As soon as I rose I knew that David was dying. The Mind Gift revealed to me that he had been in agony for several hours, and yet, he was calling to me with a desperate but ever so powerful mental cry.
It took me seconds to reach the Talamasca Motherhouse. Never had I entered this building, but now, even the thought of how Louis and Marius would disapprove my being there could not stop me. Did it ever stop me?
I created a little commotion when I entered the dimly lit room where David was spending his last painful hours. There were a dozen or more scholars, all staring at me with wide-opened eyes. Of course, they knew me. They also knew, as I knew, that David had been waiting for me.
'Lestat', said David. 'You came.'
People moved around me to let me approach the bed. Aaron Lightner, David's old friend, rose from the armchair where he sat next to the bed and offered it to me. I sat, taking David's hand into mine.
Of course, in my precipitation to get near David, I had not fed, which meant that my vampiric nature was all the more obvious. My skin was white and cold as snow and I knew my eyes where glimmering unnaturally. But why did it matter? Here of all places, there was no deceiving the mortals around me, and David, my beloved David, was dying in front of me.
'Don't cry, Lestat.'
I realised, as he said it, that blood tears where running down my face. I wiped them before answering.
'I can't help it, David. My best friend in the world is dying and he won't let me save him.'
'Lestat,', he started, but I interrupted him.
'Say it, David. A single word from you, and I will give you the Blood.'
Several people gasped. I ignored them.
'Lestat, my friend', David said. 'I am too old to be immortal. Beside, I don't fear death. It might give me some answers which I have been looking for all my life.'
'David, I have been dead for three hundred years, and I don't have more answers now than I had when I was mortal.'
He smiled faintly. Stubborn old fool.
We remained silent. I held his hand in mine for hours, listening to the faint beating of his heart, feeling as if my own would stop at the same time as his would. But of course, it would not, would it?
I bent over him and kissed his pale lips.
'I love you, I said.'
He did not answer. He had fallen into a comatic sleep, and nothing I could say now would rouse him. His heartbeat was decreasing ever so slightly.
For another hour I sat still, barely moving. The Talamascans where there too, watching over their Superior General, their mentor, their friend.
I knew it was over even before the cardiac monitor beside David's bed beeped his alarm. I sighted and kissed one last time David's lips.
'Good bye, old friend. Eternity will not be long enough to forget you.'
I rose and left like the ghost I was.
