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"Why?" he asked. "Why would I bother with such an apparition? You know what I'm asking of you! You know what it means! You're no stranger to the mystical or the theological revelation. You knew when you were a living man¡ªthe boy back in France who realized he might die without knowing the meaning of the universe and ran to the village priest to demand of the poor fellow, 'Do you believe in God?'"

"Yes, but it just all happened at the same time. And when you claim there's no connection, I just. . . I don't believe it," I said.

"You are the damnedest creature! You really are!" he said. His exasperation was mild and patient but still there. "Lestat, don't you see that what impelled you towards the complexity of Roger and his daughter, Dora, was the same thing that compelled me to come to you? You had come to a point where you were reaching out for the supernatural. You were crying to Heaven to be laid waste! Your taking David, that was perhaps your first real step towards utter moral peril! You could forgive yourself for having made the child vampire Claudia, because you were young and stupid.

"But to bring David over, against his will! To take the soul of David and make it vampiric? That was a crime of crimes. That was a crime that cries to Heaven, for the love of God. David, whom we had an interest in him and whatever path he might take. "

"Ah, so the appearance to David was deliberate. "

"I thought I said so. "

"But Roger and Dora, they were simply in the way. "

"Yes. Of course, you chose the brightest and most alluring victim! You chose a man who was as good at what he did¡ªhis criminality, his racketeering, his thieving¡ªas you are good at what you are. It was a bolder step. Your

hunger is growing. It becomes ever more dangerous to you and those around you. You don't take the downfallen and the bereft and the cutthroats any longer. When you reached for Roger, you reached for the power and the glory, but so what?" "I'm torn," I whispered.

"Why?"

"Because I feel love for you," I said, "and that's something I always pay attention to, as we both know. I feel drawn into you. I want to know what else you have to tell me! And yet I think you're lying about Roger. And about Dora. I think it is all connected. And when I think of God Incarnate¡ª" I broke off, unable to continue.

I was flooded by the sensations of Heaven, or what I could still remember, what I could still feel, and the breath did leave me in a sorrow that was far greater than any I ever expressed in tears.

I must have closed my eyes. Because when I opened them, I realized Memnoch was holding both my hands in his. His hands felt warm and very strong and uncommonly smooth. How cold my own must have felt to him. His hands were larger; flawless. My hands were . . . my strange white, slender, glittering hands. My fingernails flashed like ice in the sun as they always do.

He drew away, and it was excruciating. My hands remained rigid, clasped, and utterly alone.

He was standing yards away from me, his back to me, looking out over the narrow sea. His wings were apparent, huge, and moving uneasily, as if an inner tension caused him to work the invisible muscular apparatus to which they were attached. He looked perfect, irresistible, and desperate.

"Maybe God is right!" he said with rage in his low voice, staring not at me but at the sea.

"Right about what?" I stood up.

He wouldn't look at me.

"Memnoch," I said, "please go on. There are moments when I feel I'll collapse beneath the things being made known to me. But go on. Please, please go on. "

"That's your way of apologizing, isn't it?" he asked gently. He turned around, towards me. The wings vanished. He walked slowly up to me, and past me, and sat down again on my right. His robe was hemmed in dust from the ground. I absorbed the detail before I actually thought about it. There was a tiny bit of leaf, green leaf, caught in the long flowing tangles of his hair.

"No, not really," I said. "It wasn't an apology. I usually say exactly what I mean. "

I studied his face¡ªthe sculpted profile, the utter absence of hair on otherwise magnificently human-looking skin. Indescribable. If you turn and look at a statue in a Renaissance church, and you see it is bigger all over than you are, that it is perfect, you don't get frightened because it's stone. But this was alive.

He turned as if he'd just noticed I was looking at him. He stared down into my eyes. Then he bent forwards, his eyes very clear, and filled with myriad colors, and I felt his lips, smooth, evenly and modestly moist, touch my cheek. I felt a burn of life through the hard coldness of my self. I felt a raging flame that caught every particle of me, as only blood can do it, living blood. I felt a pain in my heart. I might have laid my finger on my chest in the very place.

"What do you feel!" I asked, refusing to be ravaged.

"I feel the blood of hundreds," he whispered. "I feel a soul who has known a thousand souls. "

"Known? Or merely destroyed?"

"Will you send me away out of hatred for yourself?" he asked.

"Or shall I continue with my story?"

"Please, please go on. "

"Man had invented or discovered God," he said. His voice was calm now and back to the same polite and almost humble instructive manner. "And in some instances, tribes worshipped more than one such deity who was perceived to have created this or that part of the world. And yes, humans knew of the souls of the dead surviving; and they did reach out to these souls and make offerings to them. They brought offerings to their graves. They cried out to these dead souls. They begged for their help in the hunt, and in the birthing of a child, in all things.