Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles 5)

The waiter had set down the hot drinks, and the steam did feel glorious. The piano played Satie ever so softly. Life was almost worth living, even for a son of a bitch of a monster like myself. Something crossed my mind.

In this very bar, I'd heard my victim say to his daughter two nights ago, "You know I sold my soul for places just like this. "

I'd been yards away, quite beyond mortal hearing, yet hearing every word that fell from my Victim's lips, and I was enthralled with the daughter. Dora, that was her name. Dora. She was the one thing this strange and succulently alluring Victim truly loved, his only child, his daughter.

I realized David was watching me.

"Just thinking about the victim who brought me here," I said. "And his daughter. They're not going out tonight. The snow's too deep and the wind too cruel. He'll take her back up to their suite, and she'll look down on the towers of St. Patrick's. I want to keep my victim in my sights, you know. "

"Good heavens, have you fallen in love with a couple of mortals?"

"No. Not at all. Just a new way of hunting. The man's unique, a blaze of individual traits. I adore him. I was going to feed on him the first time I saw him, but he continues to surprise me. I've been following him around for half a year. "

I flashed back on them. Yes, they were going upstairs, just as I thought. They had just left their table in the restaurant. The night was too wretched even for Dora, though she wanted to go to the church and to pray for her father, and beg him to stay there and pray too. Some memory played between them, in their thoughts and fragmentary words. Dora had been a little girl when my Victim had first brought her to that cathedral.

He didn't believe in anything. She was some sort of religious leader. Theodora. She preached to television audiences on the seriousness of values and nourishment of the soul. And her father? Ah, well, I'd kill him before I learnt too much more, or end up losing this big trophy buck just for Dora's sake.

I looked back at David, who was watching me eagerly, shoulder resting against the dark satin-covered wall. In this light, no one could have known he wasn't human. Even one of us might have missed it. As for me, I probably looked like a mad rock star who wanted all the world's attention to crush him slowly to death.

"The victim's got nothing to do with it," I said. "I'll tell you all that another time. It's just we're in this hotel because I followed him here. You know my games, my hunts. I don't need blood any more than Maharet does, but I can't stand the thought of not having it!"

"And so what is this new sort of game?" he said politely in British.

"I don't look so much for simple, evil people, murderers, you know so much as a more sophisticated kind of criminal, someone with the mentality of an Iago. This one's a drag dealer. Highly eccentric. Brilliant. An art collector. He loves to have people shot, loves to make billions in a week off cocaine through one gateway and heroin through another. And then he loves his daughter. And she, she has a televangelist church. "

"You're really enthralled with these mortals. "

"Look right now, past me, over my shoulder. See the two people in the lobby moving towards the elevators?" I asked.

"Yes. " He stared at them fixedly. Perhaps they'd paused in just the right spot. I could feel, hear, and smell both of them, but I couldn't know precisely where they were unless I turned around. But they were there, the dark smiling man with his pale-faced eager and innocent little girl, who was a woman-child of twenty-five if I had reckoned correctly.

"I know that man's face," said David. "He's big time. International. They keep trying to bring him up on some cha

rges. He pulled off an extraordinary assassination, where was it?" "The Bahamas. "

"My God, how did you happen on him? Did you really see him in person somewhere, you know, like a shell you found on the beach, or did you see him in the papers and the magazines?"

"Do you recognize the girl? Nobody knows they're connected. " "No, I don't recognize her, but should I? She's so pretty, and so sweet. You're not going to feed on her, are you?"

I laughed at his gentlemanly outrage at such a suggestion. I wondered if David asked permission before sucking the blood of his victims, or at least insisted that both parties be properly introduced. I had no idea what his killing habits were, or how often he fed. I'd made him plenty strong. That meant it didn't have to be every night. He was blessed in that.

"The girl sings for Jesus on a television station," I said. "Her church will someday have its headquarters in an old, old convent building in New Orleans. Right now she lives there alone, and tapes her programs out of a studio in the French Quarter. I think her show goes through some ecumenical cable channel out of Alabama. " "You're in love with her. "

"Not at all, just very eager to kill her father. Her television appeal is peculiar. She talks theology with gripping common sense, you know, the kind of televangelist that just might make it all work. Don't we all fear that someone like that will come along? She dances like a nymph or a temple virgin, I suppose I should say, sings like a seraph, invites the entire studio audience to join with her. Theology and ecstasy, perfectly blended. And all the requisite good works are recommended. "

"I see," he said. "And this makes it more exciting for you, to feast on the father? By the way, the father is hardly an unobtrusive man. Neither seem disguised. Are you sure no one knows they're connected?"

The elevator door had opened. My Victim and his daughter were rising floor after floor into the sky.

"He slips in and out of here when he wants. He's got bodyguards galore. She meets him on her own. I think they set it up by cellular phone. He's a computer cocaine giant, and she's one of his best-protected secret operations. His men are all over the lobby. If there'd been anyone nosing around, she would have left the restaurant alone first. But he's a wizard at things like that. There'll be warrants out for him in five states and he'll show up ringside for a heavyweight match in Atlantic City, right in front of the cameras. They'll never catch him. I'll catch him, the vampire who's just waiting to kill him. And isn't he beautiful?"

"Now, let me get this clear," David said. "You're being stalked by something, and it's got nothing to do with this victim, this, er, drug dealer, or whatever, or this televangelist girl. But something is following you, something frightening you, but not enough to make you Stop tracking this dark-skinned man who just got into the elevator?"

I nodded, but then I caught myself in a little doubt. No, there Couldn't be any connection.

Besides, this thing that had me rattled to the bone had started before I saw the Victim. It had "happened" first in Rio, the stalker, not long after I'd left Louis and David and gone back to Rio to hunt.

I hadn't picked up this Victim until he'd walked across my path in own city of New Orleans. He'd come down there on a whim to Dora for twenty minutes; they'd met in a little French Quarter and I had been walking past and seen him, sparkling like a fire, her white face and large compassionate eyes, and wham! It was hunger.