Akasha

His thirst for fame awoke her.

His thirst for power may kill us all.

??????????? Legendary Vampire Lestat has risen from a decades long slumber, determined to step out into the light. No longer content with being banished to the shadows, moving among mortals who never truly see him for what he is, Lestat has reinvented himself as the closest thing to a god on Earth, a rock star.

??????????? The intoxicating lure of his music has snaked its way around the globe, ultimately finding the ear of the slumbering ancient Queen Akasha in her crypt beneath the Arctic ice. Mother of all Vampires, Akasha has been resting for centuries, waiting for the right time to rise again and seize dominion over the world. Lestat's music is the revelation she has been waiting for, and she desires that he rule beside her.

??????????? But can Akasha be stopped? Her malevolent power may be too great for even the most ancient of the immortal Vampires to combat. She created them, and their survival depends on her own.

??????????? The Vampire Lestat has been asleep for a very, very long time.

??????????? When Lestat first becomes a Vampire, he feels all that power, loves it for about half an hour and then realizes that he’s a monster, and that he can never really be in touch with anything human again. So begins this sort of downward spiral."

??????????? Unwilling or unable to face the prospect of living eternally in the shadows, cut off by necessity from the very life that sustains him, Lestat decided a century ago to bow out rather than accept this grim prospect.

??????????? Lestat entombs himself in Lafayette Cemetery in New Orleans, where he lays until the 1990’s roll around, and a sound reaches his ears that leads him to believe that his time has come again. He’s been in this crypt for a hundred years, bored, sleeping, lonely. And then he hears this rock music playing, and he thinks, Oh, this is interesting, and he rises from his tomb to investigate. He looks at these kids and they’re all tattooed and pierced and sexy and androgynous, and for an 18^th century Vampire who was always frustrated with the restrictions of moral European culture, it’s sort of a fantastic liberation for him.

??????????? Lestat realizes that in this new, more flamboyant yet skeptical age, he can live out in the open, without having to hide his true nature from the unsuspecting masses. "When he wakes up and says, I’m a Vampire, his fellow band members all laugh and think he’s like a Marilyn Manson-type character. But his Vampire powers have given him great musical prowess, so he very quickly becomes this sensational rock star.

??????????? Lestat’s fame soon reaches around the globe, and his music finally finds the ear of Akasha, the Mother of all Vampires, in the crypt where she is kept safe by the Ancient Vampire Marius. Akasha has been slumbering for thousands of years, but in Lestat’s voice she hears a kindred spirit, one who will rule beside her as she reclaims her power in the new age.

??????????? Akasha appears and whisks him away, and tells him, You want to live in the light? Come with me and we will rule the Earth. Lestat becomes the proverbial magician’s apprentice who unleashes forces way beyond his control.

??????????? Lestat’s devotion to Akasha is tempered only by his growing fascination with a mortal woman named Jesse. Jesse is one of the only mortals of our story. Jesse is a Talamascan. She translates and studies ancient philosophy and paranormal activity. She’s very confused and lost in her own life, trying to figure out what her place is in the world. The closer and closer she gets to the Vampires, the more alive she begins to feel. Like Lestat, for the first time, she feels that someone can know her."

??????????? While he is wildly celebrated by the world’s mortals, Lestat fast becomes the Vampire population’s enemy number one. It is one of the Vampires’ most important rules that a Vampire must never reveal himself or his brethren to a mortal and allow that mortal to live; although they are immortal, Vampires still have weaknesses, and if mortals learn of their existence, they will be hunted to extinction. Now Lestat’s very public persona is giving away all of the secrets that have kept the Vampires safe for millennia, and they are not pleased one bit.

??????????? Lestat wants to live in the light. He thinks, I’m really powerful. I’m not afraid, so why should I hide? In that sense, Lestat is acting up like an adolescent who’s feeling his power for the first time; his hormones are raging, and he’s saying, Why not? I’m invincible. I’ll drive that car at a hundred miles an hour down the street with no lights on, just because it’s fun. But eventually the teenager learns that you can’t behave that way and be a member of society in this case, Vampire society.

??????????? In turn, Lestat plans an elaborate concert in Death Valley to taunt (and tempt) his would-be destroyers, and the Vampires answer his call, gathering from across the globe to silence the traitor once and for all. Meanwhile, as Akasha burns a path to his door, Marius and the Ancients must attempt to stop her before she destroys them all; and Jesse puts herself in grave danger to follow Lestat quite possibly to her grave.