Strident perfume rose from the gardens right and left, from purple Four O'Clocks, as 
mortals call them here, a rampant flower like unto weed, but infinitely sweet, and the 
wild irises stabbing upwards like blades out of the black mud, throaty petals monstrously 
big, battering themselves on old walls and concrete steps, and then as always there were 
roses, roses of old women and roses of the young, roses too whole for the tropical night, 
roses coated with poison.
  
  There had been streetcars here once on this center strip of grass. I knew it, that the 
tracks had run along this wide deep green space where I walked ahead of him, slumward, 
riverward, deathward, Woodward. He came after me. I could close my eyes as I walked, 
never losing a step, and see the streetcars.
  
  "Come on, follow me," I said, describing what he did, not inviting him.
  
  Blocks and blocks within seconds. He kept up. Very strong. The blood of an entire Royal 
Vampire court was inside him, no doubt of it. Count on Lestat to make the most lethal of 
monsters, that is, after his initial seductive blunders-Nicolas, Louis, Claudia-not a 
single one of the three able to take care of themselves alone, and two perished, and one 
lingering and perhaps the weakest vampire yet walking in the great world.
  
  I looked back. His tight, polished brown face startled me. He looked lacquered all 
over, waxed, buffed, and once again I thought of spicy things, of the meat of candied 
nuts, and delicious aromas, of chocolates sweet with sugar and dark rich butterscotch, 
and it seemed a good thing suddenly to maybe grab ahold of him.
  
  But this was no substitute for one rotten, cheap, ripe and odoriferous mortal. And 
guess what? I pointed. "Over there."
  
  He looked as I directed him. He saw the sagging line of old buildings. Mortals 
everywhere lurked, slept, sat, dined, wandered, amid tiny narrow stairs, behind peeling 
walls and under cracked ceilings.
  
  I had found one, most perfect in his wickedness, a great flurry of hateful embers, of 
malice and greed and contempt smoldering as he waited for me.
  
  We'd come to Magazine Street and passed it, but we were not at the river, only almost, 
and this was a street I had no recollection of, or knowledge of, in my wanderings of this 
city-their city, Louis's and Lestat's-just a narrow street with these houses the color of 
driftwood under the moon and windows hung with makeshift coverings, and inside there was 
this one slouching, arrogant, vicious mortal fixed to a television set and guzzling malt 
from a brown bottle, ignoring the roaches and the pulsing heat that pressed in from the 
open window, this ugly, sweating, filthy and irresistible thing, this flesh and blood for 
me.
  
  The house was so alive with vermin and tiny despicable things that it seemed no more 
than a shell surrounding him, crackling and friable and the same color in all its shadows 
as a forest. No antiseptic modern standards here. Even the furniture rotted in the trashy 
clutter and damp. Mildew covered the grinding white refrigerator.
  
  Only the reeky personal bed and rags gave off the clue to reigning domesticity.
  
  It was a proper nest in which to find this fowl, this ugly bird, thick rich pluckable, 
devourable sack of bones and blood and shabby plumage.
  
  I pushed the door to one side, the human stench rising like a swirl of gnats, and 
thereby put it off its hinges, but not with much sound.
  
  I walked on newspapers strewn on painted wood. Orange peels turned to brownish leather. 
Roaches running. He didn't even look up. His swollen drunken face was blue and eerie, 
black eyebrows thick and unkempt, and yet he looked quite possibly a bit angelic, due to 
the light from the tube.
  
  He flicked the magic plastic twanger in his hand to make the channels change, and the 
light flared and flickered soundlessly, and then he let the song rise, a band playing, a 
travesty, people clapping.
  
  Trashy noises, trashy images, like the trash all around him. All right, I want you. No 
one else does.
  
  He looked up at me, a boy invader, David too far off for him to see, waiting.
  
  I pushed the television set to the side. It teetered, then fell onto the floor, its 
parts breaking, like so many jars of energy were inside, and now splinters of glass.
  
  A momentary fury overcame him, charging his face with sluggish recognition.
  
  He rose up, arms out, and came at me.
  
  Before I sank my teeth, I noticed that he had long tangled black hair. Dirty but rich. 
He wore it back by means of a knotted bit of rag at the base of his neck and then 
straggling down his checkered shirt in a thick tail.
  
  Meantime, he had enough syrupy and beer-besotted blood in him for two vampires, 
delicious, ugly, and a raging fighting heart, and so much bulk it was like riding a bull 
to be on him.
  
  In the midst of the feed, all odors rise to sweetness, even the most rancid. I thought 
I would quietly die of joy, as always.
  
  I sucked hard enough to fill my mouth, letting the blood roll over my tongue, and then 
to fill my stomach, if I have one, but above all just to stanch this greedy dirty thirst, 
but not hard enough to slow him down.
  
  He swooned and fought, and did the stupid thing of tearing at my fingers, and then the 
most dangerous and clumsy thing of trying to find my eyes. I shut them tight and let him 
press with his greasy thumbs. It did him no good. I am an impregnable little boy. You can 
not blind the blind. I was too fall of blood to care. Besides it felt good. Those weak 
things that would scratch you do only stroke you.
  
  His life went by as if everyone he ever loved were riding a roller coaster under snazzy