vampire chronicles | Page 8

my brother. I had
to watch the overseer awake with a start, try to throw oft Lestat with both hands, fail, then
lie there struggling under Lestat 's grasp, and finally go limp, drained of blood. And die.
He did not die at once. We st ood in his narrow bedroom for the better part of an hour
watching him die. Part of my change, as I said. Lestat would never have stayed
otherwise. Then it was necessary to get rid of the overseer's body. I was almost sick from
this. Weak and feverish already, I had little reserve; and handling the dead body with
such a purpose caused me nausea,. Lestat was laughing, telling me callously that I would
feel so different once I was a vampire that I would laugh, too. He was wrong about that. I
never laugh at death, no matter how often a nd regularly I am the cause of it.
"But let me take things in order. We had to drive up the river road until we came to open
fields and leave the overseer there. We tore his coat, stole his money, and saw to it his-
lips were stained with liquor. I knew his wife, who lived in New Orleans, and knew the
state of desperation she would suffer wh en the body was discovered. But more than
sorrow for her, I felt pain that she woul d never know what had happened, that her
husband had not been found drunk on the road by robbers. As we beat the body, bruising
the face and the shoulders, I became more and more aroused. Of course, you must realize
that all this time the vampire Lestat was extraordinary. He was no more human to me
than a biblical angel. But under this pressu re, my enchantment with him was strained. I
had seen my becoming a vampire in two light s: The first light was simply enchantment;
Lestat had overwhelmed me on my deathbed. But the other light was my wish for self-
destruction. My desire to be thoroughly damned. This was the open door through which
Lestat had come on both the first and sec ond occasion. Now I was not destroying myself
but someone else. The overseer, his wife, his family. I recoiled and might have fled from
Lestat, my sanity thoroughly shat tered, had not he sensed with an infallible instinct what
was happening. Infallible instinct. . ." The vampire mused. "Let me say the powerful
instinct of a vampire to whom even the slight est change in a human's facial expression is
as apparent as a gesture. Le stat had preternatural timing. He rushed me into the carriage
and whipped the horses home. `I want to die, ' I began to murmur. `This is unbearable. I
want to die. You have it in your power to kill me. Let me die.' I refused to look at him, to

be spellbound by the sheer beauty of his appearance. He spoke my name to me softly,
laughing. As I said, he was determin ed to have the plantation."
"But would he have let you go?" aske d the boy. "Under any circumstances?"
"I don't know. Knowing Lestat as I do now, I would say he would have killed me rather
than let me go. But this was what I wanted, you see. It didn't matter. No, this was what I
thought I wanted. As soon as we reached the house, I jumped down out of the carriage
and walked, a zombie, to the brick stairs where my brother had fallen. The house had
been unoccupied for months now, the oversee r having his own cottage, and the Louisiana
heat and damp were already picking apart the steps. Every crevice was sprouting grass
and even small wildflowers. I remember feeli ng the moisture which in the night was cool
as I sat down on the lower steps and even rest ed my head against the brick and felt the
little wax-stemmed wildflowers w ith my hands. I pulled a clump of them out of ,the easy
dirt in one hand. `I want to die; kill me. Kill me,' I said to the vampire. `Now I am guilty
of murder. I can't live.' He sneered with th e impatience of people listening to the obvious
lies of others. And then in a flash he fastened on me just as he had on my man. I thrashed
against him wildly. I dug my boot into his chest and kicked him as fiercely as I could, his
teeth stinging my throat, the fever pounding in my temples. And with a movement