The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice [126]
A figure stood over me. I lay on the moist Mother Earth, thank God, the smoke still rising from my scorched hands and face and my hair. The figure was big-shouldered, tall, black-haired.
He lifted two strong thick-knuckled white hands and drew his hood back off his head, revealing a huge mass of shining black hair. His eyes were large with pearly whites and pupils of jet, and his eyebrows, though very thick, were beautifully arched and curved over his eyes. He was a vampire, as were the others, but he was one of unique beauty and immense presence, looking down at me as though he were more interested in me than himself, though he expected to be the center of all eyes.
A tiny shiver of thanks passed through me, that he seemed by virtue of these eyes and his smooth Cupid’s bow mouth to be possessed of the semblance of human reason.
“Will you serve God?” he asked. His voice was cultured and gentle, and his eyes held no mockery. “Answer me, Will you serve God, for if you will not, you will be thrown back into the fire.”
I felt pain in all my frame. No thought came to me except that the words he spoke were impossible, they made no sense, and I could therefore make no response.
At once, his vicious helpers lifted me again, laughing, and chanting in time with the loud singing of the hymn which had never ceased, “Into the fire, into the fire!”
“No!” the leader cried out. “I see in him the pure love of our Savior.” He lifted his hand. The others released their grip, though they held me suspended, my legs and arms spread out, in the air.
“You are good?” I whispered desperately to the figure. “How can this be?” I wept.
He drew nearer. He leant over me. What beauty he possessed! His thick mouth was the perfect Cupid’s bow, as I have said, but only now did I see its rich dark color, natural to it, and the even shadow of beard, shaven away for the last time in mortal life no doubt, that covered all his lower face, giving it the strong mask of a man. His high broad forehead seemed made of pure white bone only by comparison, with full rounded temples and a peaked hairline, from which his dark curls fell back gracefully to make a striking frame for his face.
But it was the eyes, yes, as always with me, the eyes that held me, the large oval and shimmering eyes.
“Child,” he whispered. “Would I suffer such horrors if it were not for God?”
I wept all the more.
I was no longer afraid. I didn’t care that I was in pain. The pain was red and golden as the flames had been and ran through me as if it were fluid, but though I felt it, it didn’t hurt me, and I didn’t care.
Without protest, I was carried, my eyes closed, into a passage, where the shuffling feet of those who carried me made a soft, crumbling echo against low ceiling and walls.
Let loose to roll over on the ground, I turned my face to it, sad that I lay on a nest of old rags because I couldn’t feel the moist Mother Earth when I needed her, and then this too was of no import whatsoever, and I laid my cheek on the soiled linen and drifted, as if I had put there to sleep.
My scalded skin was a part from me, and not a part of me. And I let a long sigh come out of me, knowing, though I didn’t form words in my mind, that all my poor boys were safely dead. The fire could not have tortured them for long, no. Its heat was too great, and surely their souls had fled Heavenward like nightingales that had drifted into the smoky blast.
My boys were of the Earth no more and no one could do them harm. All the fine things which Marius had done for them, the teachers, the skills they’d been taught, the lessons they’d learned, their dancing, their laughter, their singing, the works they had painted—all of this was gone, and the souls went Heavenward on soft white wings.
Would I have followed? Would God have received the soul of a blood drinker into his golden cloudy Heaven?