so you want me to tell you the story of my life.
you'd have to have a lot of tape for my story. i've had a very unusual life.
you followed me here, didn't you?
it's just a room.
i'm a vampire.
absolutely. i was watching you watching me. i was waiting for you in that alleyway. and then you began to speak.
perhaps lucky for both of us.
i'll tell you my story. all of it. i'd like to do that very much.
yes but you needn't worry about that now. things change.
we can't begin this way. let me turn on the light.
we love it. i only wanted to prepare you.
don't be frightened. i want this opportunity.
the same way you do it. a series of simple gestures. only i moved too fast for you to see. i'm flesh and blood, you see. but not human. i haven't been human for two hundred years.
what can i do to put you at ease? shall we begin like david copperfield? i am born, i grow up. or shall we begin when i was born to darkness, as i call it. that's really where we should start, don't you think?
why should i lie? 1791 was the year it happened. i was twenty-four - younger than you are now.
but times were different then. i was a man at that age. the master of a large plantation just south of new orleans.
i had just lost my wife in childbirth. she and the infant had been buried less than half a year.
i was twenty-four and life seemed finished. i couldn't bear the pain of their loss. i longed for a release from it.
i wanted to lose everything. my wealth, my estate, my sanity. but lady luck didn't oblige.
you're calling me a cheat?
then do me a favor. get rid of this piece of shit.
you lack the courage of your convictions, sir. do it.
most of all i longed for death. i know that now. i invited it, a release from the pain of living.
my invitation was open to anyone. sailors, thieves, whores and slaves.
but it was a vampire that accepted.
then my luck would have changed.
yes.
enough.
no. the gift of darkness requires more than that, as you'll see.
he left me half dead that morning. he wanted something from me. he came back the following night.
who the hell are you? what are you doing in my house?
why should i be?
what do you want from me?
diane!!!!
no!!!!!
give it to me!!!
i want it!
my last sunrise. that morning i was not yet a vampire, and i saw my last sunrise. i remember it completely, yet i don't remember any sunrise before it. i watched the whole magnificence of the dawn for the last time, as if it were the first. and the i said goodbye to sunlight and went out to become what i became.
how do you mean, start?
carlos!!!
i can't do it.
kill me if you will, but i can't do this.
backs away as lestat rises and descends the steps so fluidly he hardly seems to move.
you're the devil, aren't you? that's who you are.
i can't go through with it, i tell you.
but why do you want me?
yes. kill me. kill me like you promised -
yes.
yes.
no. don't leave me here. give it to me.
sure.
dying?
i want a woman.
the crucifix -
what have i done?
dear god, what have i done?
dear god, what have i become????
oh, that rumor about crosses?
nonsense, my friend. i can look on anything i like. and i am particularly fond of looking on crucifixes.
the same. as you would say today.  bull shit.
coffins.  coffins unfortunately are a necessity.
killing is no ordinary act. it is the experience of another's life for certain. that night i had lost my own life and taken another's. i was drowning in a sea of human guilt and regret, with all the heightened senses of a vampire.
it can't be.
and if i don't?
you told me something earlier. you said you didn't have a choice. was that true?
dear god, what have i done?
i awoke the next evening to a different world. and i realized there are as profound differences between vampires as between human beings.
i sat there staring at him with contempt. he had the soul of a shopkeeper, he was the sow's ear out of which nothing fine could be made. i felt sadly cheated in having him as a teacher.
do you think so?
i looked at anything mortal and saw all life as precious, condemning all fruitless guilt and passion that would let it slip through the fingers like sand.
it was only as a vampire that i could see yvette's beauty. her fear of me increased my desire.
i will finish it, yvette. now leave us.
we can live like this? off the blood of animals?
fascination.
but we can live without taking human life. it's possible.
this was new orleans, a magical and magnificent place to live. in which a vampire, richly dressed might attract no more notice in the evening than hundreds of other exotic creatures.
have you ever been caught?
lestat killed two, sometimes three a night. a fresh young girl, that was his favorite for the first of the evening.
but the triumphant kill of lestat was a young man. they represented the greatest loss to lestat because they stood on the threshold of the maximum possibility of life.
but how do you know?
i can't.
what have you done to me? you've condemned me to hell.
you want to see me kill? watch me kill you then -
being a vampire to him meant revenge. revenge against life- itself. every time he took a life it was revenge. and the slaves with a wisdom that was denied their masters, began to notice.
paris? you came from paris?
tell me about him. you must have learnt something from him! it had to happen for you as it did for me!
but you must know something about the meaning of it all, you must know where we come from, why we.
they know about us. they see us dine on empty plates and drink from empty glasses.
i respect life, don't you see? for each and every human life i have respect.
no, ma cher. i need no supper. is all well at pointe du lac tonight?
leave me alone now, yvette.
i am frightened of myself, yvette.
hush, yvette -
this place is cursed. damned, do you hear me? and your master is the devil.
get out while you can. you're free men.
unlike me, you are no free men.
do i have to convince you?
what you wouldn't do. it's almost sunrise. it will be the sun or the fire. you said they can kill me. the sun or the fire!
where are we?
we belong in hell.
can a vampire feel love?
i was human then. might as well ask can an angel feel love. both are blesses or cursed with a certain.  detachment. though whether angels take as long to learn it as i, i will never know.
yes, i loved yvette. as i loved pointe du lac. and as with each thing i loved, i destroyed it.
lestat i did not love. and he survived.
i'm leaving you. i can't stand this any longer.
i'm not interested in you. you disgust me. i'm interested in my own nature and know i can't trust you to tell me the truth about me.
i don't pretend to know.
lestat, she's alive!!!
the girl, lestat -
why do you do this lestat?
lestat - finish this -
no!!!
my god.  to think you.  are all i have to learn from.
am i damned? am i from the devil? is my very nature that of a devil? and all the while, as these dreaded questions caused me to neglect my thirst, my thirst grew hotter, my veins were threads of pain in my flesh, my temples throbbed.
the way i came.
 and finally, when i could stand it no longer, i stood in an empty desolate street and heard the sound of a child crying.
and if i am damned, why do i fell such pity for her gaunt face? why do i wish to warm her tiny arms? comfort her beating heart?
for years i had not savored a human. and when i had lestat's words made sense to me. i knew peace only when i killed and when i heard her heart in that terrible rhythm i knew again what peace could be. yet even then i could not contenance it.
no.
oh god lestat. i felt peace. i felt an end to the craving.
is god merciless? greedy and cruel?
what are you saying?
lestat!
i didn't want to kill her.
lestat, what do you mean?
what have you done?
you are the devil! you are the instrument of satan!
you are the devil! you are the instrument of satan!
you fiend. you monster.
shall we go on?
perhaps. he knew me. he knew i would love her more than the waking world. but there was more to it than that. perhaps in the end he did it - to show me that he could. for he lavished affection on her, there was no doubt about that. life was very different with madame claudia, as you can imagine.
a little child she was, but also a fierce killer, now capable of the ruthless pursuit of blood with all a child's demanding.
she would sleep in my coffin, daily, curl her child's fingers round my hair as she dreamt of i know not what.
mute and beautiful, she played with dolls, dressing them and undressing them by the hour.
mute and beautiful, she killed. and to watch her kill was chilling.
they found death fast in those days, before she learnt to play with the, to delay the moment till she had taken what she wanted.
she grew, yet stayed the same. she wanted a bed of her own, yet would climb back into mine.
how did you learn to write, claudia?
lestat taught you all you need to know about that.
he jests.
hush, claudia don't talk about such things. show me your book.
claudia! you did that?
time can pass fast for mortals when they're happy. with us it was the same.
it was a very different life. and a new century was beginning. what had once been a small godforsaken french colony was growing into a great port, giving us an endless train of magnificent strangers.
all human life was here, for the taking. and we took, all three of us, in our different ways.
i watched her grow yet stay the same, her doll-like face possessed of adult eyes, eerie, powerful, seductive.
claudia - don't -
claudia -
we're immortal. you've always known that.
you see the old woman? that will never happen to you. you'll never grow old. you will never die.
come.  i've something to show you.
though everything was changed, through the years had warped the contours of the streets, i found my way there, aware that i'd always known where it was and avoided it, not wanting to pass the doorway where i'd first heard claudia cry.
i heard you crying. you were there in a room with your mother. you were hugging her for warmth, crying pitifully as you had been for days. because your mother was dead.
i opened the shutters.  i came into the room.  i felt pity for you. pity, but something else.
and he found me with you. i ran, sickened at what i'd done. then he cut his wrist and fed you from him. i tried to stop him, but you were a vampire then. and have been every night hereafter.
i took your life. he gave you another one.
how could i not? she had to know.
where would she have gone? she was a child, and beautiful, heartbreaking merciless child. and i had made her that.
i walked all night. i walked as i walked years before when my mind swam with guilt at the thought of killing. i found myself at the cathedral.
i thought of all the things i had done and couldn't undo. and i longed for one second's peace.
i had no fear. if anything i longed for something to happen, for the stones to tremble as i entered the foyer.
i almost genuflected from old habit. i almost prayed.
and then it struck me.
what if the statues gave an image to nothing? what if i was the supernatural in this cathedral? the only immortal under this roof. and i felt nothing but loneliness. loneliness to the point of madness.
it's too late, too late -
bless me father for i have sinned so often and so long, i don't know how to change nor beg for forgiveness.
murders, father, death after death. the woman who died two nights ago in jackson square, i killed her. and thousands of others before her. i have walked the streets of new orleans like the grim reaper. and fed on human life for my own. i am a vampire, father, and have turned the one i love most of all into on too -
then there is no mercy.
you talk of sacrilege. why if god exists does he suffer me to exist?
why does he suffer me to live?
he'll never let us go.
so we made plans. she was convinced there were others of our kind in europe, that they would have the answers lestat couldn't provide. lestat whom she now hated, who she thought she could be free of. i doubted, but then she had a surprise in store.
claudia! don't do this thing!!!
what have you done, claudia -
lestat. oh, god forgive us.
he's dead, claudia, dead.
don't mock, claudia.
and suppose the one who made him knows nothing and the vampire who made him knows nothing, and it goes back, nothing proceeding from nothing, until there is nothing! and we must live with the knowledge that there is no knowledge.
and if we find the one who made him? do we tell him we destroyed his own creation? the vampire lestat?
then maybe so do we. every night of our lives. he was my brother. my maker. he gave me this life, whatever it is.
i can't. go away from me.
claudia - you're crying -
and you never cried -
hush, claudia, hush now my dear -
i love you claudia. always. and we are free now, claudia. no lestat. just the two of us, beginning the great adventure of our lives.
the birds. we forgot about the birds. there's nothing for it but to let them go.
the workmen must have a trunk - don't stop, cherie -
it can't be -
stay back - for the love of god.  or i'll burn you alive.
not yet. holding her tightly, louis runs.
though the fire seemed to spread through the quartier, i stood on that deck until dawn, fearful he would come out again of the very river like some monster to destroy us both. and all the while i thought, lestat, we deserve your vengeance. you gave me the dark gift. and i delivered you into the hands of death for the second time.
he was dead to us. we were free. that was all that mattered.
though the ship was blessedly free of rats, a strange plague nonetheless struck its passengers.
claudia and i alone seemed immune. we kept to ourselves, pondering the mystery of lestat and the greater mystery of each other.
we reached the mediterranean. i wanted those waters to be blue. they were black, nighttime waters and how i suffered then, straining to remember the color that a young man's senses had taken for granted, that my memory had let slip away for eternity. it was black off the coast of italy, black off the coast of greece, europe itself was black.
we saw the acropolis by moonlight, shades of grey and silver. and i longed for the brilliant white of those marbles in the hot sun of homer.
we docked at varna and searched the rural countryside of the carpathians, for what she liked to term "our kind".
the quest for these old world vampires filled me with bitterness. we searched village after village, ruin after ruin and i was glad when always we found nothing. for what could the damned really have to say to the damned?
peasant rumors, superstitions about garlic, crosses, stakes in the hear, all that - how do you say again? bull shit. but one of our kind? not a whisper.
fictions, my friend. the vulgar fictions of a demented irishman.  so we repaired to paris.
i think the very name of paris brought a rush of pleasure to me that was extraordinary. i was a creole, after all and paris was the mother of new orleans, a universe whole and entire unto herself.
we were alive again. we were in love and so euphoric was i that i yielded to her every desire.
still my beautiful child.
yes.
yes.
it was something hurries. and seldom savored.  something acute that was quickly lost. it was the pale shadow of killing.
claudia, you torture yourself.
you are more beautiful than any of them.
you are neither, claudia. now stop this -
you know her?
come, claudia.
for a time we had been almost human, in the sensual whirl of what paris had to offer. but the human delights of that city only served to remind her of the ageless child she had become. i felt her pain as i walked until i become aware that i was being followed.
claudia!
so it was when i had given up the search for vampires that a vampire found me.
you mean me harm?
trickster. buffoon!
i've searched the world for an immortal and this is what i find?
remember what i've told you. they'll have different powers. they'll read your thoughts if you allow it.
nonsense all right. but something tell me it's going to be the strangest nonsense we've ever seen.
they are here. i know they are. listen for something that doesn't make a sound.
it's a vampire. it's the one i saw in rue st jacques.
they use no paint. and the audience think it is paint.
no. she's frightened. she doesn't know where she is.
this is no performance.
this is monstrous!
i've seen enough of this! i loathe it!
we've been searching for you for a very long time.
monstrous.
your lips, they didn't move.
we had feared we were the only ones.
are you the leader of this group?
so you have the answers.
what are we?
who made us what we are?
but the one who made him, who made the one who made him, the source of all this evil.
you mean we are not children of satan?
then there is nothing.
then god does not exist.
and no vampire here has discourse with god or the devil?
my god.  so it's as i always feared. nothing, leading to nothing.
he knew nothing. he just didn't care.
the place was dark as we left, a darkness that confounded even claudia. and as we blundered through it, again came the thought: i have wronged lestat, i have hated him for the wrong reasons.
you read my thoughts?
a name i don't want to say again.
what danger?
do you think i would let them harm you?
love holds you to me. and we are in danger, not you.
never.
that's not so.
so you felt it too!
he can protect us, claudia.
listen to me.
claudia is dear to me. my.  daughter.
no, my beloved, my child.
i'm not innocent. but i'm afraid. she feels she's in danger from the others.
but why?
then blame the one who made her.
we want no quarrel with him.
then i leave too.
you said there were none.
we can do that?
that's what the one who made me said.
he? don't you see? i'm not the spirit of any age! i'm at odds with everything and always have been! i'm not even sure what i am!
and the vampires of the theatre?
yes.  my god.
lestat! you knew lestat!
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. and i knew claudia must leave me.
you haven't the vaguest conception under god of what you ask!
how do we seem to you? do you think us beautiful, magical, our white skin, our fierce eyes? drink, you ask me! have you any idea of the thing you will become?
don't make me, claudia! i cannot do it!
yes.
you promise to care for her then?
and you know what you ask for?
what do you think she is, madeleine? a doll?
and the child who did die?
look at the gaslight. don't take your eyes off it. you will be drained to the point of death, but you must stay alive. do you hear me?
she is dying. it happened to you too, but your child's mind can't remember.
it's only mortal death.
bear me no ill will, my love. we are now even.
what died tonight inside that room was not that woman. it will take her many nights to die, perhaps years. what has died in that room tonight is the last vestige in me of what was human.
armand! get me armand! he wouldn't countenance this -
you are alive, lestat! it can't be murder! tell them how you treated us.
are you mad???
you let her go, lestat - you let her free - and i'll come back with you -
they've fooled you, lestat! you must reach armand! armand has the power!
claudia!!!
where is she? where's claudia?
not without claudia. where is she?
you can't believe i'd leave without her. armand! you must save her! you have no choice.
claudia!!!
i don't believe you. i do not have to read your soul to know that you lie.
you let them do it.
you held sway over them. they feared you. you wanted it to happen.
i understand you only too well. you let them do it, as i let lestat turn a child into a demon. as i let her rip lestat's heart to pieces! well i am no longer that passive fool that has spun evil from evil till the web traps the one who made it. your melancholy spirit of this century! i know what i must do. and i warn you - you saved me tonight, so i return the favor - do not go near your cell in the theatre des vampires again.
shudders all over, fighting the morning weakness. he readies the scythe, like the grim reaper.
you didn't even warm them, did you?
and yet you knew what i would do.
you were their leader. they trusted you.
what a pair we are. we deserve each other, don't we?
we left paris shortly after. for years we wandered. greece, egypt, all the ancient lands. then, out of curiosity, perhaps, boredom, who knows what, i took him home, to my america.
and there, a technological wonder allowed me see sunrise, for the first time in two hundred years.
and what sunrises! seen as the human eye could never see them. we would sit in the dark, night after night among nameless humans, entranced with the miracle of light. silver at first, then as the years progressed in tones of purple, red and my long-lost blue.
and in time parted. we had become so alike, we both wanted the certainties of loneliness once more.
i had returned to new orleans. as soon as i smelt the air, i knew i was home. there was sadness there, rich, almost sweet, like the fragrance of jasmine. i walked the streets, savoring it like a 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.
looks around. walks on. sees another corpse, almost nothing but bones, sinking into the wet earth, the roots of an oak overgrowing it.
they were like the doomed princess caught in the thorny vines of sleeping beauty's castle. i knew what it meant. a vampire had lured them here, but had been to weak to get rid of them.
it spelt weakness, madness, the behavior of a dying animal that pollutes its own lair.
he hadn't even been there. and all those years i thought he was dead.
don't try to speak.  it's alright.
that's all past, lestat.
don't fear me, lestat. i bring you no harm.
it's only a siren.
and they frighten you?
it's false light, lestat. it can't harm you.
i have to go now lestat.
yes. i remember.
i tried.
you have it.
yes, lestat.
and my story ends there. but in fact it ended a long time ago, with claudia's ashes in that theatre. my love died with her. i never really changed after that. what became of lestat i have no idea. i go on, night after night. i feed on those who cross my path. but all my passion went with her yellow hair. i ma a spirit with preternatural flesh. detached. unchangeable. empty.
but it has. there is no more to tell.
it's over, i'm telling you.
do what you want with it. learn what you can. give the story to others.
is this what you want? you ask me for this after all i've told you?
dear god. i've failed again, haven't i?
don't say anymore. the reels are still turning. i have but one chance to show you the meaning of what i've said.
you like it? you like being food for the immortals? you like dying? is it beautiful? is it intense?
thank god.
1791. that's when it happened. i was twenty-four. younger then you are now.
my invitation was open to anyone. sailors, whores, thieves. but it was a vampire that accepted.