I didn't answer.

"Should everyone just go to Heaven?" he asked. "I mean, should everyone go?"

"No. That can't be," I said. "Not creatures like me, not creatures who have tortured and killed other creatures, not people who have deliberately duplicated through their actions punishments as severe as disease, or fire, or earthquake—that is, not people who have done wrongs that hurt others just as much or worse than natural disasters.

It can't be right for them to go to Heaven, not if they don't know, not if they don't understand, not if they haven't begun to comprehend what they've done! Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel, selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven. I don't want to meet the unreformed monsters of Earth in Heaven! If it's that easy, then the suffering of this world is damned near.. .."

"Damn near what?

"Unforgivable," I whispered.

"What would be forgivable—from the point of view of a soul who died in pain and confusion? A soul who knew that God didn't care?"

"I don't know," I said. "When you described the elect of Sheol, the first million souls you took through the Heavenly Gates, you didn't speak of reformed monsters; you spoke of people who had forgiven God for an unjust world, didn't you?"

"That's right, I did. That's what I found. That's what I took with me with certainty to Heaven's Gates, yes."

"But you spoke entirely as if these people had been victims of God's injustice. You didn't touch upon the souls of the guilty? Those like me—the transgressors, those who were the doers of injustice?" "Don't you think they have their story?"

"Some may have their excuses, engrained in their stupidity and their simplicity and their fear of authority. I don't know. But many, many evildoers must be just like me.

They know how bad they are. They don't care. They do what they do because ...

because they love it. I love making vampires. I love drinking blood. I love taking life.

I always have."

"Is that really why you drink blood? Just because you love it? Or isn't it because you were made into a perfect preternatural mechanism for craving blood eternally, and thriving only on blood—snatched out of life and made a gleaming Child of the Night by an unjust world that cared no more for you and your destiny than it cared for any infant who starved that night in Paris?"

"I don't justify what I do or what I am. If you think I do, if that's why you want me to run Hell with you, or accuse God ...then you picked the wrong person. I deserve to pay for what I've taken from people. Where are their souls, those I've slain? Were they ready for Heaven? Have they gone to Hell? Did those souls loosen in their identity and are they still in the whirlwind between Hell and Heaven? Souls are there, I know, I saw them, souls who have yet to find either place."