I jerked him back by his collar. His big empty eyes rolled up into his head. Then he 
kicked at me, blindly, this bully, this killer of the old and weak, shoe scuffing my 
shin. I lifted him to my hungry mouth again, fingers sliding through his hair, and felt 
him stiffen as if my fangs were dipped in poison.
  
  Again the blood flooded my brain. I felt it electrify the tiny veins of my face. I felt 
it pulse even into my fingers, and a hot prickling warmth slide down my spine. Draught 
after draught filled me. Succulent, heavy creature. Then I let him go once more, and when 
he stumbled away this time, I went after him, dragging him across the floor, turning his 
face to me, then tossing him forward and letting him struggle again.
  
  He was speaking to me now in something that ought to have been language, but it wasn't. 
He pushed at me but he could no longer see clearly. And for the first time a tragic 
dignity infused him, a vague look of outrage, blind as he was. It seemed I was 
embellished and enfolded now in old tales, in memories of plaster statues and nameless 
saints. His fingers clawed at the instep of my shoe. I lifted him up, and when I tore his 
throat this time, the wound was too big. It was done.
  
  The death came like a fist in the gut. For a moment I felt nausea, and then simply the 
heat, the fullness, the sheer radiance of the living blood, with that last vibration of 
consciousness pulsing through all my limbs.
  
  I sank down on his soiled bed. I don't know how long I lay there.
  
  I stared at his low ceiling. And then when the sour musty smells of the room surrounded 
me, and the stench of his body, I rose and stumbled out, an ungainly figure as surely as 
he had been, letting myself go soft in these mortal gestures, in rage and hatred, in 
silence, because I didn't want to be the weightless one, the winged one, the night 
traveler. I wanted to be human, and feel human, and his blood was threaded all through 
me, and it wasn't enough. Not nearly enough!
  
  Where are all my promises? The stiff and bruised palmettos rattle against the stucco 
walls.
  
  "Oh, you're back," she said to me.
  
  Such a low, strong voice she had, no tremor in it. She was standing in front of the 
ugly plaid rocker, with its worn maple arms, peering at me through her silver-rimmed 
glasses, the paperback novel clasped in her hand. Her mouth was small and shapeless and 
showing a bit of yellow teeth, a hideous contrast to the dark personality of the voice, 
which knew no infirmity at all.
  
  What in God's name was she thinking as she smiled at me? Why doesn't she pray?
  
  "I knew you'd come," she said. Then she took off the glasses, and I saw that her eyes 
were glazed. What was she seeing? What was I making her see? I who can control all these 
elements flawlessly was so baffled I could have wept. "Yes, I knew."
  
  "Oh? And how did you know?" I whispered as I approached her, loving the embracing 
closeness of the common little room.
  
  I reached out with these monstrous fingers too white to be human, strong enough to tear 
her head off, and I felt her little throat. Smell of Chantilly-or some other drugstore 
scent.
  
  "Yes," she said airily but definitely. "I always knew."
  
  "Kiss me, then. Love me."
  
  How hot she was, and how tiny were her shoulders, how gorgeous in this the final 
withering, the flower tinged with yellow, yet full of fragrance still, pale blue veins 
dancing beneath her flaccid skin, eyelids perfectly molded to her eyes when she closed 
them, the skin flowing over the bones of her skull.
  
  "Take me to heaven," she said. Out of the heart came the voice.
  
  "I can't. I wish I could," I was purring into her ear.
  
  I closed my arms around her. I nuzzled her soft nest of gray hair. I felt her fingers 
on my face like dried leaves, and it sent a soft chill through me. She, too, was 
shivering. Ah, tender and worn little thing, ah, creature reduced to thought and will 
with a body insubstantial like a fragile flame! Just the "little drink," Lestat, no more.
  
  But it was too late and I knew it when the first spurt of blood hit my tongue. I was 
draining her. Surely the sounds of my moans must have alarmed her, but then she was past 
hearing... They never hear the real sounds once it's begun.
  
  Forgive me.
  
  Oh, darling!
  
  We were sinking down together on the carpet, lovers in a patch of nubby faded flowers. 
I saw the book fallen there, and the drawing on the cover, but this seemed unreal. I 
hugged her so carefully, lest she break. But I was the hollow shell. Her death was coming 
swiftly, as if she herself were walking towards
  
  me in a broad corridor, in some extremely particular and very important place. Ah, yes, 
the yellow marble tile. New York City, and even up here you can hear the traffic, and 
that low boom when a door slams on a stairway, down the hall.
  
  "Good night, my darling," she whispered.
  
  Am I hearing things? How can she still make words?
  
  I love you. Yes, darling. I love you too."
  
  She stood in the hallway. Her hair was red and stiff and curling prettily at her 
shoulders; she was smiling, and her heels had been making that sharp, enticing sound on 
the marble, but there was only silence around her as the folds of her woolen skirt still 
moved; she was looking at me with such a strange clever expression; she lifted a small