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Didn’t Heaven want her?
    “They’re coming for you,” I said. “It’s your family.” I hadn’t meant to blurt it. Was I under some sort of spell myself, looking into her eyes? But I could hear them clearly, the fast-approaching Mayfairs. Ambulance
sans
siren pulling into the pecan-tree drive, stretch limousine right behind it.
    “No, don’t let them take me,” she cried. “I want to be with you.”
    “Honey bunch, this is for always,” I said.
    “Yes!”
    Darkness eternal, yes, curse, grief, isolation, yes.
    Oh, and it’s the same old beat with you, Lestat, you Devil, you want to do it, you want to, you want to see it, you greedy little beast, you can’t give her over to the angels and you know they’re waiting! You know the God who can sanctify her suffering has purified her and will forgive her last cries.
    I drew close to her, pushing gently against Quinn.
    “Let her go, Little Brother,” I said. I lifted my wrist, broke the inside skin with my teeth and put the blood to her lips. “It has to be done this way. I’ve got to give her some of my blood first.” She kissed the blood. Her eyes squeezed shut. Shiver. Shock. “Otherwise, I can’t bring her through. Drink, pretty girl. Good-bye, pretty girl, good-bye, Mona.”

3
    S HE DREW THE BLOOD from me as if she’d broken the circuit that kept me alive, as if she meant to kill me. A witch had me by the blood. I gasped and reached with my left hand for the post of the bed and missed it, falling gently back with her on the nest of flowers. Her hair was catching in the roses. So was mine.
    In a blatant rush, I felt myself emptying my life into her—dank country castle, Paris, the boulevard theater, stolen, stone tower, made by Magnus, fire, alone, orphan weeping, treasure; did she laugh? I saw her teeth in my heart, my very heart. I pulled back, dizzy, and clung to the post, each one is unique, staring down at her.
    Witchlet!
    With glazed eyes she looked up at me. The blood was on her lips, just a touch, and all her pain was gone, and the moment had come, the moment of peace from pain, peace from struggle, peace from fear.
    She simply couldn’t believe it.
    In the twilight between human and vampire, she breathed deeply and slowly, hungry hybrid, doomed hybrid, her skin plumping exquisitely and the sweetness unfolding in her face as the cheeks formed and her lips filled out, and the flesh around her eyes grew firm, and then the breasts were rising beneath her cotton gown, and a roundness came to her arms, such a delectable roundness, I am such a fiend, and she sighed again, sighed as if ecstatic, looking at me, yeah, right, I’m gorgeous, I know, and now she could endure the Dark Trick. Quinn was stunned. So in love. Get away. I pushed him back.
This is mine.
    I snatched her up from the flowers. Vessel of my blood. Petals falling. Whispered poetry was tumbling from her lips, “Or like a creature native and indued unto that element.” I hugged her to me. I wanted my blood from her. I wanted her.
    “Little Witch,” I hissed into her ear. “You think you know all I can do!” I crushed her to me. I heard her sweet soft laugh. “Come on, show me!” she said.
I’m not dying.
Quinn was afraid. He put his arms around her and touched my arms. He was trying to hold us both. It was so warm. I loved him. So what? I had her.
    I grazed her neck with my teeth. “I’m coming to get you, Little Girl!” I whispered. “You’re playing in the big time, Little Girl!” Her heart was racing. Still on the brink. I sank my teeth and felt her body stiffen. Lovely paralysis. Slowly I drew on the blood, her salt mixed with my own. I
knew
her: child beauty, nymphet, schoolgirl scamp, the one on whom nothing was lost, pronouncements of genius, nursing drunken parents, freckles and smile, her life a romp, and always dreaming, restless at the computer keys, designée to the Mayfair billions, burying father and mother, no more worry there, lover of more men than she