Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [10]
“Yes,” I said. Or rather it was a stutter. “The letter, please read it.” I faltered, then pressed on. “Before you . . . make up your mind.”
He tucked the letter into his own inside pocket and then he turned to Stirling, who sat dazed and silent, eyes cloudy, his hands clinging to the back of the chair before the desk. The back was like a shield in front of him, though a useless one as I well knew.
Lestat’s eyes fixed on me again:
“We don’t feed on members of the Talamasca, Little Brother,” he said. “But you”—he looked at Stirling—“you nearly got what you almost deserve.”
Stirling stared forward, plainly unable to answer, and only shook his head.
“Why did you come here, Mr. Oliver?” Lestat asked him.
Again, Stirling merely shook his head. I saw the tiny drops of blood on his starched white collar. I felt an overwhelming shame, a shame so deep and painful it filled me completely, banishing even the faintest aftertaste of the attempted feast.
I went silently crazy.
Stirling had almost died, and for my thirst. Stirling was alive. Stirling was in danger now, danger from Lestat. Behold: Lestat, like a blaze in front of me. Yes, he could pass for human, but what a human—magnetic and charged with energy as he continued to take command.
“Mr. Oliver, I’m talking to you,” Lestat said in a soft yet imperious tone. He picked up Stirling by the lapels and, moving him clumsily to the far corner of the parlor, he flung him down into a large satin upholstered wing chair.
Stirling looked the worse for it—who wouldn’t?—still unable apparently to focus his gaze.
Lestat sat down on the velvet couch very near him. I was completely forgotten for the moment, or so I assumed.
“Mr. Oliver,” said Lestat, “I’m asking you. What made you come into my house?”
“I don’t know,” said Stirling. He glanced up at me and then at the figure who was questioning him, and I struggled, because I couldn’t help it, to see what he was seeing—this vampire whose skin still glowed though it was tanned, and whose eyes were prismatic and undeniably fierce.
The fabled beauty of Lestat seemed potent as a drug. And the crowning light of the chandelier was merciless or splendid depending entirely on one’s point of view.
“Yes, you do know why you came here,” said Lestat, his voice subdued, the French accent no more than a beguiling taste. “It wasn’t enough for the Talamasca to drive me out of the city. You have to come into those places that belong to me?”
“I was wrong to do it,” Stirling said. It was spoken in a sigh. He scowled and pressed his lips together hard. “I shouldn’t have done it.” For the first time he looked directly into Lestat’s eyes.
Lestat glanced up at me.
Sitting forward he reached over and slipped his fingers behind Stirling’s bloodstained collar, startling Stirling and glaring up at me.
“We don’t spill blood when we feed, Little Brother,” he said with a passing mischievous smile. “You have much to learn.”
The words hit me rather like a wallop and I found myself speechless. Did this mean that I’d walk out of here alive?
Don’t kill Stirling, that’s what I was thinking; and then suddenly Lestat, as he still stared at me, made a short little laugh.
“Tarquin, turn that chair around,” he said, gesturing to the desk, “and sit down. You make me nervous standing there. You’re too damned tall. And you’re making Stirling Oliver nervous as well.”
I felt a great rush of relief, but as I tried to do what he’d told me to do my hands were shaking so badly that I was again full of shame. Finally, I managed to sit down facing the pair of them, but a polite distance away.
Stirling made a small frown as he looked at me, but it was entirely sympathetic and he was still obviously off base. I hadn’t drunk enough blood to account for his dizziness. It was the act of it, the drawing on his heart. That, and the fact that Lestat had come, Lestat had interrupted us, Lestat was here and he