“Kill me!” he wailed suddenly.

I drew closer and closer.

“You did kill Eric, didn’t you? You were the one who did it!”

Eric. Eric had been with Maharet over twenty years ago when Akasha rose. Eric had been at the council table with us when we’d confronted Akasha and opposed her. I had never known Eric, and had never heard of Eric since. Mael, I knew, had perished in New York, though precisely how I wasn’t certain. He’d gone into the sun on the steps of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, but surely that had not been enough to destroy him. But Eric? I didn’t know.

“It’s finished,” Khayman cried. “I will not continue. You do what you have to do with me. You do it!” He was wailing like one in mourning. “My journey in this world is finished.”

I saw the volcano again.

Pacaya. That was the name of the volcano. The image was coming from her, not from him. He couldn’t even know what she was thinking.

I continued moving through the jungles as slowly and silently as I could. But they were so deep into this agonizing discussion, they took no notice.

At last, I came to the black steel mesh of a great enclosure. Dimly through the dense green foliage I could see both of them now in a cavernous lighted room—Maharet with her arms around Khayman, Khayman with his face in his hands. Maharet was crying with a deep wrenching feminine sound to it, like a young girl crying.

She stood back and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand like a child might do it. Then she looked up.

She’d seen me.

“Leave here, Lestat,” she said in a clear voice that carried over the vast enclosure. “Go. It’s not safe for you here.”

“I wouldn’t harm him,” Khayman said with a groan. “I would never harm him or anyone of my own will.” He was peering through the foliage trying to make me out. I think he was actually addressing me.

“Maharet, I must speak to you,” I said. “I don’t want to leave here without talking to you.”

Silence.

“You know how things are, Maharet. I have to speak to you for myself and for others. Please, let me in.”

“I don’t want any of you here!” she cried out. “Do you understand? Why do you challenge me?”

Suddenly an invisible forced ripped through the enclosure, uprooting palms, shearing off leaves, and then buckling the steel mesh before it, it drove me backwards, bits and pieces of the mesh flying everywhere in silver needles.

It was the Mind Gift.