Excerpt of Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice

I SAW HIM when he came through the front doors. Tall,
solidly built dark brown hair and eyes, skin still fairly
dark because it had been dark when I'd made him a vampire.
Walking a little too fast, but basically passing for a
human being. My beloved David.

I was on the stairway. The grand stairway, one might say.
It was one of those very opulent old hotels, divinely
overdone, full of crimson and gold, and rather pleasant.
My victim had picked it. I hadn't. My victim was dining
with his daughter. And I'd picked up from my victim's mind
that this was where he always met his daughter in New
York, for the simple reason that St. Patrick's Cathedral
was across the street.

David saw me at once—a slouching, blond, long-haired
youth, bronze face and hands, the usual deep violet
sunglasses over my eyes, hair presentably combed for once,
body tricked out in a dark-blue, double-breasted Brooks
Brothers suit.

I saw him smile before he could stop himself. He knew my
vanity, and he probably knew that in the early nineties of
the twentieth century, Italian fashion had flooded the
market with so much shapeless, hangy, bulky, formless
attire that one of the most erotic and flattering garments
a man could choose was the well-tailored navy-blue Brooks
Brothers suit.

Besides, a mop of flowing hair and expert tailoring are
always a potent combination. Who knows that better than I?

I didn't mean to harp on the clothes! To hell with the
clothes. It's just I was so proud of myself for being
spiffed up and full of gorgeous contradictions—a picture
of long locks, the impeccable tailoring, and a regal
manner of slumping against the railing and sort of
blocking thestairs.

He came up to me at once. He smelled like the deep winter
outside, where people were slipping in the frozen streets,
and snow had turned to filth in the gutters. His face had
the subtle preternatural gleam which only I could detect,
and love, and properly appreciate, and eventually kiss.

We walked together onto the carpeted mezzanine.

Momentarily, I hated it that he was two inches taller than
me. But I was so glad to see him, so glad to be near him.
And it was warm in here, and shadowy and vast, one of the
places where people do not stare at others.

"You've come," I said. "I didn't think you would."

"Of course," he scolded, the gracious British accent
breaking softly from the young dark face, giving me the
usual shock. This was an old man in a young man's body,
recently made a vampire, and by me, one of the most
powerful of our remaining kind.

"What did you expect?" he said, tete-a-tete. "Armand told
me you were calling me. Maharet told me."

"Ah, that answers my first question." I wanted to kiss
him, and suddenly I did put out my arms, rather
tentatively and politely so that he could get away if he
wanted, and when he let me hug him, when he returned the
warmth, I felt a happiness I hadn't experienced in months.

Perhaps I hadn't experienced it since I had left him, with
Louis. We had been in some nameless jungle place, the
three of us, when we agreed to part, and that had been a
year ago.

"Your first question?" he asked, peering at me very
closely, sizing me up perhaps, doing everything a vampire
can do to measure the mood and mind of his maker, because
a vampire cannot read his maker's mind, any more than the
maker can read the mind of the fledgling.

And there we stood divided, laden with preternatural
gifts, both fit and rather full of emotion, and unable to
communicate except in the simplest and best way, perhaps—
with words.

"My first question," I began to explain, to answer, "was
simply going to be: Where have you been, and have you
found the others, and did they try to hurt you? All that
rot, you know—how I broke the rules when I made you, et
cetera."

"All that rot," he mocked me, the French accent I still
possessed, now couple with something definitely American.

"What rot."

"Come on," I said. "Let's go into the bar there and talk.
Obviously no one has done anything to you. I didn't' think
they could or they would, or that they'd dare. I wouldn't
have let you slip off into the world if I'd thought you
were in danger."

He smiled, his brown eyes full of gold light for just an
instant.

"Didn't you tell me this twenty-five times, more or less,
before we parted company?"

We found a small table, cleaving to the wall. The place
was half crowded the perfect proportion exactly. What did
we look like? A couple of young men on the make for mortal
men or women? I don't care.

"No one has harmed me," he said, "and no one has shown the
slightest interest in it."

Someone was playing a piano, very tenderly for a hotel
bar, I thought. And it was something by Erik Satie. What
luck.

"The tie," he said, leaning forward, white teeth flashing,
fangs completely hidden, of course. "This, this big mass
of silk around your neck! This is not Brooks Brothers!" He
gave a soft teasing laugh. "Look at you, and the wing-tip
shoes! My, my. What's going on in your mind? And what is
this all about?"

The bartender threw a hefty shadow over the small table,
and murmured predictable phrases that were lost to me in
my excitement and in the noise.

"Something hot," David said. It didn't surprise me. "You
know, rum punch or some such, whatever you can heat up."

I nodded and made a little gesture to the indifferent
fellow that I would take the same thing.

Vampires always ordered hot drinks. They aren't going to
drink them; but they can feel the warmth and smell them if
they're hot, and that is so good.

David looked at me again. Or rather this familiar body
with David inside looked at me. Because for me, David
would always be the elderly human I'd known and treasured,
as well as this magnificent burnished shell of stolen
flesh that was slowly being shaped by his expressions and
manner and mood.

Dear Reader, he switched human bodies before I made him a
vampire, worry no more. It has nothing to do with this
story.

"Something's following you again?" he asked. "This is what
Armand told me. So did Jesse."

"Where did you see them?"

"Armand?" he asked. "A complete accident. In Paris. He was
just walking on the street. He was the first one I saw."

"He didn't make any move to hurt you?"

"Why would he? Why were you calling to me? Who's stalking
you? What is all this?