“Yes, that’s what I’d do. That’s what I’ve wanted to do all along.” His eyes were shot with blood and blazing. A spectacle to see his angelic face so contorted with rage and grief. “I’d blast every one of them off this earth because they are a threat to us! What are we becoming? We are vampires. And they are our enemy. Destroy them. You, I, Cyril, and Thorne—we can do it all ourselves.”

“Can’t do it,” I whispered.

“Lestat!” He moved towards me with his hands out, then he stepped back and looked up to the rooftop. Cyril and Thorne appeared almost instantly at his side. “You cannot let this happen!” he said to them.

“He’s the captain of the damned ship,” said Cyril.

“I do what the Prince tells me to do,” said Thorne with a long agonized sigh.

“I haven’t made up my mind,” I said. “There’s one more vote here right now to be taken into consideration, and I’m not hearing that vote.”

Just the pulse on the back of my neck.

I thought of that little fledging Amber, hiding in her cellar only moments from here, sobbing and crying and waiting to be executed. I thought of the Court.

Last night the most extraordinary thing had happened. Marius had come in, and danced with Bianca. He’d worn a simple modern suit and tie, as they say, and she had been in a gown of black sequins and tiny twinkling jewels. They had danced for hours, no matter what the orchestra played. Marius, the one who would be King tomorrow night if I were gone by then, gone Heaven only knows where?

Was Memnoch waiting for me in that hideous purgatorial school of his? I couldn’t help but wonder whether my unanchored soul would shoot up to that geographical part of the astral plane.

“All right,” I said. “Listen to me once again. This is my life! Mine alone to risk if I choose! And I don’t want to go out with the blood of those Replimoids on my hands! I have enough blood on my hands, don’t I? I’m telling you now that I am the Prince and I am ordering you to let me go to meet this woman alone.”

I went upwards, rising hundreds of feet above the tiny crestfallen gathering.

And within seconds I was looking down at the pavement in front of Notre Dame—where Kapetria stood, a tiny figure in a trench coat and pants stranded in the empty square, apparently alone. But she wasn’t alone.