It's impossible! Oh God, just make it stop!"

Louis grew very still. There was something horrible in that stillness, something disturbing in the anguished expression on his face. Only his hands still moved, smoothing Michelle's hair back with the slow, rythmic motion one might use to stroke a cat. Michelle sat and cried and David and I sat and watched Louis. That stillness was ominous, like the hiss of a snake about to strike.

It came without warning. Only his lips moved, forming around the words, his hand never ceasing that gentle motion on Michelle's hair. His voice was low, gentle and matter of fact, as though what he said had no great importance. "We can stop it. Would you take the Dark Gift, Michelle? If we were to offer it to you, would you take it?"

Silence. Stunned, heavy, shell-shocked silence. Ghastly silence. Into that silence someone's breath rasped, hard and harsh, and with a sort of amazed shock I realized it was my own. I was shaking. This was Louis who had said this? This was my Louis?

And then Michelle was on her feet, she jumped away from Louis as though in fear for her life, naked terror in her eyes. "No," she gasped. And then, louder, "No! God, no, NEVER!"

Louis reached out to her and she scrambled away, anguished. "Don't touch me!" she cried. "Don't EVER touch me! Ah, God, stay away!" Sobbing, she whirled, ran stumbling from the room.

David was up, he went after her. I went to Louis, but I stopped short, almost afraid to lay hands on him. What had possessed him to say that to her, to offer such a thing? Louis, who had sworn never to bring another into our existance, who had turned me away in my hour of need, so firm was his conviction. And he had offered it to Michelle.

But Louis turned to me, anguished, and I took him in my arms. I kissed that drawn down brow, the satin softness of his hair, held him to me with a possessive strength. Still, I couldn't resist the need to know- "Louis, why in hell did you do that?"

His arms were tight around me and now he shook his head alittle, buried his face against my neck. He was trembling. "Do you know," he whispered miserably, "what it said? The spirit in the fire? Do you know what it said to me?"

I shook my head, perplexed. "I didn't hear it, Louis. It spoke?"

Louis nodded sharply. "It said, 'I will have her when you are ashes.' I heard it clearly, in my head. 'I will have her when you are ashes.' And then it laughed, not real laughing, just said the word like before. 'Laughter.' Just like that. Lestat, this thing means to kill me! That was what tonight was for, don't you see? It was warning me, it's so confident in itself that it warned me it meant to kill me and laughed about it!"

"No, Louis, no, I won't let it hurt you, nothing is going to hurt you..." The words were lies, even as they passed my lips in a rush. I couldn't stop this thing, I could do anything to it, for all my vaunted power. And it already had hurt Louis and if it tried again there was precious little I could do about it. I hated being this helpless- powerless to stop this thing, powerless to protect Louis. It galled at me, like acid in an open wound. I hated this thing beyond all reason or question, hated it more thoroughly then I had ever hated anything.

Louis let me comfort him, let me lift him up and lead him back to our rooms. I paused only long enough to speak softly to David on the way.

"She's in her room," David said. "She's locked the door. She won't answer."

"We're leaving," I told him. "Tomorrow, the night after at the latest. I don't care where we go but we have to move. This thing seems to have problems tracking us and we need the time." David looked surprised but didn't question me. I took his arm before he turned away, letting desperation color my voice.

"David- I don't care how you do it, but get those files!"

From the diary of Michelle Renford
March 12, 1995

I locked myself in my room last night.

There's a lock on the door but I've never bothered with it before. Who would come in? The housekeeper? Perfect. Then she could clean up and I wouldn't have to. But last night I slammed that door behind me and thumbed the lock on, twisted the dead bolt into place and heard it close with a reassuring click. I locked the windows and flung back the drapes as far as they would go, then fell to my knees on the carpet and prayed as I never have, prayed for the first light of dawn to illuminate that eastern horizon. For the sun to rise and make me safe.

I've never been that scared in my entire life.

God, to hear those words from his lips, from Louis' lips. From the mouth of one who described his own existance as the hell of the damned.

"Would you take the Dark Gift, Michelle? If we were to offer it to you, would you take it?"

How could he ask me that?

I love Louis, love him dearly, ever since I first laid eyes on him. Lestat is overwhelming, he drowns you, and David is such a familiar presence that being near him is like being back in the Motherhouse. It's Louis I love.

But only if I don't dwell too long on what he really is, if I don't think about what he does on those nightly walks. Intellectually I know what vampire means, I know that they do. But thinking of them, any of them, as killers makes me sick.

And to ask me whether I would want this, whether I would enter this state willingly! To become a killer, enslaved to some alien, physical need that demands the blood and death of fellow humans... What did Louis say, in his own words in that book? "Don't make me do this, I cannot!" And I could not, I'd die myself first.

Death scares me. I think if scares every living being. But it scares me worse, because I've seen what can happen afterwards.

Ghosts, spirits, bedraggled souls caught halfway between worlds, unable to go back and unwilling to go forwards. Confused and trapped for all eternity, unseen, unheard, shadows that don't understand they're dead. That's what traps them here. People who die in their sleep will usually linger for a time. And people who die unexpectedly, especially by accident or violence.

How many of these poor souls are trapped here by the pale hands that snatch them in the night, the fangs that bite and draw blood and kill them before they know it? Louis condemns the taking of life but worse then that is leaving those souls to wander, confused and dazed in that grey state between existances.

I could never condemn someone to that fate. Never. Would I take the Dark Gift? A vampire, haunted by the ghosts of those they've killed. That's what I'd be. And I'd greet the sun with open arms before I ever took a single life.

I did greet it with joy this morning. Pale and watery and still trying to cling to winter, but sunlight. It poured in on me, covering me like a shield. Louis didn't really frighten me, even after he said such a horrible thing. But I saw Lestat. I saw the look on his face. He thinks it would be a splendid idea. And he scares me witless.

The spirit, the presence, came back to me this morning. I haven't felt him since we left New Orleans and I was glad to feel him now. He seemed much stronger, he radiated a type of contented pleasure and smugness. At first I thought he was just proud of himself for having been able to follow me, but it seemed to be more then that. He was so much stronger!

And then he shocked me. He pulled himself together, I saw him do it, collecting all the little bits of thing in the air and pulling them into himself. He poured himself into the sunlight streaming through the window and formed an image, a body, made up of all of those little particles. He was showing himself to me! Just for an instant, and eyeblink, and then he lost the cohesion and the image dispersed in a rush of warmth.

An image flashed on the eye. Tall, dark haired, dark eyed. Smiling in delight and happiness. Beautiful. And very, very still.

I knew it, though I had never seen him do such a stunt before. I knew it because Louis had described it to me the night before.

Oh, I was in a rage! I screamed at him, I cursed him, I was so angry I was in tears. "Why did you do it?" I demanded. "Why are you trying to hurt Louis?"

He was upset, he rushed about the room wildly, the wind like a trapped hurricane. Rushes of feelings, words, he thought I was in danger, Louis meant to hurt me, to make me one of them. He was protecting me. He was keeping me safe. He loved me more then anything and he was only trying to help me.

I felt so very cold inside. There was truth in what he said. Louis didn't mean to hurt me, I was positive of it. But make me one of them? "Would you take the Dark Gift, Michelle?" I couldn't believe it of him, I just couldn't. But Lestat I could easily believe, and, God help me, even David. They would do it to me if they could. It was a neat solution to the problem I presented them, wasn't it? Can't let me go back to the Talamasca now, I know too much. And they wouldn't want to have to babysit me for the next sixty years. A quick and easy answer. And there was two of them against Louis, and he loved Lestat. He could be swayed by them. I was in very real danger.

I was crying in hurt now but I wouldn't let the spirit comfort me. I pushed him away, told him to leave me alone. "Don't do that again," I ordered him. "No more exploding glass, no more fire! Do you hear me? No more!"

He promised. He didn't like it, but he promised. And he left. I don't think I've ever been this alone.

The Norway coast. Rocky and jagged and cold and beautiful, in a savage sort of way. Isolated. And so far, unhaunted.

Michelle had absolutely no idea where we were. She had been drugged through the flight, falling asleep at Talbot manor and waking up here in this little cottage on the coast. No town nearby. Nothing to tell her where she was. She had been paniced at first but David had explained it to her. Louis didn't want this spirit hounding him, but he didn't want to just send Michelle away either. So, if Michelle didn't know where she was then the spirit probably wouldn't be able to find her. At least, that was what we hoped.

She gave in with very little arguement. She turned quiet, withdrawn, almost sullen. She would talk to Louis, if he talked, (which he didn't) or David, though she would only give him brief answers. She refused to talk to me. I seem to have earned the label of villian somehow.

Fine. If the other two weren't against it I'd take her back to the Motherhouse in London right now, drop her on their steps and wash my hands of the entire mess. Taciturn little creature. She glares at me. I do my best to avoid her.

David was wrapped up in his computer for two nights. On the second night he began to print things out, pulling them straight from the Talamasca's files. Michelle's access code worked like a charm. Michelle didn't want to talk or know about any of it and Louis was only alittle better. He did rouse some when David showed him a picture, however, a scan of a very old photograph, which was further distorted by having been run through the small, portable printer we had here. Still, it was visible. A man, late middle age, standing before the door of a beautiful old house. New Orleans, surely, the Garden District. And the man himself was good to look at, very assured and poised, a smile hovering about his lips. Alive, that was how he looked. Fair haired, dark eyed. Impossible to tell more from the printout.

It was enough. Louis took the paper in trembling hands, eyes wide, shocked. "This is him," he said, breathlessly. "This is the one I saw, the one who possessed Michelle. This is him!"

And the Talamasca had his picture on file. Turn of the century clothes. I was getting chills looking at it. What did this ghost want with us?

David merely nodded, as though he had suspected as much. "His name was Julien Mayfair," he told us. "He was very influential in making the New Orleans Mayfairs as prosperous as they are." David pulled out a stack of papers, quite thick, all freshly printed. "It's all in here," he said, handing it to us. "You'd better read it."

Pages and pages of this history, compiled by David's friend, Aaron. The history of the Mayfair witches, that was what it was titled, printed in small type neatly across the bottom of each page, along with the page number. Louis and I sat on the couch for the next hour reading it. I would read one page and pass it to him, and he would read it and lay it down as I passed him the next one. A history of a family haunted by a spirit, by this ghost named 'Lasher'. It was bizarre, and too surreal, until one remembered what had happened recently.

A 'Legacy'. That was what Julien's (if it truly was him) ghost had warned us of. The Legacy. I handed the papers back to David. "It says here that the current designee of the Legacy is a woman named Rowan Mayfair. So why in hell would this spirit be tormenting us or Michelle?"

"The file is several years old," David said. "It hasn't been updated since before Aaron's death. Obviously something happened, but it hasn't been input into the computer files yet."

It was late. Michelle was asleep, she went to bed very early in the evening, in a rather obvious attempt to avoid us. It all seemed to date back to the night Louis had asked her about accepting the Dark Gift. She had been skittish ever since. Louis rose to his feet. "I'm going out."

I started to rise, to go with him, but he shook his head. "I need to think," he told me. "Alone." He smiled to take the sting from the words, reaching out to brush his fingertips over my cheek. "I'll be back soon."

"He makes it sound like he can't think when I'm there," I said rather bitterly when he had left.

David smiled. "He probably can't. You take up rather alot of a person's concentration when you're around, Lestat."

I leaned back on the couch, smiling ruefully. "I suppose I should take that as a compliment."

"Of course." David wasn't really into the little exchange, though, he was bent over the papers. He kept rifling through them, as though looking for something more. "Well, this explains the green jewel you saw on the woman. And the woman must have been Deborah Mayfaire, of course, one of the first. But it leaves so much unexplained, as well."

"You said yourself it's incomplete," I said. "Never mind the history, David. What can we do about it? How can we get rid of this thing? Will it follow Michelle? If we send her back to the Talamasca will it follow her there? It doesn't like the Talamasca, David."

"No, it doesn't," David said quietly. He had an odd look in his eyes, a contemplative look. He wasn't really looking at the papers any more, just fidgiting with them. He sighed. "Lestat, this is going to sound incredibly silly but... do you know Louis' parent's names? His mother's maiden name? Or his grandparents?"

He was right, it did sound rather silly. I had to laugh. "Well, not having actually filled out a marriage license with him, I can't say that I do," I said between laughs. David looked irritated.

"Lestat, I'm serious!"

I waved a hand at him, caught my breath. "All right, David, I know you are," I said, choking back the laughter. "I apologize, truly. But you're right, it does sound silly. Really, though, I don't know. Whatever gave you the idea that I did?"

"I didn't think that you did, I just hoped that you might," he said, tossing the papers down on the floor. "It might be important."

"Why? And why not just ask Louis, if you really want to know?"

David shook his head. "No. He didn't catch the link and obviously neither did you. I don't want to upset him. Let it be."

"But what is it?" I pressed, really curious now. "What does Louis have to do with this? I mean, besides being Michelle's upteenth times removed half brother."

"Yes, and Julien Mayfair was, most likely, her great grandfather." David smiled alittle. "Of course, Julien Mayfair seems to be the father, grandfather, or great grandfather of half of the Mayfairs in New Orleans." He became serious again, dropping his voice unconsiously. "But there are other Mayfairs. They're spread all over the United States, in Texas and New York."

I shurgged. "So? David, what are you getting at? How can any of this be connected to Louis?"

David held up a hand, shushing me. "Let me explain. Back at the 1700's, at least seventy years before Louis was born, Charlotte Matfair was living in Saint-Domingue. She bore two children by her father, Petyr van Abel, and three other children by various fathers. Two of these, boys, immigrated back to France under the name of Fontenay. More then half a century before Louis was born, Lestat! And people married young back then, had children young."

I was sitting very still, trying to understand what David was saying. It was really unthinkable. "David, you're saying that Louis may be related to this family himself, that he might be a Mayfair! Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

David was shaking his head. "I'm just pointing out a link, Lestat. I don't know anything. I'd need Louis' mother's maiden name, his grandparent's names from both sides. Even then, the names could have been changed. It's impossible to tell. But look at it. Lestat, he can hear this spirit, when you and I cannot! He's heard it every time, and I haven't heard a thing. He saw Julien's ghost, when both of us were staring at Michelle and saw nothing. The spirit, this Lasher, has picked Louis out for some reason. It's never tried anything against you, or against me, except for when I tried to contact Beatrice Mayfair. Yet it keeps attacking him, without provocation. And his brother saw spirits, Lestat. 'Visions', he called them. That was the reason for their arguement, when his brother died. Remember?"

"Of course I do," I snapped. I didn't like this talk, I didn't like how neatly it all seemed to fit together. It was entirely too disturbing to think about. I didn't want to sit here and have to listen to this. I got to my feet.

"Don't mention this to Louis," I told David. "You're right, it would upset him. And don't mention it to Michelle!"

David looked irritated. "Oh, Michelle won't listen to it. She won't talk about it at all. I tried to ask her about it all, about Lasher, and she almost became hysterical. She swears she doesn't know anything about it." David's eloquent shrug said how much he believed that.

"Maybe I should talk to her," I said grimly. "If she does know anything about this I want to know what!"

"She's already scared of you, Lestat," David warned me. "You don't need to frighten her into fits."

"David, she's the source of this entire mess..."

"That's what I was getting at! She may not be!" David stood up, took my arm urgently. "What if the thing is tracking Louis, not Michelle?"

Oh, this was really on the outside of enough. I couldn't stand in that room and listen to him for a minute more. I pulled away from him, strode to the door. "Let it be, David," I growled. "Just let it drop! It's a crazy theory and that's all it is, it's just a theory." So saying, I walked out.

I heard him call my name, call for me to wait. I didn't. I went out of the house, out to the little path that lead to the bluff overlooking the rocky beach. I was in a turmoil over what David had said. It made my skin crawl just to think about it. And I found myself pondering it all as well, turning it over and over in my thoughts the way a person will poke at a sore tooth or worry at a half healed scrape. Who were Louis' parents? His grandparents? I didn't know. Oh, I had met his mother and his sister, but I didn't really know them or anything about them.

'Don't ask Louis about it', I had told David. 'It will upset him.' But not knowing was upseting me and I had more then half a mind to go find Louis and ask him myself.

I climbed up to the bluff. It provided a simply stunning view of the ocean, the moonlight glinting off of the jagged waves. A wind had picked up and the sea was restless, crashing with hard force against the rocks below. No sandy beaches with lolling tourists here. Just the hard, primal force of nature. It could spark awe in me, the same sort of heady feeling as rising in the winds until the stars stretched overhead, bright and merciless, the world a giddy swirl below. All this untamed, untrampled force. I felt I could be at home here, at least for while, all alone in this vast space.

I wasn't alone, though. Someone had beaten me to this secluded spot.

They could have been twins, standing there, looking out over the sea. Black hair on two heads, one slightly longer, whipped about by the wind. Jeans on long legs, worn sweatshirt and sweater, both in those charcoal shades of grey that comes to black after too many washings. 'Comfortable', they would say, stubbornly. How many times had I tried to point out to Louis that comfortable didn't have to mean frayed and ragged? And then popular fashion came along, with its ripped jeans and ragged grunge styles, just to prove me wrong.

Twins, clones of each other, brother and sister standing there. Beautiful. Dark wraiths. I had no idea that Michelle had been awake, much less out here, with Louis. And now they were standing there, at the bluffs edge overlooking the sea, talking as they hadn't talked for days.

But something was wrong.

Michelle was agitated, I could see it in the frantic shake of her head, the tight tenseness in her posture. The way she edged away from Louis, slapped his hand away when he would have reached for her. Louis was talking; explaining, it seemed. Pleading, almost. And Michelle was shouting, her face twisted with fear and anger, her words coming to me only as a dim rush of sound drowned by the wind - wind that howled over that bluff, shaking the trees, icy cold and piercing. A storm was blowing in.

David was beside me, he had followed me from the house. "What are they doing?" he cried, raising his voice to be heard over the noise of wind and breaking surf. I shook my head, unable to answer.

Louis was speaking rapidly, he reached out and grabbed Michelle, as though he would shake her. And Michelle stumbled back from him in fear, tripped and fell to the ground, lashing out with feet and hands when he would have helped her up. I was going out to them, with no memory of when I had decided to do so. Something was wrong, very wrong, I could feel it deep inside. I had to reach Louis' side.

The wind howled, battering the bluff like a jet engine, insensible and furious. I was running towards them, I heard David behind me, and then Michelle's voice rang out, harsh and loud over the wind, as Louis reached for her again. Filled with loathing, that voice, hurtful and hating. "Get thee behind me, Satan!"

Louis stumbled back, shocked and repelled. I knew that feeling, that agony in memory and soul as words from the past were flung in your face. She had done it to me, and now she did it to Louis. A woman's voice, and now a girl's, I wanted to strike her, make her stop- "And here it is, Father! And I hate you, I hate you both!"

He was reeling back from her as though she had physically struck him, hands raised to shut out those hate filled words. Blood tears on his cheeks, black in the moonlight. The wind raged around us, shoved at him, pushed him back. Michelle was screaming, I couldn't hear the words.

And I was there now, Louis was before me, Michelle to the side. I reached out to take Louis' arm, draw him to me, carry him from this place. I had to take him, take us both from here before I lost all reason and attacked this slip of a girl who could hurt him in such a way, before I struck her and flung her from the bluff, a mortal body crushed on the jagged rocks below. Louis didn't see me, the wind blinded him, dragged at his hair and clothing. I saw it just before it happened, that split instant of knowing.

They had stood at the very edge of the bluff, sandy rock and scruffy grass underfoot. Louis was inches from that edge now and the wind was attacking him, it was consiously pushing at him. He was struggling against it, not blinded, no, he knew what was happening! I saw his eyes widen, his lips open in a perfect O of horror, then draw back over teeth and fangs, a snarl of rage. I flung myself foreward as the wind curled, a lance of pure air with the force of bomb, pushing him back. I was screaming his name, grabbing for his outstretched hand...

His fingertips brushed mine and then he was ripped from me, thrown bodily up and backwards, off of the edge. He tumbled in the wind's grasp, a doll in a hurricane, and time seemed to slow to an unbearable crawl. I know I screamed his name, the sound ripped from my lungs and lips in a great rush. I sprang from the ground, rose into the air, surely I could move faster then any natural force of gravity! But time had become a heavy liquid stream about me and I knew I wouldn't make it even as I leapt, knew that nothing would stop this horrible sight which burned itself into my eyes.

Up the wind carried him, up and out, and then down. It hurled him down like an arrow released from the string, smashed him against the rocks in a deafening, heartstopping instant.

Time resumed. I was screaming, wordless agony. I dropped to the rocks in an instant, ran to that limp, broken body. The wind was between me and Louis, battering at me, scratching and hitting with a thousand hands. I pushed it away, thrust it from me with the force that could crush a human heart. I could hear Michelle's voice behind me, David's yell. He had grabbed her, dropped to the rocks below the bluff with her. She was screaming to the wind, so weak and ineffectual; "Stop it! Stop it!"

And then, with sudden command and strength, like a whiplash of power, "LASHER! Obey me! Come to me, my Lasher!"

The wind died. It hesitated and faltered. With a howl of anger, it went.

I couldn't turn to see what had happened, I couldn't focus on anything but the beautiful, shattered body that lay before me.

I dropped to my knees on that hard, uneven stone. It was wet- I looked down to see blood. It was everywhere, it pooled around him, crimson and fresh and pouring from the rents in his body where the rocks had pierced his flesh. It smeared his still face, soaked his clothes. So much blood and raw flesh...

Black hair splayed out across the rocks, fine strands lifted and touched by the now gentle wind. I reached out, touched those strands, felt the deep ragged gash, the sharp splinter of bone. The tears were rising in me, choking me, strangling my breath. "Louis..."

His body was nothing in my arms, feather light. My hands were red with his blood, my arms were wet with it. I lifted him into my lap, I couldn't bear to turn him over, to see that great rent in his skull that I had felt beneath his hair. His face was so still, composed, almost relaxed. I was trembling, I touched his cheek, felt the thin, papery, skin. So pale, so completely drained of life, the blood pouring from him and leaving this thin shell behind. I held his body to me, smoothed the hair back from his forehead. His eyes stared to the night sky, to the stars above, open orbs that were dark, all of the light drained from them.

I listened. I listened with all of the strength in me, straining for even the faintest whisper of breath through pierced lungs, for the fluttering beat of a heart within a broken chest. For any sign of life.

Nothing. I heard nothing but the crash of the surf which soaked the rocks and us with its cold, salty spray and the soft whistle of the wind through the night air. Nothing supernatural about it now. My own heart pounded a frantic, broken rhythm within me. Somewhere, a voice sobbed. Nothing, and no life in this body that I held in my arms. So it was in blind, desperate hope that I lifted my wrist to my own lips and bit deeply, feeling tooth and bone scrape across each other, the pain flashing up my arm like fire.

Blood. It splashed out in great jets of crimson, driven from my frantically beating heart. I held my trembling hand out, letting that flow fall across Louis' chest, across his chin and cheek and parted lips.

"Drink, Louis," I whispered. "Please drink." I was sobbing, the wind cold against my wet cheeks. "Please, God, drink! Live, Louis, you have to live!"

Nothing. I was in a hell of despair, absolutely frantic. I pressed my wrists to his lips, forced the blood into his mouth. He had to live, I simply couldn't let myself think of any other possible outcome. Louis had to live.

Nothing.

A groan wrenched itself from my soul, a moan of utter horror and such pain as I had never known. No mere physical agony could compare to this cancer in my heart. It was like acid thrown across nerves, pain that transmuted my very blood into corrosive fire and forced it through my laboring heart. I choked, my throat too tight to allow the sobs that welled up inside my chest. I curled around him, holding his limp body to me, rocking with the despair that shook my entire being. The gash in my wrist had closed and I opened it again, heedless of the pain it caused me. I held it to him again, praying, a whispered plea of desperation. "Please. Drink. Oh, please..." It was a mantra, falling endlessly from my lips. "Live, Louis. Live, ma cher. Please..."

It was so small at first, the barest hint of motion, that I might have imagined it. The faintest brush of his lips against my wrist. And then it was a whiplash, an explosion of life into his body. A convulsion wracked him. He reared against me, back arched, teeth sinking like points of fire into my wrist. I cried aloud, crushed him to me.

He drew on me, an endless web of pain as vein and artery were drained, until that vast draining sucked at my very hart. Everything faded but that pain, my life rushing out through that point in my wrist, spilling over his lips and into him. I was crying with relief, with joy, hearing the thrum of his heart within me like a drum, rolling over and through me. I was crying in regret as well, in bitter disappointment, for this was not the way I had wanted this to be. I had wanted this for so very long, to give him that powerful elixir that flowed through my veins, to have him take it from me willingly. I had dreamt of this moment, all but begged him to take it. It would have been the culmination of all of our love over the years, a sharing like none other. To sink into Louis' soul and mind, to be joined in the endless flow of blood again, to feel it circulate between both of our hearts. And now we had been robbed of that choice, forced into this moment with no other possible option, tainting what should have been the most joyous of acts with the pain and fear that had brought us to this crux.

But it didn't matter. Not really. All that mattered was that deep, soul pulling suction, the flood of life being drawn from me to him. My vision was dimming, my pulse roared in my ears, slower now. I lay against him on those hard rocks, my head dropped limply to his chest, hearing the pound of his heart beneath my cheek. Stronger and stronger it grew, oh yes... "Drink," I whispered, barely a breath of sound. "Take it, Louis. Take it all- more then David did, doesn't matter, take all of it..." The entire world was growing dim, my pulse was so light and slow I could barely hear it above the drum of his. He would live, that pulse was so strong, he would live and be strong. Tears of relief blinded me.

A hand twined itself in my hair, pulled me up clumsily. I dimly realized the drain had ceased, that he had released my wrist. The world spun about me, the rocks dipping sickeningly beneath my leaden body. And then the hand pulled my head down, pressed my face against warm skin that was slick with blood. My mouth opened, my tongue lashing out in instinct, lapping at that blood. Delicious shivers of ecstasy, the blinding liquid light of the blood of another of our kind. I felt the sharp flash of pain as teeth tore through the flesh beneath my ear, clumsy in their greed and haste. The drain resumed, blood pouring from me. It brought a gasp to my lips. And then I had bent and fastened my mouth to that smooth column of throat bared beneath me, sinking my teeth into that pulse that beat just below the pale skin.

Ecstasy that could kill. I was lost in the endless pulse of our hearts, the double beat that drew closer and closer, until it beat as one great, resounding drum. The endless rush of blood, through two hearts and two bodies, circulating in an infinite loop of exquisite pleasure that stroked every nerve and cell. I was moaning as the sweet syrup of his blood jetted out over my tongue, pouring into me in a bottomless stream. And then I was sinking, falling into a great warmth, yet flying at the same time. Weightless, beyond worlds, beyond body, beyond stars... and Louis was with me.

Visions, emotions, words- it rolled through me in great waves, battered at my soul. New Orleans by gaslight, the sweet smell of wisteria and lavender in the spring air, the humid heat and the sharp, beautiful light of the stars seen from the steps of a great plantation. Fragile plunking sound of a harpsichord, played by pale, child sized fingers. Beautiful, silky golden hair. A yellow dress smeared with ash and blood. The feel of book leather and crisp pages beneath fingertips, the peaceful glow of candlelight. So many visions, flashes of sensation. My own face, smiling, and a flood of wordless emotions. Despair, anger, hate, fear, frustration... and love. Always love, no matter what else. Joy, happiness, contentment, yes, those as well. And love, a love that poured through me and humbled me, brought tears to my eyes. A love that I was sinking in, drowning in, surely this was heaven. ::I love you forever.::

Eventually, it had to end. We clung to it as long as we could, lost in each other's souls. After it ended we lay together, twined in each other's arms, heedless of the hard rock beneath us of the cold sting of the sea spray. I lay in timeless bliss, his chest beneath my cheek, just listening to that resonant beat within. Strong and rhythmic, pumping my blood through his veins, infusing him with more strength then he had ever known.

Louis stirred first, reaching out to gently touch my hair, run light fingers over my forehead and cheeks. I lifted myself, turned to look at him for the first time.

White. Incredibly white, he could have been carved from the palest, most perfect ivory. The little lines in his face were fading already, the skin changing almost as I watched. But his eyes were the same, brilliant green, living luminescent emeralds set beneath lashes of black lace, incredibly beautiful. Those eyes were looking at me now, wide and amazed. He reached up with a trembling hand to push my hair back, trace the line of my jaw. His voice was a tremulous whisper, throbbing with incredulous wonder and new strength. "Ooooh... Lestat, what have you given me?"

I touched his face, drew my thumb over the soft flesh of his lips. Hardening, yes, his skin was hardening. I could see the blood working on him. He was going to be stronger then David, he would be my equal. He was still watching me with that awed, dazed expression. "What have you given me?"

"Eternity." I bent, kissed those cool lips. I could taste myself on his tongue. He clung to me, such strength in those hands. When he pushed me away I couldn't have stopped him; but knowing that only made me laugh in delight. He would be magnificent, absolutely perfect. And he was staring at me in shock, realizing that he had pushed me and that, for once, it hadn't been solely because I had let him.

Reality came back rather abruptly when he sat up. He flinched, reaching out to steady himself against me, his hand going reflexively to his head. I was alarmed. "What is it, Louis?"

Cautiously, he shook his head. Slender, pale fingers probed lightly through his dark hair and I saw him flinch again as he touched the back of his head. I tilted his head forward, carefully brushed back the long, blood matted strands of hair.

Ghastly looking. I could only imagine what it had looked like before, shattered skull and torn flesh, exposed bone. It was healing slower then the rest of his injuries. No more blood welled forth but the place was swollen, hot and painful looking, tender to the touch. If I concentrated I could see the fragments and slivers of bone realigning beneath the skin, slipping back into place and binding themselves there.

Louis pushed my hands away. "It just hurts, that's all. Really."

"Be careful. Try not to move too quickly." I reached out to help him but he struggled up by himself. He wasn't as steady as he thought, though, and he stumbled heavily against me as his balance wavered. I caught him, barely managed to retain my own rather precarious footing. I was aware of the exhaustion that dragged at my limbs and mind, the empty gnawing in my gut.

For a moment he was limp against me, his face blanched to an almost transparent white, eyes rolling back in his head. I held him tightly, helped him to regain his feet. "It's a head wound," I told him, "you can't just expect to get up and walk away from something like that as though nothing had happened! Take it slow. Pretend you're a mortal with a concussion. If you feel dizzy then try not to move."

A corner of his mouth quirked up. "I never had a concussion as a mortal," he said, "so I can't really say that I'd know what to do for one." He started to shake his head, as though to clear it, then thought better of the motion. I pulled him to me, let him lean against me as he took deep breaths. A crease of pain drew his brows down but a look proved that the wound was healing rapidly, the swelling already less red and inflamed looking.

"I'll be fine," Louis assured me.

The chill wind was picking up again, a real storm this time, no spirit induced frenzy. I glanced up to the cliff above us. Eight or so building stories, at least. It loomed above us, a respectable distance. And one that I didn't feel up to ascending. I could do it, but I felt incredibly tired, almost too fatigued to stand. I had given an incredible amount to Louis and it had left me feeling drained to the very pit of my being. I wasn't at all sure that I could take Louis' weight with me.

Louis followed my gaze upwards, then looked back to me. "Well, I don't favor staying on this beach until the sun comes up," I said. "Do you think you can manage it?"

He looked up again, obviously considering. "The cliff, you mean?"

"Yes." I hugged him to me, loving the feel of his slim waist beneath my hands, the way he let himself lean against me. "I'd take you up, but I really don't think I can."

Louis twisted in my arms, looking back at me in shock. Then understanding reflected in those green eyes. "Are you all right?" he asked, worry tinging his voice.

I smiled at him, a bit lopsidedly. "Nothing a good meal wouldn't cure. Seriously, though, do you think you can manage?"

He glanced up again, tilted his head, considering. He flexed his fingers unconsciously, testing them, feeling the new strength flowing through them. A smile curved his lips. "A hundred years ago Armand taught me that I could climb up a brick wall. I think I can manage a cliff."

Oh, he was magnificently strong. I was almost leaning more against him now then the other way around. And he knew it, he looked at me with that touch of wonder in his eyes, trying to understand the new state he had been launched into. I felt a little pang of pain, realizing that the pain of that wretched wound had distracted him from this, his second rebirth.

He was studying me. And then, turning, he looped his arm about my waist and lifted.

He had to strain a bit but he did it, I felt my feet leave the ground. Absolutely incredible, the strength in him. And it was the same trick I had pulled on him once, wasn't it? He put me down quickly enough but the astonishment shone in his eyes, the surprise that he had been able to do this at all. I was thinking frantically, oh, this would take getting used to. And I loved it, loved knowing that this was my Louis and that he could do this to me, match me in strength like this. Simply lovely.

But how much had I given him? How much would he be capable of now, how strong was he? I desperately wanted to know. I pushed his hands away, stepped back from him. "Louis," I said, "I want you to do something for me."

Surprise. "What?"

I was tense, but I had to know. "Follow me. Don't think about it, don't question it. Just... follow me. Now." I could see the confusion on his face. "Humor me, Louis. Follow me."

I went up. Straight up, no jump, no touching the cliff face. Just straight up, ascending into the air, arrowing towards the bluff surface. It wasn't the steadiest of ascents, it had little grace in it. I was tremendously tired and it showed. Still, up I went, touching down with some control on the sandy ground of the bluff. And then I turned, looking back down to Louis.

He wasn't there.

My heart stopped, my mind freezing. And then he was there beside me, a dark angel descending from the winds, landing heavily on the scruffy grass. His eyes were huge, stunned, the hands he held out to me shook.

He had done it!

Louis was shivering, absolutely shocked. "I don't know how I did it," he whispered. "You said 'follow', and I did. I just... did." Tears on his cheeks, a betraying tremble in his voice, rich with wonder. "Oh God, Lestat, it's too much! How do you bear it? There's so much..."

I held him, spoke meaningless little reassurances. It was what he had always feared, what I had feared when I had thought about it. The sudden, dramatic change, the wrenching of all of his careful boundaries. The strength that exploded within him, no time for slow growth or adjustment. I had wanted to give it to him slowly, over time. He hadn't wanted it at all. And now here it was, all at once, in one great flood. I could only pray it wouldn't overwhelm him.

But he was pulling back, recovering his composure and calm. He was distracted, caught by the light of the stars and moon above, seeing them in sharper detail then he ever had before. The wind was strong and he had to listen to it, hearing it now as he had that first night, two hundred years before. All his senses augmented so highly that it was like the catapult jump from mortal to immortal all over again. He hadn't known enough to truly savor the experience then but he did now, standing there on that bluff like a still stone statue, utterly entranced with the night around him.

I was tired and dirty, my skin sticky with blood, my clothes stained with it. Louis' clothes were ripped, his ivory skin streaked and splashed with dried blood, his hair a tangled mess. We both needed to wash and change and the hunger gnawed in me horribly, reminding me that I hadn't hunted since the night before. Something else gnawed at me as well, a question, a distraction that it took me a moment to pinpoint.

"Where are Michelle and David?"

Louis blinked, regarding me slowly, his expression blank. Then he nodded, looking around again with purpose. I bit my lip, wishing I had stayed quiet. I hadn't meant to distract him.

"Michelle..." he said softly. "And David was here? I didn't see him. Could he have taken her back to the house?"

He turned, walked to the trail that lead back to the house. I followed, fell into step beside him. "Louis? Louis, what happened? I saw you arguing with Michelle, just before... before..." I stopped, unable to retract the words and unsure of how to continue.

Louis didn't reply for a long moment. He stopped abruptly on the trail, forcing me to stop as well. He wouldn't meet my eyes. "What happened?" he said slowly, almost calmly. "We were... talking. Just talking. And then... It was Lasher. I could hear him when he... pushed me. She called him."

I rocked back on my heels, stunned. "She called him? You mean she set him on you?"

"She called him," Louis repeated firmly. He resumed walking after that and nothing I said would get a response from him, though I hounded him as we walked. I didn't like this mood that had overtaken him, the cold darkness in his eyes.

He stopped again when we neared the house, just as it came into sight through the trees. He stopped and cocked his head, regarding the house silently. Light shone through the windows. "They're in there," he announced softly. "David is in the front room. Michelle is in her bedroom."

I didn't say anything and Louis thought for a moment. Then he turned to me. "Lestat," he said, quite clearly and distinctly, "I want you to go in there. Get David and take him away from here. I don't care how you do it, but get him away from the house. Can you do that? Will you do that? For me?"

Oh, I didn't want to hear that. I truly didn't. Take David away from the house. Leave Louis here with Michelle. If our places had been reversed he would never have considered it, I would have been in a perfect rage and Michelle would have been in very great danger indeed. But this was Louis, the gentle one, the one who never truly lost his temper or took calculated revenge like I did. Louis, with the heart of a saint. But at that moment I looked into his eyes and I saw something entirely like my own rage reflected there. It frightened me more then I would have thought possible.

"Louis," I whispered, almost frantic. "What are you going to do? Why are you asking me to do this?"

He shook his head, his jaw set and firm. "Take David and go," he told me. "Keep him away from the house for a few hours. And Lestat," he added, taking a deep breath, "stay away yourself."

"What are you going to DO?" If I tried to think about this too hard I would probably be hysterical. He couldn't be asking me to do this. I couldn't let him, for his own sake as well as Michelle. Impossible. I suddenly understood that this was how he felt, he and David, when I went off on one of my whims.

"I can't answer that because I don't know what I'm going to do," he said slowly, turning away from me and back to the house. There was a note in his voice I had never heard before, something cold and very unlike Louis. "Just get David out of the house, Lestat. And stay out yourself. Whatever happens is between myself and Michelle, do you understand?"

In the end, I couldn't refuse him. We both knew it.

It was ridiculously easy. I went in first, through the front door. David was in the living room, pacing with those crisp, swift gestures he used when impatient or agitated. I went in silently, shut the door behind me.

He whirled at the click of the latch, relief showing on his face. He came forward, took my shoulders in his hands. For a moment it seemed he would embrace me. "Lestat! Thank God, I was worried..." And then he paused, realizing that I had come in alone, that no one else was with me. Fear in his brown eyes then, almost panic. His voice was a hoarse whisper. "Louis?"

"He went to hunt." The lie came with horrible ease to my lips. Outwardly I was perfectly calm, alittle tired. Inside I was raging. ::Louis, what are you going to do?::

David sighed, his eyes closing for a moment. He cared for Louis as well, I realized. In his own way, he cared. It pleased me that these two, whom I loved best, should be friends. "Then it worked," David was saying. "He's alright."

"Yes." I couldn't trust myself to say more then that. Louis was out there, waiting for us to leave, and I had promised. I had to do this. But David was speaking again, very agitated.

"Michelle's in her room, Lestat. She won't talk to me, won't tell me what happened. Her mind is complete chaos, I can't make anything out. I think she's in shock. Maybe you could..."

"What happened, David?" I asked, interrupting. "What did you see?"

David shook his head slowly, looking away. "It was... confused. After... after Louis... fell," he had problems choking those words out, "I took Michelle down to the beach. I was yelling at her, I think. I told her to call the spirit, to reign it in and control it. She was crying and stunned and it didn't heed her at all, it was trying to stop you from getting to Louis. And then she switched again and for a moment I could have sworn I saw him, standing right behind her. Julien, I mean. Both of them called him, like some sort of gestalt entity, and the spirit, Lasher, obeyed. Instantly. Michelle banished him, told him to leave, and then just collapsed. I brought her here, it didn't seem like I could help you or Louis."

"No, you couldn't have. You did right, David." It seemed to be what he had been waiting to hear, for he relaxed, some of the tenseness leaving him.

He took my arm, tried to draw me into the house. "Talk to her, Lestat. Or at least try to look into her mind. You're better at that then I am. If we can figure out what happened..."

"Louis already told me what happened." I exerted some strength, pulled him back to me. "David, not now. I don't want to try to question her about it now. I'm nearly bled dry, David, I need to hunt. I didn't go with Louis because I knew you were waiting, but I need to go now."

He stopped tugging at me, looking at me properly for the first time. I could feel my body regenerating what it had lost but I still must look an absolute fright, dirty and blood smeared, almost translucent skin drawn tight over the wiry ropes of muscles and veins. The hunger gnawed in me like a endless hole, a burning furnace that would consume me if I didn't feed it. Everything else paled in comparison.

David was nodding, he understood. "You have to change first," he said, "if you don't get out of those clothes soon you'll be cemented into them." I let him pull me into the bedroom I shared with Louis. I stripped off the soiled clothes, the fabric stiff with dried blood and salt. David tossed me new clothes, which I drew on. A soft cable knit sweater, a pair of worn, comfortable acid washed jeans. It was a shock to see myself in the mirror above the bathroom sink. I really was awful looking, though my skin was already trying to fill back out. I splashed water on my face, wiped the blood away, pulled a comb roughly through my tangled hair. That was better, if far from perfect. I was far too hungry to care at that point.

David put up some resistance to coming with me, protesting that someone needed to watch Michelle. I convinced him by pointing out, rather acidly, that I was feeling actually dizzy with the hunger and driving was going to be a risky thing, never mind flying. There was a large town a fair distance away, but that distance could be covered quickly if one was willing to push a vehicle past the limits of the speedometer. I just wasn't at all certain I was up to doing so. David, in the interest of not having me drive the car off the edge of a cliff, took the keys from me and agreed to accompany me.

I was suffused with the most terrible urgency on that drive. The minute I had stepped into the car I had grown tense, a tenseness that grew as David drove down that narrow dirt path to the road and then floored the accelerator, sending us off in a burst of speed that pressed my body back into the seat. I had done it, I had left with David, left Michelle alone in that house. Alone with Louis. I wanted to scream at David to turn around, to take us back. I couldn't let him exact vengeance on that girl, for Louis' own sake. It would destroy him. But I had promised him that I wouldn't interfere, and even though I broke rules and promises with impunity I didn't feel as though this was something I could do this time.

I was in agony by the time we reached the town nearly an hour later. The mental anguish I was going through had combined with the gut-wrenching stabs of the hunger, melding into some sort of perfect, all encompassing pain. I wasn't fussy. The first mortal that crossed my path on the shadowy back streets died in seconds and the minute the hot blood flooded my mouth all thought and concern died away in that red tide that surged into me, doused the fire of the hunger. My entire world was narrowed to the taste of the blood, the feel of it sweeping through my veins. It ended all too quickly and, driven and nearly mindless with need, I searched for another.

A gambler, a hooker, a drunk. Lured from the back street taverns. And only as I let the third body fall from my arms did the red haze of the hunger draw back from my eyes, leave my mind and body deliciously clear and light. I licked the last of the blood from my lips, felt the renewed strength zing through my limbs, out to the very tips of my fingers and hair. Luxurious feeling.

I was standing in the alley alone, the body of the old drunk sprawled at my feet. I could feel the bite of the alcohol in the blood, the rush of giddy lightheadedness. I pushed it away, straightened, listened.

The sound of music and voices in the tavern I had just left. David was there, waiting for me to return. I licked my lips again, pushed back my hair. I can't say that I really considered anything in that moment. It was impulse, as so much I do is.

So simple to rise into the air, let the winds lift me up. The town receding below in a blur of lights. And to look down, spot the car, send a shaft of force down upon it. Fire and explosion as the engine gave under that force. Mortals running from the tavern, shrieking and yelling. There was one figure that stood out among them, still, face lifted to the sky. David. He saw me, knew what I had done. Hurt on his face, confusion. He didn't understand and I couldn't explain the need to delay him, to keep him here and safe. Even if he could get other transport he wouldn't be able to return to the house in less then an hour. It gave me time. I turned from David and sped upwards and out, back to the house.

That mode of travel is so much quicker, but not quick enough. Nothing could be quick enough to get me back there in time. It was in breathless haste that I dropped out of the night sky to the ground, almost running the few steps to the house.

And then I paused.

I had no sense of Louis, of course, but Michelle I could feel. Frantic, panicked, her heart beating the hysterical spasms of a trapped animal. Ragged breath caught in sobs and the rush of fear induced adrenaline through mortal veins. It pounded in my ears like a physical touch. I reached out and opened the door.

Voices from the bedroom. I approached it slowly, silently. The door was half open and through it I could see Michelle, collapsed on her bed in the corner, knees drawn up to her chest. She was crying, but she didn't appear to be physically hurt. Louis sat in a chair, his back to the door, facing Michelle. He was still wearing the ripped clothes, his dark hair pushed back and tucked behind his ears. I couldn't see his face but I could hear the cool eveness of his tone when he spoke. "You spoke to him."

Michelle was shaking her head, biting her lip. She wouldn't look at Louis. "No," she sobbed. "No, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't call him, I wouldn't. He wanted to hurt you, he said he was protecting me. I told him not to, I told him to stop..." she was rambling, the words falling from her tongue in disjointed, slurred rushes.

"You told him to stop the exploding glass and the fire. You spoke to him." Awful to hear, that saint-like patience with the cold menace behind it. They had obviously been going over this for some time. Without meaning to I moved closer to the door.

"I didn't want him to hurt you," Michelle cried. "I didn't mean it, Louis, I didn't! You were scaring me, why did you say those things? God, how can you do this to me? Leave me alone, get out of my mind! I've told you everything!"

Louis leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. Coiled, like a snake about to strike. Michelle felt it as well, she edged farther back, pushed herself into the corner, her face blanched white. She was shaking.

Louis' voice was almost calm. "You say you didn't want him to hurt me, but you called him. He's been with us for the last days, I've heard him. He speaks to me, Michelle. He threatens. Out on that bluff you called him to you, I heard you say his name. I was not going to hurt you, Michelle, I only wanted to talk."

"Don't say that!" Michelle raised her hands to her ears, pressing, trying to block out Louis' soft voice. "Don't say it again! I'll die, do you hear me? If you do this to me I'll die! I can't bear it! Just the thought makes me sick, can't you understand? God, please, just let me leave! I won't go back to the Talamasca, I won't ever try to see you again, I swear! Just let me go, let me go away from here..." She broke off, sobbing, half choked.

"Letting you leave won't stop him, Michelle, you know that." Louis settled back in the chair again, his hands clenching and unclenching on the carved wooden arms. I could see the imprint of his fingers as he flexed his hands, the mark of his new strength. "You can't control him. He comes to your call but he doesn't obey what you tell him to do. It was Julien who called him back at the cliff, not you. You're a very sensitive witch, you see and hear things that no one else can, but you don't have the strength to control him. He washes over you like a flood. All of it does. And if you can't control the impressions you certainly can't control him. Just sending you away doesn't guarantee my safety. He's quite convinced that I present a danger to you and I'm vulnerable, Michelle. If he acts during the daylight hours there's nothing I can do to stop him."

She shook her head frantically. There was blood on her lip where she had bitten it. "He'll come with me, he'll leave you alone. I swear it. I'll keep him under control, Louis, I will! Please, just let me leave!"

In a sudden, fluid motion Louis rose to his feet. Michelle jumped, a startled squeak escaping her. "There is no proof to prove that you can control him," Louis said softly, "and every proof that this demon is merely waiting until daybreak to make another attempt on my life! This can not go on, Michelle! Days ago I asked you if you would accept the Dark Gift. Earlier tonight I asked you again. I am not going to ask you if you will accept it a third time. The only thing you need to decide is if you will take it willingly, or unwilling."

A horrified type of shriek erupted from Michelle, though Louis made no move towards her. I heard myself gasp, unable to stop myself. I couldn't believe what I had just heard. I made some sort of wretched sound, a mortal gasp, and both of them swung towards the noise.

Michelle scrambled up from the bed and flung herself towards me. "Lestat!" she cried, as though I had appeared to save her. "Lestat, stop him! Let me out! Please, God, let me GO!"

I stood in the door, stunned by all of it. Her hands closed on my sweater, her face peering up into mine, eyes white rimmed and blood shot from crying. She was pleading with me. And then, in a movement too fast for the mortal eye, Louis was there. He grabbed her, tore her from me. He threw her back, heedless of her screams, his face an angry mask with blazing emeralds for eyes. I shouted to him, tried to catch his arm, he didn't know his own strength now and he would hurt her without trying.

Michelle slammed against the wall by the head of the bed with a the sickening crack of bones and the thud of soft mortal flesh. She collapsed to the floor in a heap, a moaning marionette cut from its strings.

Louis barely noticed, he had turned to me in fury. "I told you to stay away," he hissed. "I told you to take David and go, Lestat! And you promised, damn you, you don't know what you've done by coming back here!"

I caught his shoulders. "Louis, you can't do this! You can't! This is wrong. For God's sake, just let her go! Send her away! Just don't do this!"

He flung my hands away, shoved me back. He was stronger then I in that moment, anger giving him an advantage. "And it wasn't wrong for you?" Louis cried. "It wasn't wrong for David? For Claudia? Did they have the choice? This can not continue, Lestat! I will not live in this fear, I will not hide from this thing for all eternity! It killed me tonight, it took all of the choices from us, it's forced my hand. And it made a mistake. I have the strength now, from your veins, the strength I said I would never take and that IT forced on me! The strength to fight this thing! And if fighting it means bringing Michelle to us, then so be it!"

Oh, he couldn't be saying these things! The words beat at me, stabbing like knives into my soul. To hear these things at all was horrible, but to hear them from Louis was monstrous. I grabbed him again, shook him. "What of your vow?" I asked him. "Never to make another one of us, do you remember? You wouldn't break that even for me, even though I begged you! And you'll break it now for this demon? Will you let it take that from you as well?"

That hit home. I saw it in his eyes, in the sudden bleakness beyond the burning fire of rage. He flinched from me. I pressed, trying to reach him. "If you do this, Louis, if you work the Dark Trick tonight, you give this Lasher the final victory. Don't you see? He will have broken you, mon cher, he will have forced you to smash every vow you ever made to yourself, every promise you ever swore to keep. Don't do this, Louis!"

A shudder went through him and he tore away from me, turning from me, raising his hands to cover his eyes. He didn't resist me when I reached out and turned him back to face me, pushing his chin up gently. He grabbed my wrists, but his trembling hands didn't have that preternatural rage in them now. Tears on those pale cheeks. "I cannot live like this, Lestat," he whispered. "I can't live in this fear. I CAN'T." Anguish in that soft voice. And when he turned his eyes back to me I saw the fear in them, the terror that the anger had held back.

I moved to take him in my arms but he pushed me away. Turning, he went to crouch beside Michelle's crumpled form. He reached out a tentative hand to touch her cheek. "I think her ribs are broken," he said. "I heard them crack. We need to get her to a hospital."

The voice of sweet reason. I could have cried. "Of course." No car. It didn't matter. I could carry her to the town. If we wrapped her in blankets and I went slowly then the cold winds shouldn't hurt her thin skin.

Louis was trying to pick Michelle up without hurting her further, lifting her very carefully and trying not to twist her. A moan of pain escaped her blood stained lips, her eyelids fluttering. Dim mortal eyes struggled to focus on the face above her own. "I'm not going to hurt you," Louis whispered, reassuring her. "It's all right, Michelle. Truly."

But before the words had left his lips the terror washed over her face, her eyes wide. A scream burst from her throat and she struggled against him. I could hear the scrape of her broken bones as she fought but Michelle was too frightened to heed the pain. She was whimpering, hysterical, her fingers curved into claws that raked at Louis' face. He jerked back from her. The moment he released her she crawled away from him, struggling for every movement, her hands and feet sliding ineffectually on the hardwood floor. She screamed again as Louis reached out to catch her ankle.

Louis was trying to explain, to tell her that he wouldn't harm her, that she could leave if she wanted to. Michelle was past all hearing or reason. She kicked at him, completely unable to break that grip. Her scream died for a moment as she sucked in breath, and when it burst forth again it held words.

A word.

"LASHER!!"

The name hung in the air, vibrated, gained power and solidity as it rang on and on. And then it burst, like a fragile soap bubble, exploding into the room. He was there, the fiend, with greater strength then I had ever felt. Even on the bluff it had been nothing like this. I was shoved backwards, tossed to the floor outside of the room. Louis was dragged away from Michelle and swept backwards over the floor until his shoulders impacted the edge of the bed. The entire room was caught in a hurricane of wind, a contained storm, with Michelle at its center, the only thing untouched by its fury.

The winds were like a wall in front of me, I couldn't get past them no matter how I pushed and strained. I could hear Michelle's hysterical voice above the winds, with a strength in her tone I had heard only once before, at the bluff. This had nothing of Julien's sanity to it, though, it was driven by the terror of a young girl. "Lasher! Come to me, my Lasher! Protect me! Lasher!"

The wind howled. Part of it drew together, solidifying. And from the winds stepped a man, the dark haired demon that had appeared in the fire. His black eyes blazed. He stepped towards Louis' slumped body, his hands outstretched, as though he would personally break the vampire that 'threatened' his witch.

Pale hands snapped out in preternatural speed, caught the fiend's wrists. Louis surged to his feet, thrusting Lasher's physical form back. The wind whipped at his black hair, tore at his clothes, battered at his flesh. He might have been a statue for all he noticed. His hands tightened, crushing the unnatural substance he held. Lasher's lips opened in surprise, his eyes wide. In a rush of heat and wind he vanished again but his voice came, that eerie disembodied voice that rung out, sibilant whisper on the winds. "Kill you," it promised, the malice cold in its voice. "Kill you, vampire. I will have her when you are ash! She is mine, the Legacy is mine! Mayfairs, my family, MY witches! You will not have her!"

Louis threw up his arms as the wind attacked him, clawing at his face, his eyes. I was shouting his name, throwing myself against that invisible wall.

The glass on the bedside table, the lightbulb in the overhead and in the desk lamp. His favorite weapon. They shattered with the popping explosion of glass, snatched up by the winds and slashing down on Louis' unprotected figure. I saw a line of crimson erupt on his cheek; the blood had not had the time to work enough of its magic to make him impervious to such attacks. And as it cut him I saw the rage erupt in those green eyes, the fury boiling back into him past all reason or fear.

He flung up his hands against the wave of glass and it stopped. The wind raged and Louis trembled and the shards of razor glass hung, suspended between two invisible forces. I could feel the heavy taint of it in the air, the effort that Louis extended to do this, a thing he had never done before.

"Back," he commanded, his voice a steel cable of force. "BACK! I command you, spirit! Lasher! Back! You WILL NOT HURT ME! Get away!"

The glass dropped to the floor, inert and still.

There was another presence in that room, I felt it, a thousand tiny pricks on my skin. Louis threw his head back, faltering for a moment, almost falling. With a shriek of glee Lasher descended on him, battering at him.

Louis' head snapped up. His eyes flared open, emerald darkening to jet black. A blending of voices, like two tracks of a tape out of synch by a second, torn from the same throat. Louis and Julien. "LASHER! Obey me! I am Mayfair, Lasher, I AM the LEGACY! You cannot harm me! Lasher!"

The wind was thrust back from him like a wave parting, a meld of Louis' mental force and Julien's power sweeping it away. Lasher howled, the winds shaking the room, the very house. In two quick steps Louis crossed the room, grabbing Michelle and hauling her up by the nape of her shirt.

Her cries were pitiful. "NO! Louis, don't, DON'T! Let me go! Don't do this! Lasher, help me! Lasher! Don't, Louis, don't do this! Please! Jesus, please, let me go!"

A white hand clamped like iron across her mouth, silencing her cries. Louis pulled her head back, stretching her pale neck out like an offering, the pulse beating with visible force beneath the skin. The wind grabbed, dragging, trying to tear her from Louis' grasp. Michelle struggled wildly, all to no avail.

Black eyes, green, superimposed and blazing with fury. That terrible offset blending of voices, like the roar of a storm. "Get back, Lasher! You claim her as the designee? You value her? Then obey me!"

The wind shrieked, but it had little force. And it died away, withdrew, left an island of calm about the two figures. It snarled from the edges, hissed from the corners, but it obeyed. Louis' voice rose, above Julien's, above Lasher's wordless anger, above Michelle's terrified noises. "Leave, spirit! Leave NOW! GO!!" He roared the words out... and Lasher obeyed.

Abruptly, the force that kept me from the room vanished. I heard it outside, the sudden rush of wind, the wild thrashing of the trees as the storm whipped them. Rain against the windows, so heavy and hard it was like stones thrown against the glass. Lasher had taken his fury outside.

I was at Louis' side, I was trying to pry Michelle from his arms. "Let her go, Louis, let it be... She's hurt, Lasher's gone... Louis!"

He lashed out, thrust me back yet again. I heard Michelle shriek, a desperate cry. "NO! LOUIS, NO!!" A thud of flesh against wood, another cry, and then nothing.

He had her pressed against the far wall, lifted up, her toes just touching the floor. Her hands flailed, sliding against the window glass, pushing at him, struggling. His hand was twisted in her long hair, dragging her head back, his lips locked to her throat.

The thought crossed my mind to fly at him, to grab him, pull him away from her. Force him back. But I didn't. I couldn't.

I had done this to David. In a small cottage by a brilliant white beach I had done this to him, forced him, taken him against his will. I had been so sure of myself, so possessed of the devil; I had reveled in his struggles against me and bathed my wicked soul in his life's blood. I had brought him back from the brink of death and in the end, he had thanked me. What right had I to deny this to Louis, to Michelle?

But Louis didn't find joy in the struggle as I did. This was not an act of love for him, that deep draught of Michelle's heart. He drained her fast. Her head was lolling, eyes rolled back, hands slipping limply from his arms. There was no final love in this. And that was what made it all the more monstrous, though the act was quiet compared to David's struggles, the way I had toyed with him at the end. It was done in quiet anger and it was horrible to behold.

Michelle was fading, her heart faltering. And it seemed, in those last moments, that Louis had made his decision. He would take her past the point of no return, let her slip with silent dignity into death, refusing the Dark Gift with her last breath. I could feel her life slip out as the blood became a trickle over his tongue, until he drew away.

For a moment he stood, holding her, his dark head bowed. His voice was hoarse in the dark room. "Lestat?"

I went to him, to the pain in that voice. He dropped to his knees, cushioning Michelle's limp body. I knelt beside him, reaching out hesitantly to lay a hand on those slumped shoulders.

He caught my hand in a vise-like grip, drawing me down. His eyes were wide, almost glazed. Before I could pull back he jerked my hand forward, his teeth sinking into my skin.

I yelled, more in surprise then pain. Louis dragged me forward, his voice a tight, harsh whisper. "You do this, Lestat. You do this, because you're right and I cannot. Do you hear me?"

"Louis..."

"Do it, Lestat!" It hurt me to hear the pain in his voice. "Damn you, do it! I cannot, and she will die! You do this, the way you did Claudia. You give her to me, Lestat, you give me Michelle!"

I looked into those bleak eyes, I heard the anguish in his voice. Like a spellbound puppet I went to my knees down on that wooden floor, taking that limp body into my arms. I hesitated. She was nearly dead. All I would have to do was wait, just a half minute more, and no earthly or undead power would be able to retrieve her from that darkness.

Louis' hand on my shoulder, his soft voice in my ear. "Please, Lestat. Please."

I closed my eyes against the tears in that voice. I did not want to do this, I could almost feel Michelle's spirit pushing me away. Her voice whispered to me. ::Don't do this.::

His hand was on mine, trembling as it tried to push my wrist down. He was crying soundlessly. "Please."

I had created a daughter in selfish need, to keep this beautiful dark haired creature at my side. I had lost my heart to him and mortgaged my soul to keep him with me. Claudia had been my damnation and I had created her solely out of blind need to bind Louis to me. I couldn't deny him this, his chosen daughter.

I could feel her soul slipping away. I thrust my wrist out, let the blood trickle between her parted lips. ::Live, chere. Live, and forgive us for this Dark Trick we have worked tonight.::

Perhaps the strongest instinct in a mortal is the will to live. In the face of death all other considerations or moral objections will be pushed aside before this all encompassing instinct. In those last moments before death I had begged Magnus for life. David had prayed to me, his betrayer, to save him. And Michelle, who swore she would not take it, who had resisted Louis with such fear, rose from the brink of the eternal blackness to take the life line that I offered her, her base instinct for survival betraying her in the end.

For the second time in one night the drain swept through me, pulled at my heart and soul. Michelle latched onto the wound with all the strength of a lamprey, drawing life and blood into herself with mindless need. I let the tide sweep me up, the beat of her heart and mine like a living thing, echoing in the night. No thought from her now, no defiance. Just need. The need to live. Beautiful and primal and savage, the be all and end all of life. The need to continue. In one this young it beat with wild rage, a child's heart in a woman's body, beating in reckless abandon even as the tainted blood washed her veins, soaked into tissues, working its unseen magic on her very cells. ::I will not die,:: it chanted, beat after beat. ::I will not die.::

Forever it lasted, that sucking pain. And then something drew her away, released me from that terrible draw.

I was laying on the floor, the smooth wood cool under my back. Outside, the storm shook the house, the rain sheeting the windows in torrential fury. Loss, it seemed to say. Loss and grief. Poor wind. I could almost sympathize with it. I felt battered and bruised, too many shocks in one night, too many things changed. I closed my eyes, let the heavy tiredness wash over me.

A woman's voice intruded, a voice that trembled with preternatural life and wild, disbelieving shock. "Oh my GOD..."

I sat up, looked at Michelle. She lay beside me, one arm lifted to thread her fingers through her hair, her eyes open wide to the ceiling above. Louis knelt beside her, worry etched into every line of his being. "Michelle..." A whisper, very hesitant.

She shushed him almost unthinkingly, with a quick little gesture. She seemed to be captivated by the little dips of shadow and light on the ceiling. I saw her cock her head, listening to the storm. For a moment her lips formed a word, two syllables, and then she pressed them tight, silencing herself.

A rip of lightning outside illuminated the room like a flash, followed by the deep rumble of thunder. Michelle jumped, sitting up and rearing back so sharply that she nearly tumbled over me. But then something else caught her attention and the fear was almost instantly forgotten as she became entranced by the twinkling reflections of all of the little glass shards on the floor, illuminated by the light from the hall. She crouched down, feline-like, her wide green eyes completely fascinated by the little points of light and all other thoughts seemingly chased right out of her head.

Louis spoke her name again, touched her shoulder. She jerked, looking up at him in surprise. "Michelle," he repeated, and then seemed at a loss for what to say. There was no clue of emotion behind those wide eyes, no hatred or fear. Barely any recognition.

She blinked, then looked away rather shakily, then back to Louis. The tip of her tongue flicked out, wet her lips. "Do you realize," she said, exactly as if she had been in the middle of a conversation and was merely continuing it, "that the wind is speaking?"

It was Louis' turn to blink, and then to nod. Michelle nodded as well, as though she had expected nothing else. "He's not happy," she added, still in that relaxed, conversational tone.

"I know," Louis responded quietly, but Michelle had already turned away, completely distracted by the mirror over the dresser.

She climbed to her feet rather shakily, lurching across the distance to lean against the wooden dresser and study her reflected image in the glass. The hall light backlit her, casting shadows over her features. She reached up, touching her cheek. "Oh, kiss that tan goodbye," she whispered, then laughed, a soft little sound. It seemed to startle her and she stopped abruptly. Frowning in puzzlement, she tilted her head and listened intently as she hummed, a tuneless buzz running up and down the scale. I realized she was studying the preternatural timbre of her own voice.

Louis helped me up, though I was rather comfortable right there on the floor. I was certainly tired enough to stay there. Michelle had stopped humming and now she brushed past us to the livingroom, almost vibrating with contained energy. She flung herself down next to the little stereo, her thin fingers flipping through the compact disk cases with blurring speed. Louis went to her, crouched beside her. "Michelle, listen to me..."

"I am listening to you," she cried, wild eyed. "I'm listening to everything! God, talk again, keep talking, I want to hear you. I never knew there were this many sounds. Put something classical on, I have to hear it. Drown out the storm, Louis, put something on. I don't want to hear him."

Louis drew her away, got her to sit on the couch. He assured her he would put something on, anything she wanted. "Paganini," she said. "Or Bach. Doesn't matter, I just want to hear it. Ohh, Louis, keep talking, please. That French accent, so beautiful, I never realized. I'm hearing in wavelengths humans don't, aren't I? Higher or lower? And the colors, they're all so brilliant. What spectrums can you see in? Hasn't anyone ever tested these things?"

Question after question, they poured from her. You could almost see the little Talamasca trained scientific wheels in her head turning. Even David had never tried to dissect our condition quite the way she did. She was using herself as a test subject and studying herself like a mouse under a microscope.

The questions broke off abruptly when Louis inserted the CD, started the strains of Bach rolling through the house. Michelle lay back on the couch, absolutely entranced with the sound. Louis turned it up until it drowned out the fury of the storm outside.

I leaned over the back of the couch, watching Michelle. She was staring up at the ceiling, her hands moving in quick little unconscious gestures, as though she were playing the music on the piano. I wasn't sure she knew I was there until she spoke. "I could write this," she said, calm but rushed sounding, as everything she had said had been. "I can see the notes in my mind, all of them, for all of the instruments. All at once. That's how clearly I'm hearing it. This is incredible, Lestat, absolutely unbelievable.." and then she broke off with a little gasp, a frown creasing her brow. She looked almost puzzled.

"What is it?" I asked.

She took a moment to answer, another little shiver going through her. "Ow," she whispered. "I think. I mean, that hurt."

"You're dying," Louis explained quietly. "Your body is dying. It will hurt, at first."

"Oooo, I remember reading about that and... and..." she licked her lips rapidly, another convulsion gripping her. "And I think I'm going to be sick," she finished in a rush. Louis helped her up, supporting her to the bathroom. She pushed us both out and shut the door.

Louis leaned back against the wall, sighing. I went to him, looped an arm about his waist and rested my cheek against his silky, dark hair. "She doesn't seem to be very upset about it," I said.

"I know," Louis said. "That's what worries me. She was so very set against it, she hated the very idea. And now she's acting as though it were exactly what she wanted."

I didn't have an anger for that so I did the only thing I could do- I ignored it. Lightning cracked outside, the boom of the thunder following so close it could have hit just outside the house. Louis shivered. "He's out there. He's making the storm. For her."

I didn't question how he knew it. At that point I really didn't want to know. I tugged him with me to the couch, sat him down and pulled him against me. He was still tense but he let me hold him. We sat in silence, listening to the Bach and the rumble of the storm.

Michelle emerged from the bath some time later, a bit more subdued. She came over to us, sliding bonelessly to the floor before the couch, her head dropping limply to one side as she regarded us. "Tell me one thing," she requested. "Why did you do it? I mean, you already proved you could force him," she jerked her head towards the window and the storm outside, "to go away. So why do this to me? Was it for yourself? Or for the other spirit?" Louis didn't respond immediately and Michelle's eyes narrowed. "Do you even know why you did it?"

"For you," Louis answered slowly. "And for Julien. To spite Lasher. And yes, for myself. Can you understand?" He regarded her warily, almost with regret. "I can understand if you hate us. But I need you to understand that the thought of you, alive, channeling that spirit, was more frightening to me then the thought of living the life we must lead was to you. Do you see?"

Michelle studied him through cool green eyes for a long time, then slowly nodded. Abruptly, she turned away, twisting around to lay with her back on the floor and her ankles up on the chair opposite. "You know," she said suddenly, "he doesn't sound the same. I mean, I remember him being alot more.. seductive, I guess. And now he's just this tiny little voice in the back of my head, like the whine of a gnat. I'm not even sure I'm really hearing it. Will I stop hearing him? I mean, when I'm completely dead?"

"Jesse doesn't see spirits anymore," I said.

Michelle thought about that for a moment, then smiled. Her teeth were changing, small sharp points on the fangs. "Cool." She twisted her head to look at us. "And we don't have to... to hunt humans, do we? We can live off other things, can't we? Not that I'm hungry, or whatever, but..."

Louis smiled. "Yes, we can live off animals. Rats, dogs... anything."

"Cool," Michelle repeated, rolling the word from her tongue with obvious pleasure. Then she grinned. The expression peeled years from her, made her a teenager laying there in her grubby black clothes and ripped stockings. "I always hated rats. Bitchin'." That word seemed to be funny to her, for she laughed, the peals of sound ringing out. Giddy fledgling, drunk on the world. Like Daniel. That was what she resembled. If she regretted the change or felt any of the dread she had felt as a mortal it wasn't visible.

It was almost two hours later, early in the morning, when David returned. And though I was nearly asleep on the couch, too tired to do more then squint at him rather blearily, the entire night was worth all of the trouble and pain just to see that perfect, priceless shock and outrage on his face when he saw Michelle. He never got a chance to lecture me on my shortcomings and impulsiveness and general damned state. I wasn't the only one who thought it was funny. Michelle drowned out his stunned splutters with her delighted laughter.

The next day was, according to reports, remarkably clear and bright and warm- though, of course, I didn't know anything about it. The evening was mild, the sunset vibrant in the cloudless sky. Lasher had wrung every last bit of rain and fury out of the weather for miles around. If nothing else, I remarked to Louis with a smile, we could thank him for that.

Louis didn't smile back. We were laying together in our room, twilight just falling beyond the draped windows. Louis was still subdued and disturbed by the night before, as I was myself, I suppose; though I refused to let it drag me into a morass of depression as Louis did. Michelle was already up; the stereo had turned on some time ago. She had the player shuffling between disks, first Beethoven, then Guns and Roses, then something from Enigma. The slow, eerily powerful strains of Eastern influenced music that rang through the house now were from her collection of tapes- Dead Can Dance, or some such. The male singer's voice was rough, almost a chant. "The priests and the friars behold me with dread because I still love you, my love, and you're dead..."

There had been a discussion the night before, in the wee hours of the morning before sunrise. Michelle had sobered enough to consider what should lay in her immediate future. "No," she had said decisively when Louis had suggested New Orleans. "No, I don't want to go back there. There's just too much in that city, too many memories. I'd rather not." Seeing his face, she had sighed. "But I don't want to keep you from going back there either. That's your home, you and Lestat. It's not fair to keep you out here, babysitting me."

Other places had been suggested. France, Greece, even Australia. Michelle had considered them and, one by one, dismissed them. "I need somewhere to stay for awhile, don't you see? It's enough to have to get used to without globe hopping while I'm doing it." There had been the slightest trace of fear when she had said that, a little tremble, but she had shaken it off. "I need to be somewhere I can stay, maybe somewhere familiar." A little sigh. "Pity I can't go back to the Talamasca. I mean, to me, that's home."

David had found the solution. "What about my home? Talbot manor? You seemed comfortable enough there. And you could stay there as long as you like. In fact, we all could. At least until you feel alright with staying there alone."

Michelle had agreed instantly and it was decided- we would return to David's home, we would stay there with Michelle, teach her what she needed to know. I had a feeling that Michelle was purposefully trying to forget what type of things she needed to know- the hunt, and all of the other little aspects of vampiric life. Several times I saw her falter, grow disturbed at the mention of such things. So long as she was only studying and exploring all the rest of her new senses she was fine, almost enthusiastic about it. The hunger frightened her. The idea of hunting. I'd almost swear that the mention of blood made her faintly ill. Louis would take her in hand for that, introduce her to the concept of animal blood first. Even then she would probably starve for a bit before overcoming her mortal phobias. But, all in all, she made a fine addition to our ranks.

I hated seeing Louis so depressed. It frequently made me feel as though I should be depressed and subdued, just to keep him company. I pulled him against me, kissed his forehead, smoothed back his hair. "It's over," I told him. "Louis, it's over. You can't regret it now, there's no changing the past. For good or evil, it's over and done with. There's no going back."

"No, there's not," he said slowly, "but Michelle might wish there was. She's caught up in the newness of it right now, but what happens when she has to kill for the first time? When she realizes what this life really means? What then?"

"I think she already knows," I answered seriously. "That's why she resisted so strongly. But now that it has happened- she's a very practical young woman. She knows she can't go back. She's trying to make her peace with her beliefs and accept. Give her time."

He didn't say anything but some of the tenseness drained from his body. I combed back his hair, enjoying the feel of it between my fingers. He rested his head on my chest. I stroked his neck, digging my fingers into the tight muscles of his shoulders. "She'll be fine," I told him. "You'll see."

Louis didn't say anything for a long time. Then, abruptly, he said "What about Lasher?"

"What about him?" I asked. I let my fingers trail down his back, working at the muscles along his spine. "Michelle's beyond his reach. What reason would he have to come back?"

Louis sighed, lifting himself up on his elbows. The expression he turned on me was faintly exasperated. "Well, besides the obvious one of revenge, for which you're not exactly unknown yourself..."

"All right, there's always that," I admitted. "But you beat him back. You and Julien. And if he comes back he'll just get the same thing."

Louis winced. "I don't remember that, Lestat," he murmured. He had admitted that the night before- everything he had said during that brief time when Julien's spirit had overlapped his own was a blur in his memory. I had wanted to ask him about it but he knew less about it then I did.

Louis looked disturbed. "Actually, that's not what worries me," he said.

"Then what is it?"

"Lasher might still be able to draw strength from Michelle."

I laughed. "How? Louis, she's one of us now."

He regarded me seriously. "So am I," he said. "And I could see and hear Lasher when you and David couldn't. Remember?"

I sobered rather abruptly. He had a point. But it was senseless to worry about it. If something happened then it would happen, and we could deal with it then. Destroying Lasher was the only sure way out, and I hadn't figured out how to do that. Yet. I was certainly thinking about it.

"Julien wanted the Dark Trick worked on Michelle to take her out of Lasher's grasp," I told Louis. "We just have to trust that he knew what he was talking about. Louis, you can't sit and worry about it forever. It's just the same as living in fear of him. Put it out of your mind. We'll deal with it when... no, IF he ever comes back. Until then, just let it be. Michelle needs you now."

A slow smile curved Louis' lips, those unearthly green eyes glinting with humor. "Alright. We'll deal with it together. IF we ever need to." He reached down, tracing the line of my lips with a fingertip. "Michelle's entertaining herself quite well right now. But what about you? Do you need me, monsieur de Lioncourt?"

I threaded my fingers through his hair and dragged his head down, crushing our lips together until I felt him melt against me, pliant and loving and passionate in my arms. "Always," I whispered huskily, kissing his face, his neck and shoulders. Scent of blood just beneath that hard, pale skin. The sure knowledge that he would let me break that skin; the drowning rapture of the infinite blood loop as close as his lips on my neck, mine on his. No barriers now. "Always, Louis, and forever. Don't ever doubt that. No matter what, we face it together."

END