Desperately, I wanted to see that image of me again, from the rock videos. That image or any image, but there was nothing. I sent forth the image. I remembered those songs and canticles of our origins, hoping against hope that this had some meaning for her.

But one wrong word, and think what she might do. She could crush my skull with both hands. She could blast me with obliterating fire. But I couldn’t think of this, or imagine it.

“Beautiful,” I said again.

No change. I detected a low humming coming from her. We don’t need our tongues to hum? It was almost a purr as might come from a cat, and suddenly her eyes were as remote and without consciousness as those of a statue.

“Why are you doing it?” I asked. “Why kill all those young ones, those poor little young ones?”

With no spark of recognition or response, she moved forward and kissed me, kissing the right side of my face with those seashell-pink lips, those cold lips. I brought my hand up slowly and let my fingers move into the soft thickness of her waving red hair. I touched her head ever so gently.

“Mekare, trust in me,” I whispered in that old language.

A riot of sounds exploded behind me, again some force tearing through a forest that was almost impenetrable. The air was filled with a rain of tiny falling green leaves. I saw them falling on the viscid surface of the water.

Maharet stood there to my left helping Mekare to her feet, making soft gentle crooning sounds as she did it, her fingers stroking Mekare’s face.

I climbed to my feet as well.

“You leave here now, Lestat,” said Maharet, “and don’t you come back. And don’t you urge anyone ever again to come here!”

Her pale face was streaked with blood. There was blood on her pale-green silk robe, blood in her hair, all this from weeping. Blood tears. Blood-red lips.

Mekare stood beside her gazing at me impassively, eyes drifting over the palm fronds, the mesh of branches that shut out the sky, as if she were listening to the birds or the insects and not to anything spoken here.

“Very well,” I said. “I came to help. I came to learn what I could.”

“Say no more! I know why you came,” she said. “You must go. I understand. I would have done the same thing if I were you. But you must tell the others never to look for us again. Never. Do you think I would ever try to hurt you, you or any of the others? My sister would never do this. She would never harm anyone. Go now.”

“What about Pacaya, the volcano?” I asked. “You can’t do this, Maharet. You can’t go into the volcano, you and Mekare. You can’t do this to us.”

“I know!” she said. It was almost a groan. A terrible deep groan of anguish.

A deep groan came out of Mekare as well, a horrid groan. It was as if her only voice were in her chest and she turned to her sister suddenly lifting her hands but only a little, and letting them drop as if she couldn’t manage to really work them at all.

“Let me talk to you,” I pleaded.

Khayman was coming towards us, and Mekare turned sharply away and moved towards him and lay against his chest and he enfolded her with his arms. Maharet stared at me. She was shaking her head, moaning as if her fevered thoughts had a little song to them of moans.

Before I could speak again, there came a heated blast of air against my face and chest. It blinded me. I thought it was the Fire Gift, and she was making an immediate mockery of her own words.

Well, Brat Prince, I thought, you gambled, you lost! And you get to die now. Here’s your personal Pacaya.

But I was merely flying backwards through the bracken again, smashing against tree trunks, and through clattering crackling branches and wet fronds. I twisted and turned with all my might trying to escape this thing, trying to flee to one side or the other, but it was driving me backwards at such speed that I was helpless.

Finally I was flung down in a grassy place, an open grassy circle of sorts, unable for a moment to move, my body aching all over. My hands and face were badly cut. My eyes were stinging. I was covered with dirt and broken leaves. I climbed to my knees and then to my feet.

The sky above was a deep radiant blue with the jungles rising high all around as if to engulf it. I could see the remains of some huts here, that this had been a village once, but it was now in ruins. It took me a moment to catch my breath and then to wipe my face with my handkerchief, and wipe the blood from the cuts on my hands. My head throbbed.

It was half an hour before I reached the lodge on the banks of the river.

I found David and Jesse in a tasteful tropical suite there, all very civilized and pretty with white curtains and veils of bleached mosquito netting over the white iron bed. Candles burned all through the rooms and the manicured gardens and around a small swimming pool. Such luxury on the edge of chaos.

I stripped everything off and bathed in the fresh, clean swimming pool.

David stood by with a heap of white towels.

When I was myself again, as best as I could be, with these soiled and torn clothes, I went into the cozy little parlor with him.

I related what I’d seen.

“Khayman’s in the grip of the Voice, that’s clear,” I said. “Whether Maharet’s heard it or not, I have no idea. But Mekare gave me no hint of menace, no hint of mind or cunning or …”

“Or what?” Jesse asked.

“No hint that the Voice was coming from her,” I said.

“How could it possibly be coming from her?”

“You’re joking, surely,” I said.

“No, I’m not,” said Jesse.

In a low confidential tone I told them all I knew of the Voice.

I told them how it had been speaking to me for years, how it talked of beauty and love, and how it had nudged me once to burn and destroy the mavericks in Paris. I told them all about the Voice—its games with my reflection in the mirror.

“So you’re saying it’s some demonic ancient one,” said Jesse. “Trying to take possession of blood drinkers, and that it’s taken possession of Khayman, and Maharet knows it?” Her eyes were glassy with tears that were slowly thickening into pure blood. She brushed her curling copper hair back from her face. She looked unutterably sad.

“Well, that’s one way of putting it,” I said. “You really have no clue who the Voice is?”

I lost all taste for this conversation. I had too much thinking to do and I needed to do it quickly. I didn’t tell them about the image of Pacaya in Guatemala. Why should I? What could they do about it? She had said she wouldn’t harm us.