The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [120]
“I was something whirling and vibrating to them, as mortals were to me. And I knew when he turned towards me again that he’d come to understand she did not believe or share my concept of evil.
“His speech commenced without the slightest warning. ‘This is the only real evil left,’ he said to the flames.
“ ‘Yes,’ I answered, feeling that all-consuming subject alive again, obliterating all concerns as it always had for me.
“ ‘It’s true,’ he said, shocking me, deepening my sadness, my despair.
“ ‘Then God does not exist … you have no knowledge of His existence?’
“ ‘None,’ he said.
“ ‘No knowledge!’ I said it again, unafraid of my simplicity, my miserable human pain.
“ ‘None.’
“ ‘And no vampire here has discourse with God or with the devil!’
“ ‘No vampire that I’ve ever known,’ he said, musing, the fire dancing in his eyes. ‘And as far as I know today, after four hundred years, I am the oldest living vampire in the world.’
“I stared at him, astonished.
“Then it began to sink in. It was as I’d always feared, and it was as lonely, it was as totally without hope. Things would go on as they had before, on and on. My search was over. I sat back listlessly watching those licking flames.
“It was futile to leave him to continue it, futile to travel the world only to hear again the same story. ‘Four hundred years’—I think I repeated the words—‘four hundred years.’ I remember staring at the fire. There was a log falling very slowly in the fire, drifting downwards in a process that would take it the night, and it was pitted with tiny holes where some substance that had larded it through and through had burned away fast, and in each of these tiny holes there danced a flame amid the larger flames: and all of these tiny flames with their black mouths seemed to me faces that made a chorus; and the chorus sang without singing. The chorus had no need of singing; in one breath in the fire, which was continuous, it made its soundless song.
“All at once Armand moved in a loud rustling of garments, a descent of crackling shadow and light that left him kneeling at my feet, his hands outstretched holding my head, his eyes burning.
“ ‘This evil, this concept, it comes from disappointment, from bitterness! Don’t you see? Children of Satan! Children of God! Is this the only question you bring to me, is this the only power that obsesses you, so that you must make us gods and devils yourself when the only power that exists is inside ourselves? How could you believe in these old fantastical lies, these myths, these emblems of the supernatural?’ He snatched the devil from above Claudia’s still countenance so swiftly that I couldn’t see the gesture, only the demon leering before me and then crackling in the flames.
“Something was broken inside me when he said this; something ripped aside, so that a torrent of feeling became one with my muscles in every limb. I was on my feet now, backing away from him.
“ ‘Are you mad?’ I asked, astonished at my own anger, my own despair. ‘We stand here, the two of us, immortal, ageless, rising nightly to feed that immortality on human blood; and there on your desk against the knowledge of the ages sits a flawless child as demonic as ourselves; and you ask me how I could believe I would find a meaning in the supernatural! I tell you, after seeing what I have become, I could damn well believe anything! Couldn’t you? And believing thus, being thus confounded, I can now accept the most fantastical truth of all: that there is no meaning to any of this!’
“I backed towards the door, away from his astonished face, his hand hovering before his lips, the fingers curling to dig into his palm. ‘Don’t! Come back …’ he whispered.
“ ‘No, not now. Let me go. Just a while