Anne Rice - Memnoch the Devil

Did I defeat them somehow some other way? Oh, if only I could remember, their voices in the beginning. Vengeance. Someone said that it wasn't simple vengeance. But it was those fragments. I can't remember now. What's happened! Will they come back for me?"

I fell to crying again. Stupid. I fell to describing Memnoch again, in all his forms, even the Ordinary Man, who had been so extraordinary in his proportions, the haunting footsteps, the wings, the smoke, the glory of Heaven, the singing of angels ... "Sapphiric ..." I whispered.

"Those surfaces, all the things the prophets saw and sprinkled throughout their books with words like topaz and beryl and fire and gold and ice and snow, and it was all there ... and He said, 'Drink my Blood!' I did it!"

They drew close to me. I'd scared them. I'd been too loud, too crazed, too possessed. They stood around me, their arms against me, her fiery white human arms, the warmest, the sweetest of all, and David's dark brow pushed against my face.

"If you let me," said Armand, his fingers slipping up to my collar, "if you let me drink, then I'll know. . . ."

"No, all you'll know is that I believe what 1 saw, that's all Ii said.. "No," he said, shaking his head. "I'll know the blood of Christ if I taste it."

I shook my head. "Back away from me. I don't even know what the veil will look like. Will it look like something with which I wiped my blood sweat in my sleep as I dreamt? Back away."

They obeyed. They were a loose triangle. I had my back to the inner wall so that I could see the snow on my left side, though I had to turn my head to the left now to do it. I looked at them. My right hand fumbled inside my vest, it drew out the thick wad, and I felt something, something tiny and strange which I could not explain to them, or put into words even for myself, I felt the weave, that weave of cloth, that ancient weave!

I drew out the veil, not looking myself, and held it up as if I were Veronica showing it to the crowd.

A silence gripped the room. A motionlessness.

Then I saw Armand go down on his knees. And Dora let out her long, keening cry.

"Dear God," said David.

Shivering, I lowered the veil, still held wide open with both hands, and turned it so I could see the reflection of the veil in the dark glass against the snow, as if it was the Gorgon and was going to kill me.

His Face! His Face blasted into the veil. I looked down. God Incarnate staring at me from the most minute detail, burnt into the cloth, not painted or stained, or sewn or drawn, but blasted into the very fibers, His Face, the Face of God in that instant, dripping with blood from His Crown of Thorns.

"Yes," I whispered. "Yes, yes." I fell on my knees. "Oh, yes, so very complete, down to the last detail."

I felt her take the veil. I would have snatched it back if either of them had tried. But into her small hand, I entrusted it, and she held it up now turning round and round, so that all of us could see His dark eyes shining from the cloth!

"It's God!" she screamed. "It's Veronica's Veil!" Her cry grew triumphant and then filled with joy. "Father, you've done it! You have given me the Veil!"

And she began to laugh, as one who had seen all the visions one can endure to see, dancing round and round, with the veil held high, singing one syllable over and over again.

Armana was snattered, broken, on his knees, the blood tears running straight down his cheeks, horrid streaks on the white flesh.

Humbled and confounded, David merely watched. Keenly, he studied the veil as it moved through the air, her hands still stretching it wide. Keenly, he studied my face. He studied the slumped, broken, sobbing figure of Armand, the lost child in his exquisite velvet and lace now stained with his tears.

"Lestat," Dora cried, tears gushing, "you have brought me the Face of my God! You have brought it to all of us. Don't you see? Memnoch lost! Memnoch was defeated. God won! God used Memnoch for his own ends, he led Memnoch into the labyrinth of Memnoch's own design. God has triumphed!"

"No, Dora, no! You can't believe that," I shouted. "What if it isn't the truth? What if it was all a pack of tricks. Dora!"

She shot past me down the corridor and out the door. We three stood stunned. We could hear the elevator descending. She had the veil!

"David, what is she going to do? David, help me."

"Who can help us now?" asked David, but it was without conviction or bitterness, only that pondering, that endless pondering.

"Armand, take hold of yourself. You cannot surrender to this," he said. His voice was sad.

But Armand was lost.

"Why?" Armand asked. He was just a child now on his knees.

"Why?"

This is how he must have looked centuries ago when Marius had come to free him from his Venetian captors, a boy kept for lust, a boy brought into the palace of the Undead.

"Why can't I believe it? Oh, my God, I do believe it. It is the face of Christ!"

He climbed to his feet, drunkenly, and then he moved slowly, doggedly, step by step, after her.

By the time we reached the street, she stood screaming before the doors of the cathedral.

"Open the doors! Open the church. I have the veil." She kicked the bronze doors with her right foot. All around her gathered mortals, murmuring.

"The Veil, the Veil!" They stared at it, as she stopped to turn and show it once more. Then all pounded on the doors.

The sky above grew light with the coming sun, far, far off in the maw of the winter, but nevertheless rising in its inevitable path, to bring its fatal white light down on us if we didn't seek shelter.

"Open the doors!" she screamed.

From all directions, humans came, gasping, falling on their knees when they saw the Veil.

"Go," said Armand, "seek shelter now, before it's too late. David, take him, go."

"And you, what will you do?" I demanded.

"I will bear witness. I will stand here with my arms outstretched," he cried, "and when the sun rises, my death shall confirm the miracle."

The mighty doors were being opened at last. The dark-clad figures drew back in astonishment. The first gleam of silver light illuminated the Veil, and then came the warmer, yellow electric lights from within, the lights of candles, the rush of the heated air.

"The Face of Christ!" she screamed.

The priest fell down on his knees. The older man in black, brother, priest, whatever he was, stood openmouthed looking up at it.

"Dear God, dear God," he said, making the Sign of the Cross, "That in my lifetime, God . .. it's the Veronica!"

Humans rushed past us, stumbling and jostling to follow her into the church. I heard their steps echoing up the giant nave.

"We have no time," David said in my ear. He had lifted me off my feet, strong as Memnoch, only there was no whirlwind, only the risen winter dawn, and the falling snow, and more and more shouts and howls and cries as men and women flooded towards the church, and the bells above in the steeples began to ring.

"Hurry, Lestat, with me!"

We ran together, already blinded by the light, and behind me I heard Armand's voice ring out over the crowd.

"Bear witness, this sinner dies for Him!" The scent of fire came in a fierce explosion! I saw it blaze against the glass walls of the towers as we fled. I heard the screams.

"Armand!" I cried out. David pulled me along, down metal steps, echoing and chiming like the bells pealing from the cathedral above.

I went dizzy; I surrendered to him. I gave up my will to him. In my grief, crying, "Armand, Armand."

Slowly I made out David's figure in the dark. We were in a damp icy place, a cellar beneath a cellar, beneath the high shrieking hollow of an empty wind-torn building. He was digging through the broken earth.

"Help me," he cried, "I'm losing all feeling, the light's coming, the sun is risen, they'll find us."