And then there was the lovely ease of plummeting hundreds of feet in a shaft through 
solid ice to reach the electrically lighted chambers below.
  
  He opened the door and stepped into the carpeted corridor. It was Lestat again singing 
within the shrine, a rapid, more joyful song, his voice battling a thunder of drums and 
the twisted undulating electronic moans.
  
  But something was not quite right here. Merely looking at the long corridor he sensed 
it. The sound was too loud, too clear. The antechambers leading to the shrine were open!
  
  He went to the entrance immediately. The electric doors had been unlocked and thrown 
back. How could this be? Only he knew the code for the tiny series of computer buttons. 
The second pair of doors had been opened wide as well and so had the third. In fact he 
could see into the shrine itself, his view blocked by the white marble wall of the small 
alcove. The red and blue flicker of the television screen beyond was like the light of an 
old gas fireplace.
  
  And Lestat's voice echoed powerfully over the marble walls, the vaulted ceilings.
  
  Kill us, my brothers and sisters The war is on.
  
  Understand what you see, When you see me.
  
  He took a slow easy breath. No sound other than the music, which was fading now to be 
replaced by characterless mortal chatter. And no outsider here. No, he would have known. 
No one in his lair. His instincts told him that for certain.
  
  There was a stab of pain in his chest. He even felt a warmth in his face. How 
remarkable.
  
  He walked through the marble antechambers and stopped at the door of the alcove. Was he 
praying? Was he dreaming? He knew what he would soon see-Those Who Must be Kept-just as 
they had always been. And some dismal explanation for the doors, a shorted circuit or a 
broken fuse, would soon present itself.
  
  Yet he felt not fear suddenly but the raw anticipation of a young mystic on the verge 
of a vision, that at last he would see the living Lord, or in his own hands the bloody 
stigmata.
  
  Calmly, he stepped into the shrine.
  
  For a moment it did not register. He saw what he expected to see, the long room filled 
with trees and flowers, and the stone bench that was the throne, and beyond it the large 
television screen pulsing with eyes and mouths and unimportant laughter. Then he 
acknowledged the fact: there was only one figure seated on the throne; and this figure 
was almost completely transparent! The violent colors of the distant television screen 
were passing right through it!
  
  No, but this is quite out of the question! Marius, look carefully. Even your senses are 
not infallible. Like a flustered mortal he put his hands to his head as if to block out 
all distraction.
  
  He was gazing at the back of Enkil, who, save for his black hair, had become some sort 
of milky glass statue through which the colors and the lights moved with faint 
distortion. Suddenly an uneven burst of light caused the figure to radiate, to become a 
source of faint glancing beams.
  
  He shook his head. Not possible. Then he gave himself a little shake all over. "All 
right, Marius," he whispered. "Proceed slowly."
  
  But a dozen unformed suspicions were sizzling in his mind. Someone had come, someone 
older and more powerful than he, someone who had discovered Those Who Must Be Kept, and 
done something unspeakable! And all this was Lestat's doing! Lestat, who had told the 
world his secret.
  
  His knees were weak. Imagine! He had not felt such mortal debilities in so long that he 
had utterly forgotten them. Slowly he removed a linen handkerchief from his pocket. He 
wiped at the thin layer of blood sweat that covered his forehead. Then he moved towards 
the throne, and went round it, until he stood staring directly at the figure of the King.
  
  Enkil as he had been for two thousand years, the black hair in long tiny plaits, 
hanging to his shoulders. The broad gold collar lying against his smooth, hairless chest, 
the linen of his kilt immaculate with its pressed pleats, the rings still on his 
motionless fingers.
  
  But the body itself was glass! And it was utterly hollow! Even the huge shining orbs of 
the eyes were transparent, only shadowy circles defining the irises. No, wait. Observe 
everything. And there, you can see the bones, turned to the very same substance as the 
flesh, they are there, and also the fine crazing of veins and arteries, and something 
like lungs inside, but it is all transparent now, it is all of the same texture. But what 
had been done to him!
  
  And the thing was changing still. Before his very eyes, it was losing its milky cast. 
It was drying up, becoming ever more transparent.
  
  Tentatively, he touched it. Not glass at all. A husk.
  
  But his careless gesture had upset the thing. The body teetered, then fell over onto 
the marble tile, its eyes locked open, its limbs rigid in their former position. It made 
a sound like the scraping of an insect as it settled.
  
  Only the hair moved. The soft black hair. But it too was changed. It was breaking into 
fragments. It was breaking into tiny shimmering splinters. A cool ventilating current was 
scattering it like straw. And as the hair fell away from the throat, he saw two dark 
puncture wounds in it. Wounds that had not healed as they might have done because all the 
healing blood had been drawn out of the thing.
  
  "Who has done this?" He whispered aloud, tightening the fingers of his right fist as if 
this would keep him from crying out. Who could have taken every last drop of life from 
him?