Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles 5)

". . . into your arms, because you didn't, you never . . . "

". . . and I all the time I thought and you . . . " "Love you, love you, love you, yes, and always . . . and no, you didn't know. You didn't know, you didn't know. "

". . . and always thought that it was what I should, but I knew, I felt. . . "

". . . the courage to turn and say that it wasn't. . . "

"We didn't know! We didn't know. "

It was blended finally into that one incessant cry.

We Did Not Know!

Before me the wall of a mosque rose, crowded with those screaming and covering their heads as the plaster came down upon them, the roar of the artillery deafening. Phantoms all.

We didn't know, we didn't know, the voices of the souls wailed. The Helpful Dead gathered on their knees, tears streaming down their faces . . . "Yes, we understand, you understand. "

"And that year, just to go home then and be with . . . "

"Yes. . . "

I fell forward, my foot striking a rock, and pitching me into the middle of a swarm of soldiers on their hands and knees, weeping as they clutched at one another and the wraithlike phantoms of the conquered, the slain, the starved, all rocking and crying together in one voice.

There came a chain of explosions, each more violent than the one before, such as only the modern world can make. The sky was light as day if day could be colorless and merciless and then dissolve into flickering darkness.

Darkness Visible.

"Help, help me out of this," I cried, but they didn't seem to hear or notice my screams, and when I looked for Memnoch, I saw only a pair of elevator doors slide open suddenly, and before me loomed a great modern room full of elaborate chandeliers and buffed floors and carpets without end. The hard polished glitter of our machine-made world. Roger came running towards me.

Roger, in all his dandified finery of purple silk jacket and tightly tailored pants, of perfumed hair, and manicured hands.

"Lestat," he cried. "Terry is here, they are here. Lestat. " He clung to my coat, the very eyes I'd seen in the ghost and in the human in my arms, staring at me, breath on my face, the room dissolving into smoke, the dim spirit of Terry with her bright bottle-blond hair, throwing her arms about his neck, her face open with amazement, her pink lips speechless, Memnoch's wing touching down, shutting me off from them, the floor cracking open.

"I wanted to tell him about the veil. . . . " I insisted. I struggled.

Memnoch held me.

"This way!"

The heavens opened with another fiery shower of sparks and the clouds burst above, clashing together, the lightning touching down over our heads, and on came a thunderous deluge of cold and chilling rain.

"Oh God, oh, God, oh God!" I cried. "This cannot be your school! God! I say no!"

"Look, look!"

He pointed to the figure of Roger on his hands and knees, turning like a dog, amongst those he'd slain, men imploring him with outstretched arms, women tearing open the cloth of their dresses to show the wounds, the chatter of voices rising perilously as if the sound of Hell itself would suddenly explode, and Terry¡ªthe very same Terry-with her arms still around his neck. Roger lay on the ground, his shirt torn open, his feet naked, the jungle rising around him. Shots rang out in the dark. Crack of automatic guns spitting their numberless fatal bullets in unstinted fury. The lights of a house flickered among vines, amid monstrous trees. Roger turned to me, trying to rise, sinking back on his leg, crying, the tears streaming down his face.

". . . and each and every act, in its own way, Lestat, and I didn't know . . . I didn't know. . . . "

Distinct and ghastly and demanding, he rose before me only to recede into the countless others.

In all directions I saw them. The others.

Scenario lapping into scenario, ashen colors brightening, or dying in a murky haze, and rising here and there from the horrid furious turbulent fields of Hell, the Purified Souls. There came the beat of drums, there came the piercing shrieks of some unendurable torture; a mass of men in crude white robes shoved into the blazing logs, their arms appealing to the souls who shrank and howled and screamed in remorse, in awful recognition.

"My God, my God, we are both forgiven!"

What was this sudden whirl of the filthy, stinking wind? Upward souls went with arms out, garments suddenly stripped or faded away into the indistinguishable robes of the Saved, the Tunnel opening.