Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles 5)

Suddenly he made the decision to continue, and I was relieved.

"I made my life rich enough," he said, "that I stopped caring about changing the world if ever I really thought of it; I made a life, you see, you know, a world unto itself. But she really has opened her soul in a sophisticated way to . . . to something. My soul's dead. "

"Apparently not," I said. The thought that he would vanish, had to, sooner or later, was becoming intolerable to me, and far more frightening than his initial presence had ever been.

"Let's get back to the basics. I'm getting anxious. . . . " he said.

"Why?"

"Don't freak on me, just listen. There is money put aside for Dora that has no connection to me. The government can't touch it, besides, they never got an indictment against me let alone a conviction, you saw to that. The information's in the flat. Black leather folders.

File cabinet. Mixed right in with sales slips for all sorts of paintings and statues. And you have to save all that somewhere for Dora. My life's work, my inheritance. It's in your hands for her. You can do it, can't you? Look, there's no hurry, you've done away with me in a rather clever way,"

"I know. And you're asking me now to function as a guardian angel, to see that Dora receives this inheritance untainted. . . . "

"Yes, my friend, that's precisely what I'm begging you to do. And you can do it! And don't forget about my Wynken! If she won't take those books, you keep those books!"

He touched my chest with his hand. I felt it, the little knock upon the door of the heart.

He continued. "When my name drops put of the papers, assuming it ever makes it from the FBI files to the wire service, you get the money to Dora. Money can still create Dora's church. Dora is magnetic, Dora can do it all by herself, if she has the money! You follow me? She can do it the way Francis did it or Paul or Jesus. If it wasn't for her theology, she would have become the charismatic celebrity long ago. She has all the assets. She thinks too much. Her theology is what sets her apart. "

He took a breath. He was talking very rapidly, and I was beginning to shiver. I could hear his fear like a low emanation from him.

Fear of what?

"Here," he said. "Let me quote something to you. She told me this last night. We've been reading a book by Bryan Appleyard, a columnist for the papers in England, you've heard of him? He wrote some tome called Understanding the Present. I have the copy she gave me. And in it he said things that Dora believed . . . such as that we are 'spiritually impoverished. ' "

"Agreed. "

"But it was something else, something about our dilemma, that you can invent theologies, but for them to work they have to come from some deeper place inside a person. . . I know what she called it. . . Appleyard's words . . . 'a totality of human experience. ' " He stopped.

He was distracted.

I was desperate to reassure him that I understood this. "Yes, she's looking for this, courting it, she's opening herself for it. "

I suddenly realized that I was holding on to him as tightly as he was holding on to me.

He was staring off.

I was filled with a sadness so awful that I couldn't speak. I'd killed this man! Why had I done it? I mean, I knew he'd been interesting and evil, but Christ, how could I have . . . but then what if he stayed with me the way he was! What if he could become my friend exactly the way he was.

Oh, this was too childish and selfish and avaricious! We were talking about Dora, about theology. Of course I understood Appleyard's point. Understanding the Present. I pictured the book. I'd go back for it. I filed it in my preternatural memory. Read at once, He hadn't moved or spoken.

"Look, what are you scared of?" I asked. "Don't fade on me!" I clung to him, very raw, and small, and almost crying, thinking that I had killed him, taken his life, and now all I wanted to do was hold on to his spirit.

He gave no response. He looked afraid.

I wasn't the ossified monster I thought I was. I wasn't in danger of being inured to human suffering. I was a damned jibbering empath!

"Roger? Look at me. Go on talking. "

He only murmured something about maybe Dora would find what he had never found.

"What?" I demanded.

"Theophany," he whispered.

Oh, that lovely word. David's word. I'd only heard it myself a few hours ago. And now it slipped from his lips.