Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles 5)

"Uncle Mickey, very young and very scared I imagine, was in Corona's Bar in the Irish Channel. "

"On Magazine Street," I said. "That bar was there for years and years. Maybe a century. "

"Yes, and the bookie's henchmen came in and dragged Uncle Mickey to the back of the bar. My mother's father saw it all. He was there, but he couldn't do anything about it. Nobody could. Nobody would. Nobody dared. But this is what my grandfather saw. The men beat and kicked Uncle Mickey. They were the ones who hurt the roof of his mouth so he talked as if something were wrong with him. And they kicked out his eye. They kicked it across the floor. And the way my grandfather said it every time he told it was, 'Dora, they could have saved that eye, except those guys stepped on it. They deliberately stepped on it with those pointed shoes. ' "

human could be that cold. I had sopped up the winter's worst as though I were porous marble, which I suppose I was.

"Dora, Dora, Dora," I whispered. "How he loved you, and how much he wanted everything to be right for you, Dora. "

Her scent was strong, but so was I.

"Lestat, explain about the Devil," she said.

I sat down on the carpet so that I could look up at her. She was perched on the edge of her chair, knees bare, black coat carelessly open now, and a streak of gold scarf showing, her face pale but very flushed, in a way that made her radiant and at the same time a little enchanted, as though she were no more human than me.

"Even your father couldn't really describe your beauty," I said.

"Temple virgin, nymph of the wood. "

"My father said that to you?"

"Yes. But the Devil, ah, the Devil told me to ask you a question.

To ask you the truth about Uncle Mickey's eye!" I had just remembered it. I had not remembered to tell either David or Armand about this, but what difference could that possibly make?

She was surprised by these words, and very impressed. She sank back a little into the chair. "The Devil told you these words?"

"He gave it to me as a gift. He wants me to help him. He says he's not evil. He says that God is his adversary. I'll tell you everything, but he gave me these words as some sort of little extra gift, what do we call it in New Orleans, lagniappe? To convince me that he is what he says he is. "

She gave a little gesture of confusion, hand flying to her temple as she shook her head. "Wait. The truth about Uncle Mickey's eye, you're sure he said that? My father didn't say anything about Uncle Mickey?"

"No, and I never caught any such image from your father's heart or soul, either. The Devil said Roger didn't know the truth. What does it mean?"

"My father didn't know the truth," she said. "He never knew. His mother never told him the truth. It was his uncle Mickey, my grandmother's brother. And it was my mother's people who told me the real story¡ªTerry's people. It was like this, my father's mother was rich and had a beautiful house on St. Charles Avenue. "

"I know the place, I know all about it. Roger met Terry there. "

Yes, exactly, but my grandmother had been poor when she was.

She stopped.

"And Roger never knew this. "

"Nobody knows it who is alive," she said. "Except for me, of course. My grandfather's dead. For all I know, everyone who was ever there is dead. Uncle Mickey died in the early fifties. Roger used to take me out to the cemetery to visit his grave. Roger had always loved him. Uncle Mickey with his hollow voice and his glass eye. Everybody sort of loved him, the way Roger told it. And even my mother's people said that too. He was a sweetheart. He was a night watchman before he died. He rented rooms on Magazine Street right over Baer's Bakery. He died of pneumonia in the hospital before anyone even knew he was ill. And Roger never knew the truth about Uncle Mickey's eye. We would have spoken of it if he had, naturally. "

I sat there pondering, or rather picturing what she had described. No images came from her, she was closed tight, but her voice had been effortlessly generous. I knew Corona's. So did anyone who had ever walked Magazine Street in those famous blocks of the Irish hey-day. I knew the criminals with their pointed shoes. Crushing the eye.

"They just stepped on it and squashed it," said Dora, as though she could read my thoughts. "My grandfather always said, 'They could have saved it, if they hadn't stepped on it the way they did with those pointed shoes. '"

A silence fell between us.

"This proves nothing," I said.

"It proves your friend, or enemy, knows secrets, that's what it proves. "

"But it doesn't prove he's the Devil," I said, "and why would he choose such a story, of all things?"

"Maybe he was there," she said with a bitter smile.