Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles, #5)

by Anne Rice

“Are those the words Armand used, ‘unabashed plea’? I hate Armand.” David only smiled and made a quick impatient gesture with both hands. “You don’t hate Armand and you know you don’t.”

But the sight of the other astonished me. This was Armand. He sat on the stone park bench, boylike, casual, with one knee crooked, looking up at me with the predictable innocence, dusty all over, naturally, hair a long, tangled mess of auburn curls. Dressed in heavy denim garments, tight pants, and a zippered jacket, he surely passed for human, a street vagabond maybe, though his face was now parchment white, and even smoother than it had been when last we met. In a way, he made me think of a child doll, with brilliant faintly red-brown glass eyes—a doll that had been found in an attic. I wanted to polish him with kisses, clean him up, make him even more radiant than he was. “That’s what you always want,” he said softly. His voice shocked me. If he had any French or Italian accent left, I couldn’t hear it. His tone was melancholy and had no meanness in it at all. “When you found me under Les Innocents,” he said, “you wanted to bathe me with perfume and dress me in velvet with great embroidered sleeves.” “Yes,” I said, “and comb your hair, your beautiful russet hair.” My tone was angry. “You look good to me, you damnable little devil, good to embrace and good to love.” We eyed each other for a moment. And then he surprised me, rising and coming towards me just as I moved to take him in my arms. His gesture wasn’t tentative, but it was extremely gentle. I could have backed away. I didn’t. We held each other tight for a moment. The cold embracing the cold. The hard embracing ...

laughed outright, though it was very low, and he shook his head, flashing a glance on David that implied they knew each other very well, maybe too well. I didn’t like it that they knew each other at all. David was my David, and Armand was my Armand. I sat down on the bench. “So David’s told you the whole story,” I said, glancing up at Armand and then over at David. David gave a negative shake of the head. “Not without your permission, Brat Prince,” David said, a little disdainfully. “I

would never have taken the liberty. But the only thing that’s brought Armand here is worry for you.” “Is that so?” I said. I raised my eyebrows. “Well?” “You know damned good and well it is,” said Armand. His whole posture was casual; he’d learned, beating about the world, I guess. He didn’t look so much like a church ornament anymore. He had his hands in his pockets. Little tough guy. “You’re looking for trouble again,” he went on, in the same slow manner, without anger or meanness. “The whole wide world isn’t enough for you and never will be. This time I thought I’d try to speak to you before the wheel turns.” “Aren’t you the most thoughtful of guardian angels?” I said sarcastically. “Yes, I am,” he said without so much as blinking. “So what are you doing, want to let me know?” “Come, I want to go deeper into the park,” I said, and they both followed me as we walked at a mortal pace into a thicket of the oldest oaks, where the grass was high and neglected, and not even the most desperate homeless heart would seek to rest. We made our own small clearing, among the volcanic black roots and rather cool winter earth. The breeze from the nearby lake was brisk and clean, and for a m...

“You aren’t enjoying my misery, are you?” I admitted with a little sigh of defeat. “No, of course not,” Armand said, “only, as usual, you don’t really seem miserable. You’re on the verge of an adventure, and just a little more cautious this time than when you let that mortal run off with your body and you took his.”

I studied him for a long moment, fighting the darkness I had deliberately sought, trying to draw from him some impression of his complete disposition on this, and I realized he was sincere. There was no envy in him, or old grudge against me; there was no hurt, or trickery, or anything. He was past all these things, if ever they had obsessed him. Perhaps they’d been fantasies of mine.

“Then you must be the one to give in to that temptation,” said Armand crossly. “I never choose my victims anymore, you know this. I can stand before a house as always, and out of the doors will come those who want to be in my arms. Of course I won’t hurt her. You do hold old grudges. You think I live in the past. You don’t understand that I actually change with every era, I always have as best I can. But what in the world can Dora tell you that will help you?” “I

“Lestat, if you need me—” Armand said. “If this being tries to take you by force!” “Why do you care about me?” I asked. “After all the bad things I did to you? Why?” “Oh, don’t be such a fool,” he begged gently. “You convinced me long ago that the world was a Savage Garden. Remember your old poetry? You said the only laws that were true were aesthetic laws, that was all you could count on.” “Yes,

“Because I hoped and prayed for you, that you would remain in that mortal body and save your soul. I thought you had been granted the greatest gift, that you were human again, my heart ached for your triumph! I couldn’t interfere. I couldn’t do it.”

“I can believe the Devil wants you,” said Armand.

“ ‘You are merciless to your Creations, my Lord!’ I roared as loud as I could over the din of distressful singing. ‘Those men and women made in your own image are right to despise you, for nine-tenths of them would be better off if they had never been born!’ ”

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.

Armand had once again decked himself out in high-fashion velvet and embroidered lace, the kind of “romantic new look” one could find at any of the shops in the deep crevasse below us. His auburn hair was free and uncut and hung down in the way it used to do in ages long past, when as Satan’s saint of the vampires of Paris, he would not have allowed himself the vanity to cut one lock of it. Only it was clean, shining clean, auburn in the light, and against the dark blood-red of his coat. And there were his sad and always youthful eyes looking at me, the smooth boyish cheeks, the angel’s mouth. He sat at the table, reserved, filled with love and curiosity, and even a vague kind of humility which seemed to say: Put aside all our disputes. I am here for you. “Yes,” I said aloud. “Thank you.”

“Where is the other eye?” asked Armand. It was just the sort of question he would ask.