stay away from Faust, for heaven's sake. You really think angels will come in the end and 
take us away? Well, not me, perhaps, but you?"
  
  "Don't go," he said, and his voice was so soft and imploring that it took my breath 
away.
  
  But I was already going.
  
  I barely heard him call out behind me:
  
  "Lestat, I need you. You're the only friend I have."
  
  How tragic those words! I wanted to say I was sorry, sorry for all of it. But it was 
too late now for that. And besides, I think he knew.
  
  I shot upwards in the cold darkness, driving through the descending snow. All life 
seemed utterly unbearable to me, both in its horror and its splendour. The tiny house 
looked warm down there, its light spilling on the white ground, its chimney giving forth 
that thin coil of blue smoke.
  
  I thought of David again walking alone through Amsterdam, but then I thought of 
Rembrandt's faces. And I saw David's face again in the library fire. He looked like a man 
painted by Rembrandt. He had looked that way ever since I'd known him. And what did we 
look like-frozen forever hi the form we had when the Dark Blood entered our veins? 
Claudia had been for decades that child painted on porcelain. And I was like one of 
Michelangelo's statues, turning white as marble. And just as cold.
  
  I knew I would keep my word.
  
  But you know there is a terrible lie in all this. I didn't really believe I could be 
killed by the sun anymore. Well, I was certainly going to give it a good try.
  
  THREE
  
  THE Gobi Desert. Eons ago, in the saurian age, as men have called it, great lizards 
died in this strange part of the world by the thousands. No one knows why they came here; 
why they perished. Was it a realm of tropical trees and steaming swamps? We don't know. 
All we have now in this spot is the desert and millions upon millions of fossils, telling 
a fragmentary tale of giant reptiles who surely made the earth tremble with each step 
they took.
  
  The Gobi Desert is therefore an immense graveyard and a fitting place for me to look 
the sun in the face. I lay a long time in the sand before the sunrise, collecting my last 
thoughts,
  
  The trick was to rise to the very limit of the atmosphere, into the sunrise, so to 
speak. Then when I lost consciousness I would
  
  tumble down in the terrible heat, and my body would be shattered by this great fall 
upon the desert floor. How could it then dig in beneath the surface, as it might have 
done, by its own evil volition, were I whole and in a land of soft soil?
  
  Besides, if the blast of light was sufficiently strong to burn me up, naked and so high 
above the earth, perhaps I would be dead and gone before my remains ever struck the hard 
bed of sand.
  
  As the old expression goes, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Nothing much could 
have deterred me. Yet I did wonder if the other immortals knew what I meant to do and 
whether or not they were in the least concerned. I certainly sent them no farewell 
messages; I threw out no random images of what I meant to do.
  
  At last the great warmth of dawn crept across the desert. I rose to my knees, stripped 
off my clothing, and began the ascent, my eyes already burning from the faintest bit of 
light.
  
  Higher and higher I went, propelling myself well beyond the place where my body tended 
to stop and begin to float of its own accord. Finally I could not breathe, as the air was 
very thin, and it took a great effort to support myself at this height.
  
  Then the light came. So immense, so hot, so blinding that it seemed a great roaring 
noise as much as a vision filling my sight. I saw yellow and orange fire covering 
everything. I stared right into it, though it felt like scalding water poured into my 
eyes. I think I opened my mouth as if to swallow it, this divine fire! The sun was mine 
suddenly. I was seeing it; I was reaching for it. And then the light was covering me like 
molten lead, paralyzing me and torturing me beyond endurance, and my own cries filled my 
ears. Still I would not look away, still I would not fall!
  
  Thus I defy you, heaven! And there were no words suddenly and no thoughts. I was 
twisting, swimming in it. And as the darkness and the coldness rose up to envelop me-it 
was nothing but the loss of consciousness-I realized that I had begun to fall.
  
  The sound was the sound of the air rushing past me, and it seemed that the voices of 
others were calling to me, and through the horrid mingled roar, I heard distinctly the 
voice of a child.
  
  Then nothing . . .
  
  Was I dreaming?
  
  We were in a small close place, a hospital smelling of sickness and death, and I was 
pointing to the bed, and the child who lay on the pillow, white and small and half dead.
  
  There was a sharp riff of laughter. I smelled an oil lamp- that moment when the wick 
has blown out.
  
  "Lestat," she said. How beautiful her little voice.
  
  I tried to explain about my father's castle, about the snow falling, and my dogs 
waiting there. That's where I had wanted to go. I could hear them suddenly, that deep 
baying bark of the mastiffs, echoing up the snow-covered slopes, and I could almost see