8

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¡ªa 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. "Well?"

"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."

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¡ªnot 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¡ªhe 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¡ª" 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.