Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles 5)

"She stood up, threw up her arms, and in a loud voice told them what she had seen. Her language was simple. But she had plenty enough words to describe it¡ªhow she had come upon me on the banks of the sea and seen that I was naked and she had given herself to me in sanctity and worship, knowing I could not be a man of the earth.

"No sooner had my seed come into her than a magnificent light from above had filled the cave. She had rushed in fear from it, but I had walked out into it, fearless, knowing it, and before her eyes I changed so that she could see through me, yet still she saw me.

And I was grown tall, with immense white feathered wings! This vision¡ªthis creature through whom she could see as if through water¡ªshe saw only for an instant. Then I vanished. I was gone as surely as I sit here now. She had hovered, shivering, watching, praying to the ancestors, to the Creator, to the Demons of the Desert, to all powers for protection, when suddenly she had seen me again¡ªtransparent, to summarize her simple words, but visible, falling¡ªwinged and enormous¡ªsmashing towards earth in a fall that would have killed a man, though that is what I became¡ªa man, solid as everyone could see, sitting in the dust.

" 'God,' I prayed. 'What do I do? What this woman has said is true! But I am no God. You are God. What do I do?'

"No answer came from Heaven, not to my ears, not to my heart, not to my cumbersome and elaborate brain.

"As for the crowd of listeners, whom I judged to be about thirty-five, exclusive of all the children, no one spoke. Everyone was considering this. No one was quick to accept it. No one was going to jump forward and challenge it either. Something in my manner and posture held them aloof.

"No surprise. I certainly didn't cower or shiver or evince what I was suffering. I had not learnt to express angelic suffering through flesh. I merely sat there, aware that by their measure I was young, comely, and a mystery; and they were not brave enough to try to hurt me as they so often hurt others, to stab, or pierce, or burn me as I had seen them do enough times to their enemies, and to their own despised.

"Suddenly the whole group burst into murmuring. A very old man rose to his feet. His words were even simpler than hers. I would say he had perhaps half of her working vocabulary. But this was enough to express himself and he asked of me simply: 'What do you have to say for yourself?'

"The others reacted as if this question were an expression of sheer genius. Maybe it was. The woman pulled very close to me at that moment. She sat down beside me and with an imploring look, she embraced me.

"I realized something¡ªthat her fate was connected to mine. She was slightly afraid of all these people, her kindred. And she wasn't afraid of me! Interesting. That is what tenderness and love can do, and marvels also, I thought. And God says these people are part of Nature!

"I hung my head, but not for long. Finally, I rose to my feet, bringing her up with me, my mate, as it were, and, using all the words known in her language, some even that the children had been adding already in this generation that the adults didn't yet know, I said:

" 'I mean you no harm. I came from Heaven. I came to learn about you and to love you. And I wish you only all good things under God!'

"There was a great clamour, a happy clamour, with people clapping their hands, and rising to their feet, and the little ones jumping up and down. It seemed a consensus emerged that Lilia, the woman I had been with, could now return to the group. She had been cast out to die when she had come upon me. But she was now surely upheld. And she had returned with a god, a deity, a sky being . . . they aimed for it with many syllables and combinations of syllables.

" 'No!' I declared. 'I am not a god. I did not make the world. I worship, just as you do, the God who did. '

"This, too, was accepted in jubilation. Indeed, the frenzy began to alarm me. I felt the limits of my body keenly with all these others dancing and screaming and shouting and kicking at the wood in the fire, and this lovely Lilia clinging to me.

" 'I must sleep now!' I said suddenly. And this was no more or less than the perfect truth. I had scarce slept an hour or more at any one time in my three days in the flesh and was bone weary and bruised and cast out of Heaven. I wanted to turn to this woman, and bury my sorrow in her arms.

"Everyone gave their approval. A hut was prepared for us. People ran hither and thither gathering the finest skins and furs for us, and the softest chewed leather, and we were ushered into this place in silence, and I lay back down on the fur beneath me, the skin of a mountain goat, long and soft.

" 'God, what do you want me to do!' I asked aloud. There came no answer. There was only the silence and the darkness in the hut, and then the arms of a Daughter of Men around me, luscious and loving and full of tenderness and passion, that mystery, that combination, that purely living miracle, tenderness and lust rolling and rolling into one. "

Memnoch stopped. He seemed exhausted suddenly. He rose and again walked to the bank of the sea. He stood in the soft sand and pebbles. I saw the outline of his wings flash for a moment, perhaps exactly the way the woman had seen it, and then he was merely the large figure, with his shoulders hunched as he stood with his back to me, his face apparently buried in his hands.

"Memnoch, what happened!" I said. "Surely God didn't leave you there! What did you do? What happened the next morning when you woke up?"

He gave a sigh and turned around finally. He walked slowly back to the boulder, and sat down again.

"By morning, I had known her a half dozen times and lay half dead, and that in itself was another lesson. But I had no thought whatsoever on what I might do. While she'd slept, I had prayed to God, I had prayed to Michael and to the other angels. I had prayed and prayed, asking what I should do.

"Can you guess who answered me?" he asked.

"The souls in Sheol," I said.

"Yes, precisely! Those are the spirits who answered. How could you know? Those are the spirits¡ªthe strongest souls of Sheol who heard my prayers to the Creator and heard the impetus and essence of my cries and my excuses and my pleas for mercy and forgiveness and understanding¡ªheard all of it, absorbed it, drank it up, as they did the spiritual yearnings of their human and living children. And by the time the sun rose, by the time all the men of the group had started to gather, I knew one thing only:

"Whatever happened to me, whatever was the will of God, the souls of Sheol would never be the same! They had learnt too much from the voice of this Angel fallen into Matter who had thoughtlessly cried to Heaven and to God.

"Of course the full impact didn't hit me. I didn't sit there reasoning it out. The strongest souls had had their first glimpse of Paradise. They knew now of a Light which made an Angel weep and beg in desperation, because he was afraid he would never see that Light again. I didn't think of it. No.

"God had left me here. That is what I thought. God had left me. I went out into the crowd. The encampment was overflowing. In fact, men and women were coming from all the nearby encampments to see me.

"And we had to leave the enclosure and go out into the open, into one of the fields. Look down to the right, where the land slopes? You see down there where the field spreads out and the water turns. . . . "

"Yes. "