Anne Rice - Memnoch the Devil

"I can't do it!" I cried. "I won't do it!" Suddenly my fury rose. I felt it obliterate all fear and trembling and doubt; I felt it rush through my veins like molten metal. The old anger, the resolve of Lestat. "I will not be pan of this, not for you, not for Him, not for them, not for anyone!"

I staggered backwards, glaring at him. "No, not this. Not for a God as blind as He, and not for one who demands what you demand of me. You're mad, the two of you! I won't help you. I won't. I refuse."

"You would do this to me, you would abandon me?" he cried, stricken, dark face convulsed with pain, tears shimmering on his shining black cheeks. "You would leave me with this, and not lift your hands to help me after all that you have done, Cain, slayer of Brothers, slayer of the Innocents, you cannot help me—?"

"Stop it, stop it. I won't. I can't support this. I can't help this to happen! I cannot create this! I cannot endure it! I cannot teach in this school!"

My throat was hoarse and burning, and the din seemed to swallow my words but he heard them.

"No, no, I will not, not this fabric, not these rules, not this design, never, never, never!"

"Coward," he roared, the almond-shaped eyes immense, the fire flickering on the hard black forehead and cheeks. "I have your soul in my hands, I hand you your salvation at a price that those who have suffered here for millennia would beg for!"

"Not me. I won't be part of this pain, no, not now, not ever... Go to Him, change the rules, make it make sense, make it better, but not this, this is beyond human endurance, this is unfair, unfair, unfair, this is unconscionable."

"This is Hell, you fool! What did you expect? That you'd serve the Lord of Hell while suffering nothing?"

"I won't do it to them!" I screamed. "To hell with you and with me." My teeth were clenched. I seethed and stormed with my own conviction. "I will not participate in this with them! Don't you see? I cannot accept this! I cannot commit to it. I cannot abide it. I'm leaving you now, you gave me the choice, I'm going home! Release me!" I turned.

He grabbed my arm again and this time the fury in me knew no bounds. I hurled him backwards over the dissolving and tumbling souls. The Helpful Dead turned here and there to witness and cry out, their pale oval faces full of alarm and distress.

"You go now," Memnoch swore, even as he lay still on the ground where I had thrown him. "And as God is my witness you come back my pupil and my student on your knees at death, and never again this offer to make you my prince, my helper!"

I froze, staring over my shoulder at him, at his fallen figure, his elbow digging into the soft black underdown of his wing as he rose to his cloven feet and came at me again, in that hobbled monstrous walk.

"Do you hear me!"

"I cannot serve you!" I roared at the top of my lungs. "I cannot do it."

Then I turned for the last time, knowing I would not look back, with only one thought in my mind, Escape! I ran and ran, sliding down the loose marl and the slippery bank, and stomping through the shallow streams and through the clumps of astonished Helpful Dead, and over wailing souls.

"Where is the stairs? Where are the gates? You can't deny it to me. You have no right. Death has not taken me!" I shouted but I never looked back and I never stopped running.

"Dora! David, help me!" I called.

And there came Memnoch's voice almost at my ear. "Lestat, don't do this thing, don't go. Don't return. Lestat, don't do it, it's folly, don't you see, please, for the love of God, if you can love Him at all and love them, help me!"

"NO!" I turned and gave him a great shove, seeing him stumble backwards down the steep stairs, the dazed figure amid the huge fluttering wings awkward and grotesque. I pivoted, turning my back on him. Ahead, I could see the light at the very top, the open door.

I ran for it.

"Stop him!" Memnoch cried. "Don't let him out. Don't let him take the veil with him."

"He has Veronica's veil!" cried one of the Helpful Dead lunging at me through the gloom.

My foot nearly slipped, yet on I ran, step after step, bounding, legs aching. I could feel them closing in, the Helpful Dead.

"Stop him."

"Don't let him go!"

"Stop him!"

"Get the veil from him," Memnoch cried, "inside his shirt, the veil, the veil must not go with him!"

I waved my left hand, driving the Helpful Dead in a soft shapeless clatter against the cliff. High above loomed the door. I could see the light. I could see the light and I knew it was the light of Earth, brilliant and natural.

Memnoch's hands clamped on my shoulders and he spun me around.

"No, you don't!" I snarled. "God forgive me. You forgive me, but you're not taking me or the veil!" I roared.

I raised my left arm to stave off his reaching, clawing hands, and shoved him again, but against me he flew as if his wings now came to his aid, and he almost pressed me back against the steps. I felt his fingers plunge into my left eye! I felt them drive open the lids, smashing my eye back into my head in an explosion of pain, and then the gelatinous mass slipped down my cheek, through my trembling fingers.

I heard Memnoch gasp.

"Oh no. ..." he wailed, his fingers to his lips, staring in horror at the same object at which I stared.

My eye, my round blue eye, shivering and gleaming on the stair.

All the Helpful Dead stared at the eye.

"Step on it, crush it," cried one of the Helpful Dead and rushed forward. "Yes, crush it, step on it, smear it!" cried another, swooping down upon the sight.

"No, don't do that, don't! Stop, all of you!" Memnoch wailed.

"Not in my kingdom, you will not!"

"Step on the eye!"

That was my moment, that was my chance.

I flew upwards, feet scarcely touching the steps, I felt my head and shoulders plunge through the light and the silence and into the snow.

And I was free.

I WAS on earth. My feet struck the frozen ground, the slippery sludge of snow.

I was running, one-eyed and bleeding, with the veil in my shirt, running through the driving storm, through the drifts of snow, my cries echoing up the buildings I knew, the dark, obdurate skyscrapers of the city I knew. Home, Earth.

The sun had only just set behind the dark gray veil of the descending storm, the winter twilight eaten up in darkness by the whiteness of the snow.

"Dora, Dora, Dora!"

On and on I ran.

Shadowy mortals slouched through the storm; shadowy humans hurried through small slippery paths, automobiles crawled through the blizzard, beams searching the rising, collecting whiteness. The snow was in such thick drifts that I fell and then scrambled to my knees; yet on I went.

The arches and the spires of St. Patrick's rose before me.

St. Patrick's.

And beyond, the wall of the Olympic Tower driving upwards, its glass like polished stone, seemingly invincible, its height monstrous as if like the Tower of Babel it was trying to reach directly to Heaven.

I stopped, my heart about to burst.

"Dora! Dora!"

I reached the doors of the lobby, the dizzying lights, the slick floors, the press of mortals, solid mortals everywhere, turning to see what moved too swiftly to be seen. Woozy music and lulling lights, the gush of artificial warmth!

I found the stairwell and rose like a cinder going up a chimney in my flight, and crashed through the wooden door of the apartment, staggering into the room.

Dora.

I saw her, smelled her, smelled the blood from between her legs again, saw her tender little face, white and stricken, and on either side of her like goblins out of nursery rhymes and tales of hell, Armand and David, vampires, monsters, both staring at me in the same stark wonder.

I struggled to open the left eye that was no longer there, then turned my head this way and that to see the three of them distinctly with the one eye, the right eye, that I still had. I could feel a sharp tiny pain like so many needles in the empty tissues where my left eye had been.