"Daniel stirred in the dark. The sleep seemed to lift like a blanket that had been about to crush him. He saw the gleam of Armand's eye. He heard Armand's whisper: 'She's taken him.'
"Jesse moaned aloud. Weightless, she drifted in the pearly gloom. She saw the two rising figures as if in a dance--the Mother and the Son. Like saints ascending on the painted ceiling of a church. Her lips formed the words 'the Mother.'
"In their deep-dug grave beneath the ice, Pandora and Santino slept in each other's arms. Pandora heard the sound. She heard Khayman's cry. She saw Lestat with his eyes closed and his head thrown back, rising in Akasha's embrace. She saw Akasha's black eyes fixed upon his sleeping face. Pandora's heart stopped in terror.
"Marius closed his eyes. He could keep them open no longer. Above the wolves howled; the wind tore at the steel roof of the compound. Through the blizzard the feeble rays of the sun came as if igniting the swirling snow, and he could feel the dulling heat move down through layer upon layer of ice to numb him.
"He saw the sleeping figure of Lestat in her arms; he saw her rising into the sky. 'Beware of her, Lestat,' he whispered with his last conscious breath. 'Danger.'
"On the cool carpeted floor, Khayman stretched out and buried his face in his arm. And a dream came at once, a soft silky dream of a summer night in a lovely place, where the sky was big over the city lights, and they were all together, these immortals whose names he knew and held to his heart now."
Copyright © 1988 by Anne O'Brien Rice.
