He really could not understand his daughter. It seemed he'd been a thief ever since he 
was a child. New Orleans. The boardinghouse, the curious mixture of poverty and elegance 
and his mother drunk most of the time. The old captain who ran the antique shop. All this 
was going through his mind. Old Captain had had the front rooms of the house, and he, my 
Victim, had brought the breakfast tray each morning to Old Captain, before going on to 
school. Boardinghouse, service, elegant oldsters, St. Charles Avenue. The time when the 
men sat on the galleries in the evening and the old ladies did, too, with their hats. 
Daylight times I'd never know again.
  
  Such reverie. No, Dora wouldn't like this. And he wasn't so sure he did either, 
suddenly. He had standards which were often difficult to explain to people. He began some 
defense as though talking to the dealer who'd brought this. "It's beautiful, yes, but 
it's too Baroque! It lacks that element of distortion that I treasure."
  
  I smiled. I loved this guy's mind. And the smell of the blood, well.
  
  I took a deliberate breath of it, and let it turn me into a total predator.  Go slowly, 
Lestat. You've waited for months. Don't rush it. And he's such a monster himself. He'd 
shot people in the head, killed them with knives. Once in a small grocery he had shot 
both his enemy and the proprietor's wife with utter indifference. Woman in the way. And 
he had coolly walked out. Those were early New York days, before Miami, before South 
America. But he remembered that murder, and that's why I knew about it.
  
  He thought a lot about those various deaths. That's why I thought about them.
  
  He was studying the hoofed feet of this thing, this angel, devil, demon. I realized its 
wings reached the ceiling. I could feel that shiver again if I let myself. But again, I 
was on firm ground, and there was nothing from any other realm in this place.
  
  He slipped off his coat now, and stood in shirtsleeves. That was too much. I could see 
the flesh of his neck, of course, as he opened his collar. I could see that particularly 
beautiful place right below his ear, that special measure between the back of the neck of 
a human and the lobe of his ear, which has so much to do with male beauty.
  
  Hell, I had not invented the significance of necks. Everyone knew what those 
proportions meant. He was all over pleasing to me, but it was the mind, really. To hell 
with his Asian beauty and all that, even his vanity which made him glow for fifty feet in 
all directions. It was the mind, the mind that was locked onto the statue, and had for 
one merciful moment let thoughts of Dora go.
  
  He reached for another one of the little halogen spots and clamped his hand over the 
hot metal and directed it hill on the demon's wing, the wing I could best see, and I too 
saw the perfection he was thinking about, the Baroque love of detail; no. He did not 
collect this sort of thing. His taste was for the grotesque, and this thing was only 
grotesque by accident. God, it was hideous. It had a ferocious mane of hair, and a scowl 
on its face that could have been designed by William Blake, and huge rounded eyes that 
fixed on him in seeming hatred.
  
  "Blake, yes!" he said suddenly. He turned around. "Blake. The damned thing looks like 
one of those drawings by Blake."
  
  I realized he was staring at me. I had projected the thought, carelessly, yes, 
obviously with purpose. I felt a shock of connection. He saw me. He saw the glasses 
perhaps, and the light, or maybe my hair.
  
  Very slowly I stepped out, with my arms at my sides. I wanted nothing so vulgar as his 
reaching for his gun. But he hadn't reached for it. He merely looked at me, blinded 
perhaps by the bright little lights so near to him. The halogen beam threw the shadow of 
the angel's wing on the ceiling. I came closer.
  
  He said absolutely nothing. He was afraid. Or rather, let me say, he was alarmed. He 
was more than alarmed. He felt this might very well be his last confrontation. Someone 
had gotten by him totally!  And it was too late to be reaching for guns, or doing 
anything so literal, and yet he wasn't actually in fear of me.
  
  Damned if he didn't know I wasn't human.
  
  I came swiftly towards him, and took his face in both my hands.  He went into a sweat 
and tremble, naturally, yet he reached up and pulled the glasses off my eyes and they 
fell on the floor.
  
  "Oh, it's gorgeous, finally," I whispered, "to be so very close to you!"
  
  He couldn't form words. No mortal in my grip like this could have been expected to 
utter anything but prayers, and he had no prayers! He stared right into my eyes, and then 
very slowly took my measure, not daring to move, his face still fixed in both my cold, 
cold hands, and he knew. Not human.
  
  It was the strangest reaction! Of course I'd confronted recognition before, in lands 
the world over; but prayer, madness, some desperate atavistic response, something always 
accompanied it. Even in old Europe where they believed in the nosferatu, they'd scream 
out a prayer before I sank my teeth.
  
  But this, what was this, his staring at me, this comical criminal courage!
  
  "Going to die like you lived?" I whispered.
  
  One thought galvanized him. Dora. He went into a violent struggle, grabbing at my 
hands, realizing they felt like stone, and then convulsing, as he tried to pull himself 
loose, held mercilessly by the face. He hissed at me.
  
  Some inexplicable mercy came over me. Don't torture him like this. He knows too much. 
Understands too much. God, you've had months of watching him, you don't have to stretch 
this out. On the other hand, when will you find another kill like this one!
  
  Well, hunger overcame judgment. I pressed my forehead against his neck first, shifting 
my hand to the back of his head, let him feel my hair, heard him draw in his breath, and 
then I drank.