I turned to Rhoshamandes. “Now make us hear your fledgling Benedict talking through that phone now, clearly and distinctly, or I will chop off both your legs and split your breastbone with this ax.”

Rhoshamandes put his right hand to his mouth now as if he were about to be sick. His face was blanched, and covered in a thin film of blood sweat. He was trembling violently. He reached for the phone and lifted it and struggled apparently to make his trembling fingers and thumb obey him.

He dropped the phone back onto the table, or it slipped out of his blood-tinged sweating hand.

All waited.

A voice came out of the phone, the voice of a blood drinker.

“Rhosh? Rhosh, I need you. Rhosh, everything has gone wrong!”

The Voice cursed me in French. Then in English. I was an abomination to it. Did I know that? I was anathema. I was all things foul and worthy of damnation.

“Benedict,” I said coolly, “if you don’t release my son unharmed, I’m going to chop your maker into pieces, do you understand? I’ve already chopped off his right hand and his arm. I’m going for his nose next, then his ears. And I’ll burn these parts before I go for his legs. Do you want me to send you pictures of this?”

Indeed Benji was already snapping pictures with his own phone. The number from which Benedict was talking was plainly readable on Rhoshamandes’s phone.

Benedict began weeping.

“But I can’t,” he said. “Please don’t hurt him. I can’t. I mean I … I mean Viktor’s free. He’s free. Rhosh, let me speak to Rhosh, Rhosh, I need your help, Rhosh help me. She’s come alive. She’s woken up. She’s broken out of her bonds. Rhosh, she’s going to destroy me. Viktor’s free. Viktor has run away. Rhosh, everything went wrong.”

Rhosh sat back in the chair and looked at the dark glass ceiling. A long shudder passed through his body. The stump below his shoulder had sealed itself off and he was no longer bleeding.

“Oh, Benedict,” he said with a long groan.

“Tell us exactly where you are!” said Benji. “Tell us now. You force me to trace this phone of yours, and I swear to you, Lestat will split this creature’s tongue.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The Voice had fallen into a nest of sighs, gasps, malicious whispers, and growls.

“You’ve got to come!” said Benedict. “She’s after me. She’s walking along the beach.”

“Take to the air,” said Rhoshamandes in a low groaning voice. “She doesn’t know she has that gift.”

“But I did,” Benedict stammered. “I’m up here safe on this bluff, but Rhosh, if I leave here and if she wanders off, if I lose sight of her, if we lose her, Rhosh, help me. If she falls down somewhere in the sun, if the sun strikes her, if we lose her …”

“You’ll die,” I said. “Where are you? Tell us now!”

“Montauk, the Atlantic coast, the tip of Long Island. Old Montauk Road. For God’s sake, come.”

At once Fareed and Seth made for the door.

“I want to come with you!” I shouted.

“No, stay here, please, and keep him here!” said Seth, with a nod to Sevraine and to Gregory. “Trust us to bring them back.” He looked down at the phone. “Benedict, you harm that boy and we will kill you when we find you. And your maker will die here. You’ll never see him again.”

“I won’t hurt him,” Benedict said. “He’s fine. I never wanted to hurt him. He’s unharmed. He’s walking inland towards the road. I didn’t hurt him at all.”

“I want to go with you,” said Jesse, rising from her chair. David was right with her. “If anyone can calm Mekare, I can. Otherwise you might not be able to take her to safety. Let me come.”

“Let us both come,” said David.

“Of course, go,” I said. “All of you, go.”

Seth nodded, and they all left together.

The Voice was cursing me in some ancient language, promising to destroy me, promising me the most terrible reckoning, and I sat there at the end of the table, one knee up, the other leg dangling over the edge, the ax still in my right hand, and contemplated whether or not I wanted to go on chopping up this creature—well, just a little so that Benedict might hear him scream. I couldn’t quite make up my mind.

And I could not stop thinking, This is the monster who murdered Maharet, the great Maharet who had never done him a particle of harm. This is the monster who attacked her as brutally as I am attacking him now.

I could hear Sybelle crying. I could hear a female voice, I think Bianca’s voice, trying to quiet her. But she couldn’t stop crying.

All the fight had gone out of Rhoshamandes. Sevraine was staring at him, fixedly, and so was Gregory—both clearly holding him there through their power. But I wondered if it was even necessary now.

He was defeated, staring dully at the table before him, but he was no longer trembling, no longer sweating, and then that expression came over him again, that same look of cavalier dismissal, almost a facial shrug, and he seemed to collapse mentally into himself.

“This is not the finish,” the Voice snarled at me. “This is only the beginning. I will drive you out of your mind before this is finished. You will beg me to leave you alone, on your knees. You think this is finished? Never.”

I turned him off. Just like that. Turned him off. But it didn’t last. He blasted through within a split second. It was as they had said. He was stronger. “I will make your existence miserable from now on and forever until I accomplish my purpose and then I will do to you all that you have done to him, and to me.”

Allesandra walked slowly towards us and round in back of Rhoshamandes. She stood behind Rhoshamandes’s chair and put her hands very lightly on his shoulders.

“Don’t hurt him anymore, please,” she said, appealing to me. “You have cut the Gordian knot, Lestat. Splendid. It is all splendid. But the Voice tricked him. The Voice duped him, as it duped me.”

The Voice said, “You think you can shut me out! You think it’s so easy? You think it’s easy now that I’m stronger? You think you can do it now that I’ve recovered so much strength?”

“Voice,” I said with a sigh. “Maybe we both have much to learn.”

He began to weep. It was as loud and clear in my head as if he was in the very room. Again, I tried to shut him out. Again, I could not.

I opened my coat, wiped the blood off my ax on the lining of it, such pretty brown silk lining, and then I hooked the handle back in there under my arm.