fragments of memory were slipping away from me, flying away from me, so fast that I 
couldn't catch any one thought or finished proposition or suggestion.
  
  "All I could remember with any certainty is what I just told you. I stood there. I 
looked at the flowers. Nobody in the lobby noticed me.  I pretended everything was 
normal. But I kept trying to remember, kept chasing these fragments, beset by bits and 
pieces of talk, or threat or description, and I kept seeing very clearly this truly ugly 
dark Being before me, exactly the sort of demon you'd create if you wanted to drive 
someone right out of his reason. I kept seeing this face and...."
  
  "Yes?"
  
  "...I've seen him twice again."
  
  , I realized I was mopping my forehead with the little napkin the waiter had given me. 
He'd come again. David placed an order. Then he leant close to me.
  
  "You think you've seen the Devil."
  
  "There's not much else that could frighten me, David," I said.  "We both know that. 
There isn't a vampire in existence who could really frighten me. Not the very oldest, not 
the wisest, not the cruelist. Not even Maharet. And what do I know of the supernatural 
other than us? The elementals, the poltergeists, the little addlebrained spirits, we all 
know and see ... the things you called up with Candomble  witchcraft."
  
  "Yes," he said.
  
  "This was The Man Himself, David."
  
  He smiled, but it was by no means unkind or unsympathetic. "For you, Lestat," he teased 
softly, seductively, "for you, it would have to be the Devil Himself."
  
  We both laughed. Though I think it was what writers call a mirthless laugh. I went on.
  
  "The second time it was in New Orleans. I was near home, our flat in the Rue Royale. 
Just walking. And I started to hear those steps behind me, like something deliberately 
following me and letting me know it. Damn it, I've done this to mortals myself and it's 
so vicious.  God! Why was I ever created! And then the third time, the Thing was even 
closer. Same scenario. Huge, towering over me. Wings, David. Either it has wings or I in 
my fear am endowing it with wings.  It is a Winged Being, and it is hideous, and this 
last time, I kept hold of the image long enough to run from it, to flee, David, like a 
coward.  And then I woke up, as I always do, in some familiar place, where I started 
actually, and everything's just the way it was. Nobody has a hair out of place."
  
  "And it doesn't talk to you when it appears like this?"
  
  "No, not at all. It's trying to drive me crazy. It's trying to ... to make me do 
something, perhaps. Remember what you said, David, that you didn't know why God and the 
Devil had let you see them."
  
  "Hasn't it occurred to you that it is connected with this victim you're tracking? That 
perhaps something or someone does not want you to kill this man?"
  
  "That's absurd, David. Think of the suffering in the world tonight. Think of those 
dying in Eastern Europe, think of the wars in the Holy Land, think of what's happening in 
this very city. You think God or the Devil gives a damn about one man? And our kind, our 
kind preying for centuries on the weak and the attractive and the unlucky. When has the 
Devil ever interfered with Louis, or Armand, or Marius, or any of us? Oh, would that it 
were so easy to summon his august presence and know once and for all!"
  
  "Do you want to know?" he asked earnestly.
  
  I waited, thought about it. Shook my head. "Could be something explainable. I detest 
being afraid of it! Maybe this is madness. Maybe that's what Hell is. You go mad. And all 
your demons come and get you just as fast as you can think them up."
  
  "Lestat, it is evil, you are saying that?"
  
  I started to answer and then stopped. Evil.
  
  "You said it was hideous; you described intolerable noise, and a light. Was it evil? 
Did you feel evil?"
  
  "Well, actually, no. I didn't. I felt the same thing I feel when I hear those bits of 
conversation, some sort of sincerity, I suppose is the word for it, sincerity and 
purpose, and I'll tell you something, David  about this Being, this Being who's stalking 
me-he has a sleepless mind in his heart and an insatiable personality."
  
  "What?"
  
  "A sleepless mind in his heart," I insisted, "and an insatiable personality," I had 
blurted out. But I knew it was a quote. I was quoting it from something, but what I had 
no idea, some bit of poetry?
  
  "What do you mean?" he asked patiently.
  
  "I don't know. I don't even know why I said it. I don't even know why those words came 
into my mind. But it's true. He does have a sleepless mind in His heart, and He has an 
insatiable personality.  He's not mortal. He's not human!"
  
  " 'A sleepless mind in his heart,' " David quoted the words. 
  
  " 'Insatiable personality.'"
  
  "Yes. That's The Man, all right, the Being, the male Thing. No, wait, stop, I don't 
know if it's male; I mean ...why, I don't know what gender it is ... it's not distinctly 
female, let's put it that way, and not being distinctly female, it seems therefore ... to 
be male."
  
  "I understand."