Wolfkiller

Before there was Paris, before there was greasepaint and applause, immortality or the taste of blood, there was a winter forest and eight wolves. This is the first legend Lestat wrote with his own hands. Frozen ground and woodsmoke, the eerie shadowed darkness of an Auvergne winter. The snow reflected everything: torn pelts steaming in the cold, pine boughs splintered beneath desperate claws, the wild musk of beasts and bloodshed. Before he was Lelio or the Brat Prince, he was Wolfkiller. They sewed his courage and terror into red velvet, lined it in fur, and pressed it into his hands like a coronation, a benediction, a curse. Frost-hardened pine, snow-covered cedar, black spruce pitch, wolf musk, torn leather, iron-bright blood, cold stone, red velvet, and amber fire.