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"You are the damnedest creature! You really are!" he said. Hisexasperation was mild and patient but still there. "Lestat, don't yousee that what impelled you towards the complexity of Roger and hisdaughter, Dora, was the same thing that compelled me to come toyou? You had come to a point where you were reaching out for thesupernatural. You were crying to Heaven to be laid waste! Yourtaking David, that was perhaps your first real step towards utter moralperil! You could forgive yourself for having made the child vampireClaudia, because you were young and stupid.
"But to bring David over, against his will! To take the soul ofDavid and make it vampiric? That was a crime of crimes. That was acrime that cries to Heaven, for the love of God. David, whom we had_., _ ?.*劔 uiu we icei an interest in himand whatever path he might take.""Ah, so the appearance to David was deliberate.""I thought I said so.""But Roger and Dora, they were simply in the way.""Yes. Of course, you chose the brightest and most alluring victim!
You chose a man who was as good at what he did梙is criminality, hisracketeering, his thieving梐s you are good at what you are. It was abolder step. Your hunger is growing. It becomes ever more dangerousto you and those around you. You don't take the downfallen andthe bereft and the cutthroats any longer. When you reached forRoger, you reached for the power and the glory, but so what?""I'm torn," I whispered.
"Why?""Because I feel love for you," I said, "and that's something Ialways pay attention to, as we both know. I feel drawn into you. I wantto know what else you have to tell me! And yet I think you're lyingabout Roger. And about Dora. I think it is all connected. And when Ithink of God Incarnate? I broke off, unable to continue.
I was flooded by the sensations of Heaven, or what I could stillremember, what I could still feel, and the breath did leave me in asorrow that was far greater than any I ever expressed in tears.
I must have closed my eyes. Because when I opened them, Irealized Memnoch was holding both my hands in his. His hands feltwarm and very strong and uncommonly smooth. How cold my ownmust have felt to him. His hands were larger; flawless. My handswere . . . my strange white, slender, glittering hands. My fingernailsflashed like ice in the sun as they always do.
He drew away, and it was excruciating. My hands remained rigid,clasped, and utterly alone.
He was standing yards away from me, his back to me, looking outover the narrow sea. His wings were apparent, huge, and movinguneasily, as if an inner tension caused him to work the invisiblemuscular apparatus to which they were attached. He looked perfect,irresistible, and desperate.
"Maybe God is right!" he said with rage in his low voice, staringnot at me but at the sea.
"Right about what?" I stood up.
He wouldn't look at me.
"Memnoch," I said, "please go on. There are moments when Ifeel I'll collapse beneath the things being made known to me. But goon. Please, please go on.""That's your way of apologizing, isn't it?" he asked gently. Heturned around, towards me. The wings vanished. He walked slowlyup to me, and past me, and sat down again on my right. His robe washemmed in dust from the ground. I absorbed the detail before Iactually thought about it. There was a tiny bit of leaf, green leaf, caughtin the long flowing tangles of his hair.
"No, not really," I said. "It wasn't an apology. I usually say exactlywhat I mean."I studied his face梩he sculpted profile, the utter absence of hairon otherwise magnificently human-looking skin. Indescribable. Ifyou turn and look at a statue in a Renaissance church, and you see it isbigger all over than you are, that it is perfect, you don't get frightenedbecause it's stone. But this was alive.
He turned as if he'd just noticed I was looking at him. He stareddown into my eyes. Then he bent forwards, his eyes very clear, andfilled with myriad colors, and I felt his lips, smooth, evenly andmodestly moist, touch my cheek. I felt a burn of life through the hardcoldness of my self. I felt a raging flame that caught every particle ofme, as only blood can do it, living blood. I felt a pain in my heart. Imight have laid my finger on my chest in the very place.
"What do you feel!" I asked, refusing to be ravaged.
"I feel the blood of hundreds," he whispered. "I feel a soul whohas known a thousand souls.""Known? Or merely destroyed?""Will you send me away out of hatred for yourself?" he asked.
"Or shall I continue with my story?""Please, please go on.""Man had invented or discovered God," he said. His voice wascalm now and back to the same polite and almost humble instructivemanner. "And in some instances, tribes worshipped more than onesuch deity who was perceived to have created this or that part of theworld. And yes, humans knew of the souls of the dead surviving; andthey did reach out to these souls and make offerings to them. Theybrought offerings to their graves. They cried out to these dead souls.
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