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 older thinkers would have arranged it in the world before the age of reason had come to me.
"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 changed the saints. What are they now but obedient nuns and priests? They build hospitals and orphanages, but they do not call down the angels to rout armies or tame the savage beast."
I could see no change in him but I pressed on.
"And so it is with evil, obviously. It changes its form. How many men in this age believe in the crosses that frighten your followers? Do you think mortals above are speaking to each other of heaven and hell? Philosophy is what they talk about, and science! What does it matter to them if white-faced haunts prowl a churchyard after dark? A few more murders in a wilderness of murders? How can this be of interest to God or the devil or to man?"
I heard again the old queen vampire laughing.
But Armand didn't speak or move.
"Even your playground is about to be taken from you," I continued. "This cemetery in which you hide is about to be removed altogether from Paris. Even the bones of our ancestors are no longer sacred in this secular age."
His face softened suddenly. He couldn't conceal his shock.
"Les Innocents destroyed!" he whispered. "You're lying to me..."
"I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love. The people of Paris don't want the stench of graveyards around them anymore. The emblems of the dead don't matter to them as they matter to you. Within a few years, markets, streets, and houses will cover this spot. Commerce. Practicality. That is the eighteenth-century world."
"Stop!" he whispered. "Les Innocents has existed as long as I have existed!" His boyish face was strained. The old queen was undisturbed.
"Don't you see?" I said softly. "It is a new age. It requires a new evil. And I am that new evil." I paused, watching him. "I am the vampire for these times."
He had not foreseen my point. And I saw in him for the first time a glimmer of terrible understanding, the first glimmer of real fear.
I made a small accepting gesture.
"This incident in the village church tonight," I said cautiously, "it was vulgar, I'm inclined to agree. My actions on the stage of theater, worse still. But these were blunders. And you know they aren't the source of your rancor. Forget them for the moment and try to envision my beauty and my power. Try to see the evil that I am. I stalk the world in mortal dressthe worst of fiends, the monster who looks exactly like everyone else."
The woman vampire made a low song of her laughter. I could feel only pain from him, and from her the warm emanation of her love.
"Think of it, Armand," I pressed carefully. "Why should Death lurk in the shadows? Why should Death wait at the gate? There is no bedchamber, no ballroom that I cannot enter. Death in the glow of the hearth, Death on tiptoe in the corridor, that is what I am.