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Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. ALSO BY ANNE RICE
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. A Brief History of the Vampires
  8. Blood Argot
  9. Proem
  10. Part I
  11. 1
  12. 2
  13. 3
  14. 4
  15. 5
  16. 6
  17. 7
  18. 8
  19. 9
  20. 10
  21. 11
  22. 12
  23. 13
  24. 14
  25. 15
  26. 16
  27. 17
  28. 18
  29. Part II
  30. 19
  31. 20
  32. 21
  33. 22
  34. 23
  35. 24
  36. Part III
  37. 25
  38. 26
  39. 27
  40. 28
  41. 29
  42. 30
  43. 31
  44. 32
  45. 33
  46. Appendix 1
  47. Appendix 2
  48. What’s next onyour reading list?

The boat rocked him like a child in a cradle. Or so he imagined, because he had never been a child. Just like a child in a cradle, riding the whale path! Derek drifted. Was Kapetria on her way this very minute to meet them in Derry?

13

Lestat

THE ENTIRE WORLD of the Undead was in the Château or so it seemed, all the public rooms filled with blood drinkers talking in whispers to one another and turning to bow to me or salute me in some subtle way as Louis and I appeared. Every beeswax candle in the old castle was lighted; every electric sconce or chandelier was aglow. I could hear the orchestra playing in the ballroom.

Rose and Viktor had returned and came at once to greet me as I entered the main hall. I was relieved to see they were here. Avicus also came to embrace me, and so did Zenobia, his eternal companion. They were sorry for the blunder of the young ones in California.

“They’ve convened a Council of the Elders only,” said Thorne, pressing me to move through the crowd. “They don’t want the younger ones at the table. And they are waiting for you.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”

But in every doorway stood some curious friend or stranger glancing to me expectantly as I made the march through one vast salon after another to the north tower and its great curving stairs. Ah, the splendor of it in this decidedly feudal moment when all the lesser lords of the world had come to seek shelter under the roof of the great lord who would defend them all against the invaders as long as these great walls would hold.

I was painfully thirsting. Innocent blood. I kept thinking about it, and I blamed Amel for it, but Amel might not have been behind it after all. But there was no putting off the meeting.

Amel had started murmuring to me in a strange language as soon as I opened my eyes. At first I’d tried to penetrate it and translate it, but that proved impossible. But the sound of it was like the sound of Sanskrit which I had not heard spoken very much in my life at all. Well, it wasn’t Sanskrit, I knew that because I can understand Sanskrit.

Whatever the language, it became clear that Amel was repeating the same bits and pieces of material over and over again. A song? A poem? A speech?

Within no time, the telepathic intelligence of the world around me came piercing through to let me know that messages left on Benji’s radio broadcast provided the songs that Amel was singing, messages from the non-humans, and no one had achieved a translation. For the moment the radio phone line was still open, because no one had made the decision to shut it down. The non-humans were using our greatest mode of communication to communicate amongst themselves.