Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles 5)

She made the Sign of the Cross again. But she had never been actually afraid. She was just confirming something, I suppose. Though precisely what is really open to question, if you think of it.

Silently she prayed.

"I can do that too," I said. I did it. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. " I repeated the entire performance, doing it in Latin.

She regarded me with a still, amazed face, and then she let slip a tiny, gentle laugh.

I smiled. This bed and chair¡ªwhere we sat so close to each other¡ªwere in the corner. There was a window over her shoulder, and one behind me. Windows, windows, it was a palazzo of windows.

The dark wood of the ceiling must have been fifteen feet above us. I adored the scale of it. It was European, to say the least, and felt normal. It had not been sacrificed to modern dimensions.

"You know," I said, "the first time I walked into Notre Dame, after I'd been made into this, a vampire, that is, and it wasn't my idea, by the way, I was completely human and younger than you are now, the whole thing was forced, completely, I don't remember specifically if I prayed when it was happening, but I fought, that I vividly remember and have preserved in writing. But. . . as I was saying, the first time I walked into Notre Dame, I thought, well, why doesn't God strike me dead?"

"You must have your place in the scheme of things. "

"You think? You really believe that?"

"Yes. I never expected to come upon something like you face to face, but it never seemed impossible or even improbable. I've been waiting all these years for a sign, for some confirmation. I would have lived out my life without it, but there was always the feeling. . . that it was going to come, the sign. "

Her voice was small and typically feminine, that is, the pitch was without mistake feminine, but she spoke with terrific self-confidence now, and so her words seemed to have authority, rather like those of a man.

"And now you come, and you bring the news that you've killed my father. And you say that he spoke to you. No, I'm not one for simply dismissing such things out of hand. There's an allure to what you say, there is an ornate quality. Do you know, when I was a young girl, the very first reason I believed in the Holy Bible was because it had an ornate quality! I have perceived other patterns in life. I'll tell you a secret. One time I wished my mother dead, and do you know on that very day, within the very hour, she disappeared out of my life forever?

I could tell you other things. What you must understand is I want to learn from you. You walked into Notre Dame Cathedral and God didn't strike you dead. "

"I'll tell you something that I found amusing," I said. "This was two hundred years ago. Paris before the Revolution. There were vampires living in Paris then, in Les Innocents, the big cemetery, it's long gone, but they lived there in the catacombs beneath the tombs, and they were afraid to go into Notre Dame. When they saw me do it, they, too, thought God would strike me dead. "

She was looking at me rather placidly.

"I destroyed their faith for them," I sa

id. "Their belief in God and the Devil. And they were vampires. They were earthbound creatures like me, half demon, half human, stupid, blundering, and they believed that God would strike them dead. "

"And before you, they had really had a faith?"

"Yes, an entire religion, they really did," I said. "They thought themselves servants of the Devil. They thought it was a distinction.

They lived as vampires, but their existence was miserable and deliberately penitential. I was, you might say, a prince. I came swaggering through Paris in a red cloak lined with wolf fur. But that was my human life, the cloak. Does that impress you, that vampires would be believers? I changed it all for them. I don't think they've ever forgiven me, that is, those few who survive. There are not, by the way, very many of us. "

"Stop a minute," she said. "I want to listen to you, but I must ask you something first. "

"Yes?"

"My father, how did it happen, was it quick and. . . . "

"Absolutely painless, I assure you," I said, turning to her, looking at her. "He told me himself. No pain. "

She was owl-like with such a white face and big dark eyes, and she was actually slightly scary herself. I mean, she might have scared another mortal in this place, the way she looked, the strength of it.

"It was in a swoon that your father died," I said. "Ecstatic perhaps, and filled with various images, and then a loss of consciousness.

His spirit had left his body before the heart ceased to beat. Any physical pain I inflicted he never felt; once the blood is being sucked, once I've . . . no, he didn't suffer. "

I turned and looked at her more directly. She'd curled her legs under her, revealing white knees beneath her hem.

"I talked with Roger for two hours afterwards," I said. "Two hours. He came back for one reason, to make certain I'd look out for you. That his enemies didn't get you, and the government didn't get you, and all these people he's connected with, or was. And that, and that his death didn't. . . hurt you more than it had to. "

"Why would God do this?" she whispered.