him in fascination. The candles had all burned down, and the only light was that of the moon and the street. I could see his iced and gleaming profile as he set the child down on the pillow. ‘Come here, Louis, you haven’t fed enough, I know you haven’t,’ he said with that same calm, convincing voice he had used skillfully all evening. He held my hand in his, his own warm and tight. ‘See her, Louis, how plump and sweet she looks, as if even death can’t take her freshness; the will to live is too strong! He might make a sculpture of her tiny lips and rounded hands, but he cannot make her fade! You remember, the way you wanted her when you saw her in that room.’ I resisted him. I didn’t want to kill her. I hadn’t wanted to last night. And then suddenly I remembered two conflicting things and was torn in agony: I remembered the powerful beating of her heart against mine and I hungered for it, hungered for it so badly I turned my back on her in the bed and would have rushed out of the room had not Lestat held me fast; and I remembered her mother’s face and that moment of horror when I’d dropped the child and he’d come into the room. But he wasn’t mocking me now; he was confusing me. ‘You want her, Louis. Don’t you see, once you’ve taken her, then you can take whomever you wish. You wanted her last night but you weakened, and that’s why she’s not dead.’ I could feel it was true, what he said. I could feel again that ecstasy of being pressed to her, her little heart going and going. ‘She’s too strong for me … her heart, it wouldn’t give up,’ I said to him. ‘Is she so strong?’ he smiled. He drew me close to him. ‘Take her, Louis, I know you want her.’ And I did. I drew close to the bed now and just watched her. Her chest barely moved with her breath, and one small hand was tangled in her long, gold hair. I couldn’t bear it, looking at her, wanting her not to die and wanting her; and the more I looked at her, the more I could taste her skin, feel my arm sliding under her back and pulling her up to me, feel her soft neck. Soft, soft, that’s what she was, so soft. I tried to tell myself it was best for her to die—what was to become of her?—but these were lying thoughts. I wanted her! And so I took her in my arms and held her, her burning cheek on mine, her hair falling down over my wrists and brushing my eyelids, the sweet perfume of a child strong and pulsing in spite of sickness and death. She moaned now, stirred in her sleep, and that was more than I could bear. I’d kill her before I’d let her wake and know it. I went into her throat and heard Lestat saying to me strangely, ‘Just a little tear. It’s just a little throat.’ And I obeyed him.
“I won’t tell you again what it was like, except that it caught me up just as it had done before, and as killing always does, only more; so that my knees bent and I half lay on the bed, sucking her dry, that heart pounding again that would not slow, would not give up. And suddenly, as I went on and on, the instinctual part of me waiting, waiting for the slowing of the heart which would mean death, Lestat wrenched me from her. ‘But she’s not dead,’ I whispered. But it was over. The furniture of the room emerged from the darkness. I sat stunned, staring at her, too weak to move, my head rolling back against the headboard of the bed, my hands pressing down on the velvet spread. Lestat was snatching her up, talking to her, saying a name. ‘Claudia, Claudia, listen to me, come round, Claudia.’ He was carrying her now out of the bedroom into the parlor, and his voice was so soft I barely heard him. ‘You’re ill, do you hear me? You must do as I tell you to get well.’ And then, in the pause that followed, I came to my senses. I realized what he was doing, that he had cut his wrist and given it to her and she was drinking. ‘That’s it, dear; more,’ he was saying to her. ‘You must drink it to get well.’
“ ‘Damn you!’ I shouted, and he hissed at me with blazing eyes. He sat on the settee with her locked to his wrist. I saw her white hand clutching at his sleeve, and I could see his chest heaving for breath