The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (345 page)

“And Satan means accuser,” I said. “And all those other dreadful names you don’t like are in some way connected with that idea. Accuser.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “And the early religious writers, knowing only bits and pieces of the truth, thought it was man whom I accused, not God; but there are reasons for this, as you’ll soon see. You might say I have become the Great Accuser of everybody.” He seemed mildly exasperated, but then his voice resumed, very calm and measured. “But my name is Memnoch,” he reminded me, “and there is no angel more powerful or clever than I am and there never was.”

“I see,” I said, meaning this to be polite. And also because I actually didn’t question this statement at all. Why should I?

“The Nine Choirs?” I asked.

“All there,” he said. “The Nine Choirs, of course, making up the
bene ha elohim
. And very well described by Hebrew and Christian scholars, thanks to times of revelation and perhaps disaster, though one would be hard put to determine the nature of each event. The First Triad is made of Three Choirs, the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones or Ophanim, as I prefer to call them. And this First Triad is in general locked to the glory
of God. They are in His thrall, thrive in the light which can blind or dazzle others, and almost never get very far from the light at all.

“At times when I am angry and making speeches to all of Heaven, I accuse them … if you’ll pardon the expression again—of being held to God as if by a magnet and not having a free will or personality such as we possess. But they have these things, they do, even the Ophanim, who are in general the least articulate or eloquent—in fact, Ophanim are likely to say nothing for eons—and any of these First Triad can be sent by God to do this and that, and have appeared on Earth, and some of the Seraphim have made rather spectacular appearances to men and women as well. To their credit, they adore God utterly, they experience without reserve the ecstasy of His presence, and He fills them completely so that they do not ask questions of Him and they are more docile, or more truly aware of God, depending on one’s point of view.

“The Second Triad has Three Choirs which have been given the names by men of Dominations, Virtues, and Powers. But to tell the truth, there is very little difference between these angels and the First Triad. The Second Triad is a little farther from the Light of God and perhaps as close as it can come, given its endowments, and perhaps it is not so clever when it comes to logic or questions. Who knows? Certainly the Second is more docile altogether; but then there is more coming and going from the Second Triad, from Earth to Heaven, than from the devoted and magnetized and sometimes arrogant Seraphim. You can see how this could lead to much discussion.”

“I think I understand it.”

“Both triads sing continuously when they are in Heaven, and most of the time when they are on Earth; their songs rise to Heaven spontaneously and continuously; they don’t erupt with the deliberate jubilation of my song or the songs of those like me. Nor do they fall silent for long periods as my kind—Archangels—are apt to do.

“When you’re dead you’ll be able to hear the song of all
these triads. It would destroy you now if you did. I’ve let you hear part of the Din of Heaven, but that’s all it can be to you, a din—the sound of song and mingled laughter, and seemingly erratic eruptions of beautiful sound.”

I nodded. It had been both painful and gorgeous to hear it.

“The Lowest Triad is supposed to include Principalities, Archangels, and Angels,” he continued, “but this is misleading, as I said. For we, the Archangels, are in fact the most powerful and the most important, have the most personality, and are the most questioning and concerned.

“The other angels think we are flawed on that account. It does not occur to the average Seraph to plead for mercy for mankind.

“But here you have the rough scheme of things. The angels are innumerable. And there is mobility among angels, some drifting closer to God than others, and then away when the majesty is too great for them, and they choose to slip back and sing a softer song. It’s continuous.

“Now, the important thing is that the Guardian Angels of Earth, the Watchers, those who became intent upon the Creation, came from all these ranks! Even from the very Seraphim there have come Guardians who have spent millions of years on Earth and then gone Home. Going and coming is common. The disposition I describe is innate but not fixed.

“Angels aren’t perfect. You can see that already. They are Created Beings. They don’t know everything God knows, that’s obvious to you and everyone else. But they know a great deal; they know all that can be known in Time
if they wish to know it;
and that is where angels differ, you see. Some wish to know everything in Time, and some care only for God and God’s reflection in those of His most devoted souls.”

“I see, then. What you’re saying is everybody’s right about it, and everybody’s sort of wrong.”

“More right than wrong. Angels are individuals, that is the key. We Who Fell are no single species, unless being the
brightest, the most clever, and the most comprehending makes us a species, which I don’t think it does.”

“Go on.”

He laughed. “You think I’m going to stop now?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Where do I fit in? I don’t mean me, Lestat de Lioncourt, I mean what I am … the vampire I am.”

“You’re an earthbound phenomenon, just like a ghost. We’ll get to that in a moment. When God sent us down to Earth to Watch, specifically to observe all Mankind, we were as curious about the dead as the living—this wreath of souls we could see and hear, gathered about the world, and which we called Sheol immediately because it seemed to us that the realm of these weeping souls was the realm of pure gloom. ‘Sheol’ means gloom.”

“And the spirit that made the vampires—”

“Wait. It’s very simple. Let me present it, however,
as it came to me
. If I don’t do that, how can you understand my position? What I ask of you—to be my lieutenant—is so personal and so total that you can’t fully grasp it unless you listen.”

“Please go on.”

“All right. A gathering of Angels decided to go with me, to draw as close as possible to Matter in order to pull together for ourselves our entire knowledge, to better comprehend, as God had asked us to do. Michael came with me. And so did a host of other archangels. There were a few Seraphim. There were a few Ophanim. And some of the lower orders which are the least intelligent angels, but nevertheless angels, and much in love with Creation and curious as to what was making me so angry with God.

“I can’t give you the number of how many we were. But when we reached the earth, we went our separate ways to perceive things, and came together often and instantly and agreed upon what we had seen.

“What united us was our interest in the statement of God that Humankind was part of Nature. We just couldn’t see how this was true. We went exploring.

“Very quickly, I learnt that men and women lived now in large groups, very unlike the other primates, that they built shelters for themselves, that they painted their bodies with various colors, that the women often lived separate from the men, and that they believed in something invisible. Now what was that? Was it the souls of the ancestors, the dearly departed who were still locked in the air of Earth, disembodied and confused?

“Yes, it was the souls of ancestors, but the humans worshipped other entities as well. They imagined a God who had made the Wild Beasts and to him they made blood sacrifice on Altars, thinking this aspect of Almighty God to be a personality of very distinct limits and rather easy to please or displease.

“Now, I can’t say all this was a big surprise to me. I’d seen the early signs of it. After all, I telescoped millions of years for you in my Revelations. But when I drew near to these altars, when I heard the specific prayer to the God of the Wild Animals; when I began to see the care and deliberation of the sacrifice—the slaying of a ram or a deer—I was much struck by the fact that not only had these humans come to look like Angels, but they had guessed at the truth.

“They had come upon it instinctively! There was a God. They knew. They didn’t know what He was like but they knew. And this instinctive knowledge seemed to spring from the same essence as did their surviving spiritual souls. Let me be even clearer.

“Self-consciousness, and the awareness of one’s own death—this had created a sense of distinct individuality in humans, and this individuality feared death; feared annihilation! Saw it, knew what it was, saw it happening. And prayed for a God that He would not let such a thing have no meaning in the world.

“And it was this very same tenacity—the tenacity of this individuality—that made the human soul stay alive after it left the body, imitating the shape of the body, holding itself together,
so to speak, clinging to life, as it were, perpetuating itself, by shaping itself according to the only world it knew.”

I didn’t speak. I was wound up in the story and only wanted for him to continue. But naturally I thought of Roger. I thought very distinctly of Roger because Roger was the only ghost I’d ever known. And what Memnoch had just described was a highly organized and very willful version of Roger.

“Oh, yes, precisely,” said Memnoch, “which is probably why it is just as well that he came to you, though at the time I regarded it as one of the greatest annoyances in the world.”

“You didn’t want Roger to come to me?”

“I watched. I listened. I was amazed, as you were, but I have been amazed by other ghosts before him. It wasn’t that extraordinary, but no, it certainly wasn’t something orchestrated by me, if that’s what you mean.”

“But it happened so close to your corning! It seems connected.”

“Does it? What’s the connection? Look for it inside yourself. Don’t you think the dead have tried to speak before? Don’t you think the ghosts of your victims have come howling after you? Admittedly, the ghosts of your victims usually pass in total bliss and confusion, unaware of you as the instrument of their death. But that’s not always the case. Maybe what has changed is you! And as we know, you loved this mortal man, Roger, you admired him, you understood his vanity and love of the sacred and the mysterious and the costly, because you have these traits within yourself.”

“Yes, all of that’s true, without doubt,” I said. “I still think you had something to do with his coming.”

He was shocked. He looked at me for a long moment as if he were going to become angry, and then he laughed.

“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—the 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 allowed to glimpse us once, so much did we feel 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—his criminality, his racketeering, his thieving—as 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—” 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.”