A loud echoing noise sounded somewhere in the building. I stepped back almost too fast, and lost my footing stupidly and found myself facing the church. Someone moved in the building, someone walking at a moderate pace on the lower floor and towards the same stairway up which I'd come to the chapel door.
I moved swiftly to the entrance of the vestibule. I could hear no voice and detect no scent! No scent. My heart sank. "I won't take any more of this!" I whispered. I was already shaking. But some mortal scents don't come that easily; there is the breeze to consider, or rather the draughts, which in this place were considerable.
The figure was mounting the stairs.
I leant back behind the chapel door so I might see it turn at the landing. And if it was Dora I meant to hide at once.
But it wasn't Dora, and it came walking so fast right up the stairs, lightly and briskly towards me, that I realized who it was as he came to a stop in front of me.
The Ordinary Man.
I stood stock-still, staring at him. Not quite my height; not quite my build; regular in every respect as I remembered. Scentless? No, but the scent was not right. It was mingled with blood and sweat and salt and I could hear a faint heartbeat... .
"Don't torment yourself," he said, in a very civil and diplomatic voice. "I'm debating. Should I make my offer now, or before you get mixed up with Dora? I'm not sure what's best."
He was four feet away at the moment.
I slouched arrogantly against the doorframe of the vestibule and folded my arms. The whole flickering chapel was behind me. Did I look frightened? Was I frightened? Was I about to perish of fright?
"Are you going to tell me who you are," I asked, "and what you want, or am I supposed to ask questions and draw this out of you?"
"You know who I am," he said in the same reticent, simple manner.
Something struck me suddenly. What was outstanding were the proportions of his figure and his face. The regularity itself. He was rather a generic man.
He smiled. "Exactly. It's the form I prefer in every age and place, because it doesn't attract very much attention." Again the voice was good-natured. "Going about with black wings and goat's feet, you know—it overwhelms mortals instantly."
"I want you to get the hell out of here before Dora comes!" I said.
I was suddenly sputtering crazy.
He turned, slapped his thigh, and laughed.
"You are a brat, Lestat," he said in his simple, unimposing voice. "Your cohorts named you properly. You can't give me orders."
"I don't know why not. What if I throw you out?"
"Would you like to try? Shall I take my other form? Shall I let my wings...." I heard the chatter of voices, and my vision was clouding.
"No!" I shouted.
"All right."
The transformation came to a halt. The dust settled. I felt my heart knock against my chest like it wanted to get out.
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," he said. "I'll let you handle things with Dora, since you seem obsessed with it. And I won't be able to distract you from it. And then when you've finished with all this, this girl and her dreams and such, we can talk together, you and I."
"About what?"
"Your soul, what else?"
"I'm ready to go to Hell," I said, lying through my teeth. "But I don't believe you're what you claim to be. You're something, something like me for which there aren't scientific explanations, but behind it all, there's a cheap little core of facts that will eventually lay bare everything, even the texture of each black feather of your wings."
He frowned slightly, but he wasn't angry.
"We won't continue at this pace," he said. "I assure you. But for now, I'll let you think about Dora. Dora's on her way home. Her car has just pulled into the courtyard. I'm going, with regular footsteps, the way I came. And I give you one piece of advice, for both of us."
"Which is what?" I demanded.
He turned his back on me and started down the stairway, as quick and spry as he had come up. He didn't turn around till he reached the landing. I had already caught Dora's scent.
"What advice?" I demanded.
"That you leave Dora alone completely. Turn her affairs over to worldly lawyers. Get away from this place. We have more important things to discuss. This is all so distracting."
Then he was gone with a clatter down the lower stairs, and presumably out a side door. I heard it open and close.
And almost immediately following, I heard Dora come through the main rear entrance into the center of the building, the way I had entered, and the way he had entered, and she began her progress down the hall.
She sang to herself as she came, or hummed, I should say. The sweet aroma of womb blood came from her. Her menses. Maddeningly, it amplified the succulent scent of the whole child moving towards me.
I slipped back into the shadows of the vestibule. She wouldn't see me or have any knowledge of me as she went by and on up the next stairway to her third-floor room.
She was skipping steps when she reached the second floor. She had a backpack slung over her shoulders and wore a pretty, loose old- fashioned dress of flowered cotton with long, white lace-trimmed sleeves.
She swung round to go up when she suddenly stopped. She turned in my direction. I froze. She could not possibly see me in this light.
Then she came towards me. She reached out. I saw her white fingers touch something on the wall; it was a light switch. A simple plastic light switch, and suddenly a flood came from the bulb above.
Picture this: the blond male intruder, eyes hidden by the violet sunglasses, now nice and clean, with no more of her father's blood, black wool coat and pants.
I threw up my hands as if to say "I won't hurt you!" I was speechless.
I disappeared.
That is, I moved past her so swiftly she couldn't see it; I brushed her about like the air would brush her. That's all. I made the two flights to an attic, and went through an open door in the dark spaces above the chapel, where only a few windows in the mansard let in a tiny light from the street. One of the windows was broken out. A quick way to make an exit. But I stopped. I sat down very still in the corner. I shrank up into the corner. I drew up my knees, pushed my glasses up on my nose, and looked across the width of the attic towards the door through which I'd come.
I heard no screams. I heard nothing. She had not gone into hysterics; she was not running madly through the building. She had sounded no alarms. Fearless, quiet, having seen a male intruder. I mean, next to a vampire, what in the world is as dangerous to a lone woman as a young human male?
I realized my teeth were chattering. I put my right hand into a fist and pushed it into my left palm. Devil, man, who the hell are you, waiting for me, telling me not to talk to her, what tricks, don't talk to her, I was never going to talk to her, Roger, what the hell am I to do now? I never meant for her to see me like this!
I should never, never have come without David. I needed the anchor of a witness. And the Ordinary Man, would he have dared to come up if David had been here? I loathed him! I was in a whirlpool. I wasn't going to survive.
Which meant what? What was going to kill me?
Suddenly I realized that she was coming up the stairs. This time she walked slowly, and very quietly. A mortal couldn't have heard her. She had her electric torch with her. I hadn't noticed it before.
But now she had it, and the beam came through the open attic door and ran along the sloping dark boards of the inner roof.
She stepped into the attic and switched off the torch. She looked around very cautiously, her eyes filling with the white light coming through the round windows. It was possible to see things fairly distinctly here because of those round windows, and because the street- lamps were so close.
Then she found me with her eyes. She looked right at me in the corner.
"Why are you frightened?" she asked. Her voice was soothing.