I didn't answer. I wasn't sure what I could say. We were leagues from the point at which we had begun this discussion.
"See Heaven?" I whispered, absorbing all of it slowly. "See Hell?"
"Yes, of course," he said with level patience.
"I want a full night to think it over."
"What!"
"I said I want a night to think it over."
"You don't believe me. You want a sign."
"No, I am beginning to believe you," I said. "That's why I have to think. I have to weigh all of this."
"I'm here to answer any question, to show you anything now."
"Then leave me alone for two nights. Tonight and tomorrow night. That's a simple enough request, isn't it? Leave me alone."
He was obviously disappointed, maybe even a little suspicious.
But I meant every word of it. I couldn't say anything but what I had said. I knew the truth as I spoke it, so fast were thought and word wedded in my mind.
"Is it possible to deceive you?" I asked.
"Of course," he asked. "I rely upon my gifts such as they are, just as you rely on yours. I have my limits. You have yours. You can be deceived. So can I."
"What about God?"
"Ach!" he said with disgust. "If you only knew how irrelevant that question is. You cannot imagine how much I need you. I'm tired," he said with a faint rise of emotion. "God is ... beyond being deceived, that much I can say with charity. I'll give you tonight and tomorrow night. I won't bother you, stalk you, as you put it. But may I ask what you mean to do?"
"Why? Either I have the two nights or I don't!"
"You're known to be unpredictable," he said. He smiled broadly.
It was very pleasant. And something else, quite obvious, struck me about him. Not only were his proportions perfect, there were no visible flaws in him anywhere; he was a paragon of the Ordinary Man.
He showed no response to this estimation, whether he could read it from my mind or not. He merely waited on me, courteously.
"Dora," I said. "I have to go back to Dora."
"Why?"
"I refuse to explain further."
Again, he was surprised by my answer.
"Well, aren't you going to try to help her with all this confusion regarding her father? Why not explain something as simple as that? I only meant to ask you how deeply you intended to commit yourself, how much you planned to reveal to this woman. I'm thinking of the fabric of things, to use David's phrase. That is, how will it be with this woman, after you've come with me?"
I said nothing.
He sighed. "All right, I've waited for your like for centuries. What is another two nights, such as the case may be. We are speaking of only tomorrow night, really, aren't we? At the sunset of the following evening, after that I shall come for you."
"Right."
"I'll give you a little gift that will help you believe in me. It's not so simple to me to fix your level of understanding. You're full of paradox and conflict. Let me give you something unusual."
"Agreed."
"So this is the gift. Call it a sign. Ask Dora about Uncle Mickey's eye. Ask her to tell you the truth that Roger never knew."
"This sounds like a Spiritualist parlour game."
"Think so? Ask her."
"All right. The truth about Uncle Mickey's eye. Now let me ask you one last question. You are the Devil. Yes. But you're not evil? Why?"
"Absolutely irrelevant question. Or let me put it a little more mysteriously. It's completely unnecessary for me to be evil. You'll see. Oh, this is so frustrating for me because you have so much to see."
"But you're opposed to God!"
"Oh, absolutely, a total adversary! Lestat, when you see everything that I have to show you, and hear all that I have to say, when you've spoken with God and better see it from His perspective, and from my point of view, you will join me as His adversary. I'm sure you will."
He stood up from the chair. "I'm going now. Should I help you up off the floor?"
"Irrelevant and unnecessary," I said crossly. "I'm going to miss you." The words surprised me as they came out.
"I know," he answered.
"I have all of tomorrow night," I said. "Remember."
"Don't you realize," he answered, "that if you come with me now there is no night and day?"
"Oh, that's very tempting," I said. "But that's what Devils do so well. Tempt. I need to think about this, and consult others for advice."
"Consult others?" He seemed genuinely surprised.
"I'm not going off with the Devil without telling anyone," I said. "You're the Devil! Goddamn it, why should I trust the Devil? That's absurd! You're playing by rules, somebody's rules. Everybody always is. And I don't know the rules. Well. You gave me the choice, and this is my choice. Two full nights, and not before then. Leave me alone all that time! Give me your oath."
"Why?" he asked politely, as if dealing with an ornery child. "So you won't have to fear the sound of my footsteps?"
"Possibly."
"What good is an oath on this if you don't accept the truth of all the rest that I've said?" He shook his head as if I were being foolishly human.
"Can you swear an oath or not?"
"You have my oath," he said, laying his hand on his heart, or where his heart should have been. "With complete sincerity, of course."
"Thank you, I feel much better," I said.
"David won't believe you," he said gently.
"I know," I said.
"On the third night," he said with an emphatic nod, "I shall come back for you here. Or wherever you happen to be at the time."
And with a final smile, as bright as the earlier one, he disappeared.
It was not the way I tended to do it, by making off with such swiftness no human could track it.
He actually vanished on the spot.
8
I STOOD up shakily, brushed off my clothes, and noted without surprise that the room was as perfect as it had been when we entered it. The battle obviously had been fought in some other realm. But what was that realm?
Oh, if only I could find David. I had less than three hours before the winter dawn and set off at once to search.
Now, being unable to read David's mind, or to call to him, I had but one telepathic tool at my command, and that was to scan the minds of mortals at random for some image of David as he passed in some recognizable place.
I hadn't walked three blocks when I realized that not only was I picking up a strong image of David, but that it was coming to me from the mind of another vampire.
I closed my eyes, and tried with my entire soul to make some eloquent contact. Within seconds, the pair acknowledged me, David through the one who stood beside him, and I saw and recognized the wooded place where they were.
In my days, the Bayou Road had led through this area into country, and it had been very near here once that Claudia and Louis, having attempted my murder, had left my remains in the waters of the swamp.
Now the area was a great combed park, filled by day, I supposed, with mothers and children, containing a museum of occasionally very interesting paintings, and providing in the dark of night a dense wood.
Some, of the oldest oaks of New Orleans lay within the bounds of this area, and a lovely lagoon, long, serpentine, seemingly endless, wound under a picturesque bridge in the heart of it.
I found them there, the two vampires communing with one another in dense darkness, far from the beaten path. David was as I expected, his usual properly attired self.
But the sight of the other astonished me.
This was Armand.