But to tell the truth, I didn't think it would ever come to that -- I mean, mortals 
believing in us. Mortals have never made me afraid.
  
  It was the other war that was going to happen, the one in which we'd all come together, 
or they would all come to fight me.
  
  That was the real reason for The Vampire Lestat. That was the kind of game I was 
playing.
  
  But that other lovely possibility of real revelation and disaster ... Well, that added 
a hell of a lot of spice!
  
  OUT OF THE GLOOMY WASTE OF CANAL STREET, I WENT BACK up the stairs to my rooms in the 
old-fashioned French Quarter hotel. Quiet it was, and suited to me, with the Vieux Carre 
spread out beneath its windows, the narrow little streets of Spanish town houses I'd 
known for so long.
  
  On the giant television set I played the cassette of the beautiful Visconti film Death 
in Venice. An actor said at one point that evil was a necessity. It was food for genius.
  
  I didn't believe that. But I wish it were true. Then I could just be Lestat, the 
monster, couldn't I? And I was always so good at being a monster! Ah, well...
  
  I put a fresh disk into the portable computer word processor and I started to write the 
story of my life.
  
  The Early Education And Adventures Of The Vampire Lestat
  
  Part I
  Lelio Rising
  
  In the winter of my twenty-first year, I went out alone on horseback to kill a pack of 
wolves.
  
  This was on my father's land in the Auvergne in France, and these were the last decades 
before the French Revolution.
  
  It was the worst winter that I could remember, and the wolves were stealing the sheep 
from our peasants and even running at night through the streets of the village.
  
  These were bitter years for me. My father was the Marquis, and I was the seventh son 
and the youngest of the three who had lived to manhood. I had no claim to the title or 
the land, and no prospects. Even in a rich family, it might have been that way for a 
younger boy, but our wealth had been used up long ago. My eldest brother, Augustin, who 
was the rightful heir to all we possessed, had spent his wife's small dowry as soon as he 
married her.
  
  My father's castle, his estate, and the village nearby were my entire universe. And I'd 
been born restless -- the dreamer, the angry one, the complainer. I wouldn't sit by the 
fire and talk of old wars and the days of the Sun King. History had no meaning for me.
  
  But in this dim and old-fashioned world, I had become the hunter. I brought in the 
pheasant, the venison, and the trout from the mountain streams -- whatever was needed and 
could be got -- to feed the family. It had become my life by this time -- and one I 
shared with no one else -- and it was a very good thing that I'd taken it up, because 
there were years when we might have actually starved to death.
  
  Of course this was a noble occupation, hunting one's ancestral lands, and we alone had 
the right to do it. The richest of the bourgeois couldn't lift his gun in my forests. But 
then again he didn't have to lift his gun. He had money.
  
  Two times in my life I'd tried to escape this life, only to be brought back with my 
wings broken. But I'll tell more on that later.
  
  Right now I'm thinking about the snow all over those mountains and the wolves that were 
frightening the villagers and stealing my sheep. And I'm thinking of the old saying in 
France in those days, that if you lived in the province of Auvergne you could get no 
farther from Paris.
  
  Understand that since I was the lord and the only lord anymore who could sit a horse 
and fire a gun, it was natural that the villagers should come to me, complaining about 
the wolves and expecting me to hunt them. It was my duty.
  
  I wasn't the least afraid of the wolves either. Never in my life had I seen or heard of 
a wolf attacking a man. And I would have poisoned them, if I could, but meat was simply 
too scarce to lace with poison.
  
  So early on a very cold morning in January, I armed myself to kill the wolves one by 
one. I had three flintlock guns and an excellent flintlock rifle, and these I took with 
me as well as my muskets and my father's sword. But just before leaving the castle, I 
added to this little arsenal one or two ancient weapons that I'd never bothered with 
before.
  
  Our castle was full of old armor. My ancestors had fought in countless noble wars since 
the times of the Crusades with St. Louis. And hung on the walls above all this clattering 
junk were a good many lances, battleaxes, flails, and maces.
  
  It was a very large mace -- -that is, a spiked club -- that I took with me that 
morning, and also a good-sized flail: an iron ball attached to a chain that could be 
swung with immense force at an attacker.
  
  Now remember this was the eighteenth century, the time when white-wigged Parisians 
tiptoed around in high-heeled satin slippers, pinched snuff, and dabbed at their noses 
with embroidered handkerchiefs.
  
  And here I was going out to hunt in rawhide boots and buckskin coat, with these ancient 
weapons tied to the saddle, and my two biggest mastiffs beside me in their spiked collars.
  
  That was my life. And it might as well have been lived in the Middle Ages. And I knew