“Yes, I could have been a saint, you are right, but I would have had to found a religious order or lead an army into battle; I would have had to work miracles of such scope that the whole world would have been brought to its knees. I am one who must dare even if I’m wrong—completely wrong. Gretchen, God gave me an individual soul and I cannot bury it.”

I was amazed to see that she was still smiling at me, softly and unquestioningly, and that her face was full of calm wonder.

“Better to reign in hell,” she asked carefully, “than to serve in heaven?”

“Oh, no. I would make heaven on earth if I could. But I must raise my voice; I must shine; and I must reach for the very ecstasy that you’ve denied—the very intensity from which you fled! That to me is transcendence! When I made Claudia, blundering error that it was—yes, it was transcendence. When I made Gabrielle, wicked as it seemed, yes, it was transcendence. It was a single, powerful, and horrifying act, which wrung from me all my unique power and daring. They shall not die, I said, yes, perhaps the very words you use to the village children.

“But it was to bring them into my unnatural world that I uttered these words. The goal was not merely to save, but to make of them what I was—a unique and terrible being. It was to confer upon them the very individuality I cherished. We shall live, even in this state called living death, we shall love, we shall feel, we shall defy those who would judge us and destroy us. That was my transcendence. And self-sacrifice and redemption had no part in it.”

Oh, how frustrating it was that I could not communicate it to her, I could not make her believe it in literal terms. “Don’t you see, I survived all that has happened to me because I am who I am. My strength, my will, my refusal to give up—those are the only components of my heart and soul which I can truly identify. This ego, if you wish to call it that, is my strength. I am the Vampire Lestat, and nothing … not even this mortal body … is going to defeat me.”

I was amazed to see her nod, to see her totally accepting expression.

“And if you came with me,” she said gently, “the Vampire Lestat would perish—wouldn’t he?—in his own redemption.”

“Yes, he would. He would die slowly and horribly among the small and thankless tasks, caring for the never-ending hordes of the nameless, the faceless, the eternally needy.”

I felt so sad suddenly that I couldn’t continue. I was tired in an awful mortal way, the mind having worked its chemistry upon this body. I thought of my dream and of my speech to Claudia, and now I had told it again to Gretchen, and I knew myself as never before.

I drew up my knees and rested my arms on them, and I put my forehead on my arms. “I can’t do it,” I said under my breath. “I can’t bury myself alive in such a life as you have. And I don’t want to, that’s the awful part. I don’t want to do it! I don’t believe it would save my soul. I don’t believe it would matter.”