“Not if he requires an act of mercy. Sleep now. They’re coming to give you another shot. I’m not leaving. Here, I’ll bring the chair to the side of the bed so you can hold my hand.”

“What are you doing, Lestat?”

We were in our hotel suite now, much better place than that stinking hospital—I’ll take a good hotel suite over a stinking hospital anytime—and Louis had drunk her blood, poor helpless Louis.

“Claudia, Claudia, listen to me. Come round, Claudia … You’re ill, do you hear me? You must do as I tell you to get well.” I bit through the flesh of my own wrist, and when the blood began to spill, I put it to her lips. “That’s it, dear, more … ”

“Try to drink a little of this.” She slipped her hand behind my neck. Ah, the pain when I lifted my head.

“It tastes so thin. It’s not like blood at all.”

Her lids were heavy and smooth over her downcast eyes. Like a Grecian woman painted by Picasso, so simple she seemed, large-boned and fine and strong. Had anybody ever kissed her nun’s mouth?

“People are dying here, aren’t they? That’s why the corridors are crowded. I hear people crying. It’s an epidemic, isn’t it?”

“It’s a bad time,” she said, her virginal lips barely moving. “But you’ll be all right. I’m here.”

Louis was so angry.

“But why, Lestat?”

Because she was beautiful, because she was dying, because I wanted to see if it would work. Because nobody wanted her and she was there, and I picked her up and held her in my arms. Because it was something I could accomplish, like the little candle flame in the church making another flame and still retaining its own light—my way of creating, my only way, don’t you see? One moment there were two of us, and then we were three.

He was so heartbroken, standing there in his long black cloak, yet he could not stop looking at her, at her polished ivory cheeks, her tiny wrists. Imagine it, a child vampire! One of us.

“I understand.”

Who spoke? I was startled, but it wasn’t Louis, it was David, David standing near with his copy of the Bible. Louis looked up slowly. He didn’t know who David was.

“Are we close to God when we create something out of nothing? When we pretend we are the tiny flame and we make other flames?”

David shook his bead. “A bad mistake.”

“And so is the whole world, then. She’s our daughter—”

“I’m not your daughter. I’m my mama’s daughter.”

“No, dear, not anymore.” I looked up at David. “Well, answer me.”

“Why do you claim such high aims for what you did?” he asked, but he was so compassionate, so gentle. Louis was still horrified, staring at her, at her small white feet. Such seductive little feet.

“And then I decided to do it, I didn’t care what he did with my body if he could put me into this human form for twenty-four hours so that I could see the sunlight, feel what mortals feel, know their weakness and their pain.” I pressed her hand as I spoke.