Still clutching the bundle, refusing all help, he closeted himself up with his wound. It won't take me but a moment, and then I'll have the eye in my hand and be the doctor myself and place it here. In a low voice I whispered to him my plan.Let me go down into the streets, let me steal from some mortal, some evil being who has wasted every physical gift that God ever gave, an eye for you I'll do it. He looked at me, and a faint charming smile brightened his face.Don't fear for me, little devil Armand, he said.Fear for all of us. Tell us why you are afraid, but I think it's something far worse than fear that I see now in you.īut nothing could lessen the grotesque picture of his torn face where the cuts of a claw or fingernails surrounded the gaping, puckering lids. She could not kill the quaver in her voice.So he's taken you to his Hell and sent you back? She took Lestat's face in her hands and turned it towards her.Then tell us what it was, this Hell, tell us why we must be afraid. So the Prince of Lies had a tale to tell, did he? she asked. He wore new shoes.īut the worst, the very worst horror of all, was that one eye had been torn from his beautiful face, and the socket of vampiric lids puckered and shuddered, seeking to close, refusing to acknowledge this horrid disfigurement to the body rendered perfect for all time when he'd been made immortal.
He was washed and dressed, his torn and bleeding foot no doubt healed.
He came quietly into the parlor of the apartment as the darkness clambered down, starry for a few precious moments before the dreary descent of snow. He was handsome and radiant, a darkish ruddy glow coming from his face as though he'd seen some powerful mystery. There was no denying the beauty of his smooth poreless sun-darkened skin, and even as the dark slit of the empty socket seemed to peer at me with some secret power to relay its vision to his heart. Why do you love me after all I've done to you? he asked. As for the bundle he had carried in his arms, what could it have possibly been? I do not even think I thought of it. I remember only that the morning hastened us away, and if you cried too, I never heard you, I never thought to listen. Loved him then, yes, I had, but this had been a bodily disaster which his evil blood would heal, and I knew from our old lore that in the healing he would gain even greater strength than serene time itself would have given him.īut what I'd seen now was a devastation of the soul in his anguished face, and the vision of the one blue eye, shining so vividly in his streaked and wretched face, had been unbearable. But her greatest adornment in these moments was the tearful and eager love for him, her lack of fear of his mutilated face, the grace of her white arms as she enclosed him again, so sure of herself and so grateful for the gentle yielding of his body in towards her.
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