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limbs that were locked around me, that could crush the life out of me
in a second. I felt my fangs break through the skin as if through a
glacial crust, and the blood came steaming into my mouth. Oh, yes,
yes . . . oh, yes. I had thrown my arm over her left shoulder, I was
clinging to her, my living statue, and it didn't matter that she was
harder than marble, that was the way it was supposed to be, it was
perfect, my Mother, my lover, my powerful one, and the blood was
penetrating every pulsing particle of me with the threads of its burning
web. But her lips were against my throat. She was kissing me, kissing
the artery through which her own blood so violently flowed. Her lips
were opening on it, and as I drew upon her blood with all my strength,
sucking, and feeling that gush again and again before it spread itself
out into me, I felt the unmistakable sensation of her fangs going into
my neck. Out of every zinging vessel my blood was suddenly drawn
into her, even as hers was being drawn into me. I saw it, the
shimmering circuit, and more divinely I felt it because nothing else
existed but our mouths locked to each other's throats and the
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relentless pounding path of the blood. There were no dreams, there
were no visions, there was just this, this-gorgeous and deafening and
heated-and nothing mattered, absolutely nothing, except that this
never stop. The world of all things that had weight and filled space
and interrupted the flow of light was gone. And yet some horrid noise
intruded, something ugly, like the sound of stone cracking, like the
sound of stone dragged across the floor. Marius coming. No, Marius,
don't come. Go back, don't touch. Don't separate us. But it wasn't
Marius, this awful sound, this intrusion, this sudden disruption of
everything, this thing grabbing hold of my hair and tearing me off her
so the blood spurted out of my mouth. It was Enkil. And his powerful
hands were clamped on the sides of my head. The blood gushed down
my chin. I saw her stricken face! I saw her reach out for him. Her
eyes blazed with common anger, her glistening white limbs animate as
she grabbed at the hands that held my head. I heard her voice rise out
of her, screaming, shrieking, louder than the note she had sung, the
blood drooling from the end of her mouth. The sound took sight as
well as sound with it. The darkness swirled, broken into mullions of
tiny specks. My skull was going to crack. He was forcing me down on
my knees. He was bent over me, and suddenly I saw his face
completely and it was as impassive as ever, only the stress of the
muscles in his arms evincing true life. And even through the
obliterating sound of her scream I knew the door behind me quaked
with Marius's pounding, his shouts almost as loud as her cries. The
blood was coming out of my ears from her screams. I was moving my
lips. The vise of stone clamped to my head suddenly let go. I felt
myself hit the floor. I was sprawled out flat, and I felt the cold pressure
of his foot on my chest. He would crush my heart in a second, and
she, her screams growing ever louder, ever more piercing, was on his
back with her arm locked around his neck. I saw her knotted
eyebrows, her flying black hair. But it was Marius I heard through the
door talking to him, cutting through the white sound of her screams.
Kill him, Enkil, and I will take her away from you forever, and she will
help me to do it! I swear! Sudden silence. Deafness again. The
warmth of blood trickling down the sides of my neck. She stepped
aside and she looked straight forward and the doors flew open,
smacking the side of the narrow stone passage, and Marius was
suddenly standing above me with his hands on Enkil's shoulders and
Enkil seemed unable to move. The foot slid down, bruising my
stomach, and then it was gone. And Marius was speaking words I
could hear only as thoughts. Get out, Lestat. Run. I struggled to sit
up, and I saw him driving them both slowly back towards the
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tabernacle, and I saw them both staring not forward, but at him,
Akasha clutching Enkil's arm, and I saw their faces blank again, but for
the first time the blankness seemed listless and not the mask of
curiosity but the mask of death.
"Lestat, run! " he said again, without turning. And I obeyed.
16
I was at the farthest corner of the terrace when Marius finally came
into the lighted salon. There was a heat in all my veins still that
breathed as if it had its own life. And I could see far beyond the dim
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