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

by Rice, Anne

  David looked off into the darkness. Armand simply stared at me, rapt and silent.

  I went on. I told them everything then. I repeated the story of Roger for Armand, and of Roger’s ghost, and then I told them both in detail about my blundering visit to Dora, about my exchanges with her, and how I’d left her, and then how the Devil had come pursuing me and annoying me, and we’d had our brawl.

  I put down every detail. I opened my mind, without calculation, letting Armand see whatever he could for himself.

  Finally I sat back.

  “Don’t say things to me that are humiliating,” I averred. “Don’t ask me why I fled from Dora, or blurted out to her all this about her father. I can’t get rid of the presence of Roger, the sense of Roger’s friendship for me and love for her. And this Memnoch the Devil, this is a reasonable and mild-mannered individual, and very convincing. As for the battle, I don’t know what happened, except I gave him something to think about. In two nights, he’s coming back, and if memory serves me correctly, which it invariably does, he said he’d come for me wherever I was at the time.”

  “Yes, that’s clear,” Armand said sotto voce.

  “You aren’t enjoying my misery, are you?” I admitted with a little sigh of defeat.

  “No, of course not,” Armand said, “only, as usual, you don’t really seem miserable. You’re on the verge of an adventure, and just a little more cautious this time than when you let that mortal run off with your body and you took his.”

  “No, not more cautious. Terrified. I think this creature, Memnoch, is the Devil. If you had seen the visions, you would think he was the Devil too. I’m not talking about spellbinding. You can do spellbinding, Armand, you’ve done it to me. I was battling that thing. It has some essence which can inhabit actual bodies! It’s objective and bodiless itself, of that I’m sure. The rest? Maybe all that was spells. He implied he could make spells and so could I.”

  “You’re describing an angel, of course,” said David offhandedly, “and this one claims to be a fallen angel.”

  “The Devil himself,” mused Armand. “What are you asking of us, Lestat? You are asking our advice? I would not go with this spirit of my own will, if I were you.”

  “What makes you say this?” David asked before I could get out a word.

  “Look, we know there are earthbound beings,” Armand said, “that we ourselves can’t classify, or locate, or control. We know there are species of immortals, and types of mammalian creatures which look human but are not. This creature might be anything. And there is something highly suspicious in the manner in which he courts you … the visions, and then the politeness.”

  “Either that,” said David, “or it simply makes perfect sense. He is the Devil, he is reasonable, the way you always supposed, Lestat—not a moral idiot, but a true angel, and he wants your cooperation. He doesn’t want to keep doing things to you by force. He’s used force as his introduction.”

  “I would not believe him,” said Armand. “What does this mean—he wants you to help him? That you would begin to exist simultaneously on this earth and in Hell? No, I would shun him for his imagery, if nothing else, for his vocabulary. For his name. Memnoch. It sounds evil.”

  “Oh, all these are things,” I admitted, “that I once said, more or less, to you.”

  “I’ve never seen the Prince of Darkness with my own eyes,” said Armand. “I’ve seen centuries of superstition, and the wonders done by demonic beings such as ourselves. You’ve seen a little more than I have. But you’re right. That is what you told me before and I’m telling it to you now. Don’t believe in the Devil, or that you are his child. And that is what I told Louis, once when he came to me seeking explanations of God and the universe. I believe in no Devil. So I remind you. Don’t believe him. Turn your back.”

  “As for Dora,” said David quietly, “you’ve acted unwisely, but it’s possible that that breach of preternatural decorum can somehow be healed.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Let me ask you both … do you believe what I’m telling you?”

  “I know you’re telling the truth,” said Armand, “but I told you, I don’t believe this creature is the Devil himself or that he will take you to Heaven or Hell. And very frankly, if it is true … well, that’s all the more reason perhaps that you shouldn’t go.”

  I studied him for a long moment, fighting the darkness I had deliberately sought, trying to draw from him some impression of his complete disposition on this, and I realized he was sincere. There was no envy in him, or old grudge against me; there was no hurt, or trickery, or anything. He was past all these things, if ever they had obsessed him. Perhaps they’d been fantasies of mine.

  “Perhaps so,” he said, answering my thoughts directly. “But you are correct in that I am speaking to you directly and truly, and I tell you, I would not trust this creature, or trust the proposition that you must in some way verbally cooperate.”

  “A medieval concept of pact,” said David.

  “Which means what?” I asked. I hadn’t meant it to be so rude.

  “Making a pact with the Devil,” said David, “you know, agreeing to something with him. That’s what Armand is telling you not to do. Don’t make a pact.”

  “Precisely,” said Armand. “It arouses my deepest suspicions that he makes such a moral issue of your agreement.” His young face was sorely troubled, his pretty eyes very vivid for a second in the shadows. “Why do you have to agree?”

  “I don’t know if that’s on the mark or not,” I said. I was confused. “But you’re right. I said something to him myself, something about this being played by rules.”

  “I want to talk with you about Dora,” said David in a low voice. “You must heal what you’ve done there very quickly, or at least promise us that you won’t.…”

  “I’m not going to promise you anything about Dora. I can’t,” I said.

  “Lestat, don’t destroy this young mortal woman!” said David forcefully. “If we are in a new realm, if the spirits of the dead can plead with us, then maybe they can hurt us, have you ever thought of that?”

  David sat up, disconcerted, angry, the lovely British voice straining to maintain decency as he spoke: “Don’t hurt the mortal girl. Her father asked you for a species of guardianship, not that you shake her sanity to the foundations.”

  “David, don’t go on with your speech. I know what you’re saying. But I tell you right now, I am alone in this. I am alone. I am alone with this being Memnoch, the Devil; and you both have been friends to me. You’ve been kindred. But I don’t think anyone can advise me what to do, except for Dora.”

  “Dora!” David was aghast.

  “You mean to tell her this entire tale?” Armand asked timidly.

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I mean to do. Dora’s the only one who believes in the Devil. Dear God, I need a believer right now, I need a saint, and I may need a theologian, and to Dora I’m going.”

  “You are perverse, stubborn, and innately destructive!” said David. It had the tone of a curse. “You will do what you will!” He was furious. I could see it. All his reasons for despising me were being heated from within, and there really was nothing I could say in my defense.

  “Wait,” said Armand with gentleness. “Lestat, this is mad. It’s like consulting the Sibyl. You want the girl to act as an oracle for you, to tell you what she, a mortal, thinks you must do?”

  “She’s no mere mortal, she’s different. She has no fear of me whatsoever. None. And she has no fear of anything. It’s as though she’s a different species, but she’s the human species. She’s like a saint, Armand. She’s like Joan of Arc must have been when she led the army. She knows something about God and the Devil that I don’t know.”

  “You’re talking about faith, and it’s very alluring,” said David, “just as it was with your nun companion, Gretchen, who is now stark raving mad.”

  “Stark mutely mad,” I
said. “She doesn’t say anything but prayers, or so say the papers. But before I came along, Gretchen didn’t really believe in God, keep that in mind. Belief and madness, for Gretchen, are one and the same.”

  “Do you never learn!” said David.

  “Learn what?” I asked. “David, I’m going to Dora. She’s the only person I can go to. And besides, I can’t leave things with her as I did! I have to go back, and I am going back. Now from you, Armand, a promise, the obvious thing. Around this Dora, I’ve thrown a protective light. None of us can touch her.”

  “That goes without saying. I won’t hurt your little friend. You wound me.” He looked genuinely put out.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know. But I know what blood is and innocence and how delicious both can be. I know how much the girl tempts me.”

  “Then you must be the one to give in to that temptation,” said Armand crossly. “I never choose my victims anymore, you know this. I can stand before a house as always, and out of the doors will come those who want to be in my arms. Of course I won’t hurt her. You do hold old grudges. You think I live in the past. You don’t understand that I actually change with every era, I always have as best I can. But what in the world can Dora tell you that will help you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m going directly tomorrow night. If there were time left, I’d go now. I’m going to her. David, if something happens to me, if I vanish, if I … you have all Dora’s inheritance.”

  He nodded. “You have my word of honor on the girl’s best interests, but you must not go to her!”

  “Lestat, if you need me—” Armand said. “If this being tries to take you by force!”

  “Why do you care about me?” I asked. “After all the bad things I did to you? Why?”

  “Oh, don’t be such a fool,” he begged gently. “You convinced me long ago that the world was a Savage Garden. Remember your old poetry? You said the only laws that were true were aesthetic laws, that was all you could count on.”

  “Yes, I remember all that. I fear it’s true. I’ve always feared it was true. I feared it when I was a mortal child. I woke up one morning and I believed in nothing.”

  “Well, then, in the Savage Garden,” said Armand, “you shine beautifully, my friend. You walk as if it is your garden to do with as you please. And in my wanderings, I always return to you. I always return to see the colors of the garden in your shadow, or reflected in your eyes, perhaps, or to hear of your latest follies and mad obsessions. Besides, we are brothers, are we not?”

  “Why didn’t you help me last time, when I was in all that trouble, having switched bodies with a human being?”

  “You won’t forgive me if I tell you,” he said.

  “Tell me.”

  “Because I hoped and prayed for you, that you would remain in that mortal body and save your soul. I thought you had been granted the greatest gift, that you were human again, my heart ached for your triumph! I couldn’t interfere. I couldn’t do it.”

  “You are a child and a fool, you always were.”

  He shrugged. “Well, it looks like you’re being given another chance to do something with your soul. You’d best be at your very strongest and most resourceful, Lestat. I distrust this Memnoch, far worse than any human foe you faced when you were trapped in the flesh. This Memnoch sounds very far from Heaven. Why should they let you in with him?”

  “Excellent question.”

  “Lestat,” said David, “don’t go to Dora. Will you remember that my advice last time might have saved you misery!”

  Oh, there was too much to comment on there, for his advice might have prevented him from ever being what he was now, in this fine form, and I could not, I could not regret that he was here, that he had won the Body Thief’s fleshly trophy. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  “I can believe the Devil wants you,” said Armand.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Please don’t go to Dora,” said David seriously.

  “I have to, and it’s almost morning now. I love you both.”

  Both of them were staring at me, perplexed, suspicious, uncertain.

  I did the only thing I could. I left.

  NINE

  The next night, I rose from my attic hiding place and went directly out in search of Dora. I didn’t want to see or hear any more of David or Armand. I knew I couldn’t be prevented from what I had to do.

  How I meant to do it, that was the question. They had unwittingly confirmed something for me. I was not totally mad. I was not imagining everything that was happening around me. Some of it, perhaps, I was imagining, but not all.

  Whatever the case, I decided upon a radical course of action with Dora, and one which neither David nor Armand could conceivably have approved.

  Knowing more than a little about her habits and her whereabouts, I caught up with Dora as she was coming out of the television studio on Chartres Street in the Quarter. She’d spent the entire afternoon taping an hour-long show, and then visiting with her audience afterwards. I waited in the doorway of a nearby shop as she said farewell to the last of her “sisters” or seeming worshippers. They were young women, though not girls, and very firm believers in changing the world with Dora, and had about them a careless, nonconformist air.

  They hurried off, and Dora went the other way towards the square and towards her car. She wore a slender black wool coat and wool stockings with heels that were very high, her very favorites for dancing on her program, and with her little cap of black hair she looked extremely dramatic and fragile, and horribly vulnerable in a world of mortal males.

  I caught her around the waist before she knew what was happening. We were rising so fast, I knew she could not see or understand anything, and I said very close to her ear,

  “You’re with me, and you’re safe.” Then I wrapped her totally in my arms, so that no harm at all could come to her from the wind or the speed we were traveling, and I went up just as high as I dared to go with her, uncovered and vulnerable and depending upon me, listening keenly beneath the howl of the wind for the proper functioning of her heart and her lungs.

  I felt her relaxing in my arms, or more truly, she simply remained trusting. It was as surprising as everything else about her. She had buried her face in my coat, as though too afraid to try to look around her, but this was really more a practical matter in the cold than anything else. At one point, I opened my coat, and covered her with one side of it, and we went on.

  The journey took longer than I had supposed; I simply could not take a fragile human being up that high into the air. But it was nothing as tedious or dangerous as it might have been had we taken a fuming and stinking and highly explosive jet plane.

  Within less than an hour, I was standing with her inside the glass doors of the Olympic Tower. She awoke in my arms as if from a deep sleep. I realized this had been inevitable. She’d lost consciousness, for a series of physical and mental reasons, but she came to herself at once, her heels striking the floor, and looked at me with huge owl eyes, and then out at the side of St. Patrick’s rising in all its obdurate glory across the street.

  “Come on,” I said, “I’m taking you to your father’s things.” We made for the elevators.

  She hurried after me, eagerly, the way that vampires dream mortals will do it, which never, never happens, as if all this were wondrous and there was no reason under Heaven to be afraid.

  “I don’t have much time,” I said. We were in the elevator speeding upwards. “There is something chasing me and I don’t know what it wants of me. But I had to bring you here. And I’ll see that you get home safe.”

  I explained that I knew of no rooftop entrances to this building; indeed, the whole place was new to me, or I would have brought her in that way, and I explained this now, embarrassed that we would cover a continent in an hour and then take a rattling, sucking, and stammering elevator that seemed only slightly less marvelous than the gift of vampiric flight.

  The doors ope
ned onto the correct floor. I put the key in her hand, and guided her towards the apartment. “You open it, everything inside is yours.”

  She looked at me for a moment, a slight frown on her forehead, then she stroked carelessly at her wind-torn hair, and put the key in the lock and opened the door.

  “Roger’s things,” she said with the first breath she took.

  She knew them by the smell as any antiquarian might have known them, these icons and relics. Then she saw the marble angel, poised in the corridor, with the glass wall way beyond it, and I thought she was going to faint in my arms.

  She slumped backwards as if counting upon me to catch her and support her. I held her with the tips of my fingers, as afraid as ever that I might accidentally bruise her.

  “Dear God,” she said under her breath. Her heart was racing, but it was hearty and very young and capable of tremendous endurance. “We are here, and you’ve been telling me true things.”

  She sprang loose from me before I could answer and walked briskly past the angel and into the larger front room of the place. The spires of St. Patrick’s were visible just below the level of the window. And everywhere were these cumbersome packages of plastic through which one could detect the shape of a crucifix or saint. The books of Wynken were on the table, of course, but I wasn’t going to press her on that just now.

  She turned to me, and I could feel her studying me, assessing me. I am so sensitive to this sort of appraisal that I actually think my vanity is rooted in each of my cells.

  She murmured some words in Latin, but I didn’t catch them, and no automatic translation came up in my mind.

  “What did you say?”

  “Lucifer, Son of Morning,” she whispered, staring at me with frank admiration. Then she plopped down into a large leather chair. It was one of the many tiresome furnishings of the place, meant for businessmen but completely comfortable. Her eyes were still locked on me.