"And how in hell will we proceed?"
"I'll tell you everything," he said with a slight shrug, his hands open, "and then you'll understand why I have to win. "
"The implication . . . it's that I can refuse to cooperate with you, isn't it?"
"Absolutely. Nobody can really help me who doesn't choose to do it. And I'm tired. I'm tired of the job. I need help. That part your friend David heard correctly when he experienced that accidental epiphany. "
"Was David's epiphany accidental? What happened to that other word? What had it been . . . I don't remember. David wasn't meant to see you or hear you and God talking together?"
"That's almost impossible to explain. "
"Did I upset some plan of yours by taking David, making him one of us?"
"Yes and no. But the point is, David heard that part correctly. My task is hard and I'm tired! Some of the rest of David's ideas about that little vision, well¡ª" He shook his head. "The point is, you are the one I want now and it's terribly important you see everything before you make up your mind. "
"I'm that bad, am I?" I whispered, lips trembling. I was going to bawl again. "In all the world, with all the things humans have done, all the unspeakable horrors men have visited on other men, the unthinkable suffering of women and children worldwide at the hands of mankind, and I'm that bad! You want me! David was too good, I suppose. He didn't become as consummately evil as you thought he would. Is that it?"
"No, of course you're not that bad," he said soothingly. "That's the very point. " He gave a little sigh again.
I was beginning to notice more distinct details of his appearance, not because they were becoming more vivid as had happened with the apparition of Roger, but because I was growing more calm. His hair was a dark ashen blond, and rather soft and curling. And his eyebrows were the same shade, not distinctly black at all, but very carefully drawn to maintain an expression that contained no closed vanity or arrogance. He didn't look stupid either, of course. The clothes were generic. I don't believe they were really clothes. They were material, but the coat was too plain and without buttons, and the white shirt was too simple.
"You know," he said, "you always have had a conscience! That's precisely what I'm after, don't you see? Conscience, reason, purpose, dedication. Good Lord, I couldn't have overlooked you. And I'll tell you something. It was as though you sent for me. "
"Never. "
"Come on, think of all the challenges you've flung out to the Devil. "
"That was poetry, or doggerel, depending on one's point of view. "
"Not so. And then think of all the things you did, waking that ancient one Akasha and almost loosing her on humanity. " He gave a short laugh. "As if we don't have enough monsters created by evolution. And then your adventure with the Body Thief. Coming into the flesh again, having that chance, and rejecting it for what you were before. You know your friend Gretchen is a saint in the jungles, don't you?"
"Yes. I've seen mentions of it in the papers. I know. "
Gretchen, my nun, my love when I'd been so briefly mortal, had never spoken one word since the night she fled from me into her missionary chapel and fell on her knees before the crucifix. She remained in prayer night and day in that jungle village, taking almost no nourishment, and on Fridays people journeyed miles through the jungle, and sometimes even came from Caracas and Buenos Aires just to see her bleed from her hands and her feet. That had been the end of Gretchen.
Although it suddenly struck me for the very first time, in the middle of all this: maybe Gretchen really was with Christ!
"No, I don't believe it," I said coldly. "Gretchen lost her mind; she's fixed in a state of hysteria and it's my fault. So the world has another mystic who bleeds like Christ. There have been a thousand. "
"I didn't place any judgment upon the incident," he said. "If we can go back to what I was saying. I was saying that you did everything but ask me to come! You challenged every form of authority, you sought every experience. You've buried yourself alive twice, and once tried to rise into the very sun to make yourself a cinder. What was left for you¡ªbut to call on me? It is as if you yourself said it: 'Memnoch, what more can I do now?' "
"Did you tell God about this?" I asked coldly, refusing to be drawn in. Refusing to be this curious and this excited.
"Yes, of course," he said.
I was too surprised to say anything.
I could think of nothing clever. Certain little theological brain twisters flitted through my mind, and sticky little questions, like "Why didn't God already know?" and so forth. But we were beyond that point, obviously.
I had to think, to concentrate on what my senses were telling me.
"You and Descartes," he said. "You and Kant. "
"Don't lump me with others," I said. "I am the Vampire Lestat, the one and only. "
"You're telling me," he said.
"How many of us are there now, vampires, I mean, in the whole world? I'm not speaking now of other immortals and monsters and evil spirits and things, whatever you are, for instance, but vampires? There aren't a hundred, and none of them is quite like me. Lestat. "