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Anne RiceA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In the middle of the night, Lestat hears the voice say “Wolfkiller” again. Then, he sees the cloaked vampire, Magnus. Magnus pulls Lestat out of the window and into the air. Magnus drops Lestat on the roof of a tower. Lestat tries to hit Magnus, but his blows have no effect. Magnus bites Lestat’s neck and drinks his blood, which is a pleasurable experience for Lestat. He begs Magnus to continue when he stops, but Magnus holds Lestat up in the air over Paris.
Lestat wakes up craving apples and white wine. The exact wine he is craving is on a table near his bed in a cell in the tower, along with some beef broth. He eats and drinks ravenously. Magnus brings Lestat another bottle.
Once Lestat is intoxicated, Magnus grabs Lestat and Lestat struggles against him. When Lestat calms down, Magnus laughs, and Lestat is surprised that the sign of the cross and the name of God have no effect on Magnus. Lestat rants about God’s absence and Magnus hits him.
Magnus then feeds on Lestat. During the feeding, Lestat has visions of Magnus’s life. Magnus stops, telling Lestat that he is going to die, and instructs Lestat to ask for the gift of vampirism. Lestat refuses. Magnus cuts his own throat and presses Lestat’s mouth to the wound. The experience of feeding is ecstatic for Lestat. Eventually, Magnus pushes Lestat away.
With vampire blood inside him, Lestat’s senses become sharper. He is overwhelmed looking out the window, and cries. Lestat kisses Magnus, feeling immense love for him. Magnus tells him, “save your kisses for the world” (92) and commands Lestat to follow his orders.
Magnus gives Lestat his keys to the tower and shows him a stone that only vampires can move. Behind it is a passage to Magnus’s treasure, which he bequeaths to Lestat. He also warns Lestat to stop drinking human blood before the heart stops.
Magnus starts a large fire and makes Lestat promise to scatter his ashes and to hide from the light of the sun. Lestat begs Magnus not to die by suicide, but Magnus jumps into the fire and laughs as he burns. Lestat cries.
Lestat watches the fire burn out and mutters about “the witches’ place” (97). He thinks about Magnus saying he is going to meet the devil, if there is one. Lestat’s body rejects all his human waste, but he doesn’t cringe at it, nor the rats or insects. This lack of revulsion makes him laugh. He scatters Magnus’s ashes and bids him farewell.
Lestat crawls through the secret passageway and pulls the stone in place behind him to block out the sun. In the inner chamber, he discovers rich clothes Magnus left behind for him, with his fur-lined cloak on top of a sarcophagus. In the room’s fireplace, Lestat builds a fire. He takes off his soiled clothes, cleans himself, and puts on the new clothes.
Lestat discovers he can touch crucifixes, draw crosses, and say Jesus’s name, as well as see himself in mirrors. He also discovers a chest full of jewels, coins, silver, and gold, probably stolen from Magnus’s victims. Lestat wonders if he will be able to kill humans, or ever see Nicolas again, and decides to check out the rest of the tower.
Lestat discovers other sarcophagi and a dungeon filled with corpses of young men who looked like him. When he knocks over rotted food and milk, he vomits blood. He drinks up the vomited blood off the floor and screams. When he realizes the sun is starting to rise, he hurries back to the sarcophagus and gets inside.
When he wakes up the next evening, Lestat craves human blood. He finds Magnus’s evil servant in the tower. After telling the servant that Magnus is dead, Lestat kills the servant and drinks his blood, stopping before the heart stops. When he is finished, Lestat throws the corpse in the dungeon with the others.
Lestat gathers some money and finds a stable behind the tower. He gives the stable boy some money and takes a horse. Lestat rides to a village and walks into its locked church. Nothing happens, even after he touches the communion wafers. He climbs up buildings and jumps on rooftops. When he looks in windows, he loves the people he sees. He is able to hear their thoughts when they are emotional and open. Everything looks beautiful.
Before leaving the village, Lestat realizes he can fool humans in an inn. When he is back in the rural unpopulated areas, he throws various things like stones and tree branches. He dances, jumps, cartwheels, and does other acrobatics until he realizes morning is coming. He feels a “distinct presence in the churchyard” (116). It is supernatural, but won’t show itself or talk to Lestat. Later, it is revealed to be a coven of vampires.
The following night, Lestat takes a lot of money and rides toward Paris. When a cutthroat attacks him, Lestat feasts on his attacker’s blood, forgetting to stop before the heart stops. However, breaking that rule doesn’t seem to harm him.
Lestat finds a lawyer, Pierre Roget, to help him send money to Gabrielle, Nicolas, and Lestat’s other family members. Lestat also arranges for a letter, written in Italian, to be sent to Gabrielle, suggesting that she use the money to go to Italy. Lestat buys furnishings for his father’s castle and toys for his younger family members, with the help of his lawyer. He startles his lawyer by intensely examining a rat and is often distracted by the beauty of the world with his vampire vision. Lestat also arranges for money to be sent to Renaud and asks Roget to find out about the building’s deed and any potential mortgages. He sees that his stage name is still on playbills in the streets.
For the next few nights, Lestat feeds off of murderers and thieves in Paris. He visits Roget, who has letters for him. Gabrielle asks if Lestat is truly happy. Nicolas demands that Roget reveal where Lestat is hiding, but he doesn’t know where the tower is. Lestat pays for violin lessons for Nicolas. Renaud suggests that Lestat buy the “House of Thespians” (123), which initially upsets him, but he quickly changes his mind and agrees to do so.
Lestat visits all the theaters to see the ballets, the operas, and other performances in splendid clothes. He visits the Palais Royal after feeding, and is able to dance with women without being detected as a vampire. Lestat marvels at the changes to his body and voice, but the potentially disturbing things he does, like jumping on top of carriages, are perceived as drunkenness by humans. He still feels the presence near graveyards but can never get the supernatural creatures he senses to appear or talk to him. In March, he realizes he has learned to read while looking over Roget’s shoulder at a letter from Gabrielle.
Lestat decides he is ready to see Nicolas and peers in through his windows. Two actresses are with him, having dinner, and they are guessing where Lestat is getting his money. Nicolas insists that he heard Lestat cry out the night he left and the window was broken.
Lestat enters the theater through the back entrance and is greeted joyfully by the actors and Renaud. Everyone gathers around, hugging and kissing Lestat, after he asks for candles to be put out. Eventually, Nicolas holds Lestat, and Lestat realizes he wants to drink Nicolas’s blood, which shocks him initially. Lestat pushes Nicolas and the others away, heading toward the stage. In the wings, Nicolas demands to know what happened to Lestat, and Renaud demands Lestat go on stage. Lestat goes on and begins to sing and dance. Eventually, he jumps higher than humans can and does other impossible feats. At first the audience is enraptured, thinking it is done with wires.
However, when he sings so loudly that it hurts their ears, the people become frightened and flee the theater. An old man remains in his seat, and shoots Lestat when he jumps into the man’s box. Lestat is in pain, but his body quickly heals the wound. Nicolas is shocked that Lestat is unharmed and makes a terrible noise as Lestat pushes him away. Lestat tells Renaud that it is a new kind of “Drama of the grotesque” (141) and gives him more money. When Lestat runs out of the theater, he realizes the “presence” (141) watched the show and is following him. The presence is the feeling of more than one supernatural creature this time, and Lestat challenges the creatures to show themselves. They don’t speak, but they follow Lestat until he goes into the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
Later, he learns that the coven is forbidden from entering churches. Hunger from healing the gunshot wound drives him to take the lives of an innocent woman and her child. The experience is so ecstatic that he begins to believe that vampires should take innocent lives.
Lestat wants to shut the theater down. Nicolas suspects Lestat has supernatural powers and is frightening Roget. Lestat tells Roget to send Renaud’s company to London and to have Nicolas travel with Gabrielle to Italy. When Lestat returns to see Roget a week later, the company is in England, but Nicolas and Gabrielle are in Paris. Lestat can’t make the trip to where Gabrielle is staying before sunrise, and he demands that Gabrielle be kept alive until he can come back the following night.
Lestat gets up as early as he can the following evening and hurries from the tower to Paris. When he arrives at the mansion where Gabrielle is staying, he discovers she is dying and he can hear her thoughts. Telepathically, they talk about their love for each other and her fear of dying. She realizes he is undead and he telepathically conveys what he has gone through.
Lestat demonstrates his power by twisting a metal candelabra, and Gabrielle collapses from her illness while coughing up blood. He asks her, telepathically, if she wants to be a vampire and she says yes wholeheartedly. Lestat drinks her blood and understands who she is beyond being his mother. He then cuts his wrist and she drinks his blood. Eventually, he has to push her away and collapses.
When he comes to, Lestat thinks he is back in his father’s castle for a moment. He realizes he is in Paris and his mother is changing into a vampire. Lestat needs to feed, and Gabrielle is also thirsty. Lestat realizes he can’t read her mind anymore. He picks her up, swings her around, and they begin laughing.
When they hear the thoughts of the humans turn to entering the room, they prepare to escape out of the window. Gabrielle gathers her jewels and Lestat says they are “wandering in the Savage Garden” (162). They climb up to the roof and run across the rooftops, then jump on top of a carriage. When they jump off, she starts to feel her body’s human death, and Lestat reassures her that it is only temporary.
Gabrielle kills a young man and feeds. They both feel the presence and hear it call them outlaws. Lestat wants to challenge the beings they sense, but his need for blood outweighs his desire for conflict and resolution. He is also increasingly frustrated that he can no longer communicate telepathically with Gabrielle, but he can communicate with the vampires that make up the presence.
Lestat finds a victim in a tavern and shows off when he kills the man in front of Gabrielle. They stay in a cellar while Gabrielle’s body expels all its waste and her transformation is completed. Lestat tells her in words, rather than telepathy, about becoming a vampire. She suggests they break into a house to steal new clothes for her. After obtaining a new dress, they wander around the town like lovers. She kills another man who is her size and trades her dress for the man’s clothes. Lestat is enthralled by Gabrielle’s crossdressing. She asks to go to Renaud’s theater. There, Lestat learns he can telepathically call his horse to him.
When they get back to the tower, she chooses the sarcophagus of a knight. She prefers sleeping in it privately as a vampire to having her dead human body laid out for a funeral. Gabrielle cuts off her hair and Lestat gives her a kiss with blood. She falls asleep.
When he wakes up, Lestat fears he didn’t pass on the vampiric gift correctly and his mother died during the day. However, she rises and startles him by climbing up the tower wall. Lestat shows her Magnus’s treasure and gives her some jewelry to wear. Gabrielle wants to explore the forest after feeding, while Lestat wants to meet with Roget. She worries that he wants to turn Nicolas into a vampire, but he denies that he does.
When Gabrielle realizes her hair completely grew back while she slept, she starts screaming and crying. Lestat changes her shirt, which became blood-soaked from her crying, and braids her hair, offering to cut it again, but not wanting to. She is amazed that nothing frightens him. After they feed, they don’t go to the country or to Roget, but wander together around Paris.
The “presence” (183), or coven of vampires, stalks them on their way to the tower. Finally, the vampires reveal themselves and block Lestat’s path. Lestat and Gabrielle fight them and get into the secret room in the tower without being seen. Once there, they throw down kindling and set it on fire, making the iron bars hot so that the vampires can’t climb them. The vampires curse Lestat, again calling him and Gabrielle outlaws, but can’t break in. As they leave, they kill the stable boy and telepathically relay images of the murder to Lestat and Gabrielle. Gabrielle’s vision includes a red velvet coat, and she starts pacing.
Lestat and Gabrielle talk about the vampires, curious as to why the vampires call them outlaws. Lestat is concerned that the vampires will be able to break into the tower and suggests they rest under the local village’s church altar. He arms them with crucifixes that Magnus stole from his victims. Gabrielle is again amazed at Lestat’s fearlessness, and Lestat declares that they, as vampires, are “the things others fear” (189).
On their way to the church, they see the red velvet coat on the murdered stable boy from Gabrielle’s vision. She is hesitant when they get in the church, fearing retribution from God. However, the sun drives her into a very old sepulcher with Lestat.
Lestat is awakened by the sound of parishioners singing hymns. A little while later, Gabrielle wakes and is upset by being under the altar during the Benediction. Lestat says they will break out of the coffin “like proper vampires” (193) and scare the parishioners to clear a path to escape. They run to some stables, steal a horse, and ride toward Paris.
Believing that they will have to battle the other vampires, Lestat and Gabrielle stop to feed to gather their strength. Gabrielle tells Lestat that she recognized the red velvet coat as the one that Nicolas wore at her bedside. Putting it on the stable boy means they have Nicolas as a prisoner.
Once Lestat and Gabrielle are in the city, the vampires attack. They flee into Notre Dame again, and Lestat compares the attack of the vampires to the attack of the wolves.
Gabrielle and Lestat communicate telepathically with the coven of vampires. The vampires threaten Nicolas, but say he will not be harmed if Lestat and Gabrielle come to them and join the coven. Lestat demands that they show them Nicolas to prove he is still alive. He communicates telepathically about Magnus, and one vampire, Armand, enters the church.
Armand calls out telepathically to Gabrielle and Lestat, promising love and community if they join the coven. He asks, aloud, about Magnus. Lestat is able to gather a few confusing images from Armand’s mind, and this power startles Armand. Lestat shares some images of Magnus going into the fire, and this calms Armand. However, Armand mentally struggles with being able to wander freely in the church. He tries to physically take Lestat and Gabrielle out of the church, but they are too strong for him to overpower. Lestat challenges Armand’s coven, calling out to them telepathically to see Armand in the church and join them. Armand and Lestat fight. Armand hurls Lestat out of the church as his coven approaches.
In this section, Lestat becomes a vampire and turns his mother, Gabrielle, into a vampire. Rice reveals Gabrielle’s first name for the first time in this section. In the previous section, when Lestat is human, he only refers to her as “the marquise” and his “mother.” Once he turns her into a vampire to save her from a deadly illness, he calls her by her name and no longer refers to her as “mother.” This change in name represents the development of her character from being simply a wife and mother to becoming a powerful and immortal being. The older vampires that Rice introduces in this section are Magnus and Armand.
Magnus’s vampiric attack on Lestat develops the theme of The Performance of Vampirism and Humanity. Magnus is a very old vampire who has become mentally ill and throws himself into the fire before his character can be developed further. Shortly before his death by suicide, he fulfills the legendary and literary expectations of a vampire. Lestat describes their encounter as follows: “[I felt] the prick of its teeth on my neck. Out of all the childhood tales, the old fables, the name came to me, like a drowned thing shooting to the surface of black water and breaking free in the light. ‘Vampire!’” (81). Magnus performs the role of vampire that Lestat is familiar with from stories.
Magnus turning Lestat into a vampire disrupts Lestat’s theatrical career. Lestat performs as a human actor before performing as a vampire, and vampirism does not replace his desire to be seen and adored by a live audience. Magnus believes that being a vampire is much better than being a human actor, asserting that Lestat’s “tawdry little triumphs in the House of Thespians will be nothing once this night comes to a close” (87). Lestat initially hides from his friends at Renaud’s theater while coming to terms with feeding and other aspects of being a vampire. However, the allure is too strong and Lestat goes out on stage as a vampire once he learns he can fool humans into thinking he is human. He uses his vampiric skills, but the audience thinks “[i]t has to be trickery, an illusion” (138). The performance of vampirism is acceptable in a theater, where magic can be explained as special effects: Part of the performance of humanity is accepting any seemingly rational explanation for the supernatural rather than believing in the supernatural itself.
Rice also explores The Tensions Between Good and Evil in this section. Lestat discovers that he can enter churches and look at crucifixes, unlike some figures from vampire fiction. He realizes “God had no power over [him]” (103) in holy places and in iconography. Lestat then has to wrestle with a moral quandary as he adjusts to his new vampiric state, balancing between his identity as an evil being and yet still seeking a way to be good. He asserts, “vampires can love each other […] in being dedicated to evil, one does not cease to love” (102). Thus, Lestat assures himself that even evil beings have a capacity for goodness so long as they can still experience the humanizing emotion of love. Additionally, Lestat believes in draining the blood of humans who are evil, such as murderers—at least most of the time. He does stray from this ideal occasionally by drinking the blood of innocent humans, but his attempts at avoiding doing so reflect his desire to remain committed to some sort of moral code. Lestat notes that, by contrast, Gabrielle “didn’t fight [the same] moral battles” (170): Gabrielle embraces vampirism without struggling to conform to human ideals of goodness.
The motif of beauty also appears in this section. Lestat thinks about Nicolas playing his violin: “Beauty was a Savage Garden. So why must it wound him that the most despairing music is full of beauty?” (131). Lestat experiences beauty as a raw and untamable thing. Even as a vampire, Lestat seeks beauty in his surroundings, reinforcing the sense that beauty—like love—remains important to him: “[C]ommon beauty everywhere I looked, the splendor in the ordinary” (115). Lestat’s commitment to beauty remains, like his commitment to love and art, an essential part of his sense of self even as he becomes a vampire. His desire to maintain connections to what was important to him before as a human adds to the sense that he is an outsider among the vampires.
The symbol of red velvet connects Lestat, Magnus, and Nicolas in this section. In addition to the red velvet cloak lined in fur that Lestat is given by Nicolas, Lestat is given a “suit of red velvet” (100) by Magnus. This suit is a symbol of his transformation into a vampire and the loss of the father figure who turned him. This red velvet suit develops the symbolism of the previous section, where the red velvet cloak symbolized Lestat’s victory over the wolves. The red velvet clothes track him from being a hunter of wolves to a hunter of humans. However, the Children of Darkness also use Nicholas’s “red velvet frock coat” (190) as a symbol: They leave it on a stable boy that they kill as “a message” (195) to Lestat that they kidnapped Nicolas and he is going to be punished for his antics.
By Anne Rice