Of Love and Evil

ALSO BY ANNE RICE

Angel Time
Called Out of Darkness
Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
Blood Canticle
Blackwood Farm
Blood and Gold
Merrick
Vittorio, The Vampire
The Vampire Armand
Pandora
Violin
Servant of the Bones
Memnoch the Devil
Taltos
Lasher
The Tale of the Body Thief
The Witching Hour
The Mummy
The Queen of the Damned
The Vampire Lestat
Cry to Heaven
The Feast of All Saints
Interview with the Vampire

I
DREAMED A DREAM OF ANGELS
. I
SAW THEM AND
I heard them in a great and endless galactic night. I saw the lights that were these angels, flying here and there, in streaks of irresistible brilliance, and some as great as comets which seemed to draw so close the fire might devour me, and yet I felt no heat. I felt no danger. I felt no self.

I felt love around me in this vast and seamless realm of sound and light. I felt intimately and completely known. I felt beloved and held and part of all I saw and heard. And yet I knew I deserved nothing of it, nothing. And something akin to sadness swept me up and mingled my very essence with the voices who sang, because the voices were singing of me.

I heard the voice of Malchiah rise high and brilliant and immense as he said that I must now belong to him, that I must now go with him. That he had chosen me as his companion and I must do what he would have me do. How strong and brilliant was his voice rising higher and higher. Yet there came against him a smaller voice, tender, lustrous, that sang of my life on Earth and what I had to do; it sang of those who needed me and loved me; it sang of common things and common dreams, and pitted these with faultless courage against the great things which Malchiah sought to do.

Oh, that such a mingling of themes could be so very magnificent and this music should surround and enfold me as if it were a palpable and loving thing. I lay upon the breast of this music, and I heard Malchiah triumph as he claimed me, as he declared that I was his very own. The other voice was fading but not conceding. The other voice would never concede. The other voice had its own beauty and it would go on singing forever as it was singing now.

Other voices rose; or they had been there all the while. Other voices sang all around me and of me, and these voices vied with angelic voices as though answering them across a fathomless vault. It was a weave, these voices, angelic and other, and I knew suddenly that these were voices of people praying, praying for me. They were people who had prayed before and would pray after and in the far future and would always pray, and all these voices had to do with what I might become, of what I might be. Oh, sad, small soul that I was, and how very grand was it, this burning world in which I found myself, a world that makes the very word itself meaningless as all boundaries and all measures disappear.

There came to me the blessed knowledge that every living soul was the subject of this celebration, of this infinite and ceaseless chorus, that every soul was loved as I was loved, known now as I was known.

How could it not be? How could I, with all my failures, all my bitter losses, be the only one? Oh, no, the universe was filled with souls woven into this triumphant and glorious song.

And all were known and loved as I was known and loved. All were known as even their prayers for me became part of their own glorious unfolding within this endless and golden weave.

“Don’t send me away. Don’t send me back. But if you must,
let me do your Will, let me do it with all my heart,” I prayed, and I heard my own words become as fluid as the music that surrounded me and sustained me. I heard my own particular and certain voice. “I love You. I love You who made all things and gave us all things and for You I will do anything, I will do what it is You want of me. Malchiah, take me. Take me for Him. Let me do His will!”

Not a single word was lost in this great womb of love that surrounded me, this vast night that was as bright as day. For neither day nor night mattered here, and both were blended and all was perfect, and the prayers rising and rising, and overlapping, and the angels calling were all one firmament to which I completely surrendered, to which I completely belonged.

Something changed. Still I heard the plaintive voice of that angel pleading for me, reminding Malchiah of all that I was to do. And I heard Malchiah’s gentle reproof and ultimate insistence, and I heard the prayers so thick and wondrous that it seemed I would never need a body again to live or love or think or feel.

Yet something changed. The scene shifted.

I saw the great rise of the Earth beneath me and I drifted downwards feeling a slow but certain and aching chill.
Let me stay
, I wanted to plead, but I didn’t deserve to stay. It was not my time to stay, and I had to feel this inevitable separation. Yet what opened now before me wasn’t the Earth of my expectations but vast fields of wheat blowing golden under a sky more vivid in the brightening sun than I had ever beheld. Everywhere I looked I saw the wildflowers, “the lilies of the field,” and I saw their delicacy and their resilience as the force of the breeze bent them to and fro. This was the wealth of the Earth, the wealth of its blowing trees, the wealth of its gathering clouds.

“Dear God, never to be away from You, never to wrong You, never to fail You in faith or in heart,” I whispered, “for this, all this You have given me, all this You have given us.”

And there followed on my whisper an embrace so close, so total, that I wept with my whole soul.

The fields grew vague and large and a golden emptiness enveloped the world and I felt love embracing me, holding me, as if I were being cradled by it, and the flowers shifted and turned into masses of colors I couldn’t describe. The very presence of colors we did not know struck me deep and rendered me helpless.
Dear God, that You love us so very much.

Shapes were gone. Colors had detached themselves effortlessly from shapes, and the light itself was rolling now as if it were a soft and consuming smoke.

There appeared a corridor and I had the distinct impression, in words, that I had passed through it. And now, down the long corridor there came to me the tall slender figure of Malchiah, clothed as he always was, a graceful figure, like that of a young man.

I saw his soft dark hair, his oval face. I saw his simple dark suit with its narrow lines.

I saw his loving eyes, and then his slow and fluid smile. I saw him reach out to me with both arms.

“Beloved,” he whispered. “I need you once again. I will need you countless times. I will need you till the end of time.”

It seemed then the other voices sang from their hearts, in protest, in praise, I couldn’t tell.

I wanted to hold him. I wanted to beg him to let me stay just a little while more with him here. Take me again into the realm of the lamps of Heaven. I wanted to cry. I had never known as a child how to cry. And now as an adult, I did it repeatedly, awake and in dreams.

Malchiah came on steadily as though the distance between us was far greater than I had supposed.

“You’ve only a couple of hours before they come,” he said, “and you want to be ready.”

I was awake.

The morning sun flooded the windows.

The noise of traffic rose from the streets.

I was in the Amistad Suite, in the Mission Inn, and I was sitting back against a nest of pillows, and Malchiah sat, collected and calm, in one of the wing chairs near the cold stone fireplace and he said again to me that Liona and my son would soon come.

A
CAR WAS GOING TO PICK THEM UP FROM THE
L
OS
Angeles airport and bring them straight to the Mission Inn. I’d told her I’d meet her under the campanario, that I’d have a suite for her and for Toby—that was my son’s name—and that I’d take care of everything.

But I still didn’t believe she’d really come. How could she come?

I’d disappeared out of her life, in New Orleans, ten years ago, leaving her seventeen and pregnant, and now I was back via a phone call from the West Coast, and when I’d found out she wasn’t married, not even engaged, not even living with someone, when I’d found that out, I’d almost passed out on the spot.

Of course I couldn’t tell her that an angel named Malchiah told me I had a son. I couldn’t tell her what I’d been doing both before and after I met that angel, and I couldn’t tell her when or how I might see her again.

I couldn’t explain either that the angel was giving me time to see her now, before I went off on another assignment for him, and when she agreed to fly out here to see me, to bring my son, Toby, with her, well, I’d been in a sustained state of jubilation and disbelief.