Finally, when they were in the car moving uptown sluggishly on Madison Avenue, with Thorne in the front seat beside the driver, she’d been able to stop crying altogether as she leaned against Louis’s chest.

“But why did he take Viktor, why, where has he taken him?” She couldn’t stop asking, couldn’t stop.

She could hear Thorne in a low voice talking to Louis.

She felt Louis’s right hand around her forehead, turning her face towards him, and his left hand lightly touching her waist. He bent his head and pressed his ear against her neck. His skin was silky, just like Uncle Lestan’s skin had always been, cold, but like silk.

“Rose, Lestat’s come. He’s at the house. He’s waiting for you. You’re safe. You’re all right.”

She stopped sobbing only when she saw him.

He stood in the front hallway with his arms out, her uncle Lestan, her beloved uncle Lestan, an angel to her, timeless, unchanged, forever beautiful.

“My Rose,” he whispered. “My darling Rose.”

“They took Viktor, Uncle Lestan,” she sobbed. “Someone took him!” The tears ran down her face as she looked up at him. “Uncle Lestan, he’s gone.”

“I know, my darling. And we will get him back. Now come to me,” he said, his powerful arms closing around her. “You are my daughter.”

Chapter 21

Rhoshamandes

The Devil’s Gambit

HE WAS in a rage. But then he’d been in a rage since he’d struck down Maharet, since he’d doubled over with the machete in his hands, confronted with what he’d done, and the ghastly realization that he could not possibly undo it.

And now that he had Viktor in his hands, which the Voice had so furiously urged him to achieve, he was more than ever boiling with rage, against the Voice, against himself, against the wide world in which he’d survived for so long and in which he now found himself trapped and certain of nothing except that he had not wanted this! He personally had never wanted it.

He stood on the broad wooden deck of this house in Montauk on the shore of Long Island—staring out over the cold glassy Atlantic. What in the name of Hell was he to do now? How could he possibly achieve what the Voice insisted he must achieve?