"Armand, I said those things because I had to hold them to be true. They were their own 
creed, the creed of the rational, the creed of the atheistic, the creed of the logical, 
the creed of the sophisticated Roman Senator who must turn a blind eye to the nauseating 
realities of the world around him, because if he were to admit what he saw in the 
wretchedness of his brothers and sisters, he would go mad."
  
  He drew in his breath and continued, turning his back to the bright room as if to 
shield the fledglings from the heat of his words, as surely as I wanted him to do it.
  
  "I know history, I read it as others read their Bibles, and I will not be satisfied 
until I have unearthed all stories that are written and know-able, and cracked the codes 
of all cultures that have left me any tantalizing evidence that I might pry loose from 
earth or stone or papyrus or clay.
  
  "But I was wrong in my optimism, I was ignorant, as ignorant as I accused others of 
being, and refusing to see the very horrors that surrounded me, all the worse in this 
century, this reasonable century, than ever before in the world.
  
  "Look back, child, if you care to, if you would argue the point. Look back to golden 
Kiev, which you knew only in songs after the raging Mongols had burnt its Cathedrals and 
slaughtered its population like so much cattle, as they did all through the Kiev Rus for 
two hundred years. Look back to the chronicles of all Europe and see the wars waged 
everywhere, in the Holy Land, in the forests of France or Germany, up and down the 
fertile soil of England, yes, blessed England, and in every Asian corner of the globe.
  
  Oh, why did I deceive myself for so long? Did I not see those Russian grasslands, those 
burnt cities. Why, all of Europe might have fallen to Ghenghis Khan. Think of the great 
English Cathedrals torn down to rubble by the arrogant King Henry.
  
  Think of the books of the Mayas heaved into the flames by Spanish priests. Incas, 
Aztecs, Olmec-peoples of all nations ground to oblivion-.
  
  "It's horrors, horrors upon horrors, and it always was, and I can pretend no longer. 
When I see millions gassed to death for the whims of an Austrian madman, when I see whole 
African tribes massacred till the rivers are stuffed with their bloated bodies, when I 
see rank starvation claim whole countries in an age of gluttonous plenty, I can believe 
all these platitudes no more.
  
  "I don't know what single event it was that destroyed my self-deception. I don't know 
what horror it was that ripped the mask from my lies. Was it the millions who starved in 
the Ukraine, imprisoned in it by their own dictator, or the thousands after who died from 
the nuclear poisoning spewing into the skies over the grasslands, unprotected by the same 
governing powers who had starved them before? Was it the monasteries of noble Nepal, 
citadels of meditation and grace that had stood for thousands of years, older even than 
myself and all my philosophy, destroyed by an army of greedy grasping militarists who 
waged war without quarter upon monks in their saffron robes, and priceless books which 
they heaved into the fire, and ancient bells which they melted down no more to call the 
gentle to prayer? And this, this within two decades of this very hour, while the nations 
of the West danced in their discos and swilled their liquor, lamenting in casual tones 
for the poor sad fate of the distant Dalai Lama, and turning the television dial.
  
  "I don't know what it was. Perhaps it was all the millions-Chinese, Japanese, 
Cambodian, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Kurdish, oh, God, the litany goes on 
without end. I have no faith, I have no optimism, I have no firm conviction in the ways 
of reason or ethics. I have no reproof for you as you stand on the Cathedral steps with 
your arms out to your all-knowing and all-perfect God.
  
  "I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never 
will. But this you taught me as much as any other I've ever known, that love is 
necessary, as much as rain to the flowers and the trees, and food to the hungry child, 
and blood to the starving thirsting predators and scavengers that we are. Love we need, 
and love can make us forget and forgive all savagery, as perhaps nothing else can.
  
  "And so I took them out of their fabulous promising modern world with its diseased and 
desperate masses. I took them out and gave them the only might I possess, and I did it 
for you. I gave them time, time perhaps to find an answer which those mortals living now 
may never know.
  
  "That was it, all of it. And I knew you would cry, and I knew you would suffer, but I 
knew you would have them and love them when it was finished, and I knew that you needed 
them desperately. So there you are ... joined now with the serpent and the lion and the 
wolf, and far superior to the worst of men who have proved themselves in this time to be 
colossal monsters, and free to feed with care upon a world of evil that can swallow every 
bit of pruning they care to do."
  
  A silence fell between us.
  
  I thought for a long while, rather than plunge into my words.
  
  Sybelle had stopped her playing, and I knew that she was concerned for me and needed 
me, I could feel it, feel the strong thrust of her vampire soul. I would have to go to 
her and soon.
  
  But I took my time to say a few more words:
  
  "You should have trusted them, Master, you should have let them have their chance. 
Whatever you thought of the world, you should have let them have their time with it. It 
was their world and their time."
  
  He shook his head as though he was disappointed in me, and a little weary, and as he 
had resolved all these matters long ago in his mind, perhaps before I had even appeared 
last night, he seemed willing to let it all go.
  
  "Armand, you are my child forever," he said with great dignity. "All that is magical 
and divine in me is bounded by the human and always was."
  
  "You should have let them have their hour. No love of me should have written their 
death warrant, or their admission to our strange and inexplicable world. We may be no 
worse than humans in your estimation, but you could have kept your counsel. You could 
have let them alone."