“It’s gorgeous inside,” said Killer, “like a palace, and they leave all those windows open on nights like this, you know, and they’ll see you long before you ever see them. They could be anywhere up in those high windows looking out long before you even get close. The mansion’s got a name, Trinity Gate. And a lot of blood drinkers can tell you, it’s the gate of death to us if we go there. And remember, my friend, it’s Armand who’s the killer. Back years ago, when Lestat was down and out in New Orleans—after he’d met Memnoch the Devil—it was Armand who kept the trash away from him. Lestat was sleeping kind of in this chapel in this old convent.…”

“I remember from the books,” said Antoine.

“Yeah, well, it was Armand who cleared the town. Antoine, please don’t go there. He’ll blast you right off the face of the Earth.”

“I have to go,” said Antoine. How could he ever explain to this simple survivor that existence was unbearable to him as it was? Even this blood drinker’s company had not been enough to fill the gnawing emptiness inside him.

They embraced before parting. Killer repeated that he was headed out to California. If the massacres were moving west, well, he’d move west too. He’d heard tell of a great vampire physician who lived in Southern California, an immortal named Fareed, who actually studied the Dark Blood under microscopes and sometimes sheltered roamers like Killer, if they would donate some tissue and some blood for experiments.

Fareed had been made with ancient blood by a vampire named Seth, who was almost as old as the Mother. And nobody could hurt Seth or Fareed. Well, Killer was going to look for that doctor in California because he figured that was his only hope. He begged Antoine to change his mind and come with him. But Antoine could not.

Antoine wept afterwards. Alone again. And as he lay down to sleep that morning, he heard the voices wailing, powerful ones crying out, conveying the word. The Burning was annihilating the vampires of India. A great sense of doom filled Antoine. When he thought of all the years he’d roamed and slept in the earth he felt he had wasted the gift Lestat gave him. Waste. He had never thought of it as precious. It had been only a new kind of suffering.

But that’s not what it was for Benji Mahmoud. “We are a tribe and we should think like one,” Benji said often. “Why should Hell have dominion over us?”

Antoine was bound and determined to continue. He had a plan. He wouldn’t try to speak to these powerful Manhattan vampires. He would let his music speak for him. Hadn’t he done that all his long life?