The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles)

by Rice, Anne

  Although it suddenly struck me for the very first time, in the middle of all this: maybe Gretchen really was with Christ!

  “No, I don’t believe it,” I said coldly. “Gretchen lost her mind; she’s fixed in a state of hysteria and it’s my fault. So the world has another mystic who bleeds like Christ. There have been a thousand.”

  “I didn’t place any judgment upon the incident,” he said. “If we can go back to what I was saying. I was saying that you did everything but ask me to come! You challenged every form of authority, you sought every experience. You’ve buried yourself alive twice, and once tried to rise into the very sun to make yourself a cinder. What was left for you—but to call on me? It is as if you yourself said it: ‘Memnoch, what more can I do now?’ ”

  “Did you tell God about this?” I asked coldly, refusing to be drawn in. Refusing to be this curious and this excited.

  “Yes, of course,” he said.

  I was too surprised to say anything.

  I could think of nothing clever. Certain little theological brain twisters flitted through my mind, and sticky little questions, like “Why didn’t God already know?” and so forth. But we were beyond that point, obviously.

  I had to think, to concentrate on what my senses were telling me.

  “You and Descartes,” he said. “You and Kant.”

  “Don’t lump me with others,” I said. “I am the Vampire Lestat, the one and only.”

  “You’re telling me,” he said.

  “How many of us are there now, vampires, I mean, in the whole world? I’m not speaking now of other immortals and monsters and evil spirits and things, whatever you are, for instance, but vampires? There aren’t a hundred, and none of them is quite like me. Lestat.”

  “I completely agree. I want you. I want you for my helper.”

  “Doesn’t it gall you that I don’t really respect you, believe in you, or fear you, not even after all this? That we’re in my flat and I’m making fun of you? I don’t think Satan would put up with this sort of thing. I don’t usually put up with it; I’ve compared myself to you, you know. Lucifer, Son of Morning. I have told my detractors and inquisitors that I was the Devil or that if I ever happened upon Satan himself I’d set him to rout.”

  “Memnoch,” he corrected me. “Don’t use the name Satan. Please. Don’t use any of the following: Lucifer, Beelzebub, Azazel, Sammael, Marduk, Mephistopheles, et cetera. My name is Memnoch. You’ll soon find out for yourself that the others represent various alphabetical or scriptural compromises. Memnoch is for this time and all time. Appropriate and pleasing. Memnoch the Devil. And don’t go look it up in a book because you’ll never find it.”

  I didn’t answer. I was trying to figure this. He could change shapes, but there had to be an invisible essence. Had I come against the strength of the invisible essence when I’d smashed his face? I’d felt no real contour, only strength resisting me. And were I to grab him now, would this man-form be filled with the invisible essence so that it could fight me off with strength equal to that of the dark angel?

  “Yes,” he said. “Imagine trying to convince a mortal of these things. But that really isn’t why I chose you. I chose you not so much because it would be easier for you to comprehend everything but because you’re perfect for the job.”

  “The job of helping the Devil.”

  “Yes, of being my right-hand instrument, so to speak, being in my stead when I’m weary. Being my prince.”

  “How could you be so mistaken? You find the self-inflicted suffering of my conscience amusing? You think I like evil? That I think about evil when I look at something beautiful like Dora’s face!”

  “No, I don’t think you like evil,” he said. “Any more than do I.”

  “You don’t like evil,” I repeated, narrowing my eyes.

  “Loathe it. And if you don’t help me, if you let God keep doing things His way, I tell you evil—which is nothing really—just might destroy the world.”

  “It’s God’s will,” I asked slowly, “that the world be destroyed?”

  “Who knows?” he asked coldly. “But I don’t think God would lift a finger to stop it from happening. I don’t will it, that I know. But my ways are the right ways, and the ways of God are bloody and wasteful and exceedingly dangerous. You know they are. You have to help me. I am winning, I told you. But this century has been damn near unendurable for us all.”

  “So you are telling me that you’re not evil.…”

  “Exactly. Remember what your friend David asked of you? He asked you if in my presence you had sensed evil, and you had to answer that you had not.”

  “The Devil is a famous liar.”

  “My enemies are famous detractors. Neither God nor I tell lies per se. But look, I don’t expect for a moment that you should accept me on faith. I didn’t come here to convince you of things through conversation. I’ll take you to Hell and to Heaven, if you like, you can talk to God for as long as He allows, and you desire. Not God the Father, precisely, not En Sof, but … well, all of this will become clear to you. Only there’s no point if I cannot count upon your willing intent to see the truth, your willing desire to turn your life from aimlessness and meaninglessness into a crucial battle for the fate of the world.”

  I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure what I could say. We were leagues from the point at which we had begun this discussion.

  “See Heaven?” I whispered, absorbing all of it slowly. “See Hell?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said with level patience. “I want a full night to think it over.”

  “What!”

  “I said I want a night to think it over.”

  “You don’t believe me. You want a sign.”

  “No, I am beginning to believe you,” I said. “That’s why I have to think. I have to weigh all of this.”

  “I’m here to answer any question, to show you anything now.”

  “Then leave me alone for two nights. Tonight and tomorrow night. That’s a simple enough request, isn’t it? Leave me alone.”

  He was obviously disappointed, maybe even a little suspicious. But I meant every word of it. I couldn’t say anything but what I had said. I knew the truth as I spoke it, so fast were thought and word wedded in my mind.

  “Is it possible to deceive you?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he answered. “I rely upon my gifts such as they are, just as you rely on yours. I have my limits. You have yours. You can be deceived. So can I.”

  “What about God?”

  “Ach!” he said with disgust. “If you only knew how irrelevant that question is. You cannot imagine how much I need you. I’m tired,” he said with a faint rise of emotion. “God is … beyond being deceived, that much I can say with charity. I’ll give you tonight and tomorrow night. I won’t bother you, stalk you, as you put it. But may I ask what you mean to do?”

  “Why? Either I have the two nights or I don’t!”

  “You’re known to be unpredictable,” he said. He smiled broadly. It was very pleasant. And something else, quite obvious, struck me about him. Not only were his proportions perfect, there were no visible flaws in him anywhere; he was a paragon of the Ordinary Man.

  He showed no response to this estimation, whether he could read it from my mind or not. He merely waited on me, courteously.

  “Dora,” I said. “I have to go back to Dora.”

  “Why?”

  “I refuse to explain further.”

  Again, he was surprised by my answer.

  “Well, aren’t you going to try to help her with all this confusion regarding her father? Why not explain something as simple as that? I only meant to ask you how deeply you intended to commit yourself, how much you planned to reveal to this woman. I’m thinking of the fabric of things, to use David’s phrase. That is, how will it be with this woman, after you’ve come with me?”

  I said nothing.

  He sighed. “All right, I’ve waited for your like for centuries. What is another
two nights, such as the case may be. We are speaking of only tomorrow night, really, aren’t we? At the sunset of the following evening, after that I shall come for you.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll give you a little gift that will help you believe in me. It’s not so simple to me to fix your level of understanding. You’re full of paradox and conflict. Let me give you something unusual.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So this is the gift. Call it a sign. Ask Dora about Uncle Mickey’s eye. Ask her to tell you the truth that Roger never knew.”

  “This sounds like a Spiritualist parlour game.”

  “Think so? Ask her.”

  “All right. The truth about Uncle Mickey’s eye. Now let me ask you one last question. You are the Devil. Yes. But you’re not evil? Why?”

  “Absolutely irrelevant question. Or let me put it a little more mysteriously. It’s completely unnecessary for me to be evil. You’ll see. Oh, this is so frustrating for me because you have so much to see.”

  “But you’re opposed to God!”

  “Oh, absolutely, a total adversary! Lestat, when you see everything that I have to show you, and hear all that I have to say, when you’ve spoken with God and better see it from His perspective, and from my point of view, you will join me as His adversary. I’m sure you will.”

  He stood up from the chair. “I’m going now. Should I help you up off the floor?”

  “Irrelevant and unnecessary,” I said crossly. “I’m going to miss you.” The words surprised me as they came out.

  “I know,” he answered.

  “I have all of tomorrow night,” I said. “Remember.”

  “Don’t you realize,” he answered, “that if you come with me now there is no night and day?”

  “Oh, that’s very tempting,” I said. “But that’s what Devils do so well. Tempt. I need to think about this, and consult others for advice.”

  “Consult others?” He seemed genuinely surprised.

  “I’m not going off with the Devil without telling anyone,” I said. “You’re the Devil! Goddamn it, why should I trust the Devil? That’s absurd! You’re playing by rules, somebody’s rules. Everybody always is. And I don’t know the rules. Well. You gave me the choice, and this is my choice. Two full nights, and not before then. Leave me alone all that time! Give me your oath.”

  “Why?” he asked politely, as if dealing with an ornery child. “So you won’t have to fear the sound of my footsteps?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What good is an oath on this if you don’t accept the truth of all the rest that I’ve said?” He shook his head as if I were being foolishly human.

  “Can you swear an oath or not?”

  “You have my oath,” he said, laying his hand on his heart, or where his heart should have been. “With complete sincerity, of course.”

  “Thank you, I feel much better,” I said.

  “David won’t believe you,” he said gently.

  “I know,” I said.

  “On the third night,” he said with an emphatic nod, “I shall come back for you here. Or wherever you happen to be at the time.”

  And with a final smile, as bright as the earlier one, he disappeared.

  It was not the way I tended to do it, by making off with such swiftness no human could track it.

  He actually vanished on the spot.

  EIGHT

  I stood up shakily, brushed off my clothes, and noted without surprise that the room was as perfect as it had been when we entered it. The battle obviously had been fought in some other realm. But what was that realm?

  Oh, if only I could find David. I had less than three hours before the winter dawn and set off at once to search.

  Now, being unable to read David’s mind, or to call to him, I had but one telepathic tool at my command, and that was to scan the minds of mortals at random for some image of David as he passed in some recognizable place.

  I hadn’t walked three blocks when I realized that not only was I picking up a strong image of David, but that it was coming to me from the mind of another vampire.

  I closed my eyes, and tried with my entire soul to make some eloquent contact. Within seconds, the pair acknowledged me, David through the one who stood beside him, and I saw and recognized the wooded place where they were.

  In my days, the Bayou Road had led through this area into country, and it had been very near here once that Claudia and Louis, having attempted my murder, had left my remains in the waters of the swamp.

  Now the area was a great combed park, filled by day, I supposed, with mothers and children, containing a museum of occasionally very interesting paintings, and providing in the dark of night a dense wood.

  Some of the oldest oaks of New Orleans lay within the bounds of this area, and a lovely lagoon, long, serpentine, seemingly endless, wound under a picturesque bridge in the heart of it.

  I found them there, the two vampires communing with one another in dense darkness, far from the beaten path. David was as I expected, his usual properly attired self.

  But the sight of the other astonished me.

  This was Armand.

  He sat on the stone park bench, boylike, casual, with one knee crooked, looking up at me with the predictable innocence, dusty all over, naturally, hair a long, tangled mess of auburn curls.

  Dressed in heavy denim garments, tight pants, and a zippered jacket, he surely passed for human, a street vagabond maybe, though his face was now parchment white, and even smoother than it had been when last we met.

  In a way, he made me think of a child doll, with brilliant faintly red-brown glass eyes—a doll that had been found in an attic. I wanted to polish him with kisses, clean him up, make him even more radiant than he was.

  “That’s what you always want,” he said softly. His voice shocked me. If he had any French or Italian accent left, I couldn’t hear it. His tone was melancholy and had no meanness in it at all. “When you found me under Les Innocents,” he said, “you wanted to bathe me with perfume and dress me in velvet with great embroidered sleeves.”

  “Yes,” I said, “and comb your hair, your beautiful russet hair.” My tone was angry. “You look good to me, you damnable little devil, good to embrace and good to love.”

  We eyed each other for a moment. And then he surprised me, rising and coming towards me just as I moved to take him in my arms. His gesture wasn’t tentative, but it was extremely gentle. I could have backed away. I didn’t. We held each other tight for a moment. The cold embracing the cold. The hard embracing the hard.

  “Cherub child,” I said. I did a bold thing, maybe even a defiant thing. I reached out and mussed his snaggled curls.

  He is smaller than me physically, but he didn’t seem to mind this gesture.

  In fact, he smiled, shook his head, and reclaimed his hair with a few casual strokes of his hand. His cheeks went apple-perfect suddenly, and his mouth softened, and then he lifted his right fist, and teasingly struck me hard on the chest.

  Really hard. Show-off. Now it was my turn to smile and I did.

  “I can’t remember anything bad between us,” I said.

  “You will,” he responded. “And so will I. But what does it matter what we remember?”

  “Yes,” I said, “we’re both still here.”

  He laughed outright, though it was very low, and he shook his head, flashing a glance on David that implied they knew each other very well, maybe too well. I didn’t like it that they knew each other at all. David was my David, and Armand was my Armand.

  I sat down on the bench.

  “So David’s told you the whole story,” I said, glancing up at Armand and then over at David.

  David gave a negative shake of the head.

  “Not without your permission, Brat Prince,” David said, a little disdainfully. “I would never have taken the liberty. But the only thing that’s brought Armand here is worry for you.”

  “Is that so?” I said. I raised my eyebrows. “W
ell?”

  “You know damned good and well it is,” said Armand. His whole posture was casual; he’d learned, beating about the world, I guess. He didn’t look so much like a church ornament anymore. He had his hands in his pockets. Little tough guy.

  “You’re looking for trouble again,” he went on, in the same slow manner, without anger or meanness. “The whole wide world isn’t enough for you and never will be. This time I thought I’d try to speak to you before the wheel turns.”

  “Aren’t you the most thoughtful of guardian angels?” I said sarcastically.

  “Yes, I am,” he said without so much as blinking. “So what are you doing, want to let me know?”

  “Come, I want to go deeper into the park,” I said, and they both followed me as we walked at a mortal pace into a thicket of the oldest oaks, where the grass was high and neglected, and not even the most desperate homeless heart would seek to rest.

  We made our own small clearing, among the volcanic black roots and rather cool winter earth. The breeze from the nearby lake was brisk and clean, and for a moment there seemed little scent of New Orleans, of any city; we three were together, and Armand asked again: “Will you tell me what you’re doing?” He bent close to me, and suddenly kissed me, in a manner that seemed entirely childlike and also a bit European. “You’re in deep trouble. Come on. Everyone knows it.” The steel buttons of his denim jacket were icy cold, as though he had come from some far worse winter in a very few moments of time.

  We are never entirely sure about each other’s powers. It’s all a game. I would no more have asked him how he got here, or in what manner, than I would ask a mortal man how precisely he made love to his wife.

  I looked at him a long time, conscious that David had settled down on the grass, leaning back on his elbow, and was studying us both.

  Finally I spoke: “The Devil has come to me and asked me to go with him, to see Heaven and Hell.”

  Armand didn’t answer. Then he frowned just a little.

  “This is the same Devil,” said I, “which I told you I didn’t believe in, when you did believe in him centuries ago. You were right at least on one point. He exists. I’ve met him.” I looked at David. “He wants me as his assistant. He’s given me tonight and tomorrow night to seek advice from others. He will take me to Heaven and then to Hell. He claims he is not evil.”