The pianist had moved on into something popular, from the Broadway stage, I think. It 
was sad and sweet, and one of the old women in the bar was rocking slowly to the music, 
and mouthing the words with her rouged lips as she puffed on a cigarette. She was from 
that generation that had smoked so much that stopping now was out of the question. She 
had skin like a lizard. But she was a harmless and beautiful being. All of them were 
harmless and beautiful beings.
  
  My victim? I could hear him upstairs. He was still talking with his daughter. Would she 
not take just one more of his gifts? It was a picture, a painting perhaps.
  
  He would move mountains for his daughter, this victim, but she didn't want his gift, 
and she wasn't going to save his soul.
  
  I found myself wondering how late St. Patrick's stayed open. She wanted so badly to go 
there. She was, as always, refusing his money.  It's "unclean," she said to him now. 
"Roge, I want your soul. I can't take the money for the church! It comes from crime. It's 
filthy."
  
  The snow fell outside. The piano music grew more rapid and urgent.
  
  Andrew Lloyd Webber at his best, I thought. Something from Phantom of the Opera.
  
  There was that noise again out in the lobby, and I turned abruptly in my chair and 
looked over my shoulder, and then back at David. I listened. I thought I heard it again, 
like a footstep, an echoing footstep, a deliberately terrifying footstep. I did hear it. 
I knew I was trembling. But then it was gone, over. There came no voice in my ear.
  
  I looked at David.
  
  "Lestat, you're petrified, aren't you?" he asked, very sympathetically.
  
  "David, I think the Devil's come for me. I think I'm going to Hell."
  
  He was speechless/After all, what could he say? What does a vampire say to another 
vampire on such subjects? What would I have said if Armand, three hundred years older 
than me, and far more wicked, had said the Devil was coming for him? I would have laughed 
at him.  I would have made some cruel joke about his fully deserving it and how he'd meet 
so many of our kind down there, subject to a special sort of vampiric torment, far worse 
than mere damned mortals ever experienced. I shuddered.
  
  "Good God," I said under my breath.
  
  "You said you've seen it?"
  
  "Not quite. I was ... somewhere, it's not important. I think New York again, yes, back 
here with him-"
  
  "The victim."
  
  "Yes, following him. He had some transaction at an art gallery. Midtown. He's quite a 
smuggler. It's all part of his peculiar personality, that he loves beautiful and ancient 
objects, the sort of tilling you love, David. I mean, when I finally do make a meal of 
him, I might bring you one of his treasures."
  
  David said nothing, but I could see this was distasteful to him, the idea of purloining 
something precious from someone whom I had not yet killed but was surely to kill.
  
  "Medieval books, crosses, jewelry, relics, that's the sort of thing he deals in. It's 
what got him into the dope, ransoming church art that had been lost during the Second 
World War in Europe, you know, priceless statues of angels and saints that had been 
pillaged.  He's got his most valued treasures stashed in a flat on the Upper East Side. 
His big secret. I think the dope money started as a means to an end. Somebody had 
something he wanted. I don't know. I read his mind and then I tire of it. And he's evil, 
and all those relics have no magic, and I'm going to Hell."
  
  "Not so fast," he said. "The Stalker. You said you saw something. What did you see?"
  
  I fell silent. I had dreaded this moment. I had not tried to describe these experiences 
even to myself. But I had to continue. I had called David here for help. I had to explain.
  
  "We were outside, out there on Fifth Avenue; he-the Victim-was traveling in a car, 
uptown, and I knew the general direction, the secret flat where he keeps his treasures.
  
  "I was merely walking, human style. I stopped at a hotel. I went inside to see the 
flowers. You know, in these hotels you can always find flowers. When you think you're 
losing your mind on account of winter, you can go into these hotels and find lavish 
bouquets of the most overwhelming lilies."
  
  "Yes," he said with a little soft, halfhearted sigh. "I know."
  
  "I was in the lobby. I was looking at this huge bouquet. I wanted to ... to, ah ... 
leave some sort of offering, as if it were a church ...  to those who'd made this 
bouquet, something like that, and I was thinking to myself, Maybe I should kill the 
Victim, and then ... I swear this is the way it was, David-
  
  "-the ground was gone. The hotel was gone. I wasn't anywhere or anchored to anything, 
and yet I was surrounded by people, people howling and chattering and screaming and 
crying, and laughing, yes, actually laughing, and all this was happening simultaneously, 
and the light, David, the light was blinding. This wasn't darkness, this wasn't the 
cliched flames of the inferno, and I reached out. I didn't do this with my arms. I 
couldn't find my arms. I reached out with everything, every limb, every fiber, just 
trying to touch something, to regain equilibrium, and then I realized I was standing on 
terra firma, and this Being was in front of me, its shadow was falling over me. Look, I 
don't have any words for this. It was horrific. It was very certainly the worst thing 
I've ever seen! The light was shining behind it, and it stood between me and this light 
and it had a face, and the face was dark, extremely dark, and as I looked at it I lost 
all control. I must have roared. Yet I have no idea if in the real world I made a sound.
  
  "When I came to my senses, I was still there, in the lobby. Everything looked ordinary, 
and it was as if I'd been in that other place for years and years, and all sorts of