The Tale of the Body Thief (11 page)

I laughed delightedly.

“And I’d have to break it to the poor chap,” he said, “that there was no explanation. That I didn’t have the missing pieces.”

“David, nobody has the missing pieces. Nobody ever will.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“That’s your hope, then? That’s why you’re reading the Bible? You couldn’t crack the occult secrets of the universe, and now you’ve gone back to God?”

“God
is
the occult secret of the universe,” David said, thoughtfully, almost as if brooding upon it, face very relaxed and almost young. He was staring at the glass in his hand, maybe liking the way the light collected in the crystal. I didn’t know. I had to wait for him to speak.

“I think the answer might be in Genesis,” he said finally, “I really do.”

“David, you amaze me. Talk about missing pieces. Genesis is a bunch of fragments.”

“Yes, but telling fragments remain to us, Lestat. God created man in his own image and likeness. I suspect that that is the key. Nobody knows what it really means, you know. The Hebrews didn’t think God was a man.”

“And how can it be the key?”

“God is a creative force, Lestat. And so are we. He told Adam, ‘Increase and multiply.’ That’s what the first organic cells did, Lestat, increased and multiplied. Not merely changed shape but replicated themselves. God is a creative force. He made the whole universe out of himself through cell division. That’s why the devils are so full of envy—the bad angels, I mean. They are
not
creative creatures; they have no bodies, no cells, they’re spirit. And I suspect it wasn’t envy so much as a form of suspicion—that God was making a mistake in making another engine of creativity in Adam, so like Himself. I mean the angels probably felt the physical universe was bad enough, with all the replicating cells, but thinking, talking beings who could increase and multiply? They were probably outraged by the whole experiment. That was their sin.”

“So you’re saying God isn’t pure spirit.”

“That’s right. God has a body. Always did. The secret of cell-dividing life lies within God. And all living cells have a tiny part of God’s spirit in them, Lestat, that’s the missing piece as to what makes life happen in the first place, what separates it from nonlife. It’s exactly like your vampiric genesis. You told us that the spirit of Amel—one evil entity—infused the bodies of all the vampires … Well, men share in the spirit of God in the same way.”

“Good Lord, David, you’re going out of your mind. We’re a mutation.”

“Ah, yes, but you exist in our universe, and your mutation mirrors the mutation that we are. Besides, others have struck upon the same theory. God is the fire, and we are all tiny flames; and when we die, those tiny flames go back into the fire of God. But the important thing is to realize that God Himself is Body
and
Soul! Absolutely.

“Western civilization has been founded upon an inversion. But it is my honest belief that in our daily deeds we know and honor the
truth. It is only when we talk religion that we say God is pure spirit and always was and always will be, and that the flesh is evil. The truth is in Genesis, it’s there. I’ll tell you what the big bang was, Lestat. It was when the cells of God began to divide.”

“This really is a lovely theory, David. Was God surprised?”

“No, but the angels were. I’m quite serious. I’ll tell you the superstitious part—the religious belief that God is perfect. He’s obviously not.”

“What a relief,” I said. “It explains so much.”

“You’re laughing at me now. I don’t blame you. But you’re absolutely right. It explains everything. God has made many mistakes. Many, many mistakes. As surely God Himself knows! And I suspect the angels tried to warn Him. The Devil became the Devil because he tried to warn God. God is love. But I’m not sure God is absolutely brilliant.”

I was trying to suppress my laughter, but I couldn’t do it entirely. “David, if you keep this up, you’ll be struck by lightning.”

“Nonsense. God does want us to figure it out.”

“No. That I can’t accept.”

“You mean you accept the rest?” he said with another little laugh. “No, but I’m quite serious. Religion is primitive in its illogical conclusions. Imagine a perfect God allowing for the Devil to come into existence. No, that’s simply never made sense.

“The entire flaw in the Bible is the notion that God is perfect. It represents a failure of imagination on the part of the early scholars. It’s responsible for every impossible theological question as to good and evil with which we’ve been wrestling through the centuries. God is good, however, wondrously good. Yes, God is love. But no creative force is perfect. That’s clear.”

“And the Devil? Is there any new intelligence about him?”

He regarded me for a moment with just a touch of impatience. “You are such a cynical being,” he whispered.

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I honestly want to know. I have a particular interest in the Devil, obviously. I speak of him much more often than I speak of God. I can’t figure out really why mortals love him so much, I mean, why they love the idea of him. But they do.”

“Because they don’t believe in him,” David said. “Because a perfectly evil Devil makes even less sense than a perfect God. Imagine, the Devil never learning anything during all this time, never changing
his mind about being the Devil. It’s an insult to our intellect, such an idea.”

“So what’s your truth behind the lie?”

“He’s not purely unredeemable. He’s merely part of God’s plan. He’s a spirit allowed to tempt and try humans. He disapproves of humans, of the entire experiment. See, that was the nature of the Devil’s Fall, as I see it. The Devil didn’t think the idea would work. But the key, Lestat, is understanding that God is matter! God is physical, God is the Lord of Cell Division, and the Devil abhors the excess of letting all this cell division run wild.”

Again, he went into one of his maddening pauses, eyes widening again with wonder, and then he said:

“I have another theory about the Devil.”

“Tell me.”

“There’s more than one of them. And nobody appointed much likes the job.” This he said almost in a murmur. He was distracted, as if he wanted to say more, but didn’t.

I laughed outright.

“Now
that
I can understand,” I said. “Who would like the job of being the Devil? And to think that one can’t possibly win. And especially considering that the Devil was an angel at the start of it all, and supposed to be very smart.”

“Exactly.” He pointed his finger at me. “Your little story about Rembrandt. The Devil, if he had a brain, should have acknowledged the genius of Rembrandt.”

“And the goodness of Faust.”

“Ah, yes, you saw me reading
Faust
in Amsterdam, didn’t you? And you purchased your own copy as a consequence.”

“How did you know that?”

“The proprietor of the bookstore told me the next afternoon. A strange blond-haired young Frenchman came in moments after I’d left, bought the very same book, and stood in the street reading it for half an hour without moving. Whitest skin the man had ever seen. Had to be you, of course.”

I shook my head and smiled. “I do these clumsy things. It’s a wonder some scientist hasn’t scooped me up in a net.”

“That’s no joke, my friend. You were very careless in Miami several nights ago. Two victims drained entirely of blood.”

This created such instant confusion in me that at first I said
nothing, then only that it was a wonder the news had reached him on this side of the sea. I felt the old despair touch me with its black wing.

“Bizarre killings make international headlines,” he answered. “Besides, the Talamasca receives reports of all sorts of things. We have people who clip for us in cities everywhere, sending in items on all aspects of the paranormal for our files. ‘Vampire Killer Strikes Twice in Miami.’ Several sources sent it along.”

“But they don’t really believe it was a vampire, you know they don’t.”

“No, but you keep it up and they might come to believe it. That’s what you wanted to happen before with your little rock music career. You wanted them to catch on. It’s not inconceivable. And this sport of yours with the serial killers! You’re leaving quite a trail of those.”

This truly astonished me. My hunting of the killers had taken me back and forth across continents. I had never thought anyone would connect these widely scattered deaths, except Marius, of course.

“How did you come to figure it out?”

“I told you. Such stories always come into our hands. Satanism, vampirism, voodoo, witchcraft, sightings of werewolves; it all comes across my desk. Most of it goes into the trash, obviously. But I know the grain of truth when I see it. And your killings are very easy to spot.

“You’ve been going after these mass murderers for some time now. You leave their bodies in the open. You left this last one in a hotel, where he was found only an hour after his death. As for the old woman, you were equally careless! Her son found her the following day. No wounds for the coroner to find on either victim. You’re a nameless celebrity in Miami, quite overshadowing the notoriety of the poor dead man in the hotel.”

“I don’t give a damn,” I said angrily. But I did, of course. I deplored my own carelessness, yet I did nothing to correct it. Well, this must surely change. Tonight, had I done any better? It seemed cowardly to plead excuses for such things.

David was watching me carefully. If there was one dominant characteristic to David, it was his alertness. “It’s not inconceivable,” he said, “that you could be caught.”

I gave a scornful, dismissive laugh.

“They
could
lock you up in a laboratory, study you in a cage of space-age glass.”

“That’s impossible. But what an interesting thought.”

“I knew it! You want it to happen.”

I shrugged. “Might be fun for a little while. Look, it’s a sheer impossibility. The night of my one appearance as a rock singer, all manner of bizarre things happened. The mortal world merely swept up afterwards and closed its files. As for the old woman in Miami, that was a terrible mishap. Should never have happened—” I stopped. What about those who died in London this very night?

“But you enjoy taking life,” he said. “You said it was fun.”

I felt such pain suddenly I wanted to leave. But I’d promised I wouldn’t. I just sat there, staring into the fire, thinking about the Gobi Desert, and the bones of the big lizards and the way the light of the sun had filled up the entire world. I thought of Claudia. I smelled the wick of the lamp.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be cruel to you,” he said.

“Well, why the hell not? I can’t think of a finer choice for cruelty. Besides, I’m not always so kind to you.”

“What do you really want? What is your overriding passion?”

I thought of Marius, and Louis, who had both asked me that same question many a time.

“What could redeem what I’ve done?” I asked. “I meant to put an end to the killer. He was a man-eating tiger, my brother. I lay in wait for him. But the old woman—she was a child in the forest, nothing more. But what does it matter?” I thought of those wretched creatures whom I’d taken earlier this evening. I’d left such carnage in the back alleys of London. “I wish I could remember that it doesn’t matter,” I said. “I meant to save her. But what good would one act of mercy be in the face of all I’ve done? I’m damned if there is a God or a Devil. Now why don’t you go on with your religious talk? The odd thing is, I find talk of God and the Devil remarkably soothing. Tell me more about the Devil. He’s changeable, surely. He’s smart. He must feel. Why ever would he remain static?”

“Exactly. You know what it says in the Book of Job.”

“Remind me.”

“Well, Satan is there in heaven, with God. God says, where have you been? And Satan says, roaming around the earth! It’s a regular conversation. And they begin arguing about Job. Satan believes Job’s goodness is founded entirely upon his good fortune. And God agrees to let Satan torment Job. This is the most nearly true picture of the situation which we possess. God doesn’t know everything. The Devil
is a good friend of his. And the whole thing is an experiment. And this Satan is a far cry from being
the
Devil as we know him now, worldwide.”

“You’re really speaking of these ideas as if they were real beings … ”

“I think they are real,” he said, his voice trailing off slightly as he fell into his thoughts. Then he roused himself. “I want to tell you something. Actually I should have confessed it before now. In a way, I’m as superstitious and religious as the next man. Because all this is based on a vision of sorts—you know, the sort of revelation that affects one’s reason.”

“No, I don’t know. I have dreams but without revelation,” I said. “Explain, please.”

He sank back into reverie again, looking at the fire. “Don’t shut me out,” I said softly.

“Hmmm. Right. I was thinking how to describe it. Well, you know I am a Candomble priest still. I mean I can summon invisible forces: the pest spirits, the astral tramps, whatever one wants to call them … the poltergeist, the little haunts. That means I must have always had a latent ability to see spirits.”

“Yes. I suppose … ”

“Well, I did see something once, something inexplicable, before I ever went to Brazil.”

“Yes?”

“Before Brazil, I’d pretty much discounted it. In fact, it was so disturbing, so perfectly unaccountable, that I’d put it out of my mind by the time I went to Rio. Yet now, I think of it all the time. I can’t stop myself from thinking of it. And that’s why I’ve turned to the Bible, as if I’ll find some wisdom there.”

“Tell me.”

“Happened in Paris right before the war. I was there with my mother. I was in a café on the Left Bank, and I don’t even remember now which café it was, only that it was a lovely spring day and a simply grand time to be in Paris, as all the songs say. I was drinking a beer, reading the English papers, and I realized I was overhearing a conversation.” He drifted away again. “I wish I knew what really happened,” he murmured under his breath.

He sat forward, gathered up the poker in his right hand, and jabbed at the logs, sending a plume of fiery sparks up the dark bricks.