That last morning in Rome, before I was to leave for the north, it was decided that my name must be changed.

Amadeo, containing the very word for God, was most unseemly for a Child of Darkness, especially one meant to lead the Paris Coven.

From various choices given me, Allesandra chose the name Armand.

So I became Armand.

PART TWO

The BRIDGE of SIGHS

Chapter Sixteen

I refuse to discuss the past another moment. I don't like it. I don't care about it. How can I tell you about something that doesn't interest me? Is it supposed to interest you?

The problem is that too much has been written about my past already. But what if you haven't read those books? What if you haven't wallowed in The Vampire Lestat's florid descriptions of me and my alleged delusions and errors?

All right, all right. A little bit more, but only to bring me to New York, to the moment when I saw Veronica's Veil, so that you don't have to go back and read his books, so that my book will be enough.

All right. We must continue to cross this Bridge of Sighs.

For three hundred years, I was faithful to the Old Ways of Santino, even after Santino himself had disappeared. Understand, this vampire was by no means dead. He turned up in the modern era, quite healthy, strong, silent and without apology for the credos he had stuffed down my throat in the year 1500 before I was sent north to Paris.

I was mad during those times. Lead the Coven I did, and of its ceremonies, his fanciful dark litanies and bloody baptisms, I became the architect and the master. My physical strength increased with each year, as is the case with all vampires, and drinking greedily from my victims, for it was the only pleasure of which I could dream, I fed my vampiric powers.

Spells I could make around those I killed, and choosing the beautiful, the promising, the most audacious and splendid for my feast, I nevertheless conveyed upon them fantastical visions to blunt their fear or suffering.

I was mad. Denied the places of light, the comfort of entering the smallest church, bent on perfection in the Dark Ways, I wandered as a dusty wraith through the blackest alleyways of Paris, turning her noblest poetry and music into a din by the wax of piety and bigotry by which I stopped my ears, blind to the soaring majesty of her cathedrals or palaces.

The Coven took all my love, with chatter in the dark of how we might best be Satan's saints, or whether a beautiful and bold poisoner should be offered our demonic pact and made one of us.