Tonight, as the hours pushed towards dawn—and Lestat had no need to go early to his vault to protect anyone from anything—Fareed stood watching Lestat and Louis playing chess with a marvelous medieval set of exquisitely detailed figures. They were in the largest of the salons off the ballroom, sitting at one of the many round tables scattered all through the castle. Lestat appeared calm, even cheerful, smiling and nodding when he saw Fareed nearby.

A wretched anxiety came over Fareed. If he dies, I can’t bear it, Fareed thought. It will destroy me if he dies.

But rather than reveal this irrational desperation, Fareed turned away and silently retired to his crypt.

As he lay down to sleep on his broad Egyptian bed—a duplicate of his bed in Paris—he reflected on the one line of speculation that had recently given him hope.

Lestat was the third host for Amel; Lestat had developed a full vampiric etheric brain and body before ever taking Amel into his body. So what if Amel hadn’t mutated Lestat to the same extent that Amel had mutated Akasha, the first host? What if Amel was only possessing Lestat, riding as a parasite inside him? An extrication might be possible in this instance that would never have been possible with Akasha.

And then there was the spirit’s own huge desire for release. The spirit would cooperate when Kapetria’s scalpel met the fragile biological brain tissue, and just maybe, maybe it would work.

“It has to work,” Fareed whispered in the darkness. All scientific detachment deserted him. He was weeping, weeping like a child. “It has to work,” he said aloud, “because I can’t live with Lestat dying! I can’t see a future without him. This is more painful than I can bear.”

30

Lestat

THE CALL CAME from Paris. Kapetria wanted me to meet her “out in the open” right in front of Notre Dame at 4:00 a.m. “The sun will be eighteen degrees below the horizon at that time.” In other words very close to sunrise—at the time referred to as the dawn of astronomical twilight. Light in the sky but no visible sun.

“Why should I meet you?” I said.

“You know why.”

“And what will you do if I don’t?”

“Does it have to come to that?”

“Yes, unless you answer my questions.”

“I’m going to do everything in my power to achieve this without your being harmed in any way.”

“But you don’t know that you can achieve it without my being harmed?”

“No. I don’t.”

“And how do you expect me to respond to that?”

“You’re keeping him a prisoner inside you. I want to free him. I want to take him out.”

He was Amel. And Amel was silent. But Amel was listening.