magazines?"
  
  "Do you recognize the girl? Nobody knows they're connected." "No, I don't recognize 
her, but should I? She's so pretty, and so sweet. You're not going to feed on her, are 
you?"
  
  I laughed at his gentlemanly outrage at such a suggestion. I wondered  if  David asked 
permission before sucking the blood of his victims, or at least insisted that both 
parties be properly introduced. I had no idea what his killing habits were, or how often 
he fed. I'd made him plenty strong. That meant it didn't have to be every night.  He was 
blessed in that.
  
  "The girl sings for Jesus on a television station," I said. "Her church will someday 
have its headquarters in an old, old convent building in New Orleans. Right now she lives 
there alone, and tapes her programs out of a studio in the French Quarter. I think her 
show goes through some ecumenical cable channel out of Alabama." "You're in love with 
her."
  
  "Not at all, just very eager to kill her father. Her television appeal is peculiar. She 
talks theology with gripping common sense, you know, the kind of televangelist that just 
might make it all work.  Don't we all fear that someone like that will come along? She 
dances like a nymph or a temple virgin, I suppose I should say, sings like a seraph, 
invites the entire studio audience to join with her. Theology and ecstasy, perfectly 
blended. And all the requisite good works are recommended."
  
  "I see," he said. "And this makes it more exciting for you, to feast on the father? By 
the way, the father is hardly an unobtrusive man. Neither seem disguised. Are you sure no 
one knows they're connected?"
  
  The elevator door had opened. My Victim and his daughter were rising floor after floor 
into the sky.
  
  "He slips in and out of here when he wants. He's got bodyguards galore. She meets him 
on her own. I think they set it up by cellular phone. He's a computer cocaine giant, and 
she's one of his best-protected secret operations. His men are all over the lobby. If 
there'd been anyone nosing around, she would have left the restaurant alone first. But 
he's a wizard at things like that. There'll be warrants out for him in five states and 
he'll show up ringside for a heavyweight match in Atlantic City, right in front of the 
cameras. They'll never catch him. I'll catch him, the vampire who's just waiting to kill 
him. And isn't he beautiful?"
  
  "Now, let me get this clear," David said. "You're being stalked by something, and it's 
got nothing to do with this victim, this, er, drug dealer, or whatever, or this 
televangelist girl. But something is  following you, something frightening you, but not 
enough to make you Stop tracking this dark-skinned man who just got into the elevator?"
  
  I nodded, but then I caught myself in a little doubt. No, there Couldn't be any 
connection.
  
  Besides, this thing that had me rattled to the bone had started before I saw the 
Victim. It had "happened" first in Rio, the stalker, not long after I'd left Louis and 
David and gone back to Rio to hunt.
  
  I hadn't picked up this Victim until he'd walked across my path in own city of New 
Orleans. He'd come down there on a whim to Dora for twenty minutes; they'd met in a 
little French Quarter and I had been walking past and seen him, sparkling like a fire, 
her white face and large compassionate eyes, and wham! It was hunger.
  
  "No, it's got nothing to do with him," I said. "What's stalking me started months 
before. He doesn't know I'm following him. I didn't catch on right away myself that I was 
being followed by this thing, this.. . ."
  
  "This what?"
  
  "Watching him and his daughter, it's like my miniseries, you know. He's so intricately 
evil."
  
  "So you said, and what is stalking you? Is this a thing or a person or ...?"
  
  "I'll get to that. This Victim, he has killed so many people. Drugs.  Such people 
wallow in numbers. Kilos, kills, coded accounts. And the girl, the girl of course turned 
out not to be some dim-witted little miracle worker telling diabetics she can cure them 
with the laying on of hands."
  
  "Lestat, your mind's wandering. What's the matter with you?  Why are you afraid? And 
why don't you kill this victim and get that part over?"
  
  "You want to go back to Jesse and Maharet, don't you?" I asked suddenly, a feeling of 
hopelessness descending on me. "You want to study for the next hundred years, among all 
those tablets and scrolls, and look into Maharet's aching blue eyes, and hear her voice, 
I know you do. Does she still always choose blue eyes?"
  
  Maharet had been blind eyes torn out when she was made a vampire queen. She took eyes 
from her victims and wore them -until they could see no more, no matter how the vampiric 
blood tried to preserve them. That was her shocking feature the marble queen with the 
bleeding eyes. Why had she never wrung the neck of some vampire fledgling and stolen his 
or her eyes? It had never occurred to me before. Loyalty to our own kind? Maybe it 
wouldn't work. But she had her scruples, and they were as hard as she was. A woman that 
old remembers when there was no Moses and no Hammurabi's Code.  When only the Pharaoh got 
to walk through the Valley of Death....  "Lestat," David said. "Pay attention. You must 
tell me what you are talking about. I've never heard you admit so readily that you were 
afraid. You did say afraid. Forget about me for the moment. Forget that victim and the 
girl. What's up, my friend? Who's after you?" "I want to ask you some more questions 
first."
  
  "No. Just tell me what's happened. You're in danger, aren't you?  Or you think you are. 
You sent out the call for me to come to you here. It was an unabashed plea."
  
  "Are those the words Armand used, 'unabashed plea'? I hate Armand."