rose from the throne. The violin fell from Lestat's hands as he saw her; like a dancer, 
she wrapped her arms around him, drew him to her, bent to take the blood from him, while 
pressing his teeth to her own throat.
  
  It was rather better than he had ever imagined-such clever craft. Now the figure of 
Enkil awakened, rising and walking like a mechanical doll. Forward he came to take back 
his Queen. Lestat was thrown down on the floor of the shrine. And there the film ended. 
The rescue by Marius was not part of it.
  
  "Ah, so I do not become a television celebrity," he whispered with a faint smile. He 
went to the entrance of the darkened store.
  
  The young woman was waiting to let him in. She had the black plastic video cassette in 
her hand.
  
  "All twelve of them,'* she said. Fine dark skin and large drowsy brown eyes. The band 
of silver around her wrist caught the light. He found it enticing. She took the money 
gratefully, without counting it. "They've been playing them on a dozen channels. I caught 
them all over, actually. Finished it yesterday afternoon."
  
  "You've served me well," he answered. "I thank you." He produced another thick fold of 
bills.
  
  "No big thing," she said. She didn't want to take the extra money.
  
  You will.
  
  She took it with a shrug and put it in her pocket.
  
  No big thing. He loved these eloquent modern expressions. He loved the sudden shift of 
her luscious breasts as she'd shrugged, and the lithe twist of her hips beneath the 
coarse denim clothes that made her seem all the more smooth and fragile. An incandescent 
flower. As she opened the door for him, he touched the soft nest of her brown hair. Quite 
unthinkable to feed upon one who has served you; one so innocent. He would not do this! 
Yet he turned her around, his gloved fingers slipping up through her hair to cradle her 
head:
  
  "The smallest kiss, my precious one."
  
  Her eyes closed; his teeth pierced the artery instantly and his tongue lapped at the 
blood. Only a taste. A tiny flash of heat that burnt itself out in his heart within a 
second. Then he drew back, his lips resting against her frail throat. He could feel her 
pulse. The craving for the full draught was almost more than he could bear. Sin and 
atonement. He let her go. He smoothed her soft, springy curls, as he looked into her 
misted eyes.
  
  Do not remember.
  
  "Good-bye now," she said, smiling.
  
  He stood motionless on the deserted sidewalk. And the thirst, ignored and sullen, 
gradually died back. He looked at the cardboard sheath of the video cassette.
  
  "A dozen channels," she had said. "I caught them all over, actually." Now if that was 
so, his charges had already seen Lestat, inevitably, on the large screen positioned 
before them in the shrine. Long ago, he'd set the satellite dish on the slope above the 
roof to bring them broadcasts from all the world. A tiny computer device changed the 
channel each hour. For years, they'd stared expressionless as the images and colors 
shifted before their lifeless eyes. Had there been the slightest flicker when they heard 
Lestat's voice, or saw their very own image? Or heard their own names sung as if in a 
hymn?
  
  Well, he would soon find out. He would play the video cassette for them. He would study 
their frozen, gleaming faces for something-anything-besides the mere reflection of the 
light.
  
  "Ah, Marius, you never despair, do you? You are no better than Lestat, with your 
foolish dreams."
  
  It was midnight before he reached home.
  
  He shut the steel door against the driving snow, and, standing still for a moment, let 
the heated air surround him. The blizzard through which he'd passed had lacerated his 
face and his ears, even his gloved fingers. The warmth felt so good.
  
  In the quiet, he listened for the familiar sound of the giant generators, and the faint 
electronic pulse of the television set within the shrine many hundreds of feet beneath 
him. Could that be Lestat singing? Yes. Undoubtedly, the last mournful words of some 
other song.
  
  Slowly he peeled off his gloves. He removed his hat and ran his hand through his hair. 
He studied the large entrance hall and the adjacent drawing room for the slightest 
evidence that anyone else had been here.
  
  Of course that was almost an impossibility. He was miles from the nearest outpost of 
the modern world, in a great frozen snow-covered waste. But out of force of habit, he 
always observed everything closely. There were some who could breach this fortress, if 
only they knew where it was.
  
  All was well. He stood before the giant aquarium, the great room-sized tank which 
abutted the south wall. So carefully he had constructed this thing, of the heaviest glass 
and the finest equipment. He watched the schools of multicolored fishes dance past him, 
then alter their direction instantly and totally in the artificial gloom. The giant sea 
kelp swayed from one side to another, a forest caught in a hypnotic rhythm as the gentle 
pressure of the aerator drove it this way and that. It never failed to captivate him, to 
lock him suddenly to its spectacular monotony. The round black eyes of the fish sent a 
tremor through him; the high slender trees of kelp with their tapering yellow leaves 
thrilled him vaguely; but it was the movement, the constant movement that was the crux.
  
  Finally he turned away from it, glancing back once into that pure, unconscious, and