The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2)

by Anne Rice

I dashed across the churchyard after it, and I could feel it receding. Yet I saw nothing in the barren forest. And I realized I was stronger than it, and that it had been afraid of me! Well, fancy that. Afraid of me. And I had no idea whether or not it was corporeal, vampire the same as I was, or something without a body. “Well, one thing is sure,” I said. “You’re a coward!” Tingling in the air. The forest seemed to breathe for an instant. A sense of my own might came over me that had been brewing all along. I was in fear of nothing. Not the church, not the dark, not the worms swarming over the corpses in my dungeon. Not even this strange eerie force that had retreated into the forest, and seemed to be near at hand again. Not even of men. I was an extraordinary fiend! If I’d been sitting on the steps of hell with my elbows on my knees and the devil had said, “Lestat, come, choose the form of the fiend you wish to be to roam the earth,” how could I have chosen a better fiend than what I was? And it seemed suddenly that suffering was an idea I’d known in another existence and would never know again.