In the taxi, on the way to his hotel, he almost lost consciousness. He was physically sick. However well the restorative properties of his body functioned they could not restore the equilibrium of his soul. He had almost killed that thing, and Amel had spoken to him, his Amel! His Amel!

Like a stunned and drunken creature he blundered into his room, stripped off his bloodstained clothes, and headed for the steady blast of the shower.

Pray they had no human protectors, no human task force that could overtake him here or stop him from escaping New York. Ah, but they were such clever beings! Clever enough to track his credit cards, clever enough to find him here or anywhere else he went.

At the airport, the first flight he was able to confirm would have released him at London’s Heathrow Airport after dark. Impossible. He couldn’t chance it. They knew where he lived. He had to throw them off his trail. In his desperation, he had to make something resembling a plan. For surely if the wounded Eleni had not been restored to herself by nightfall, they’d be after him with two murders charged to his account.

Where could he go? What could he do?

“Amel,” he whispered as if he were praying to a god for help, a god who had no earthly reason to help him except that the god might love him as he, alone in the whole world, loved the god. “I would never have harmed you. You know this. You remember the vow we took, all of us, we, the People of the Purpose.”

Slowly, he was able to collect his thoughts.

“Los Angeles,” he said. “Earliest through flight.”

For five solid hours as the plane flew west, he listened to Benji Mahmoud’s archived broadcasts on his iPhone, examining all that these creatures revealed of themselves in a new light. But at the same time, he was thinking, dozing, and remembering, remembering more than ever before. It seemed at times it was all coming back to him, all of those splendid months, but then he would lose the thread, and every time he tried to sleep he would see the city again sinking under the waves.

He’d wake gasping with the passengers and the steward asking after him, if he needed anything, if there was anything they could do.

It was early afternoon when he checked into the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, using cash and requesting an alias be observed by the staff. They thought him an actor and a performer. No problem, once they’d verified his passport.

After leaving a lengthy message for his solicitor in London, he at last lay down to sleep in a clean fresh bed. He had a few hours until sunset, and then he might have to start running again.

8

Lestat

CHÂTEAU DE LIONCOURT