Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles 5)

"Why don't you? Don't you enjoy seeing it, even if you don't want it?"

I nodded. I'd never dreamed he would let me watch. Louis hated it when I watched. When we'd been together last year, the three of us, David had been far too reticent and suspicious to suggest such a thing. We went down into the thick snowy darkness of Central Park.

Everywhere one could hear the park's nighttime occupants, snoring, grumbling, tiny whiffs of conversation, smoke. These are strong individuals, individuals who know how to live in the wild in the midst of a city that is itself notoriously fatal to its unlucky ones.

David found what he wanted quickly¡ªa young male with a skullcap, his bare toes showing through his broken shoes, a walker in the night, lone and drugged and insensible to the cold and talking aloud to people of long ago.

I stood back under the trees, wet with snow and uncaring. David reached out for the young man's shoulder, brought him gently around and embraced him. Classic. As David bent to drink, the young man began to laugh and talk simultaneously. And then went quiet, transfixed, until at last the body was gently laid to rest at the foot of a leafless tree.

The skyscrapers of New York glowed to the south of us, the warmer, smaller lights of the East and the West Side hemmed us in. David stood very still, thinking what, I wondered?

It seemed he'd lost the ability to move. I went towards him. He was no calm, diligent archivest at the moment. He looked to be suffering.

"What?" I asked.

"You know what," he whispered. "I won't survive that long. "

"You serious? With the gifts I gave you¡ª"

"Shhhh, we're too much in the habit of saying things to each other which we know are unacceptable to each other. We should stop. "

"And speak only the truth? All right. This is the truth. Now, you feel as if you can't survive. Now. When his blood is hot and swirling through you. Of course. But you won't feel that way forever. That's the key. I don't want to talk anymore about survival. I took a good crack at ending my life; it didn't work, and besides, I have something else to think about¡ªthis thing that's following me, and how I can help Dora before it closes in on me. "

That shut him up.

We started walking, mortal fashion, through the dark park together, my feet crunching deep into the snow. We wandered in and out of the leafless groves, pushing aside the wet black br

anches, the looming buildings of midtown never quite out of sight.

I was on edge for the sound of the footsteps. I was on edge and a dreary thought had come to me¡ªthat the monstrous thing that had been revealed, the Devil himself or whoever it was, had merely been after Roger. . . .

But then what of the man, the anonymous and perfectly ordinary man? That is what he had become in my mind, the man I'd glimpsed before dawn.

We drew near to the lights of Central Park South, the buildings rising higher, with an arrogance that Babylon could not have thrown in the face of heaven. But there were the comforting sounds of the well-heeled, and the committed, coming and going, and the neverending push and shove of taxis adding to the din.

David was brooding, stricken.

Finally I said, "If you'd seen the thing that I saw, you wouldn't be so eager to jump to the next stage. " I gave a sigh. I wasn't going to describe the winged thing to either one of us again.

"I'm quite inspired by it," he confessed. "You can't imagine. "

"Going to Hell? With a Devil like that?"

"Did you feel it was hellish? Did you sense evil? I asked you that before. Did you feel evil when the thing took Roger? Did Roger give any indication of pain?"

Those questions seemed to me a bit hairsplitting.

"Don't get overly optimistic about death," I said. "I'm warning you. My views are changing. The atheism and nihilism of my earlier years now seems shallow, and even a bit cocky. "

He smiled, dismissively, as he used to do when he was mortal and visibly wore the laurels of venerable age.

"Have you ever read the stories of Hawthorne?" he asked me softly. We had reached the street, crossed, and were slowly skirting the fountain before the Plaza.

"Yes," I said. "At some time or other. "

"And you remember Ethan Brand's search for the unpardonable sin?"

"I think so. He went off to search for it and left his fellow man behind. "