1: An Impossible Request
Armand was praying.
The dying evening light peered in slivers through the rose window above the life-size crucifix, casting a painful beauty on the emaciated features of the dying Jesus. Every architectural detail of the lofty ceiling with its delicate curved beams was thrown into soft arresting detail. Armand took no notice of this. His auburn head of curls was bowed like a child saying grace at the dinner table, perfect marble features "like a Botticelli angel" so composed and serenely implacable, one would never guess at the turmoil that raged beneath the perfectly tailored velvet suit.
Marius was dead.
He was dead at the hands of the renegade vampires who both respected and loathed him, but whose loathing won out after all, enough to make a bonfire of his castle and reduce the heritage and treasures of the mortal world that Marius had built so lovingly around himself – a world he and Armand had traversed together for a brief tender time – to anonymous cinders. Ashes to ashes, indeed.
Why he had been defeated in the first place bewildered Armand. One of the most powerful walking vampires, indestructible, zapping to dust anyone who would wilfully try and harm him from a distance with a mere stare. No, this was implausible. It sounded almost as if he had welcomed it. Tired of living, perhaps. Tired of being. He who had found so much beauty in the human race had decided finally to find out if there was an afterlife for those like them.
Armand was not angry. He was beyond anger. His nine-hundred-year-old heart was in an oblivion of horror and loss and wrath and mourning. The cherub and the god (as a mortal woman had called them once) had not been united for almost two centuries now; but that did not matter. A bond forged was a bond eternal. Such was the epic passion of immortal creatures who had only each other, finally.
God would not hear him now. He had not talked to God since Lestat had come back from Purgatory with one eye missing and crying the Devil's name, and claiming, wonder of wonders, to have talked to the Lord – personally talked to him. How like Lestat to be granted such privileges and take them for nothing, a passing experience. But God was in His mighty and immovable Heaven now. All the crying and ranting and pleading from an ancient bloodsucker with the face of an eighteen-year-old boy-child would not push the cosmos of that Holy Realm to move in his favour. No, the chessboard of Heaven was set, and the chessboard had meant for Marius the Great to die. Yet Armand would move that chessboard, would topple the great pieces with all his might if he could. In his mind there was no compromise: he would have Marius back, or he would die trying
There was one other alternative.
God's own favourite angel. His other half. The Beautiful One, whose light had once shone so brilliantly he was named the Morning Star. He alone had the authority to, if not move those chess pieces, then at least nudge them in a slightly different direction. He was also more accessible than other 'legal' deities. And he just might grant this request.
It was a shot in the dark, and an obviously desperate one, but he was past maintaining a semblance of mourning dignity.
"My, but Lestat was right," said a soft deep voice echoing through the long aisle behind him. "You truly are glorious to look at."
Armand rose and turned to gaze up at the tall, almost regal figure with the long mane of dark waves and golden skin. He was dressed in a simple deep red robe that nonetheless was immensely fine, woven from heavy silk and made specifically for a magnificent body such as his.
"You did come," said Armand, surprised despite himself.
Lucifer, or Memnoch the Devil as Lestat knew him, smiled. "I never miss an appointment."