Holy Water, nor the Sacrament itself . . . ” She repeated the words, varying the melody under her breath, adding as she went on. “And the old rites, the incense, the fire, the vows spoken, when we thought we saw the Evil One in the dark, whispering . . . ”
“Silence!” said the leader, dropping his voice. His hands almost went to his ears in a strangely human gesture. Like a boy he looked, almost lost. God, that our immortal bodies could be such varied prisons for us, that our immortal faces should be such masks for our true souls.
Again he fixed his eyes on me. I thought for a moment there would be another of those ghastly transformations or that some uncontrollable violence would come from him, and I hardened myself.
But he was imploring me silently.
Why did this come about! His voice almost dried in his throat as he repeated it aloud, as he tried to curb his rage. “You explain to me! Why you, you with the strength of ten vampires and the courage of a hell full of devils, crashing through the world in your brocade and your leather boots! Lelio, the actor from the House of Thesbians, making us into grand drama on the boulevard! Tell me! Tell me why!”
“It was Magnus’s strength, Magnus’s genius,” sang the woman vampire with the most wistful smile.
“No!” He shook his head. “I tell you, he is beyond all account. He knows no limit and so he has no limit. But why!”
He moved just a little closer, not seeming to walk but to come more clearly into focus as an apparition might.
“Why you,” he demanded, “with the boldness to walk their streets, break their locks, call them by name. They dress your hair, they fit your clothes! You gamble at their tables! Deceiving them, embracing them, drinking their blood only steps from where other mortals laugh and dance. You who shun cemeteries and burst from crypts in churches. Why you! Thoughtless, arrogant, ignorant, and disdainful! You give me the explanation. Answer me!”
My heart was racing. My face was warm and pulsing with blood. I was in no fear of him now, but I was angry beyond all mortal anger, and I didn’t fully understand why.
His mind—I had wanted to pierce his mind—and this is what I heard, this superstition, this absurdity. He was no sublime spirit who understood what his followers had not. He had not believed it. He had believed in it, a thousand times worse!
And I realized quite clearly what he was—not demon or angel at all, but a sensibility forged in a dark time when the small orb of the sun traveled the dome of the heavens, and the stars were no more than tiny lanterns describing gods and goddesses upon a closed night. A time when man was the center of this great world in which we roam, a time when for every question there had been an answer. That was what he was, a child of olden days when witches had danced beneath the moon and knights had battled dragons.
Ah, sad lost child, roaming the catacombs beneath a great city and an incomprehensible century. Maybe your mortal form is more fitting than I supposed.
But there was no time to mourn for him, beautiful as he was. Those entombed in the walls suffered at his command. Those he had sent out of the chamber could be called back.
I had to think of a reply to his question that he would be able to accept. The truth wasn’t enough. It had to be arranged poetically the way that the old thinkers would have arranged it in the world before the age of reason had come to be.
“My answer?” I said softly. I was gathering my thoughts and I could almost feel Gabrielle’s warning, Nicki’s fear. “I’m no dealer in mysteries,” I said, “no lover of philosophy. But it’s plain enough what has happened here.”
He studied me with a strange earnestness.
“If you fear so much the power of God,” I said, “then the teachings of the Church aren’t unknown to you. You must know that the forms of goodness change with the ages, that there are saints for all times under heaven.”
Visibly he hearkened to this, warmed to the words I used.
“In ancient days,” I said, “there were martyrs who quenched the flames that sought to burn them, mystics who rose into the air as they heard the voice of God. But as the world changed, so