“I won’t hurt him,” Benedict said. “He’s fine. I never wanted to hurt him. He’s unharmed. He’s walking inland towards the road. I didn’t hurt him at all.”

“I want to go with you,” said Jesse, rising from her chair. David was right with her. “If anyone can calm Mekare, I can. Otherwise you might not be able to take her to safety. Let me come.”

“Let us both come,” said David.

“Of course, go,” I said. “All of you, go.”

Seth nodded, and they all left together.

The Voice was cursing me in some ancient language, promising to destroy me, promising me the most terrible reckoning, and I sat there at the end of the table, one knee up, the other leg dangling over the edge, the ax still in my right hand, and contemplated whether or not I wanted to go on chopping up this creature—well, just a little so that Benedict might hear him scream. I couldn’t quite make up my mind.

And I could not stop thinking, This is the monster who murdered Maharet, the great Maharet who had never done him a particle of harm. This is the monster who attacked her as brutally as I am attacking him now.

I could hear Sybelle crying. I could hear a female voice, I think Bianca’s voice, trying to quiet her. But she couldn’t stop crying.

All the fight had gone out of Rhoshamandes. Sevraine was staring at him, fixedly, and so was Gregory—both clearly holding him there through their power. But I wondered if it was even necessary now.

He was defeated, staring dully at the table before him, but he was no longer trembling, no longer sweating, and then that expression came over him again, that same look of cavalier dismissal, almost a facial shrug, and he seemed to collapse mentally into himself.

“This is not the finish,” the Voice snarled at me. “This is only the beginning. I will drive you out of your mind before this is finished. You will beg me to leave you alone, on your knees. You think this is finished? Never.”

I turned him off. Just like that. Turned him off. But it didn’t last. He blasted through within a split second. It was as they had said. He was stronger. “I will make your existence miserable from now on and forever until I accomplish my purpose and then I will do to you all that you have done to him, and to me.”

Allesandra walked slowly towards us and round in back of Rhoshamandes. She stood behind Rhoshamandes’s chair and put her hands very lightly on his shoulders.

“Don’t hurt him anymore, please,” she said, appealing to me. “You have cut the Gordian knot, Lestat. Splendid. It is all splendid. But the Voice tricked him. The Voice duped him, as it duped me.”