"Did he pass the test!" I demanded. "Did that soul pass muster in this hellish place, what he just said? Was that enough! Ignorance of God, was that enough! Or is he here scrambling somewhere else in all this filth, or did the Tunnel take him up! Memnoch! Help me."

  Everywhere, I looked for the monk with the burnt feet. I looked and looked.

  An explosion ripped the towers of the city and they tumbled. Was that the tolling of a bell! The huge mosque had collapsed. A man with a gun fired on those who fled. Veiled women cried out as they fell to the ground.

  Louder and louder pealed the bell.

  "Good God, Memnoch, a bell tolling, listen, more than one bell."

  "The bells of Hell, Lestat, and they are not tolling for anyone!

  They are ringing for us, Lestat!"

  He clutched my collar as if he'd lift me off my feet.

  "Remember, your own words, Lestat, Hell's Bells, you hear the call of Hell's Bells!"

  "No, let me go. I didn't know what I was saying. It was poetry. It was stupidity. Let me go. I can't stand it!"

  Around the table under the lamp a dozen people argued over the map, some embracing each other as they pointed to various areas marked in dull colors. A head was turned. A man? A face. "You!"

  "Let me go." I turned and was thrown against a wall of bookshelves, spines gleaming in the light, books tumbling, striking me on the shoulders, dear God, my limbs couldn't take any more. My fist went through the glittering globe of the world, mounted on its fancy arc of wood. A child with bent knees sat staring up at me with empty eye sockets.

  I saw the doorway and ran.

  "No, let me go. I cannot. I will not. I will not."

  "Will not?" Memnoch caught me by my right arm, dark scowl looming over me, the wings flexing and rising, blotting out the light again as they closed to enfold me as though I were his own. "Will you not help me to empty this place, to send these souls to Heaven?"

  "I can't do it!" I cried. "I won't do it!" Suddenly my fury rose. I felt it obliterate all fear and trembling and doubt; I felt it rush through my veins like molten metal. The old anger, the resolve of Lestat. "I will not be pan of this, not for you, not for Him, not for them, not for anyone!"

  I staggered backwards, glaring at him. "No, not this. Not for a God as blind as He, and not for one who demands what you demand of me. You're mad, the two of you! I won't help you. I won't. I refuse."

  "You would do this to me, you would abandon me?" he cried, stricken, dark face convulsed with pain, tears shimmering on his shining black cheeks. "You would leave me with this, and not lift your hands to help me after all that you have done, Cain, slayer of Brothers, slayer of the Innocents, you cannot help me—?"

  "Stop it, stop it. I won't. I can't support this. I can't help this to happen! I cannot create this! I cannot endure it! I cannot teach in this school!"

  My throat was hoarse and burning, and the din seemed to swallow my words but he heard them.

  "No, no, I will not, not this fabric, not these rules, not this design, never, never, never!"

  "Coward," he roared, the almond-shaped eyes immense, the fire flickering on the hard black forehead and cheeks. "I have your soul in my hands, I hand you your salvation at a price that those who have suffered here for millennia would beg for!"

  "Not me. I won't be part of this pain, no, not now, not ever... Go to Him, change the rules, make it make sense, make it better, but not this, this is beyond human endurance, this is unfair, unfair, unfair, this is unconscionable."

  "This is Hell, you fool! What did you expect? That you'd serve the Lord of Hell while suffering nothing?"

  "I won't do it to them!" I screamed. "To hell with you and with me." My teeth were clenched. I seethed and stormed with my own conviction. "I will not participate in this with them! Don't you see? I cannot accept this! I cannot commit to it. I cannot abide it. I'm leaving you now, you gave me the choice, I'm going home! Release me!" I turned.

  He grabbed my arm again and this time the fury in me knew no bounds. I hurled him backwards over the dissolving and tumbling souls. The Helpful Dead turned here and there to witness and cry out, their pale oval faces full of alarm and distress.

  "You go now," Memnoch swore, even as he lay still on the ground where I had thrown him. "And as God is my witness you come back my pupil and my student on your knees at death, and never again this offer to make you my prince, my helper!"

  I froze, staring over my shoulder at him, at his fallen figure, his elbow digging into the soft black underdown of his wing as he rose to his cloven feet and came at me again, in that hobbled monstrous walk.

  "Do you hear me!"

  "I cannot serve you!" I roared at the top of my lungs. "I cannot do it."

  Then I turned for the last time, knowing I would not look back, with only one thought in my mind, Escape! I ran and ran, sliding down the loose marl and the slippery bank, and stomping through the shallow streams and through the clumps of astonished Helpful Dead, and over wailing souls.

  "Where is the stairs? Where are the gates? You can't deny it to me. You have no right. Death has not taken me!" I shouted but I never looked back and I never stopped running.

  "Dora! David, help me!" I called.

  And there came Memnoch's voice almost at my ear. "Lestat, don't do this thing, don't go. Don't return. Lestat, don't do it, it's folly, don't you see, please, for the love of God, if you can love Him at all and love them, help me!"

  "NO!" I turned and gave him a great shove, seeing him stumble backwards down the steep stairs, the dazed figure amid the huge fluttering wings awkward and grotesque. I pivoted, turning my back on him. Ahead, I could see the light at the very top, the open door.

  I ran for it.

  "Stop him!" Memnoch cried. "Don't let him out. Don't let him take the veil with him."

  "He has Veronica's veil!" cried one of the Helpful Dead lunging at me through the gloom.

  My foot nearly slipped, yet on I ran, step after step, bounding, legs aching. I could feel them closing in, the Helpful Dead.

  "Stop him."

  "Don't let him go!"

  "Stop him!"

  "Get the veil from him," Memnoch cried, "inside his shirt, the veil, the veil must not go with him!"

  I waved my left hand, driving the Helpful Dead in a soft shapeless clatter against the cliff. High above loomed the door. I could see the light. I could see the light and I knew it was the light of Earth, brilliant and natural.

  Memnoch's hands clamped on my shoulders and he spun me around.

  "No, you don't!" I snarled. "God forgive me. You forgive me, but you're not taking me or the veil!" I roared.

  I raised my left arm to stave off his reaching, clawing hands, and shoved him again, but against me he flew as if his wings now came to his aid, and he almost pressed me back against the steps. I felt his fingers plunge into my left eye! I felt them drive open the lids, smashing my eye back into my head in an explosion of pain, and then the gelatinous mass slipped down my cheek, through my trembling fingers.

  I heard Memnoch gasp.

  "Oh no. ..." he wailed, his fingers to his lips, staring in horror at the same object at which I stared.

  My eye, my round blue eye, shivering and gleaming on the stair.

  All the Helpful Dead stared at the eye.

  "Step on it, crush it," cried one of the Helpful Dead and rushed forward. "Yes, crush it, step on it, smear it!" cried another, swooping down upon the sight.

  "No, don't do that, don't! Stop, all of you!" Memnoch wailed.

  "Not in my kingdom, you will not!"

  "Step on the eye!"

  That was my moment, that was my chance.

  I flew upwards, feet scarcely touching the steps, I felt my head and shoulders plunge through the light and the silence and into the snow.

  And I was free.

  I WAS on earth. My feet struck the frozen ground, the slippery sludge of snow.

  I was running, one-eyed and bleeding, with the veil in my shirt, running through the driving storm, through the drifts of snow, my cries echoing up the buildings I knew, the dark, obdurate skyscrapers of the city I knew. Home, Earth.

  The sun had only just set behind the dark gray veil of the descending storm, the winter twilight eaten up in darkness by the whiteness of the snow.

  "Dora, Dora, Dora!"

  On and on I ran.

  Shadowy mortals slouched through the storm; shadowy humans hurried through small slippery paths, automobiles crawled through the blizzard, beams searching the rising, collecting whiteness. The snow was in such thick drifts that I fell and then scrambled to my knees; yet on I went.

  The arches and the spires of St. Patrick's rose before me.

  St. Patrick's.

  And beyond, the wall of the Olympic Tower driving upwards, its glass like polished stone, seemingly invincible, its height monstrous as if like the Tower of Babel it was trying to reach directly to Heaven.

  I stopped, my heart about to burst.

  "Dora! Dora!"

  I reached the doors of the lobby, the dizzying lights, the slick floors, the press of mortals, solid mortals everywhere, turning to see what moved too swiftly to be seen. Woozy music and lulling lights, the gush of artificial warmth!

  I found the stairwell and rose like a cinder going up a chimney in my flight, and crashed through the wooden door of the apartment, staggering into the room.

  Dora.

  I saw her, smelled her, smelled the blood from between her legs again, saw her tender little face, white and stricken, and on either side of her like goblins out of nursery rhymes and tales of hell, Armand and David, vampires, monsters, both staring at me in the same stark wonder.

  I struggled to open the left eye that was no longer there, then turned my head this way and that to see the three of them distinctly with the one eye, the right eye, that I still had. I could feel a sharp tiny pain like so many needles in the empty tissues where my left eye had been.

  Oh, the horror on Armand's face. In his old finery, he stood, heavy shopwindow velvet coat, modern lace, boots spiffed like glass. His face, the Botticelli angel still, torn with pain as he looked at me.

  And David, the pity, the sympathy. Both figures transfixed in one, the elder Englishman and the young fine body into which he'd been locked, smothered in the tweed and cashmere garments of winter.

  Monsters clothed as men but earthbound, real!

  And the shining gamine figure of my Dora, my slender, yearning Dora with her huge black eyes.

  "Darling, darling," Dora cried, "I am here!" Her small warm arms went round my aching shoulders, oblivious to the snow falling from my hair, from my clothes. I went down on my knees, my face buried in her skirts, near to the blood between her legs, the blood of the living womb, the blood of Earth, the blood of Dora that the body could give, and then I fell backwards onto the floor.

  I could neither speak nor move. I felt her lips touch mine.

  "You're safe now, Lestat," she said.

  Or was it David's voice?

  "You're with us," she said.

  Or was it Armand?

  "We're here."

  "Look, look at his feet. He's got only one shoe left."

  ".. . at his coat, torn . . . the buttons are gone."

  "Darling, darling." She kissed me.

  I rolled her over gently, careful not to press her with my weight, and I pulled up her skirt, and I lay my face against her hot naked thighs. The smell of the blood flooded my brain.

  "Forgive me, forgive me," I whispered, and my tongue broke through the thin cotton of her panties, tearing the cloth back from the soft down of pubic hair, pushing aside the bloodstained pad she wore, and I lapped at the blood just inside her young pink vaginal lips, just coming from the mouth of her womb, not pure blood, but blood from her, blood from her strong, young body, blood all over the tight hot cells of her vaginal flesh, blood that brought no pain, no sacrifice, only her gentle forbearance with me, with my unspeakable act, my tongue going deep into her, drawing out the blood that was yet to come, gently, gently, lapping the blood from the soft hair on her pubic lips, sucking each tiny droplet of it.

  Unclean, unclean. They cried on the road to Golgotha, when Veronica had said: "Lord, I touched the hem of your garment and my hemorrhage was healed." Unclean, unclean.

  "Unclean, thank God, unclean," I whispered, my tongue licking at the secret bloodstained place, taste and smell of blood, her sweet blood, a place where blood flows free and no wound is made or ever needs to be made, the entrance to her blood open to me in her forgiveness.

  Snow beat against the glass. I could hear it, smell it, the blinding white snow of a terrible blizzard for New York, a deep white winter, freezing all beneath its mantle.

  "My darling, my angel," she whispered.

  I lay panting against her. The blood was all gone inside me now. I had drawn all of it from her womb that was meant to come. I had licked away even what had collected on the pad that had lain against her skin.

  She sat up, modestly covering me with her crossed arms, bending forward as if to shield me from their eyes—David's, Armand's— never once having pushed at me, or cried out, or recoiled, and she held my head now as I cried.

  "You're safe," she said again. They said we were safe. They all said Safe, as if it had a magic charm. Safe, safe, safe.

  "Oh, no," I cried. I wept. "No, none of us are safe. And we will never be, never, ever again, ever. ..."

  22

  I WOULDN'T let them touch me. I mean, I wouldn't give up anything just yet, not my torn shoe, nothing. Keep away your combs, your towels, your comfort. I clung to the secret inside my coat.

  A shroud, that's what I asked for, some heavy thing to wrap about myself. They found it, a blanket, soft, woolen, didn't matter.

  The place was almost empty.

  They had been steadily moving Roger's treasures south. They told me. Mortal agents had been entrusted with this task, and most of the statues and the icons were gone down to the orphanage in New Orleans, and housed there in the empty chapel I had seen, where only the Crucified Christ had been. Some omen!

  They had not quite finished these tasks. A few precious things remained, a trunk or two, boxes of papers. Files.

  I'd been gone the space of three days. The news was filled with tales of Roger's death. Though they would not tell me how it had been discovered. The scramble for power in the world of the dark, criminal drug cartels was well under way. The reporters had stopped calling the TV station about Dora. No one knew about this place. No one knew she was here.

  Few knew about the big orphanage to which she planned to return, when all Roger's relics had been moved.

  The cable network had canceled her show. The gangster's daughter preached no more. She had not seen or spoken to her followers.

  In newspaper columns and in bites on television, she learnt that the scandal had made her vaguely mysterious. But in the main, she was considered a dead end, a small-time television evangelist with no knowledge of her father's doings.

  But in the company of David and Armand, she had lost all contact with her former world, living here in New York, as the worst winter in fifty years came down, a snow from Heaven—living here among the relics and listening to them, their soft comfort, their wondrous tales, uncertain of what she meant to do, believing still in God. . . .

  All that was the latest news.

  I took the blanket from them and walked, one shoe gone, through the flat.

  I went into the small room. I wrapped the blanket around me. The window here was covered. No sun would come.

  "Don't come near me," I said. "I need to sleep a mortal's sleep. I need to sleep the night through and the day and then I'll tell you everything. Don't touch me, don't come near me."

  "May I sleep in your arms?" Dora asked, a white and vibrant blood-filled thing standing in the doorway, her vampiric angels behind her.

  The room was dark. Only a chest was left with some relics in it.

  But there were statues still in the hall.

  "No. Once the sun rises, my body will do whatever it will to protect itself from any mortal intrusion. You can't come with me into that sleep. It's not possible."

  "Then let me lie with you now."

  The other two stared over her shoulders at my empty left eyelids fluttering painfully against each other. There must have been blood. But our blood is staunched fast. The eye had been torn out by the root. What was its root? I could still smell the soft delicious blood I had from her. It laid on my lips, her blood.

  "Let me sleep," I said.

  I locked the door and lay on the floor, knees drawn up, warm and safe in the thick folds of the blanket, smelling the pine needles and the soil that clung to my clothes, and the smoke, and the bits and pieces of dried excrement, and the blood, of course, the human blood, blood from battlefields, and blood from Hagia Sophia when the dead infant had fallen on me, and the smell of the horse manure, and the smell of the marl of Hell.

  All of it was wrapped up with me in this blanket, my hand on the bulk of the unfolded veil against my bare chest.

  "Don't come near me!" I whispered one more time for the ears of the immortals outside, who were so confounded and confused.

  Then I slept.

  Sweet rest. Sweet darkness.

  Would that death were like this. Would that one would sleep and sleep and sleep forever.

  23

  I REMAINED unconscious the full twenty-four hours, waking only as the sun died behind the winter sky the next evening.

  There was a fine outlay of my own good clothes for me displayed on the wooden chest, and a pair of my own shoes.

  I tried to imagine who had made this selection from amongst all that David had earlier sent here for me from the nearby hotel. Surely he was the logical choice. And I smiled, thinking of how often in our lives David and I had been utterly entangled in the adventure of clothes.

  But you see, if a vampire leaves out details like clothes, the story doesn't make sense. Even the most grandiose mythic characters— if they are flesh and blood—do have to worry about the latchets on sandals.