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"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.

Chapter 8

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.