Louis had been thinking so intensely of Satan that he had mistaken me for Satan. He had thought Satan had elbowed him! "And the other vampires," Louis questioned.

"No," Armand answered.

"Then we are not," Louis began as he sat forward, "The children of Satan?"

I began to laugh. "Armand please, explain, reason with him. Teach him," I requested Armand though mind-speak.

"Gladly," Armand replied to me. "How could we be the children of Satan," he asked, "Do you believe that Satan made this world around you?"

"No," Louis preached, "I believe that God made it, if anyone made it. But He also must have made Satan, and I want to know if we are his children!"

"Louis, calm down," I stood up and leapt onto the arm of his chair so that I sat on it, "Just listen to what Armand has to say." "Keep going," I pressured Armand through mind-speak.

"Exactly, and consequently if you believe god made Satan. You must realize that all Satan's power comes from God and that Satan is simply God's child, and that we are God's children also. There are no children of Satan, really," Armand explained.

As Armand explained I slowly pushed Louis back into the chair.

He was looking at a small wood cut of the Devil and was getting lost in his thoughts again.

"Help me bring him back, as him something please," I asked Armand.

Armand nodded. "But why dose this concern you? Surely what I say doesn't surprise you," Armand asked Louis, trying to get his attention, "Why do you let it affect you?"

Louis shot back into the room and the conversation. "Let me explain," he blurt out as if he truly felt as if he needed to explain himself, "I know that you're a master vampire. I respect you. But I'm incapable of your detachment. I know what it is, and I do not possess it and I doubt that I ever will. I accept this."

"Oh Louis don't say that," I begged him; "You'll become a master in time."

Louis shook his head.

'"I understand," Armand gave Louis comfort, "I saw you in the theater, your suffering, your sympathy with that girl. I saw your sympathy for Denis when I offered him to you. You die when you kill, as if you feel that you deserve to die, and you stint on nothing. But why, with this passion and this sense of justice, do you wish to call yourself of child of Satan!"

Jealousy over the women that Armand had taken returned to me.

"I'm evil," Louis cried, "Evil as any vampire who ever lived! I've killed over and over and will do it again. I took that boy, Denis, when you gave him to me, though I was incapable of knowing whether he would survive or not."

"Denis," Claudia cooed, "My Denis."

'You aren't evil Louis," I disagreed.

"But I am," Louis sobbed.

"Why dose that make you as evil as any vampire," Armand asked, "Aren't there graduations of evil? Is evil a great perilous gulf into which one falls with the first sin, plummeting to the depth?"

"Yes I think it is," Louis agreed, "It's not logical as you would make it sound. But it's that dark, that empty. And it is without consolation."

"But you're not being fair," Armand said with the first glimmer of expression in his voice of that night, "Surely you attribute great degrees and variations to goodness. There is the goodness of the child which innocence, and then there is the goodness of the monk who has given up everything to others and lives a life of self deprivation and service. The goodness of saints, the goodness of good housewives. Are all these the same?"

"No," Louis answered. Louis had learnt what Armand had been trying to teach him. He sat there, lost in thought for twenty minutes or so, and then looked Armand in the eyes.

The entire time Armand just watching Louis.

Louis put his hands to his head.

"Are you all right Louis," I asked him as I reached for him.

"And how is this evil achieved," Armand asked indifferently, "How dose one fall from grace and become in one instant as evil as the mob tribunal of the Revolution or the most cruel of the Roman emperors? Dose one merely have to miss Mass on Sunday, or bite down on the communion Host? Or steal a loaf of bread… or sleep with a neighbor's wife?"

"Stop it, you're confusing him," I screamed at Armand, "You're overwhelming him! Stop!!"

"No," Louis shook his head, "No. I'm fine Dramana." He shook it off.

I sat in Louis's lap and held his hand.

Armand took his answer. "But if evil is without graduation and it dose exist, this state of evil, then only one sin is needed. Isn't that what you are saying? That God exists and…"

"Don't twist my words," I mind-spoke to Armand, causing him to stop speaking.

"I don't know if God exists," Louis admitted, gripping my hand all the tighter, looking for comfort and support, "And for all I do know… He doesn't exist."

"Then no sin matters," Armand tried to comfort Louis himself, noticing how uncomfortable he appeared, "No sin achieves evil."

"That's not true," Louis shouted, his male ego getting the better of him, he wanted to be the right one, the one to end it, "Because if God doesn't exist we are the creatures of highest consciousness in the universe. WE alone understand the passage of time and the value of every minute of human life. And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would have died tomorrow or the day after or eventually…"

"Many things take many lives," I pointed out, "It's all ironically, part of life."

"It doesn't matter," he realized, "Because if God dose not exist, this life…"

"What life," I scoffed, "All we do is exist. Mere existence…"

"Every second of it," Louis mused.

"We don't have anything else," I saddened.

"Is all we have," Louis agreed.

Armand sat back. His large eyes narrowing on me, then fixing on the depths of the fire. He was wounded by what I had said. This was the first time he looked away from Louis, yes Louis still looked on at Armand. It seemed Armand possessed an aura and even though his face was very young, which I knew meant very little, he appeared infinitely old, wise. His beauty seduced me. The youthful lines of his face how his eyes expressed innocence and this age and experience at the same time. He rose now and looked at Claudia, his hands loosely clasped behind his back.

Her silence all this time had been understandable to me. These were not her questions, and she was fascinated, in a loving way, with Denis and was waiting for him to awaken and no doubt love him.

Denis's eyes slowly opened.

I understood something else now as Denis and Claudia looked at each other.

Armand had moved to his feet with a body totally at his command, devoid of the habit of human gesture, gesture rooted in necessity ritual, fluctuation of mind; and his stillness now was unearthly.

And she, as I'd never seen before, possessed the same stillness. And Claudia and Denis were gazing at each other with a mutual understanding of the love they felt for each other from which I was simply excluded.

I was as a mortal was to Louis. "I'm sorry, Armand," I mind-whispered to him finally. And I knew, when Armand turned towards Louis again that he'd come to understand that I didn't mean to harm him with my words and also that Claudia did not believe or share Louis's concept of evil.

"Forgiven," he dubbed me in mind-speak. His speech commenced with that being my only warning, "This is the only real evil left," he said to the flames.

"Yes," Louis agreed.

"It's true," Armand said shocking Louis and deepening his sadness, his despair.

"Then God dose not exist," Louis's emotions eeped through his words.

"How do you know," I questioned Armand.

"You have no knowledge of this existence," Louis questioned.

"None," Armand sighed.

"No knowledge," Louis said again, obviously in pain.

"None,' Armand repeated, "And no vampire here has discourse with God or with the devil."

Louis gasped.

"No vampire that I've ever known," Armand said, musing, the fire dancing in his eyes, "And as far as I know today, after four hundred years, I am the oldest living vampire in the world."

Louis stared at him astonished, then after a while, sat back listlessly watching the licking flames." Four hundred years," He repeated. He stared at the fire. There was a log falling very slowly in the fire, drifting downwards in a process that would take it the night, and it was pitted with tiny holes where some substance that had larded it through and through had burned away fast, and in each of those tiny holes there danced a flame amid the larger flames; and all of those tiny flames with their black mouths seemed to me people that made a group and they whispered without speaking. The people had no need of whispering, in one sigh in the fire, which was continuous; it made its soundless secrets.

I got out of Louis's lap and began to walk towards the fire.