Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles 5)

"Look, I think they're coming for me," he said suddenly. His eyes grew wide. He didn't look afraid now so much as puzzled. He was listening to something. I could hear it too. "Remember my death," he said suddenly, as if he'd just thought of it most distinctly. "Tell her how I died. Convince her my death has cleansed the money! You understand. That's the angle! I paid with my death. The money is no longer unclean. The books of Wynken, all of it, it's no longer unclean. Pretty it up. I ransomed it all with my blood. You know, Lestat, use your clever tongue. Tell her!"

Those footsteps.

The distinct rhythm of Something walking, slowly walking. . . . and the low murmur of the voices, the singing, the talking, I was get-ting dizzy. I was going to fall. I held on to him and on to the bar.

"Roger!" I shouted aloud. Surely everybody in the bar heard it. He was looking at me in the most pacific manner, I don't even know if his face was animate anymore. He seemed puzzled, even amazed. . . .

I saw the wings rise up over me, over him. I saw the immense obliterating darkness shoot up as if from a volcanic rip in the very earth and the light rise behind it. Blinding, beautiful light.

I know I cried out. "Roger!"

The noise was deafening, the voices, the singing, the figure growing larger and larger.

"Don't take him. It's my fault. " I rose up against It in fury; I would tear It to pieces if I had to, to make It let him go! But I couldn't see him clearly. I didn't know where / was. And It came rolling, like smoke again, thick and powerful and absolutely unstoppable, and in the midst of all this, looming above him as he faded, and towards me, the face, the face of the granite statue for one second, the only thing visible, his eyes¡ª

"Let him go!"

There was no bar, no Village, no city, no world. Only all of them!

And perhaps the singing was no more than the sound of a breaking glass.

Then blackness. Stillness.

Silence.

Or so it seemed, that I had been unconscious in a quiet place for some time.

I woke up outside on the street.

The bartender was standing there, shivering, asking me in the most annoyed and nasal tone of voice, "Are you all right, man?" There was snow on his shoulders, on the black shoulders of his vest, and on his white sleeves.

I nodded, and stood up, just so he'd go away. My tie was still in place. My coat was buttoned. My hands were clean. There was snow on my coat.

The snow was falling very lightly all around me. The most beautiful snow.

I went back through the revolving door into the tiled hallway and stood in the door of the bar. I could see the place where we had talked, see his glass still there. Otherwise the atmosphere was unchanged. The bartender was talking in a bored way to someone. He hadn't seen anything, except me bolt, probably, and stumble out into the street.

Every fiber in me said, Run. But where will you run? Take to the air? Not a chance, it will get you in an instant. Keep your feet on the cold earth.

You took Roger! Is that what you followed me for? Who are you!

The bartender looked up over the empty, dusty distance. I must have said something, done something. No, I was just blubbering. A man crying in a doorway, stupidly. And when it is this man, so to speak, that means blood tears. Make your exit quick.

I turned and walked out into the snow again. It was going to be morning soon, wasn't it? I didn't have to walk in the miserable punishing cold until the sky brightened, did

I? Why not find a grave now, and go to sleep?

"Roger!" I was crying, wiping my tears on my sleeve. "What are you, damn it!" I stood and shouted, voice rolling off the buildings. "Damn it!" It came back to me suddenly in a flash. I heard all those mingled voices, and I fought it. The face. It has a face! A sleepless mind in its heart and an insatiable personality. Don't get dizzy, don't try to remember. Somebody in one of the buildings opened a window and shouted at me to move on. "Stop screaming out there. " Don't try to reconstruct. You'll lose consciousness if you do.

I suddenly envisioned Dora and thought I might collapse where I was, shuddering and helpless and jabbering nonsense to anyone who came to help me.

This was bad, this was the worst, this was simply cosmically awful!

And what in God's name had been the meaning of Roger's expression in that last moment? Was it even an expression? Was it peace or calm or understanding, or just a ghost losing his vitality, a ghost giving up the ghost!

Ah! I had been screaming. I realized it. Lots of mortals around me, high up in the night, were telling me to be quiet.

I walked on and on.