He sank his teeth now, and the slave froze as if from snakebite. He sank to his knees, 
and Lestat fed fast as the other slaves came running. `You sicken me,' he said when he 
got back to me. It was as if we were black insects utterly camouflaged in the night, 
watching the slaves move, oblivious to us, discover the wounded man, drag him back, fan 
out in the foliage searching for the attacker. `Come on, we have to get another one 
before they all return to camp,' he said. And quickly we set off after one man who was 
separated from the others. I was still terribly agitated, convinced I couldn't bring 
myself to attack and feeling no urge to do so. There were many things, as I mention, 
which Lestat might have said and done. He might have made the experience rich in so many 
ways. But he did not."
  "What could he have done?" the boy asked. "What do you mean?"
  "Killing is no ordinary act," said the vampire. "One doesn't simply glut oneself on 
blood." He shook his head. "It is the experience of another's life for certain, and often 
the experience of the loss of that life through the blood, slowly. It is again and again 
the experience of that loss of my own life, which I experienced when I sucked the blood 
from Lestat's wrist and felt his heart pound with my heart. It is again and again a 
celebration of that experience; because for vampires that is the ultimate experience." He 
said this most seriously, as if he were arguing with someone who held a different view. 
"I don't think Lestat ever appreciated that, though how he could not, I don't know. Let 
me say he appreciated something, but very little, I think, of what there is to know. In 
any event, he took no pains to remind me now of what I'd felt when I clamped onto his 
wrist for life itself and wouldn't let it go; or to pick and choose a place for me where 
I might experience my first kill with some measure of quiet and dignity. He rushed 
headlong through the encounter as if it were something to put behind us as quickly as 
possible, like so many yards of the road. Once he had caught the slave, he gagged him and 
held him, baring his neck. `Do it,' he said. `You can't turn back now.' Overcome with 
revulsion and weak with frustration, I obeyed. I knelt beside the bent, struggling man 
and, clamping both my hands on his shoulders, I went into his neck. My teeth had only 
just begun to change, and I had to tear his flesh, not puncture it; but once the wound 
was made, the blood flowed. And once that happened, once I was locked to it, drinking . . 
. all else vanished.
  "Lestat and the swamp and the noise of the distant camp meant nothing. Lestat might 
have been an insect, buzzing, lighting, then vanishing m significance. The sucking 
mesmerized me; the warm struggling of the man was. soothing to the tension of my hands; 
and there came the beating of the drum again, which was the drumbeat of his heart-only 
this time it beat in perfect rhythm with the drumbeat of my own heart, the two resounding 
in every fiber of my being, until the beat began to grow slower and slower, so that each 
was a soft rumble that threatened to go on without end. I was drowsing, falling into 
weightlessness; and then Lestat pulled me back. `He's dead, you idiot!' he said with his 
characteristic charm and tact. `You don't drink after they're dead! Understand that!' I 
was in a frenzy for a moment, not myself, insisting to him that the man's heart still 
beat, and I was in an agony to clamp onto him again. I ran my hands over his chest, then 
grabbed at his wrists. I would have cut into his wrist if Lestat hadn't pulled me to my 
feet and slapped my face. This slap was astonishing. It was not painful in the ordinary 
way. It was a sensational shock of another sort, a rapping of the senses, so that I spun 
in confusion and found myself helpless and staring, my back against a cypress, the night 
pulsing with insects in my ears. `You'll die if you do that,' Lestat was saying. `He'll 
suck you right down into death with him if you cling to him in death. And now you've 
drunk too much, besides; you'll be ill.' His voice grated on me. I had the urge to throw 
myself on him suddenly, but I was feeling just what he'd said. There was a grinding pain 
in my stomach, as if some whirlpool there were sucking my insides into itself. It was the 
blood passing too rapidly into my own blood, but I didn't know it. Lestat moved through 
the night now like a cat and I followed him, my head throbbing, this pain in my stomach 
no better when we reached the house of Pointe du Lac.
  "As we sat at the table in the parlor, Lestat dealing a game of solitaire on the 
polished wood, I sat there staring at him with contempt. He was mumbling nonsense. I 
would get used to killing, he said; it would be nothing. I must not allow myself to be 
shaken. I was reacting too much as if the `mortal coil' had not been shaken off. I would 
become accustomed to things all too quickly. 'Do you think so?' I asked him finally. I 
really had no interest in his answer. I understood now the difference between us. For me 
the experience of killing had been cataclysmic. So had that of sucking Lestat's wrist. 
These experiences so overwhelmed and so changed my view of everything around me, from the 
picture of my brother on the parlor wall to the sight of a single star in the topmost 
pane of the French window, that I could not imagine another vampire taking them for 
granted. I was altered, permanently; I knew it. And what I felt, most profoundly, for 
everything, even the sound of the playing cards being laid down one by one upon the 
shining rows of the solitaire, was respect. Lestat felt the opposite. Or he felt nothing. 
He was the sow's ear out of which nothing fine could be made. As boring as a mortal, as 
trivial and unhappy as a mortal, he chattered over the game, belittling my experience, 
utterly locked against the possibility of any experience of his own. By morning, I 
realized that I was his complete superior and I had been sadly cheated in having him for 
a teacher. He must guide me through the necessary lessons, if there were any more real 
lessons, and I must tolerate in him a frame of mind which was blasphemous to life itself. 
I felt cold towards him. I had no contempt in superiority. Only a hunger for new 
experience, for that which was beautiful and as devastating as my kill. And I saw that if 
I were to maximize every experience available to me, I must exert my own powers over my 
learning. Lestat was of no use.
  "It was well past midnight when I finally rose out of the chair and went out on the 
gallery. The moon was large over the cypresses, and the candlelight poured from the open 
doors. The thick plastered pillars and walls of the house had been freshly whitewashed, 
the floorboards freshly swept, and a summer rain had left the night clean and sparkling 
with drops of water. I leaned against the end pillar of the gallery, my head touching the 
soft tendrils of a jasmine which grew there in constant battle with a wisteria, and I 
thought of what lay before me throughout the world and throughout time, and resolved to 
go about it delicately and reverently, learning that from each thing which would take me 
best to another. What this meant, I wasn't sure myself. Do you understand me when I say I 
did not wish to rush headlong into experience, that what I'd felt as a vampire was far 
too powerful to be wasted?"
  "Yes," said the boy eagerly. "It sounds as if it was like being in love."
  The vampire's eyes gleamed. "That's correct. It is like love," he smiled. "And I tell 
you my frame of mind that night so you can know there are profound differences between 
vampires, and how I came to take a different approach from Lestat. You must understand I 
did not snub him because he did not appreciate his experience. I simply could not 
understand how such feelings could be wasted. But then Lestat did something which was to 
show me a way to go about my learning.
  "He had more than a casual appreciation of the wealth at Pointe du Lac. He'd been much 
pleased by the beauty of the china used for his father's supper; and he liked the feel of 
the velvet drapes, and he traced the patterns of the carpets with his toe. And now he 
took from one of the china closets a crystal glass and said, `I do miss glasses.' Only he 
said this with an impish delight that caused me to study him with a hard eye. I disliked