Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (The Vampire Chronicles 12)

The world seemed splendid and I was as in love with Paris as I'd ever been.

But I soon realized that someone was watching me. A still figure at the next table, practically opposite me, had fixed its gaze on me with a little too much concentration to be welcome. I didn't look at the figure. I scanned the crowds for images of him in the eyes of others and when I realized what I was seeing, I turned and confronted him at once.

He was a young male, perhaps in his twenties, and he had handsomely suntanned skin and long deep-red hair to his shoulders and bright green eyes. When he smiled at me, my heart stopped.

He got up from the table and came over to me. He looked fine in his jeans and blue-and-white seersucker jacket and stiff white shirt open at the neck. He sat down opposite and leaned in close, forearms on the table, long slender fingers reaching out and covering my right hand.

"Lestat," he whispered.

I didn't dare to say his name. I was racking this up as a hallucination because how under Heaven could anyone have so perfectly re-created the boy-man I'd been with in Atalantaya during the time when my heart had been stopped. The dimples, the cleft in the chin, but more than anything the large vibrant eyes and the intense feeling that appeared to heat him all over from within.

"It's me," he said, his warm fingers squeezing my hand tight enough to hurt a mortal hand. "It's Amel."

"I'm going to lose it," I said quietly. I could hardly speak. Beyond him I saw Louis approaching with his newspaper, but when Louis saw what was happening at the table, he nodded, folded the paper, and moved out of sight.

There was no way to put into words what I felt. This was Amel. Amel, alive; Amel as fully realized and present in this body and this body was a living breathing replica of the body he'd lost when Atalantaya had fallen into the sea.

He couldn't read these thoughts from me, apparently, and finally I said the only thing I could say. "Thank Heaven!" I put my hand up to shield my eyes and I cried. I sat there crying for a long time, and finally, I managed to find my handkerchief, and I blotted my eyes, and folded the linen to hide the blood.

"How many times have you been here?" he asked. He imprisoned my right hand again and I saw that he'd been crying too. The cadence of his voice, the pitch, the timbre--it was all the same as the voice he'd shaped in my head.

When I didn't answer, he started up again as if he couldn't contain himself.

"This is the first week," he said, "that I've been allowed out by myself, the first week I've been permitted to walk the streets unattended, the first week I've been allowed to be nearly run over by traffic, or to get lost, or to be mugged and robbed of my papers, or to get sick after overeating and gag in an alleyway on my own." He stopped only to laugh and then went right on, his white teeth sparkling and his eyes coloring beautifully in the lights. "I told them if they didn't let me out, I was going

to run away. I swore that if they didn't let me make a few blunders on my own, I was going to go on a hunger strike. Of course they reminded me that we don't need food, and nothing much would happen except that I'd be miserable, but finally Kapetria drove me into the Boulevard Saint-Michel and I jumped out of the car and walked off."

So they had been in France all the time--in Paris all the time more than likely. I didn't care. I didn't care about anything but him.

"And none of that happened to you, did it?" I asked.

"No, nothing bad at all," he announced proudly with the most incandescent smile. His eyes were moist. "I've been roaming since morning. And I knew that you had been walking in these very streets. I knew you frequented this cafe. I overheard them say it. I knew. I dreamed of seeing you! I wanted to see you. I would have kept coming back until I ran into you." He stopped and looked over the table of sandwiches and pastries. I could see that he was hungry.

"Please, eat," I said. I moved a glass of wine towards him. And I uncorked the bottle. "Are they trying to keep you and me apart?"

He took a long deep drink, and I refilled the glass.

"They know they can't, really," said Amel. "That I want to see you and talk to you and inevitably they will have to allow it. But they keep saying I'm not ready. Well, I am ready. I need to see you like this."

He began to eat slowly, savoring every bite of the bread and meat, but his eyes kept returning to me.

"Ah, such pleasure," he said under his breath. "Every cell in my body is learning to enjoy this more and more each day."

"What else can I get for you?" I asked.

I signaled the waiter.

"What about an ice-cold beer?" I asked. "Would you like that?"

He nodded. "Hot, cold, sweetness," he murmured. He took a bite from the sugar pastry right before him, closing his eyes, shuddering as he held it in his mouth. Then he looked at me, took me in again as if he were feasting on the sight of me. Tears hovered in his eyes.

Scent of blood, delicious blood inside him.

There was so much I wanted to say that I said nothing.

"I am famished for the whole world," he said. "I'm famished for wine, for beer, for food, for life, for you! Take off your glasses, will you, I have to see your eyes, oh, yes, thank you, thank you. Those are your eyes."

"Don't cry anymore," I said. "If you don't cry anymore, I won't cry."