It’s just a given, like my innocent smile and soft, purring French-accented voice and graceful way of sauntering down the street. It comes with the package. But what happened here could have happened to a human being; indeed, it surely has happened to humans, and it will happen to them again.

We have souls, you and I.

We want to know things; we share the same earth, rich and verdant and fraught with perils. We don’t either of us know what it means to die, no matter what we might say to the contrary. It’s a cinch that if we did, I wouldn’t be writing and you wouldn’t be reading this book.

What does matter very much, as we go into this story together, is that I have set for myself the task of being a herb in this world. I maintain myself as morally complex, spiritually tough, and aesthetically relevant a being of blazing insight and impact, a guy with things to say to you.

So if you read this, read it for that reason that Lestat is talking again, that he is frightened, that he is searching desperately for the lesson and for the song and for the raison d’etre, that he wants to understand his own story and he wants you to understand it, and that it is the very best story he has right now to tell. If that’s not enough, read something else.

If it is, then read on. In chains, to my friend and my scribe, I dictated these words.

Come with me. Just listen to me. Don’t leave me alone.

Chapter One

I saw him when he came through the front doors. Tall, solidly built, dark brown hair and eyes, skin still fairly dark because it had been dark when I’d made him a vampire.

Walking a little too fast, but basically passing for a human being. My beloved David.

I was on the stairway. The grand stairway, one might say. It was one of those very opulent old hotels, divinely overdone, full of crimson and gold, and rather pleasant.

My Victim had picked it. I hadn’t. My victim was dining with his daughter. And I’d picked up from my victim’s mind that this was where he always met his daughter in New York, for the simple reason that St. Patrick’s Cathedral was across the street.

David saw me at once a slouching, blond, long-haired youth, bronze face and hands, the usual deep violet sunglasses over my eyes, hair presentably combed for once, body tricked out in a dark-blue, doubled-breasted Brooks Brothers suit.

I saw him smile before he could stop himself. He knew my vanity, and he probably knew that in the early nineties of the twentieth century, Italian fashion had flooded the market with so much shapeless, hangy, bulky, formless attire that one of the most erotic and flattering garments a man could choose was the well-tailored navy-blue Brooks Brothers suit.

Besides, a mop of flowing hair and expert tailoring are always a potent combination.