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But before I go on to describe this last and most important of all my European dwellings, I must include one last tragic detail in the story of those who were lost to me.

As my many treasures were moved to this Aegean palace, as my books, my sculptures, my fine tapestries and rugs and other such were shipped and uncrated by unsuspecting mortals, there came to light one final piece of the story of my beloved Pandora.

In the bottom of a packing case, one of the workers discovered a letter, written on parchment, and folded in half, and addressed quite simply to Marius.

I was on the terrace of this new house, gazing out at the sea and over the many small islands that surrounded me, when the letter was brought to me.

The page of parchment was thick with dust, and as soon as I opened it, I read a date inscribed in old ink which affirmed that it had been written the night I parted with Pandora.

It was as if the fifty years separating me from that pain meant nothing.

My beloved Marius,

It is almost dawn and I have only a few moments in which to write to you. As we have told you, our coach will leave within the hour carrying us away and towards the eventual destination of Moscow.

Marius, I want nothing more than to come to you now, but I cannot do it. I cannot seek shelter in the same house with the Ancient Ones.

But I beg you, my beloved, please come to Moscow. Please come and help me to free myself from Arjun. Later you can judge me and condemn me.

I need you, Marius. I shall haunt the vicinity of the Czar’s palace and the Great Cathedral until you come.

Marius, I know I ask of you that you make a great journey, but please come.

Whatever I have said of my love of Arjun, I am his slave now too completely, and I would be yours again.

Pandora.

For hours I sat with the letter in my hand, and then slowly I rose and went to my servants and asked them that they tell me where the letter had been found.

It had been in a packing case of books from my old library.

How had I failed to receive it? Had Bianca hidden this letter from me? That I couldn’t believe. It seemed some simpler more haphazard cruelty had taken place—that a servant had laid it on my desk in the early hours, and I myself had swept it aside into a heap of books without ever seeing it.

But what did it matter?

The awful damage was done.

She had written to me, and I had not known it. She had begged me to come to Moscow and I, not knowing, had not gone. And I did not know where to find her. I had her avowal of love, but it was too late.

In the following months I searched the Russian capital. I searched in the hope that she and Arjun had for some reason made their home there.

But I found no trace of Pandora. The wide world had swallowed her as it had swallowed my Bianca.

What more can I say to reveal the anguish of these two losses—that of Pandora whom I’d sought for so long, and my sweet and lovely Bianca?

With these two losses my story comes to a close.

Or rather I should say we have come full circle.

We now return to the story of the Queen of the Damned and of The Vampire Lestat who waked her. And I shall be brief as I revisit that story. For I think I see most clearly what it is that would heal my miserable soul more than anything. But before I can move on to that, we must revisit Lestat’s antics and the story of how I lost my last love, Akasha.

34

The Vampire Lestat

As all know, who follow our Chronicles, I was on the island in the Aegean Sea, ruling over a peaceful world of mortals when Lestat, a young vampire, no more than ten years in the Blood, began to call out to me.

Now I was most belligerent in my solitude. And not even the recent rise of Amadeo, out of the old coven in Paris, to become the Master of the new and bizarre Théâtre des Vampires, could lure me from my solitude.

For though I had spied upon Amadeo more than once, I saw nothing in him, but the same heartbreaking sadness that I had known in Venice. I preferred