6

She gave the impression of almost rampant strength as she walked back and forth. Yet all of it was contained in an unbroken grace. She kicked at the timbers and watched the blackened ruin of the fire flare for a moment before settling into itself again. I could see the sky. An hour perhaps remained.

"But who are they?" she asked. She stood over me, her legs apart, her hands in two liquid summoning gestures. "Why do they call us outlaws and blasphemers?"

"I've told you everything I know," I confessed. "Until tonight I didn't think they possessed faces or limbs or real voices."

I climbed to my feet and brushed off my clothes.

"They damned us for entering the churches!" she said. "Did you catch it, those images coming from them? And they don't know how we managed to do it. They themselves would not dare."

For the first time I observed that she was trembling. There were other small signs of alarm, the way the flesh quivered around her eyes, the way that she kept pushing the loose strands of her hair out of her eyes again.

"Gabrielle," I said. I tried to make my tone authoritative, reassuring. "The important thing is to get out of here now. We don't know how early those creatures rise, or how soon after sunset they'll return. We have to discover another hiding place."

"The dungeon crypt," she said.

"A worse trap than this," I said, "if they break through the gate." I glanced at the sky again. I pulled the stone out of the low passage. "Come on," I said.

"But where are we going?" she asked. For the first time tonight she looked almost fragile.

"To a village east of here," I said. "It's perfectly obvious that the safest place is within the village church itself."

"Would you do that?" she asked. "In the church?"

"Of course I would. As you just said, the little beasts would never dare to enter! And the crypts under the altar will be as deep and dark as any grave."

"But Lestat, to rest under the very altar!"

"Mother, you astonish me," I said. "I have taken victims under the very roof of Notre Dame." But another little idea came to me. I went to Magnus's chest and started picking at the heap of treasure. I pulled out two rosaries, one of pearls, another of emeralds, both having the usual small crucifix.

She watched me, her face white, pinched.

"Here, you take this one," I said, giving her the emerald rosary. "Keep it on you. If and when we do meet with them, show them the crucifix. If I am right, they'll run from it."

"But what happens if we don't find a safe place in the church?"

"How the hell should I know? We'll come back here!"

I could feel a fear collecting in her and radiating from her as she hesitated, looking through the windows at the fading stars. She had passed through the veil into the promise of eternity and now she was in danger again.

Quickly, I took the rosary from her and kissed her and slipped the rosary into the pocket of her frock coat.

"Emeralds mean eternal life, Mother," I said.

She appeared the boy standing there again, the last glow of the fire just tracing the line of her cheek and mouth.

"It's as I said before," she whispered. "You aren't afraid of anything, are you?"

"What does it matter if I am or not?" I shrugged. I took her arm and drew her to the passage. "We are the things that others fear," I said. "Remember that."

When we reach the stable, I saw the boy had been hideously murdered. His broken body lay twisted on the hay strewn floor as if it had been flung there by a Titan. The back of his head was shattered. And to mock him, it seemed, or to mock me, they had dressed him in a gentleman's fancy velvet frock coat. Red velvet. Those were the words she'd murmured when they had done the crime. I'd seen only the death. I looked away now in disgust. All the horses were gone.

"They'll pay for that," I said.

I took her hand. But she stared at the miserable boy's body as if it drew her against her will. She glanced at me.

"I feel cold," she whispered. "I'm losing the strength in my limbs. I must, I must get to where it's dark. I can feel it."

I led her fast over the rise of the nearby hill and towards the road.

There were no howling little monsters hidden in the village churchyard, of course. I didn't think there would be. The earth hadn't been turned up on the old graves in a long time.

Gabrielle was past conferring with me on this.

I half carried her to the side door of the church and quietly broke the latch.

"I'm cold all over. My eyes are burning," she said again under her breath. "Someplace dark."

But as I started to take her in, she stopped.

"What if they're right," she said. "And we don't belong in the House of God."

"Gibberish and nonsense. God isn't in the House of God."

"Don't! . . ." She moaned.

I pulled her through the sacristy and out before the altar. She covered her face, and when she looked up it was at the crucifix over the tabernacle. She let out a long low gasp. But it was from the stained-glass windows that she shielded her eyes, turning her head towards me. The rising sun that I could not even feel yet was already burning her!

I picked her up as I had done last night. I had to find an old burial crypt, one that hadn't been used in years. I hurried towards the Blessed Virgin's altar, where the inscriptions were almost worn away. And kneeling, I hooked my fingernails around a slab and quickly lifted it to reveal a deep sepulcher with a single rotted coffin.

I pulled her down into the sepulcher with me and moved the slab back into place.

Inky blackness, and the coffin splintering under me so that my right hand closed on a crumbling skull. I felt the sharpness of other bones under my chest. Gabrielle spoke as if in a trance:

"Yes. Away from the light."

"We're safe," I whispered.

I pushed the bones out of the way, making a nest of the rotted wood and the dust that was too old to contain any smell of human decay.

But I did not fall into the sleep for perhaps an hour or more.

I kept thinking over and over of the stable boy, mangled and thrown there in that fancy red velvet frock coat. I had seen that coat before and I couldn't remember where I had seen it. Had it been one of my own? Had they gotten into the tower? No, that was not possible, they couldn't have gotten in. Had they had a coat made up identical to one of my own? Gone to such lengths to mock me? No. How could such creatures do a thing like that? But still ... that particular coat. Something about it...