Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles 1)

“ ‘I tell you…’ he said. ‘We don’t know the meaning of something like that until we see it!’ And he looked at me, his eyebrow arched as if he were confiding a terrible secret. ‘We just don’t know.’

“ ‘No, we don’t,’ I said.

“ ‘I’ll tell you. They took a stake, a wooden stake, mind you; and this one in the grave, he took the stake with a hammer and he put it right to her breast. I didn’t believe it! And then with one great blow he drove it right into her. I tell you, I couldn’t have moved even if I’d wanted to; I was rooted there. And then that fellow, that beastly fellow, he reached up for his shovel and with both his arms he drove it sharp, right into the dead woman’s throat. The head was off like that! He shut his eyes, his face contorted, and put his head to the side.

“I looked at him, but I wasn’t seeing him at all. I was seeing this woman in her grave with the head severed, and I was feeling the most keen revulsion inside myself, as if a hand were pressing on my throat and my insides were coming up inside me and I couldn’t breathe. Then I felt Claudia’s lip against my wrist She was staring at Morgan, and apparently she had been for some time.

“Slowly Morgan

looked up at me, his eyes wild. ‘It’s what they want to do with her,’ he said. ‘With Emily! Well I won’t let them.’ He shook his head adamantly. ‘I won’t let them. You’ve got to help me, Louis.’ His lips were trembling, and his face so distorted now by his sudden desperation that I might have recoiled from it despite myself. ‘The same blood flows in our veins, you and I. I mean, French, English, we’re civilized men, Louis. They’re savages!’

“ ‘Try to be calm now, Morgan,’ I said, reaching out for him. ‘I want you to tell me what happened then. You and Emily.’

“He was struggling for his bottle. I drew it out of his pocket, and he took off the cap. ‘That’s a fellow, Louis; that’s a friend,’ he said emphatically. ‘You see, I took her away fast. They were going to burn that corpse right there in the cemetery; and Emily was not to see that, not while I…’ He shook his head ‘There wasn’t a carriage to be found that would take us out of here; not a single one of them would leave now for the two days’ drive to get us to a decent place!’

“ ‘But how did they explain it to you, Morgan?’ I insisted. I could see he did not have much time left.

“ ‘Vampires!’ he burst out, the whiskey sloshing on his hand. ‘Vampires, Louis. Can you believe that!’ And he gestured to the door with the bottle. ‘A plague of vampires! All this in whispers, as if the devil himself were listening at the door! Of course, God have mercy, they put a stop to it. That unfortunate woman in the cemetery, they’d stopped her from clawing her way up nightly to feed on the rest of us!’ He put the bottle to his lips. ‘Oh… God…’ he moaned.

“I watched him drink, patiently waiting.

“ ‘And Emily…’ he continued. ‘She thought it fascinating. What with the fire out there and a decent dinner and a proper glass of wine. She hadn’t seen that woman! She hadn’t seen what they’d done,’ he said desperately. ‘Oh, I wanted to get out of here; I offered them money. “If it’s over,” I kept saying to them, “one of you ought to want this money, a small fortune just to drive us out of here.” ’

“ ‘But it wasn’t over…’ I whispered.

“And I could see the tears gathering in his eyes, his mouth twisting with pain.

“ ‘How did it happen to her?’ I asked him.

“ ‘I don’t know,’ he gasped, shaking his head, the flask pressed to his forehead as if it were something cool, refreshing, when it was not.

“ ‘It came into the inn?’

“ ‘They said she went out to it,’ he confessed, the tears coursing down his cheeks. ‘Everything was locked! They saw to that. Doors, windows! Then it was morning and they were all shouting, and she was gone. The window stood wide open, and she wasn’t there. I didn’t even take time for my robe. I was running. I came to a dead halt over her, out there, behind the inn. My foot all but came down on her… she was just lying there under the peach trees. She held an empty cup. Clinging to it, an empty cup! They said it lured her… she was trying to give it water…’

“The flask slipped from his hands. He clapped his hands over his ears, his body bent, his head bowed.

“For a long time I sat there watching him; I had no words to say to him. And when he cried softly that they wanted to desecrate her, that they said she, Emily, was now a vampire, I assured him softly, though I don’t think he ever heard me, that she was not.

“He moved forward finally, as if he might fall. He appeared to be reaching for the candle, and before his arm rested on the buffet, his finger touched it so the hot wax extinguished the tiny bit that was left of the wick. We were in darkness then, and his head had fallen on his arm.

“All of the light of the room seemed gathered now in Claudia’s eyes. But as the silence lengthened and I sat there, wondering, hoping Morgan wouldn’t lift his head again, the woman came to the door. Her candle illuminated him, drunk, asleep.

“ ‘You go now,’ she said to me. Dark figures crowded around her, and the old wooden inn was alive with the shuffling of men and women. ‘Go by the fire!’

“ ‘What are you going to do!’ I demanded of her, rising and holding Claudia. ‘I want to know what you propose to do!’

“ ‘Go by the fire,’ she commanded.

“ ‘No, don’t do this,’ I said. But she narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth. ‘You go!’ she growled.

“ ‘Morgan,’ I said to him; but he didn’t hear me, he couldn’t hear me.

“ ‘Leave him be,’ said the woman fiercely.

“ ‘But it’s stupid, what you’re doing; don’t you understand? This woman’s dead!’ I pleaded with her.

“ ‘Louis,’ Claudia whispered, so that they couldn’t hear her, her arm tightening around my neck beneath the fur of my hood. ‘Let these people alone.’