Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles 11)

And he gave her one of those rare bright smiles. He seemed warm and human suddenly and too grand to be mortal all at the same time.

"It really is a gift, isn't it?" asked Rose.

A shadow fell over his expression, but then he smiled again and he took her hand. "If Lestat can make it right, well, then, it will be made right," he said. "For both of you. But there are other things happening just now, other things and no one is going to bring you into our world until those challenges have been met."

"I know," she said. "I know."

She wanted to say more, that it was so kind of Louis to stay with them, to wait with them, when obviously it must have been difficult to leave the ever-growing crowds at Trinity Gate, but she'd said this over and over. And she knew that her thanks to anyone and everyone were becoming a kind of burden, and she left it where it was.

She got up and went to the great wall of glass to look out at the city, to let her eyes move through this glamorous wildwood in which life itself was teeming everywhere around her as surely as it did in faraway streets below, and only yards away it seemed there were darkened windows revealing smoky and ghostly offices and crowded bedrooms and living rooms, and rooftops lying before her with gleaming blue swimming pools and some with green gardens, perfect gardens like toy gardens, with toylike trees she felt she could reach out and pick up with her fingers, and all this stretching on towards the great distant shadow of Central Park.

I want to remember these nights always, she thought. I want to fix them forever in my memory. I want to lose nothing. When it's done, when it's decided and it's over, I will write a memoir seeking to capture everything forever. When it's happening it is too beautiful, too overwhelming, and you can feel it's being lost with every breath you take.

Quite suddenly a deep dark mass appeared above her, something like a cloud forming and descending right before her eyes. In a split second it thickened and rose up in front of her virtually blinding her as she fell back away from the transparent wall.

A great boom sounded, a great terrible crashing roar and a clatter, and she felt herself falling and all around her came down a rain of broken glittering glass. Her head hit the hardwood floor. There were deafening noises, furniture being smashed, pictures and mirrors falling, and the loud cold wind was rushing through the room. Doors slammed. More glass was breaking. She rolled over on her side, her hair whipped against her face by the wind, her hands grasping for something, anything firm, to steady her when she saw the treacherous glass splinters all around her, and she began to scream.

She saw Thorne fly at a brown-haired figure clothed all in black who stood before the overturned and broken table. But the figure slammed Thorne away with such force he appeared to fly across the length of the room. Louis lay sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood.

Viktor came rushing towards Rose.

The brown-haired figure snatched up Viktor in one arm though Viktor was fighting against him with all his strength, and as Thorne rushed at the figure again, he grabbed Thorne's hair with one hand and hurled him away once more.

For a moment this tall creature who held Viktor effortlessly in the grip of his left arm looked down at Rose and came towards her, but Louis rose up behind him like a great shadow and the stranger veered, spinning backwards and smashing Louis with his right fist.

Again and again, Rose screamed.

The figure rose off the floor, wrapping both arms around Viktor, and it went out through the great jagged hole in the glass wall. It went out and upwards and vanished into the sky. And she knew where that brown-haired one had taken Viktor, she knew--up and up, faster than the wind and towards the stars. Powerful as Uncle Lestan, unstoppable as Uncle Lestan, who'd rescued her from that little island in the Mediterranean so very long ago.

Viktor was gone!

Rose couldn't stop screaming. She crawled on her knees through the broken glass. Thorne lay to the far right, his face and head covered in blood. Louis crawled towards Rose.

Suddenly Louis was on his feet. He lifted her in his arms and carried her out of the room, out of the cold lashing wind. Thorne was staggering right behind him, hitting the walls on both sides like a drunken man, blood pouring down into his eyes.

Louis rushed with her down the long hallway. She clung to him crying, as he carried her into the bedroom that was hers in this place and put her down gently, gently as if she'd break on the white bed.

Thorne clung to the sides of the doorway as if he might fall.

There were voices in the hallway, feet pounding, shouts.

"Tell them all to get out," said Louis. "Call the house. We're going there now."

She tried to stop crying. She was choking. She couldn't breathe.

"But who was it, who took him, who did it?" she sobbed. Again, she began to scream.

"I don't know," Louis said.

Louis wrapped her up in the white cover of the bed, cradling her, rocking her, kissing her until she went quiet.

Then he carried her out of the apartment and held her tight against him in the elevator as they went down to the underground garage.

Finally, when they were in the car moving uptown sluggishly on Madison Avenue, with Thorne in the front seat beside the driver, she'd been able to stop crying altogether as she leaned against Louis's chest.

"But why did he take Viktor, why, where has he taken him?" She couldn't stop asking, couldn't stop.

She could hear Thorne in a low voice talking to Louis.