Free The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

the lamp.
    Then Baby Jenks’ mother had died. Thank God! Enough! But Baby Jenks had been crying. Then she’d carried the body out of the trailer and buried it in back, real deep, feeling how good it was to be one of the Dead and so strong and able to just heft those shovels full of dirt.
    Then her father came home. This one’s really for fun! She buried him while he was still alive. She’d never forget the look on his face when he came in the door and saw her with the fire ax. “Well, if it ain’t Lizzie Borden.”
    Who the hell was Lizzie Borden?
    Then the way his chin stuck out, and his fist came flying towards her, he was so sure of himself! “You little slut!” She split his goddamn forehead in half. Yeah, that part was great, feeling the skull cave—“Go down, you bastard!”—and so was shoveling dirt on his face while he was still looking at her. Paralyzed, couldn’t move, thinking he was a kid again on a farm or something in New Mexico. Just baby talk.
You son of a bitch, I always knew you had shit for brains. Now I can smell it!
    But why the hell had she ever gone down there? Why had she left the Fang Gang?
    If she’d never left them, she’d be with them now in San Francisco, with Killer and Davis, waiting to see Lestat on the stage. They might have even made the vampire bar out there or something. Leastways, if they had ever gotten there. If something wasn’t really really wrong.
    And what the hell was she doing now backtracking? Maybe she should have gone along out west. Two nights, that was all that was left.
    Hell, maybe she’d rent a motel room when the concert happened, so she could watch it on TV. But before that, she had to find some Dead guys in St. Louis. She couldn’t go on alone.
    How to find the Central West End. Where was it?
    This boulevard looked familiar. She was cruising along, praying no meddling cop would start after her. She’d outrun him of course, she alwaysdid, though she dreamed of getting just one of those damn sons-a-bitches on a lonely road. But the fact was she didn’t want to be chased out of St. Louis.
    Now this looked like something she knew. Yeah, this was the Central West End or whatever they called it and she turned off now to the right and went down an old street with those big cool leafy trees all around her. Made her think of her mother again, the green grass, the clouds. Little sob in her throat.
    If she just wasn’t so damn lonesome! But then she saw the gates, yeah, this was the street. Killer had told her that Dead guys never really forget anything. Her brain would be like a little computer. Maybe it was true. These were the gates all right, great big iron gates, opened wide and coveted with dark green ivy. Guess they never really close up “a private place.”
    She slowed to a rumbling crawl, then cut the motor altogether. Too noisy in this dark valley of mansions. Some bitch might call the cops. She had to get off to walk her bike. Her legs weren’t long enough to do it any other way. But that was OK. She liked walking in these deep dead leaves. She liked this whole quiet street.
    Boy, if I was a big city vampire I’d live here too, she thought, and then far off down the street, she saw the coven house, saw the brick walls and the white Moorish arches. Her heart was really going!
    Burnt up!
    At first she didn’t believe it! Then she saw it was true all right, big streaks of black on the bricks, and the windows all blown out, not a pane of glass left anywhere. Jesus Christ! She was going crazy. She walked her bike up closer, biting her lip so hard she could taste her own blood. Just look at it. Who the hell was doing it! Teeny bits of glass all over the lawn and even in the trees so the whole place was kind of sparkling in a way that human beings probably couldn’t make out. Looked to her like nightmare Christmas decorations. And the stink of burning wood. It was just hanging there.
    She was going to cry! She was going to start screaming! But then she