Anne Rice
 Memnoch The Devil
  
  
  
  
  
  Prologue
  
  LESTAT here. You know who I am? Then skip the next few paragraphs. For those whom I 
have not met before, I want this to be love at first sight.
  
  Behold: your hero for the duration, a perfect imitation of a blond, blue-eyed, six-foot 
Anglo-Saxon male. A vampire, and one of the strongest you'll ever encounter. My fangs are 
too small to be noticed unless I want them to be; but they're very sharp, and I cannot go 
for more than a few hours without wanting human blood.
  
  Of course, I don't need it that often. And just how often I do need it, I don't know, 
because I've never put it to the test.
  
  I'm monstrously strong. I can take to the air. I can hear people talking on the other 
side of the city or even the globe. I can read minds; I can bind with spells.
  
  I'm immortal. I've been virtually ageless since 1789.
  
  Am I unique? By no means. There are some twenty other vampires in the world of whom I 
know. Half of these I know intimately; one half of those I love.
  
  Add to this twenty a good two hundred vagabonds and strangers of whom I know nothing 
but now and then hear something; and for good measure another thousand secretive 
immortals, roaming about in human guise.
  
  Men, women, children-any human being can become a vampire.  All it takes is a vampire 
willing to bring you into it, to suck out most of your blood, and then let you take it 
back, mixed with his or her own. It's not all that simple; but if you survive, you'll 
live forever.  While you're young, you'll thirst unbearably, probably have to kill each 
night. By the time you're a thousand years old, you'll look and sound wise, even if you 
were a kid when you started, and you will drink and kill because you cannot resist it, 
whether you need it anymore or not.
  
  If you live longer than that, and some do, who knows? You'll get tougher, whiter, ever 
more monstrous. You'll know so much about suffering that you will go through rapid cycles 
of cruelty and kindness, insight and maniacal blindness. You'll probably go mad. Then 
you'll be sane again. Then you may forget who you are.
  
  I myself combine the best of vampiric youth and old age. Only two hundred years old, I 
have been for various reasons granted the strength of the ancients. I have a modern 
sensibility but a dead aristocrat's impeccable taste. I know exactly who I am. I am rich. 
I am beautiful. I can see my reflection in mirrors. And in shopwindows. I love to sing 
and to dance.
  
  What do I do? Anything that I please.
  
  Think about it. Is it enough to make you want to read my story?
  
  Have you perhaps read my stories of the vampires before?
  
  Here's the catch: it doesn't matter here that I'm a vampire. It is not central to the 
tale. It's just a given, like my innocent smile and soft, purring French-accented voice 
and graceful way of sauntering down the street. It comes with the package. But what 
happened here could have happened to a human being; indeed, it surely has happened to 
humans, and it will happen to them again.
  
  We have souls, you and I.
  
  We want to know things; we share the same earth, rich and verdant and fraught with 
perils. We don't either of us know what it means to die, no matter what we might say to 
the contrary. It's a cinch that if we did, I wouldn't be writing and you wouldn't be 
reading this book.
  
  What does matter very much, as we go into this story together, is that I have set for 
myself the task of being a herb in this world. I maintain myself as morally complex, 
spiritually tough, and aesthetically relevant a being of blazing insight and impact, a 
guy with things to say to you.
  
  So if you read this, read it for that reason that Lestat is talking again, that he is 
frightened, that he is searching desperately for the lesson and for the song and for the 
raison d'etre, that he wants to understand his own story and he wants you to understand 
it, and that it is the very best story he has right now to tell.  If that's not enough, 
read something else.
  
  If it is, then read on. In chains, to my friend and my scribe, I dictated these words. 
Come with me. Just listen to me. Don't leave me alone.
  
  1
  
  I SAW him when he came through the front doors. Tall, solidly built, dark brown hair 
and eyes, skin still fairly dark because it had been dark when I'd made him a vampire. 
Walking a little too fast, but basically passing for a human being. My beloved David.
  
  I was on the stairway. The grand stairway, one might say. It was one of those very 
opulent old hotels, divinely overdone, full of crimson and gold, and rather pleasant. My 
Victim had picked it. I hadn't.  My victim was dining with his daughter. And I'd picked 
up from my victim's mind that this was where he always met his daughter in New York, for 
the simple reason that St. Patrick's Cathedral was across the street.
  
  David saw me at once a slouching, blond, long-haired youth, bronze face and hands, the 
usual deep violet sunglasses over my eyes, hair presentably combed for once, body tricked 
out in a dark-blue, doubled-breasted Brooks Brothers suit.