drinkers who thrived in the very heart of Paris in the infamous Theatre of the Vampires. 
I'd broken the rules when I made a blood drinker of a child so small, and for that reason 
alone, the Parisian monsters might have put an end to her. But she too had broken their 
rules in trying to destroy her maker, and that you might say was their logical reason for 
shutting her out into the bright light of day which burnt her to ashes.
  
  It's a hell of a way to execute someone, as far as I'm concerned, because those who 
lock you out must quickly retire to their coffins and are not even there to witness the 
mighty sun carrying out their grim sentence. But that's what they did to this exquisite 
and delicate creature that I had fashioned with my vampiric blood from a ragged, dirty 
waif in a ramshackle Spanish colony in the New World-to be my friend, my pupil, my love, 
my muse, my fellow hunter. And yes, my daughter.
  
  If you read Interview with the Vampire, then you know all about this. It's Louis's 
version of our time together. Louis tells of his love for this our child, and of his 
vengeance against those who destroyed her.
  
  If you read my autobiographical books, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, 
you know all about me, also. You know our history, for what it's worth-and history is 
never worth too much-and how we came into being thousands of years ago and that we 
propagate by carefully giving the Dark Blood to mortals when we wish to take them along 
the Devil's Road with us.
  
  But you don't have to read those works to understand this one. And you won't find here 
the cast of thousands that crowded The Queen of the Damned, either. Western civilization 
will not for one second teeter on the brink. And there will be no revelations from 
ancient times or old ones confiding half-truths and riddles and promising answers that do 
not in fact exist and never have existed.
  
  No, I have done all that before.
  
  This is a contemporary story. It's a volume in the Vampire Chronicles, make no mistake. 
But it is the first really modern volume, for it accepts the horrifying absurdity of 
existence from the start, and it takes us into the mind and the soul of its hero- guess 
who?-for its discoveries.
  
  Read this tale, and I will give you all you need to know about us as you turn the 
pages. And by the way, lots of things do happen! I'm a man of action as I said-the James 
Bond of the vampires, if you will-called the Brat Prince, and the Damnedest Creature, and 
"you monster" by various and sundry other immortals.
  
  The other immortals are still around, of course-Maharet and Mekare, the eldest of us 
all, Khayman of the First Brood, Eric, Santino, Pandora, and others whom we call the 
Children of the Millennia. Armand is still about, the lovely five-hundred-year-old 
boy-faced ancient who once ruled the Theatre des Vampires, and before that a coven of 
devil worshiping blood drinkers who lived beneath the Paris Cemetery, Les Innocents. 
Armand, I hope, will always be around.
  
  And Gabrielle, my mortal mother and immortal child will no doubt turn up one of these 
nights sometime before the end of another thousand years, if I'm lucky.
  
  As for Marius, my old teacher and mentor, the one who kept the historical secrets of 
our tribe, he is still with us and always will be. Before this tale began, he would come 
to me now and then to scold and plead: Would I not stop my careless kills which 
invariably found their way into the pages of mortal newspapers! Would I not stop deviling 
my mortal friend David Talbot, and tempting him with the Dark Gift of our blood? Better 
we make no more, did I not know this?
  
  Rules, rules, rules. They always wind up talking about rules. And I love to break the 
rules the way mortals like to smash their crystal glasses after a toast against the 
bricks of the fireplace.
  
  But enough about the others. The point is-this is my book from start to finish.
  
  Let me speak now of the dreams that had come to trouble me in my wanderings.
  
  With Claudia, it was almost a haunting. Just before my eyes would close each dawn, I'd 
see her beside me, hear her voice in a low and urgent whisper. And sometimes I'd slide 
back over the centuries to the little colonial hospital with its rows of tiny beds where 
the orphan child had been dying.
  
  Behold the sorrowful old doctor, potbellied and palsied, as he lifts the child's body. 
And that crying. Who is crying? Claudia was not crying. She slept as the doctor entrusted 
her to me, believing me to be her mortal father. And she is so pretty in these dreams. 
Was she that pretty then? Of course she was.
  
  "Snatching me from mortal hands like two grim monsters in a nightmare fairy tale, you 
idle, blind parents!"
  
  The dream of David Talbot came once only.
  
  David is young in the dream and he is walking in a mangrove forest. He was not the man 
of seventy-four who had become my friend, the patient mortal scholar who regularly 
refused my offer of the Dark Blood, and laid his warm, fragile hand on my cold flesh 
unflinchingly to demonstrate the affection and trust between us.
  
  No. This is young David Talbot of years and years ago, when his heart didn't beat so 
fast within his chest. Yet he is in danger.
  
  Tyger, tyger burning bright.
  
  Is that his voice, whispering those words or is it mine?
  
  And out of the dappled light it comes, its orange and black stripes like the light and 
shade itself so that it is scarcely visible. I see its huge head, and how soft its 
muzzle, white and bristling with long, delicate whiskers. But look at its yellow eyes, 
mere slits, and full of horrid mindless cruelty. David, its fangs! Can't you see these 
fangs!
  
  But he is curious as a child, watching its big pink tongue touch his throat, touch the