Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles Page #5

- Then I leave too.

So soon?

Without any of those answers

you so longed for?

You said there are none.

But you asked the wrong questions.

Do you know...

...how few vampires...

...have the stamina for immortality?

How quickly they perish of their own will.

The world...

...changes.

We do not.

Therein lies the irony...

...that finally kills us.

I need you to make contact with this age.

Me?

Don't you see?

I'm not the spirit of any age.

I'm at odds with everything.

I always have been.

That is the very spirit of your age.

The heart of it.

Your fall...

...from grace...

...has been the fall of a century.

But the vampires in the theater?

Decadent...

...useless.

They can't reflect anything.

But...

...you do.

You reflect...

...its broken heart.

A vampire...

...with a human soul.

An immortal with a mortal's passion.

You...

...are...

...beautiful, my friend.

Lestat must have wept when he made you.

You knew Lestat?

Yes.

I knew him.

Knew him well enough

not to mourn his passing.

I felt a kind of peace at last.

I had found the teacher which Lestat

could never, I knew now, have been.

I knew knowledge would

never be withheld by Armand.

It would pass through him

as through a pane of glass.

Madeleine...

...Louis is shy.

Drink.

Do it.

Because I cannot do it.

I haven't the strength.

- You saw to that when you made me.

- You don't know what you ask!

I have.

You have found your new companion!

You will make me mine!

How do we seem to you?

Do you find us beautiful?

Magical?

Our white skin, our fierce eyes?

Do you know the thing you will become?

Your evil is that you cannot be evil!

And I shall suffer for it no longer!

Don't make me do this! I cannot!

Yet, you could do it to me.

Snatching me from my mother's hands,

like two monsters in a fairy tale.

And now you weep!

I haven't tears enough

for what you've done to me!

You give her to me, Louis!

Do this before you leave me!

Oh, God!

I love you still!

That's the torment of it!

Who'll care for me, my love...

...my dark angel, when you are gone?

What do you think she is, Madeleine?

A doll?

A child who cannot die.

And the child who did die?

My daughter.

What's happening to her?

She's dying.

It happened to you too...

...only you were too young to remember.

But if she dies?

It's only mortal death.

Bear me no ill will, my love.

We are now even.

What do you mean?

What died in that room

was not that woman.

What has died is the...

...last breath in me...

...that was human.

Yes, Father.

At last we are even.

It's time for justice, little one.

Get me Armand.

He wouldn't stand for this.

Death for the others.

For you...

...eternity in a box.

Walled in a dungeon.

Your only company will be your screams.

Perhaps it will take centuries.

Take them!

Pleasant dreams.

No! No!

Help!

Wake up!

Where's Claudia?

Claudia. I cannot help her.

- Where's Claudia?

- I can't save her!

I will only risk losing you!

Don't!

Come, Louis.

Not here.

So a vampire can cry?

Once...

...maybe twice, in eternity.

And maybe it was to quench those tears

forever that I took such revenge.

Stop him! It's burning!

Get him! Stop him!

You didn't even warn them, did you?

No.

And you knew what I would do.

I knew.

I rescued you, didn't I?

From the terrible dawn.

You were their leader. They trusted you.

No.

You made me see their failings, Louis.

They were...

...doomed, stuck in their decadent time.

They had forgotten the first lesson...

...that we must be powerful...

...beautiful...

...and without regret.

You can teach me this?

Yes.

To be without regret?

Then, what a pair we could make.

But what if it's a lesson

I don't care to learn?

What?

What if all I have is my suffering?

My regret?

Don't you want to lose it?

So you can have that too?

The heart that mourns her...

...whom you burnt to a cinder?

I swear I didn't...

But I know you did.

I know...

...you...

...regret nothing.

You feel...

...nothing.

If that's all I have left to learn...

...I can do that on my own.

I will die.

No.

You are dead.

And you want me to quicken you

once more.

And as much as your invitation

might appeal to me...

...I must regretfully...

...decline.

For years I wandered:

Italy, Greece...

...all the ancient lands.

But the world was a tomb to me...

...a graveyard full of broken statues.

And each of those statues

resembled her face.

Then, out of curiosity...

...boredom, who knows what...

...I left the Old World...

...and came back to my America.

And there a mechanical wonder

allowed me to see the sunrise...

...for the first time...

...in 200 years.

And what sunrises!

Seen as the human eye

could never see them.

Silver at first...

...then, as the years progressed,

in tones of purple...

...red...

...and my long-lost blue.

In the spring of 1988,

I returned to New Orleans.

And as soon as I smelled the air,

I knew I was home.

It was rich...

...almost sweet...

...like the fragrance of jasmine

and roses around our old courtyard.

I walked the streets savoring

that long-lost perfume.

And then on Prytania Street...

...only blocks from the

Lafayette cemetery...

...I caught the scent of death.

And it wasn't coming from the graves.

The scent grew stronger as I walked.

Old death.

A scent too faint for mortals to detect.

I'm so glad you are here!

I've dreamed...

...of this moment.

She never should have been one of...

...us.

That's all past, Lestat.

Past.

Still beautiful, Louis.

You always were the strong one.

Don't be frightened.

I mean you no harm.

You've come home to me then?

You remember how I was?

The vampire...

...that I was?

Yes, I remember.

No one...

...could refuse me...

...not even you.

I tried.

Yes, you tried.

And the more you tried...

...the more I wanted you.

I can't bear it.

Such lights...

...and that noise!

They make the night brighter than the day.

It's false light.

It can't harm you.

If you stay with me, Louis...

...I could venture out again.

Become the old Lestat.

I must leave now.

Whatever happened to Lestat,

I do not know.

I go on...

...night after night.

I feed on those who cross my path.

But all my passion went

with her golden hair.

I'm a spirit of preternatural flesh.

Detached.

Unchangeable.

Empty.

Empty?

That's it?

No, it can't end like that.

But it has.

There's no more to tell.

There must be more to tell. You don't

understand yourself. You're not empty.

What I wouldn't give to be like you,

to have your power...

...to have seen the things you have seen.

You haven't been listening.

I have been listening.

Your story is incredible.

- It's amazing.

- Do what you want with it.

Give it to others. Learn what you can.

There's only one way I'll truly learn

and you know it.

You brought me here for a reason.

Didn't you?

What reason would that be?

You want a companion. You want a link

to the outside world. That's me.

Take me. That's what I want.

- I refuse to let it end like this.

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