Merrick

Less than two weeks later, Aaron advised me by letter that the murderer of Cold Sandra and Honey had died by his own hand.

I called Aaron at once:

"Have you told Merrick?" I asked.

After a long pause, Aaron said, quite calmly:

"I suspect that Merrick knows."

"Why on earth do you say that?" I asked immediately. I was always too impatient with Aaron's reticence. However, this time he was not to keep me in the dark.

"The spirit who haunted this fellow," said Aaron, "was a tall woman with brown hair and green eyes. Now that does not square with our pictures of Cold Sandra or Honey in the Sunshine, does it?"

I answered no, that it did not.

"Well, he's dead now, poor fool," said Aaron. "And maybe Merrick can continue her work in peace." That is exactly what Merrick did: continue her work in peace.

And now:

Now, after all these years, I have come back to her, asking her to raise the soul of the Dead Child Claudia for Louis, and for me.

I have asked her in so many words to use her magic, which might surely mean using the mask, which I know to be in her possession at Oak Haven, as it had always been, the mask which could let her see spirits between life and death. I have done that, I who know what she has suffered, and what a good and happy person she could be, and is.

16

IT WAS AN HOUR before dawn when I finished the story.

Louis had listened all of this time in silence, never bringing a question, never making a distraction, but merely absorbing my words.

Out of respect for me, he remained silent, but I could see a flood of emotion in his face. His dark-green eyes made me think of Merrick's, and for one moment I felt such a desire for her, such a horror of what I'd done, that I couldn't speak. Finally Louis explained the very perceptions and sensations that were overwhelming me as I thought about all I'd said.

"I never realized how much you loved this woman," he said. "I never realized how very different you are from me."

"I love her, yes, and perhaps I myself didn't realize how much until I told you the history. I made myself see it. I made myself remember. I made myself experience my union with her again. But when you speak of you and me being different, you must tell me what you mean."

"You're wise," he said, "Wise in ways that only an elderly human being can be. You experienced old age in a way that none of the rest of us has ever known. Not even the great mother, Maharet, knew infirmity before she was made a vampire centuries ago. Certainly, Lestat has never grasped it, in spite of all his injuries. And I? I've been too young for too long."

"Don't condemn yourself for it. Do you think human beings are meant to know the bitterness and loneliness I knew in my last mortal years? I don't think so. Like all creatures, we're made to live until our prime. All the rest is spiritual and physical disaster. Of that I'm convinced."

"I can't agree with you," he said modestly. "What tribe on earth has not had elders? How much of our art and our knowledge comes from those who've lived into old age? You sound like Lestat when you say such things, speaking of his Savage Garden. The world has never seemed a hopelessly savage place to me."

I smiled.

"You believe so many things," I said. "One has only to press you to discover them, yet you deny the value of everything you've learned, in your constant melancholy. You do, you know."

He nodded. "I can't make sense of things, David," he said.

"Maybe we're not meant to, any of us, whether we're old or very young."

"Possibly so," he said. "But what's very important now is that we both make a solemn vow. We will not injure this vital and unique woman. Her strength won't blind us. We will feed her curiosity and be just to her, and protective of her, but we will not bring her any harm."

I nodded. I knew his meaning quite plainly. Oh, how I knew it.

"Would that I could say," he whispered, "that we would withdraw our request. Would that I could endure without Merrick's magic. Would that I could leave this world without ever seeing Claudia's ghost."

"Don't talk of ending it, please, I can't listen to it," I hastened to say.

"Oh, but I must talk of it. It's all I think about."

"Then think of those words I spoke to the spirit in the cave. Life belongs to those who are alive. You are alive."

"At such a price," he said.

"Louis, we are both of us desperate to live," I said. "We look to Merrick's magic for consolation. We dream of looking through the mask ourselves, don't we? We want to see something that does make it all come together, is that not so?"

"I don't know that I'm so deliberate, David," he responded. His face was dark with worry, heavy with fine lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, lines that vanished whenever his face was still. "I don't know what I want," he confessed.

"Oh, but to see spirits as Merrick has seen them, as you've seen them. Oh, if only I could hear the ghostly harpsichord that others hear in this place. Oh, if I could talk to a spirit with the strength of Honey in the Sunshine, what that would mean to me."

"Louis, what can make you want to continue?" I asked. "What could make you see that we are privileged witnesses of what the world has to offer on all sides?"

He laughed, a short polite but contemptuous laugh.

"A clear conscience, David," he replied. "What else?"

"Then take the blood I have to give," I said to him. "Take the blood Lestat has offered you more than once. Take the blood that you've refused so many times, and be strong enough to live by the 'little drink' and push death out of your way." I was a bit surprised at the vehemence with which I recommended this, because before this conversation—before this long night of storytelling—I had thought his decision to refuse the powerful blood to be very wise. As I've stated in this narrative, he was weak enough that the sun might easily destroy him, and in that lay an immense consolation which Lestat and I did not share.

Now, he studied me with a look of interest. I saw no condemnation in his eyes.

I rose and walked slowly about the room. Once again, I looked at the bright and confident painting by Monet. All my life seemed close to me suddenly; all my determination was to live.

"No, I can't die by my own will," I murmured, "not even if it's as simple as going into the sunlight. That I cannot do. I want to know what happens! I want to know when and if Lestat wakes from his dreamy sleep. I want to know what will become of Merrick! I want to know what will become of Armand. That I can live forever? Oh, how I cherish it! I cannot pretend to be the mortal who once refused Lestat. I cannot reach back and claim that being's unimaginative heart." I turned and it seemed the room was pulsing violently around me, all its color coalescing, as though Monet's spirit had infected the very fabric of the solid matter and the air. All the objects of the room seemed arbitrary and symbolic. And beyond lay the savage night—Lestat's Savage Garden—and random unanswerable stars.

As for Louis, he was captivated as only he can become, yielding as men almost never yield, no matter in what shape or form the male spirit may be clothed.

"You're all so very strong," he said in a low, reverent, and sad voice. "All so very strong."

"But we'll make that vow, old friend," I said, "with regard to Merrick. There will come a time when Merrick will want this magic and reproach us with our selfishness, that we have begged for hers while refusing her our own." Louis seemed almost on the edge of tears.

"Don't underestimate her, David," he said in a raw voice. "Perhaps she's quite as invincible as you were, in her own way. Perhaps she has shocks in store for us, of which we're unaware."

"Have I lead you to believe so?" I asked. "With all I've said?"

"You've given me her picture in deep and enduring detail," he answered. "Don't you think she knows my misery? Don't you think she will feel it when we meet?" He hesitated, then continued, "She won't want to share our existence. Why should she when she can make herself appear to others, when she can look through a jade mask and see her sister's ghost. From all you've said, I've drawn the conclusion that she won't be at all eager to give up forever the sight of the Egyptian sand in the noonday sun."

I smiled. I couldn't stop myself. I thought he was completely wrong.

"I don't know, old friend," I said, straining for courtesy. "I simply don't know. I know only I'm committed to our wretched purpose. And all that I've deliberately recalled has not taught me to be wary or kind." He rose from his chair slowly, silently, and walked to the door of the room. I realized it was time for him to go now and find his coffin, and that shortly I should do the same thing.

I followed him, and we went out of the town house together, down the back iron steps and through the wet garden and to the front gate.

I did see the black cat for one instant on the top of the rear wall, but I made no mention of it, determined that cats were simply common in New Orleans and I was being just a bit of a fool.

At last it came time for us to part.

"I'll spend the next few evenings with Lestat," Louis said quietly. "I want to read to him. He doesn't respond but he doesn't stop me. You'll know where to find me when Merrick returns."

"Does he never say anything to you?" I asked, regarding Lestat.

"Sometimes he speaks, just a little. He'll ask for Mozart perhaps, or that I read him some old poetry. But in the main, he's as you see him yourself, unchanged." He paused, then looked directly at the sky. "I want to be alone with him for a few nights, I suppose, before Merrick comes back."

His tone had a finality to it, and a sadness that touched me to the quick. He was saying farewell to Lestat, that's what he was doing, and I knew that Lestat's slumber was so deep and so troubled, that even such a dreadful message from Louis might not rouse him at all.

I watched Louis walk away as the sky grew ever more lighter. I could hear the morning birds singing. I thought of Merrick, and I wanted her. I wanted her purely as a man might want her. And as a vampire I wanted to drain her soul and have her eternally there for my visits, always safe. I was alone with her again for one precious instant in the tent in Santa Cruz del Flores, and I felt that mercurial pleasure connect my orgasmic body and brain. It was a curse to bring too many mortal memories into vampiric existence. To have been old did mean sublime experience and knowledge. And the curse had richness to it, and a splendor I could not deny. And it occurred to me, if Louis does end his life, if he does bring his supernatural journey to a conclusion, how will I ever answer for it to Lestat or Armand, or myself?

IT WAS A WEEK before I received a handwritten letter from Merrick. She was back in Louisiana.

Beloved David,

Come to my old house tomorrow evening as soon as you can. The caretaker will be safely off the property. And I will be alone in the front room.

It's my desire to meet Louis and hear from his own lips what he wants for me to do. As to those items which once belonged to Claudia, I have the rosary, the diary, and the doll. All the rest can be arranged.

I could scarce contain my exhilaration. Waiting till tomorrow would be a torment. I went at once to St. Elizabeth's, the building where Lestat spent his lonely hours sleeping on the old chapel floor.

Louis was there, seated on the marble beside Lestat, reading in a hushed voice from an old book of English poetry when I came in.

I read the letter to Louis.

There was no change whatsoever in Lestat's demeanor.

"I know where the house is," said Louis. He was extremely excited, though I think he struggled to conceal it. "I'll be there. I suppose I should have asked your permission. But I went to find it last night."

"Perfect," I responded. "I'll meet you there tomorrow evening. But listen, you must—."

"Go on, say it," he coaxed me gently.

"You must remember, she's a powerful woman. We've vowed to protect her, but don't for a moment think of her as weak."

"And so we go back and forth about her," he said patiently. "I understand you. I know your meaning. When I vowed to take this path, I braced myself for disaster. And tomorrow night, I shall brace myself as completely as I can." Lestat showed not the slightest sign of having heard our discourse. He lay as before, his red velvet coat creased and dusty, his yellow hair a tangled mass.

I knelt down and laid a reverent kiss on Lestat's cheek. He continued to gaze into the gloom before him. Once again, I had the distinct impression that his soul was not in his body, not in the way that we believed it to be. I wanted so to tell him of our enterprise, but then again, I wasn't sure that I wanted him to know.

It struck me quite completely that if he knew what we meant to do he would stop us. How far from us his thoughts must have been.

As I left, I heard Louis continue to read in a low, melodious, and faintly passionate voice.

17

ON THE EVENING of the appointed meeting, the sky was very clear except for a few distinct and brightly white clouds. The stars were small but I could see them, faint comfort that they were. The air itself was not so terribly humid, yet it was delightfully warm.

Louis came to meet me at the carriageway gate in the Rue Royale, and in my excitement, I noticed very little about his appearance except that he was uncommonly well dressed.

As I've mentioned before, his clothes are not usually very well chosen, but he had of late been enjoying a certain improvement, and on this evening he had clearly gone out of his way.

To repeat, I was too interested in our meeting with Merrick to pay it much attention. Having observed that he was not thirsting, indeed that he seemed quite flushed and human—a confirmation that he had already fed—I set out with him at once for Merrick's house.

As we made our way through the desolate and godforsaken old neighborhood, neither of us spoke a word. Many thoughts tumbled through my mind. My telling of the tale of Merrick had brought me much closer to her than I had been on the night of our meeting in the café in the Rue St. Anne, and my desire to see Merrick again, under any and all circumstances, was more powerful than I cared to admit.

But the subject of Merrick's recent spell tormented me. Why had she sent visions of herself to dazzle me? I wanted to ask her directly, and felt that it must be settled before we could go on.

When we reached the restored house, with its high black picket fence, I insisted that Louis wait patiently for a moment until I walked around the place.

At once I surmised that the little houses on either side of Merrick's large property were in utter ruin. And the property itself, as I've mentioned, was bounded on three sides and in part of the front by very high brick walls. I could see a thick forest of trees in Merrick's yard, of which two were immense oaks and another a high sprawling pecan tree, trying to free itself of the rampant yew trees which crowded against the walls. There was a shuddering light emanating upwards against the foliage and its entanglement of branches. I could smell incense and the wax of candles. Indeed, I caught many scents but not the scent of an intruder, and that is what mattered just now. As for the rear upstairs apartment of the caretaker, it was empty and locked up. This pleased me mightily, as I did not want to deal with this mortal at all.

With regard to Merrick, I could easily sense her presence, walls or no walls, so I quickly made my way back to Louis, who stood before the iron gate which separated the front garden from the street.

Merrick's oleanders were not in bloom yet, but they created a mighty evergreen shrubbery, and many other flowers were growing wild, especially the bright-red African hibiscus and the purple Althea with its stiff branches, and thick rampant white calla lilies with waxy spear-shaped leaves.

The magnolia trees which I scarcely remembered had grown hugely in the past decade, and they now composed a group of impressive sentinels for the front porch.

Louis stood patiently, staring at the leaded glass of the front doors as though he was madly excited. The house was entirely dark except for the front parlor, the room in which Great Nananne's coffin had been set so long ago. I could detect the flicker of candles in the front bedroom, but I doubt a mortal eye could have seen it through the drawn drapes. Quickly we went in the gate, rattling the ominous shrubbery, and up the steps and rang the bell. I heard Merrick's soft voice from the interior:

"David, come in."

We found ourselves in the shadowy front hall. A great shiny Chinese rug covered the polished floor in flashy modern splendor, and the large new crystal chandelier above was dark, and looked as if it were made of so much intricate ice. I escorted Louis into the parlor, and there sat Merrick clothed in a shirtwaist dress of white silk, quite relaxed, in one of Great Nananne's old mahogany chairs.

The dim light of a stand-up lamp fell wonderfully upon her. At once we locked eyes, and I felt a rush of love for her. I wanted her to know somehow that I'd revisited all our memories, that I'd chosen the prerogative of confiding them in one whom I trusted completely, and that I loved her as much as I did.

I also wanted her to know that I disliked intensely the visions she'd so recently sent after me, and if she had had any doings with the pesty black cat, that I was not amused!

I think she knew it. I saw her smile faintly at me as we moved further into the room. I was about to take up the subject of her evil magic. But something stopped me.

It was, very simply, the expression on her face when her eyes fell upon Louis as he stepped into the light. Though she was as poised and clever as always, there came about a complete change in her face. She rose to her feet to meet him, which surprised me, and her countenance was smooth and open with utter shock. It was then that I realized how skillfully Louis had attired himself in a finely tailored suit of thin black wool. He wore a shirt of a creamcolored silk with a small gold pin beneath his rose-colored tie. Even his shoes were deliberately perfect, buffed to a high luster, and his rich black curly hair was combed neatly and entirely. But the glory of his appearance was, of course, his keen features and his lustrous eyes.

I need not repeat that they are a dark-green color, because it was not the color of his eyes which mattered so much. Rather, it was the expression with which he gazed at Merrick, the seeming awe that setfled over him, and the way that his well-shaped mouth slowly relaxed.

He had seen her before, yes, but he was not prepared to find her so very interesting and comely at the same time. And she, with her long hair brushed straight back to the leather barrette, looked utterly inviting in her sharp-shouldered white silk dress, with its small fabric belt and its loose shimmering skirt.

Around her neck, over the fabric of the dress, she wore pearls, in fact, the triple strand of pearls that I myself had long ago given her, and in her ears were pearls, and on the ring finger of her right hand she wore a stunning pearl as well. I recite these details because I sought to find some sanity in them, but what I was experiencing, what humbled me and made me livid was that the two of them were so impressed with each other, that, for the moment, I was not there. It was undeniable, the fascination with which she stared at Louis. And there was not the slightest question about the overwhelming awe in which he held her.

"Merrick, my darling," I said softly, "let me present Louis." But I might as well have been babbling. She never heard a single syllable I uttered. She was silently transported, and I could see in her face a provocative expression which up until this time I had never beheld in her except when she was looking at me.

Quickly, obviously struggling to disguise her immense response, she reached out for his hand. With a vampire's reluctance, he met her gesture, and then, to my complete consternation, he bent down and kissed her—

not on the hand which he gripped so tenaciously—but on both her lovely cheeks.

Why in the world hadn't I foreseen this? Why had I thought that she would not see him except as an unapproachable wonder? Why hadn't I realized that I was bringing into her presence one of the most alluring beings I've ever known?

I felt the fool for having not foreseen it, and I also felt the fool for caring so very much. As he settled in the chair closest to hers, as she sat down and turned her attention to him, I found a place on the sofa across the room. Her eyes never left him, not for a second, and then I heard his voice come low and rich, with his French accent as well as the feeling with which he always spoke.

"You know why I've come to you, Merrick," he said as tenderly as if he was telling her that he loved her. "I live in torment thinking of one creature, one creature I once betrayed and then nurtured, and then lost. I come because I believe you can bring that creature's spirit to speak with me. I come to you because I believe I can determine through you whether that spirit is at rest."

Immediately she answered.

"But what is unrest for spirits, Louis," she said familiarly. "Do you believe in a purgatory, or is it merely a darkness in which spirits languish, unable to seek a light that would lead them on?"

"I'm not convinced of anything," Louis said in answer. His face was full of vehement eloquence. "If ever a creature was earthbound, it's the vampire. We're wed, soul and body, hopelessly. Only the most painful death by fire can rip that bond. Claudia was my child. Claudia was my love. Claudia died by fire, the fire of the sun. But Claudia has appeared to others. Claudia may come if you call her. That's what I want. That's my extravagant dream." Merrick was lost to him, utterly lost to him. I knew it. Her mind, insofar as I could read it, was ravaged. She was deeply affected by his seeming pain. Nothing of her sympathies was reserved.

"Spirits exist, Louis," she said, her voice slightly tremulous, "they exist, but they tell lies. One spirit can come in the guise of another. Spirits are sometimes greedy and depraved."

It was quite exquisite, the way that he frowned and put the back of his finger to his lip before he answered. As for her, well, I was furious with her, and saw not the slightest physical or mental fault in her. She was the woman to whom I'd surrendered passion, pride, and honor a long time before.

"I'll know her, Merrick," said Louis. "I can't be deceived. If you can call her, and if she comes, I'll know her. I have no doubt."

"But what if I doubt, Louis?" she responded. "What if I tell you that we've failed? Will you at least try to believe what I say?"

"It's all settled, isn't it?" I blurted out. "We mean to do it, then, don't we?"

"Yes, oh, yes," Louis answered, looking across the room at me considerately enough, though his large inquisitive eyes shot right back to Merrick. "Let me beg your forgiveness, Merrick, that we've troubled you for your power. I tell myself in my most awful moments that you'll take away from us some valuable knowledge and experience, that perhaps we'll confirm your faith—in God. I tell myself these things because I can't believe we've merely ruptured your life with our very presence. I hope it's so. I beg you to understand."

He was using the very words that had come to my mind in my many feverish ruminations. I was furious with him as well as her, suddenly. Detestable that he should say these things, and the hell he couldn't read minds. I had to get myself in hand.

She smiled, suddenly, one of the most magnificent smiles I'd ever seen. Her creamy cheeks, her dramatic green eyes, her long hair—all her charms conspired to make her irresistible, and I could see the effect of her smile upon Louis, as if she'd rushed into his arms.

"I have no doubts or regrets, Louis," she told me. "Mine is a great and unusual power. You've given me a reason to use it. You speak of a soul that may be in torment; indeed, you speak of long, long suffering, and you suggest that we might somehow bring that soul's torment to a close."

At this point, his cheeks colored deeply and he leant over and clasped her hand again tightly.

"Merrick, what can I give you in exchange for what you mean to do?"

This alarmed me. He should not have said it! It led too directly to the most powerful and unique gift that we had to give. No, he shouldn't have said it, but I remained silent, watching these two creatures become ever more enthralled with each other, watching them quite definitely fall in love.

"Wait until it's done, and let us talk then of such things," she said, "if we ever talk of them at all. I need nothing in return, really. As I've said, you are giving me a way to use my power and that in itself is quite enough. But again, you must assure me, you will listen to my estimation of what happens. If I think we have raised something which is not from God I will say so, and you must at least try to believe what I say."

She rose and went directly past me, with only a faint smile for me as she did so, into the open dining room behind me to fetch something, it seemed, from the sideboard along the distant wall.

Of course, Louis, the consummate gentleman, was on his feet. Again I noticed the splendid clothing, and how lean and feline were his simplest gestures, and how stunningly beautiful his immaculate hands. She reentered the light before me as if reentering a stage.

"Here, this is what I have from your darling," she said. She held a small bundle, wrapped in velvet. "Sit down, Louis, please," she resumed. "And let me put these items into your hands." She took her chair again, beneath the lamp facing him, the precious goods in her lap.

He obeyed her with the open radiance of a schoolboy before a miraculous and brilliant teacher. He sat back as though he would yield to her slightest command.

I watched her in profile and nothing filled my mind so much as pure, utter, base jealousy! But loving her as I did, I was wise enough to acknowledge some genuine concern as well.

As for him, there was little doubt that he was completely as interested in her as he was in the things which had belonged to Claudia.

"This rosary, why did she have it?" asked Merrick, extracting the sparkling beads from her little bundle. "Surely she didn't pray."

"No, she liked it for the look of it," he said, his eyes full of a dignified plea that Merrick should understand. "I think I bought it for her. I don't think I ever even told her what it was. Learning with her was strange, you see. We thought of her as a child, when we should have realized, and then the outward form of a person has such a mysterious connection with the disposition."

"How so?" Merrick asked.

"Oh, you understand," he said shyly, almost modestly. "The beautiful know they have power, and she had, in her diminutive charm, a certain power of which she was always casually aware." He hesitated. It seemed he was painfully shy.

"We fussed over her; we gloried in her. She looked no more than six or seven at most." The light in his face went out for a moment, as if an interior switch had shut it off.

Merrick reached forward again and took his hand. He let her have it. He bowed his head just a little, and he lifted the hand she held, as if saying, Give me a moment. Then he resumed.

"She liked the rosary," he said. "Maybe I did tell her the prayers. I don't remember. She liked sometimes to go with me to the Cathedral. She liked to hear the music of the evening ceremonies. She liked all things that were sensual and which involved beauty. She was girlish in her enthusiasms for a long time."

Merrick let his hand go but very reluctantly.

"And this?" she asked. She lifted the small white leather-bound diary. "A long time ago, this was found in the flat in the Rue Royale, in a hiding place. You never knew that she kept it."

"No," he said. "I gave it to her as a gift, that I well recall. But I never saw her write in it. That she kept it came as something of a surprise. She was quite the reader of books, that I can tell you. She knew so much poetry. She was always quoting this or that verse in an offhanded manner. I try to remember the things she quoted, the poets she loved." He gazed at the diary now as if he were reticent to open it, or even to touch it. As if it still belonged to her. Merrick withdrew it, and lifted the doll.

"No," Louis said adamantly, "she never liked them. They were always a mistake. No, that doesn't matter, that doll. Although if recollection serves me right, it was found with the diary and the rosary. I don't know why she saved it. I don't know why she put it away. Maybe she wanted someone in the far distant future to find it and mourn for her, to know that she herself had been locked in a doll's body; wanted some one lone individual to shed tears for her. Yes, I think that's how it must have been."

"Rosary, doll, diary," said Merrick delicately. "And the diary entries, do you know what they say?"

"Only one, the one Jesse Reeves read and related to me. Lestat had given her the doll on her birthday and she'd hated it. She'd tried to wound him; she'd mocked him; and he'd answered her with those lines from an old play which I can't forget."

He bowed his head, but he wouldn't give in to his sadness, not entirely. His eyes were dry for all the pain in them as he recited the words:

Cover her face;

mine eyes dazzle;

she died young.

I winced at the recollection. Lestat had been condemning himself when he'd spoken those words to her, he'd been offering himself up to her rage. She'd known it. That's why she'd recorded the entire incident—his unwelcome gift, her weariness of playthings, her anger at her limitations, and then his carefully chosen verse. Merrick allowed for a small interval, and then, letting the doll rest in her lap, she offered Louis the diary once more.

"There are several entries," she said. "Two are of no importance, and for one of these I'll ask you to work my magic. But there is another telling one, and that you must read before we go on."

Still Louis did not reach for the diary. He looked at her respectfully, as before, but he didn't reach for the little white book.

"Why must I read it?" he asked Merrick.

"Louis, think of what you've asked me to do. And yet you can't read the words she herself wrote here?"

"That was long ago, Merrick," he said. "It was years before she died that she concealed that diary. Isn't what we do of much greater importance? Yes, take a page if you need it. Take any page of the diary, it doesn't matter, use it as you will, only don't ask that I read a word."

"No, you must read it," Merrick said with exquisite gentleness. "Read it to me and to David. I know what is written there, and you must know, and David is here to help both of us. Please, the last entry: read it aloud." He stared hard at her, and now there came the faint film of red tears to his eyes, but he gave a tiny, near imperceptible, shake of his head, and then he took the diary from her outstretched hand.

He opened it, gazing down at it, having no need as a mortal might to move the page into the light.

"Yes," said Merrick coaxingly. "See, that one is unimportant. She says only that you went to the theater together. She says that she saw Macbeth, was Lestat’s favorite play."

He nodded, turning the small pages.

"And that one, that one is not significant," she went on, as though leading him through the fire with her words. "She says that she loves white chrysanthemums, she says she purchased some from an old woman, she says they are the flowers for the dead."

Again he seemed on the very brink of losing his composure utterly, but he kept his tears to himself. Again he turned the pages.

"There, that one. You must read it," said Merrick, and she laid her hand on his knee. I could see her fingers stretched out and embracing him in that age-old gesture. "Please, Louis, read it to me." He looked at her for a long moment, and then down at the page. His voice came tenderly in a whisper, but I knew that she could hear it as well as I.

"September 21, 1859

It has been so many decades since Louis presented me with this little book in which I might record my private thoughts. I have not been successful, having made only a few entries, and whether these have been written for my benefit I am unsure.

Tonight, I confide with pen and paper because I know which direction my hatred will take me. And I fear for those who have aroused my wrath.

By those I mean, of course, my evil parents, my splendid fathers, those who have led me from a long forgotten mortality into this questionable state of timeless 'bliss.'

To do away with Louis would be foolish, as he is without question the more malleable of the pair."

Louis paused as though he couldn't continue.

I saw Merrick's fingers tighten on his knee.

"Read it, please, I beg you," she said gently. "You must go on." Louis began again, his voice soft as before, and quite deliberately smooth.

"Louis will do as I wish, even unto the very destruction of Lestat, which I plan in every detail. Whereas Lestat would never cooperate with my designs upon Louis. So there my loyalty lies, under the guise of love even in my own heart.

"What mysteries we are, human, vampire, monster, mortal, that we can love and hate simultaneously, and that emotions of all sorts might not parade for what they are not. I look at Louis and I despise him totally for the making of me, and yet I do love him. But then I love Lestat every bit as well.

"Perhaps in the court of my heart, I hold Louis far more accountable for my present state than ever I could blame my impulsive and simple Lestat. The fact is, one must die for this or the pain in me will never be scaled off, and immortality is but a monstrous measurement of what I shall suffer till the world revolves to its ultimate end. One must die so that the other will become ever more dependent upon me, ever more completely my slave. I would travel the world afterwards; I would have my way; I cannot endure either one of them unless that one becomes my servant in thought, word, and deed.

"Such a fate is simply unthinkable with Lestat's ungovernable and irascible character. Such a fate seems made for my melancholy Louis, though the destroying of Lestat will open new passages for Louis into the labyrinthian Hell in which I already wander with every new thought that comes in my mind.

"When I shall strike and how, I know not, only that it gives me supreme delight to watch Lestat in his unguarded gaiety, knowing that I shall humiliate him utterly in destroying him, and in so doing bring down the lofty useless conscience of my Louis, so that his soul, if not his body, is the same size at last as my own."

It was finished.

I could tell this merely by the blank expression of pain on his face, the way that his eyebrows quivered for one moment, and then the way he drew back in the chair, and closed the little book, and held it idly as if he'd forgotten it altogether, in his left hand. He looked neither to me nor to Merrick.

"Do you still want to communicate with this spirit?" Merrick asked reverently. She reached for the small diary, and he gave it over without objection.

"Oh, yes," he said in a long sigh. "I want it above anything else." I wanted so to comfort him, but there were no words to touch such a private pain.

"I can't blame her for what she expressed," he resumed in a frail voice. "It always goes so tragically wrong with us." His eyes moved feverishly to Merrick. "The Dark Gift, imagine calling it that, when it goes so very wrong in the end." He drew back as if struggling against his emotions.

"Merrick," he said, "where do they come from, the spirits? I know the conventional wisdom and how foolish it can be. Tell me your thoughts."

"I know less now than I ever did," answered Merrick. "I think when I was a girl I was very sure of such things. We prayed to the untimely dead because we believed they hovered close to earth, vengeful or confused, and thereby could be reached. From time immemorial, witches have frequented cemeteries looking for those angry, muddled spirits, calling upon them to find the way to greater powers whose secrets might be revealed. I believed in those lonely souls, those suffering lost ones. Perhaps in my own way, I believe in them still.

"As David can tell you, they seem to hunger for the warmth and the light of life; they seem to hunger even for blood. But who knows the true intentions of any spirit? From what depth did the prophet Samuel rise in the Bible? Are we to believe Scripture, that the magic of the Witch of Endor was strong?"

Louis was fastened to her every word.

He reached out suddenly and took her hand again, letting her curl her fingers around his thumb.

"And what do you see, Merrick, when you look at David and at me? Do you see the spirit that inhabits us, the hungry spirit that makes us vampires?"

"Yes, I see it, but it's mute and mindless, utterly subordinate to your brains and hearts. It knows nothing now, if it ever did, except that it wants the blood. And for the blood it slowly works its spell on your tissues, it slowly commands your every cell to obey. The longer you live, the more it thrives, and it is angry now, angry insofar as it can choose any emotion, because you blood drinkers are so few."

Louis appeared mystified, but surely it wasn't so difficult to understand.

"The massacres, Louis, the last here in New Orleans. They clear away the rogues and baseborn. And the spirit shrinks back into those who remain."

"Yes," said Merrick, with a passing glance at me. "That's precisely why your thirst now is doubly terrible, and why you are so far from being satisfied with the 'little drink.' You asked a moment ago: what do I want from you? Let me say what I want of you. Let me be so bold as to answer you now."

He said nothing. He merely gazed at her as if he could refuse her nothing. She went on.

"Take the strong blood David can give you," she said. "Take it so you can exist without killing, take it so you can cease your heated search for the evildoer. Yes, I know, I use your language, perhaps too freely and too proudly. Pride is always a sin with those of us who persevere in the Talamasca. We believe we have seen miracles; we believe we have worked miracles. We forget that we know nothing; we forget that there may be nothing to find out."

"No, there is something, there's more than something," he insisted, gently moving her hand with his emphasis. "You and David have convinced me, even though it was never your intention, either of you. There are things to know. Tell me, when can we move to speak to Claudia's spirit? What more do you require of me before you'll make the spell?"

"Make the spell?" she asked gently. "Yes, it will be a spell. Here, take this diary," she gave it over to him, "rip a page from it, whatever page you feel is strongest or whatever part you are most willing to give up." He took it with his left hand, unwilling to let her go.

"What page do you want me to tear out?" he insisted.

"You make the choice. I'll bum it when I'm ready. You'll never see those particular words again." She released him, and urged him on with a small gesture. He opened the book with both hands. He sighed again, as if he couldn't endure this, but then he commenced to read in a low unhurried voice:

" 'And tonight, as I passed the cemetery, a lost child wandering dangerously alone for all the world to pity me, I bought these chrysanthemums, and lingered for some time within the scent of the fresh graves and their decaying dead, wondering what death life would have had for me had I been let to live it. Wondering if I could have hated as a mere human as much as I hate now? Wondering if I could have loved as much as I love now?' " Carefully, pressing the book to his leg with his left hand, he tore the page with his right hand, held it under the light for a moment, then gave it over to Merrick, his eyes following it as though he were committing a terrible theft. She received it respectfully and placed it carefully beside the doll in her lap.

"Think well now," she said, "before you answer. Did you ever know the name of her mother?"

"No," he said at once, and then hesitated, but then shook his head and said softly that he did not.

"She never spoke the name?"

"She spoke of Mother; she was a little girl."

"Think again," she said. "Go back, go back to those earliest nights with her; go back to when she babbled as children babble, before her womanly voice replaced those memories in your heart. Go back. What is the name of her mother? I need it."

"I don't know it," he confessed. "I don't think she ever—. But I didn't listen, you see, the woman was dead. That's how I found her, alive, clinging to the corpse of her mother." I could see that he was defeated. Rather helplessly he looked at Merrick.

Merrick nodded. She looked down and then she looked to him again, and her voice was especially kind as she spoke.

"There is something else," she said. "You're holding something back." Again, he seemed exceedingly distressed.

"How so?" he asked abjectly. "What can you mean?"

"I have her written page," said Merrick. "I have the doll she kept when she might have destroyed it. But you hold on to something else."

"Oh, but I can't," he said, his dark brows knotting. He reached into his coat and brought out the small daguerreotype in its gutter perche case. "I can't give it over to be destroyed, I can't," he whispered.

"You think you'll cherish it afterwards?" asked Merrick in a consoling voice. "Or you think our magic fire will fail?"

"I don't know," he confessed. "I know only that I want it." He moved the tiny clasp and opened the small case and looked down until he seemed unable to bear what he saw, and then he closed his eyes.

"Give it to me for my altar," said Merrick. "I promise it will not be destroyed." He didn't move or answer. He simply allowed her to take the picture from his hands. I watched her. She was amazed by it, the ancient image of a vampire, captured forever so dimly in the fragile silver and glass.

"Ah, but she was lovely, wasn't she?" asked Louis.

"She was many things," said Merrick. She shut the little gutter perche case, but she did not move the small gold clasp. She laid the daguerreotype in her lap with the doll and the page from the diary, and with both hands reached for Louis's right hand again.

She opened his palm beneath the lamplight.

She drew up as if she was shocked.

"Never have I seen a life line such as this," she whispered. "It's deeply graven, look at it, there is no end to it really," she turned his hand this way and that, "and all the small lines have long ago melted away."

"I can die," he answered with a polite defiance. "I know I can," he said sadly. "I shall when I've got the courage. My eyes will close forever, like those of every mortal of my time who ever lived." She didn't answer. She looked down into his open palm again. She felt of the hand, and I could see her loving its silky skin.

"I see three great loves," she whispered, as if she needed his permission to say it aloud. "Three deep loves in all this time. Lestat? Yes. Claudia. Most assuredly. And who is the other? Can you tell me that?" He was in a state of complete confusion as he looked at her, but he hadn't the strength to answer. The color flared in his cheeks and his eyes seemed to flash as if a light inside them had increased its incandescence. She let his hand go, and she blushed.

Quite suddenly, he looked to me, exactly as if he'd suddenly remembered me again and he needed me desperately. I had never seen him so agitated or seemingly vital. No one entering the room would have known him to be anything but a compelling young man.

"Are you for it, old friend?" he asked. "Are you ready for it to begin?" She looked up, her own eyes watering faintly, and she seemed to pick me out of the shadows and then to give the smallest, most trusting smile.

"What's your counsel, Superior General?" she asked in a muted voice, filled with conviction.

"Don't mock me," I said, because it made me feel good to say it. I was not surprised to see the quick flash of pain in her eyes.

"I don't mock you, David. I ask if you're ready."

"I'm ready, Merrick," I said, "as ready as I ever was in all my life to call a spirit in whom I scarcely believe, in whom I have no trust."

She held the page in both hands and studied it, perhaps reading the words herself, for her lips moved. Then she looked at me again, and then at Louis.

"One hour. Come back to me. I'll be ready by that time. We'll meet in the rear of the house. The old altar's been restored for our purpose. The candles are already lighted. The coals will soon be ready. It's there that we will execute this plan." I started to rise.

"But you must go now," she said, "and bring a sacrifice, because we cannot proceed without that."

"A sacrifice?" I asked. "Good Lord, what manner of sacrifice?" I was on my feet.

"A human sacrifice," she answered, her eyes sharpening as she glanced up at me, and then back to Louis, who remained in his chair. "This spirit won't come for anything less than human blood."

"You don't mean it, Merrick," I said furiously, my voice rising. "Good Lord, woman, would you make yourself a party to murder?"

"Am I not that already?" she answered, her eyes full of honesty and fierce will. "David, how many human beings have you killed since Lestat brought you over? And you, Louis, they're beyond count. I sit with you and plot with you to attempt this thing. I'm a party to your crimes, am I not? And for this spell, I tell you I need blood. I need to brew a far greater magic than anything I've ever attempted before. I need a burnt offering; I need the smoke to rise from heated blood."

"I won't do it," I said. "I won't bring some mortal here to be slaughtered. You're being foolish and naive if you think you could tolerate such a spectacle. You'll be changed forever. What, do you think because we're pretty to look at that this murder will be fancy and clean?"

"David, do as I say," she replied, "or I won't do this thing."

"I will not," I responded. "You've overreached yourself. A murder there will not be."

"Let me be the sacrifice," said Louis suddenly. He rose to his feet and looked down upon her. "I don't mean that I shall die to do it," he said compassionately. "I mean, let the blood that flows be mine." He took her hand again, locking his fingers around her wrist. He bent and kissed her hand, then stood erect, his eyes lovingly fastened to her own.

"Years ago," he said, "you used your own blood, did you not, in this very house, to call your sister, Honey in the Sunshine. Let us use my blood to call Claudia tonight. I have blood enough for a burnt offering; I have blood enough for a cauldron or a fire."

Her face was quite tranquil again as she looked at him.

"A cauldron it shall be," she said. "One hour. The rear yard is filled with its old saints, as I've told you. The stones on which my ancestors danced are swept clean for our purpose. The old pot sits on the coals. The trees have witnessed many such a spectacle. There's only a little more that I need do to prepare now. Go and return to me, as I've said."

18

I WAS BESIDE MYSELF with anxiety. As soon as we reached the pavement, I grabbed Louis by the shoulders and spun him round to face me.

"We're not going on with this," I said. "I'm going back there to tell her it will not happen."

"No, David, it will happen," he said without raising his voice. "You will not stop it!" I realized that for the first time since I'd ever set eyes on him, he was passionate and angry, though the anger was not purely for me.

"It will happen," he repeated, clenching his teeth, his face hardening in his quiet fury. "And we will leave her unharmed as we promised! But this will go on."

"Louis, don't you understand what she's feeling?" I asked. "She's falling in love with you! She'll never be the same after this. I can't let this deepen. I can't let it become any worse than it already is."

"She's not in love with me, that's wrong," he declared in an emphatic whisper. "She thinks what mortals always think. We're beautiful to them. We're exotic. We have such exquisite sensitivity! I've seen it before. All I need do is to take a victim in her presence to cure her romantic dreams. And it won't come to that, I promise you. Now, David, listen, this hour of waiting will be the longest of the night. I'm thirsting. I mean to hunt. Let go of me, David. Get out of my way." Of course I didn't leave him.

"And what about your emotions, Louis?" I walked beside him, determined he wouldn't leave me behind. "Can you tell me you're not completely taken by her?"

"And what if I am, David?" he responded, never slacking in his pace. "David, you didn't describe her truly. You told me how strong she was, how wily, and how clever. But you didn't do justice to her." He gave me a shy passing glance. "You never talked about her simplicity or her sweetness. You didn't tell me she was so inherently kind."

"That's how you see her?"

"That's how she is, my friend." Now he wouldn't look at me. "Some school, the Talamasca, that it produced both of you. She has a patient soul and a knowing heart."

"I want this broken off now," I insisted. "I don't trust either of you. Louis, listen to me."

"David, do you really believe I would hurt her?" he asked sharply. He continued walking. "Do I seek out for my victims those whom I believe to be gentle by nature, humans I believe to be both good and uncommonly strong? She'll be safe with me forever, David, don't you understand that? Only once in my wretched life did I make a fledging and that was over a century ago. Merrick couldn't be safer from any of us than she is from me. Bind me to protect her till the day she dies and I'll probably do it! I'll slip away from her after this is done, I promise you." On he walked. He continued to speak: "I'll find a way to thank her, to satisfy her, to leave her at peace. We'll do that together, David, you and I. Don't harry me now in this matter. I can't be stopped. It's gone too far."

I believed him. I believed him completely. "What am I to do?" I asked dejectedly. "I don't even know my own heart in the matter. I'm afraid for hers."

"You're to do nothing," he said, his voice a little more calm than before. "Let it happen as planned." We walked on through the ruined neighborhood together.

At last the bent red neon sign of a barroom appeared, blinkering under the rangy branches of an ancient and dying tree. There were hand-painted words of advertisement all over the boarded-up facade, and the light inside was so feeble that scarcely anything could be seen through the dirty glass of the door.

Louis went inside and I followed him, quite amazed at the large crowd of Anglo-Saxon males that chattered and drank at the long mahogany bar, and the myriad dirty little tables. Here and there were denim-clad women, young and old, as were their gentlemen companions. A garish red light shone from covered bulbs near the ceiling. Everywhere I saw naked arms and dirty sleeveless shirts, secretive faces, and cynicism beneath a veil of smiles and flashing teeth.

Louis made his way to the corner of the room, and took the wooden chair beside a large unshaven and bushy-haired man who sat at a table alone and morosely over his stagnant bottle of beer.

I followed, my nostrils assailed by the stench of sweat and the thick cigarette smoke. The volume of the voices was harsh, and the beat of music beneath it ugly, ugly in words and rhythm, ugly in its hostile chant. I sat down opposite the same poor degenerate mortal who cast his pale failing eyes on Louis and then on me, as though he were about to have some sport.

"So what do you want, gentlemen," he said in a deep voice. His huge chest heaved under the worn shirt that covered it. He lifted his brown bottle and let the golden beer slide down his throat.

"Come on, gentlemen, tell me," he said thickly, drunkenly. "When men dressed like you come downtown, you want something. Now what is it? Am I saying that you came to the wrong place? Hell no, gentlemen. Somebody else might say so. Somebody else might say you've made a bad mistake. But I'm not saying it, gentlemen. I understand everything. I'm all ears for the both of you. Is it broads you want, or is it a little ticket to fly?" He smiled at both of us. "I've got all kinds of goodies, gentlemen. Let's pretend it's Christmas. Just tell me what's your hearts' desire." He laughed at himself proudly, then drank from his greasy brown bottle. His lips were pink, and his chin covered in a grizzled beard.

Louis stared at him without answering. I watched in fascination. Louis's face gradually lost all expression, all semblance of feeling. It might have belonged to a dead man as he sat there, as he stared at the victim, as he marked the victim, as he let the victim lose his poor desperate humanity, as the kill passed from possible to probable and finally, to a foregone conclusion.

"I want to kill you," Louis said softly. He leant forward and peered very close into the man's pale and red-rimmed gray eyes.

"To kill me?" said the man, raising one eyebrow. "You think you can do that?" he asked.

"I can do it," said Louis gently. "Just like this." He bent and sank his teeth into the man's thick unshaven neck. I saw the man's eyes brighten for one instant as he stared over Louis's shoulder, then the eyes became fixed, and very gradually they went dull.

The man's cumbersome and bulky body rested against Louis, his thick-fingered right hand quivering before it went limp beside the bottle of beer.

After a long moment, Louis drew back and helped the man to lay his head and shoulders down on the table. Lovingly, he touched the man's thick grayish hair.

On the street, Louis breathed deep of the fresh night air. His face was full of the blood of his victim, and richly colored with the tints of a human. He smiled a sad, bitter smile as he looked up, his eyes seeking the faintest stars.

"Agatha," he said softly, as if it were a prayer.

"Agatha?" I repeated. How I feared for him.

"Claudia's mother," he replied, looking at me. "She said the name once in those first few nights, exactly as Merrick put it. She recited both their names, father and mother, in the manner in which she'd been taught to tell strangers. Agatha was her mother's name."

"I see," I replied. "Merrick will be very pleased with that. It's the style of the old charms, you understand, when calling a spirit, to include its mother's name."

"Pity about that man drinking only beer," he said as we commenced our walk back to Merrick. "I could have used just a little heat in the blood, you know, but then perhaps it's better. Better to have a strong clear mind for what happens. I believe Merrick can do what I want."

19

AS WE MADE OUR WAY along the side of the house, I saw the candles burning, and when we emerged into the rear yard, I saw the great altar under the shed, with all its tall blessed saints and virgins, and indeed, the Three Magi, and the angels Michael and Gabriel with their spectacular white wings and in their colorful garb. The scent of incense was strong and delicious to my nostrils. And the trees hung low over the broad clean flagstone terrace with its uneven purple stones.

Far back from the shed, indeed, very near the closest edge of the terrace, there stood the old iron pot atop the brazier tripod, the coals beneath it already glowing. And on either side were long iron tables, rectangular in shape, on which many different objects had been laid out with obvious care.

The complexity of the whole display amazed me faintly, but then I saw, standing on the back steps of the house, only a couple of yards from the tables and the cauldron, the figure of Merrick, her face covered in the green jade mask. A shock went through my system. The eye holes and mouth opening of the mask appeared empty; only the brilliant green jade was filled with reflected light. Merrick's shadowy hair and body were scarcely visible, though I saw her hand when she lifted it and beckoned for us to come close.

"Here," she said, her voice slightly muffled by the mask as she spoke, "you will stand with me behind the cauldron and the tables. You on my right, Louis, and you on my left, David, and you must promise me now before we commence that you will make no interruption, that you will try no interference in what I mean to do." She reached out for my arm and guided me into position.

Even at this closeness, the mask was inherently frightening and appeared to float before her lost countenance, perhaps her lost soul. With an anxious and meddlesome hand I confirmed that the mask was firmly affixed to her head by strong leather thongs.

Louis had stepped behind her, and now stood over the iron table to the right of the cauldron, at her right hand, peering ahead at the glowing altar with its banks of glass-contained candles, and at the eerie but lovely faces of the saints. I took my place by her left.

"What do you mean, we're not to interrupt?" I asked, though it seemed a terrible irreverence, in the midst of this spectacle which had taken on a high beauty, what with the plaster saints, and tall dark yew trees crowding in upon us, and the low twisted black limbs of the oaks shutting out the stars above.

"Just what I told you," she said in a low voice. "You're not to stop me, whatever happens. You're to stay behind this table, both of you; you're never to move in front of it, no matter what you see or think you may see."

"I understand you," said Louis. "The name you wanted. Claudia's mother. It's Agatha. Of that I'm almost certain."

"Thank you," Merrick replied. She gestured before her. "There, on the stones," she said, "the spirits will come if they're meant to come, but you must not go to them, you must not engage in any struggle with them, you must do only as I say."

"I understand you," Louis repeated.

"David, do I have your word?" she asked calmly.

"Very well, Merrick," I said crossly.

"David, stop your interference!" she declared.

"What can I say, Merrick?" I demanded. "How can I give my inner feelings to this thing? Isn't it enough that I stand here? Isn't it enough that I do as you say?"

"David, trust in me," she said. "You came to me with the request for this magic. Now I give you what you asked for. Trust that it will be for the good of Louis. Trust that I can control what I do."

"To speak of magic," I said softly, "to read of it, and study it—all that is one matter, but to participate, to be in the presence of one who believes in it and knows it—that is quite another thing."

"Govern your heart, please, David," said Louis. "I want this more than anything I have ever wanted. Merrick, please, proceed."

"Give me your word with honesty, David," said Merrick. "You will not try to interfere with the things I will say and the things I will do."

"Very well, Merrick," I said, defeated.

Only then did I have the freedom to inspect the objects covering the two tables. There lay the poor pitiful old doll which had belonged to Claudia, limp as a tiny dead body. And the page of the diary, weighted down by the doll's round porcelain head. There was the rosary heaped beside it, and the small daguerreotype in its dark case. There was an iron knife. I also saw a gold chalice, beautifully ornamented and rimmed with inset jewels. There was a tall crystal bottle filled with what appeared to be clear yellow oil. I saw the jade perforator, a wicked and awful thing in my sight, sharp and dangerous, lying close to the cauldron. And then quite suddenly I saw what appeared to be a human skull. I was furious at this last discovery. Quickly, I considered the contents of the other table, the one before Louis, and saw there a rib bone covered with markings, and that loathsome old shriveled black hand. There were three bottles of rum. There were other items—a fine golden pitcher of honey, which I could smell in its sweetness, another silver pitcher of pure white milk, and a bronze bowl of shining salt.

As for the incense, I realized it had all been distributed and was already burning before the distant unsuspecting saints. Indeed, a great deal more of the incense, very black and only faintly aglow as its smoke rose in the darkness, had been poured out to make a great circle on the purple flagstone before us, a circle which my eyes only now observed. I wanted to demand: where did the skull come from? Had Merrick robbed some anonymous grave? A dreadful thought occurred to me and I tried to banish it. I looked at the skull again and saw it was covered with incised writing. It was lurid and awful, and the beauty embracing all of this was seductive, potent, and obscene. Instead I spoke only of the circle.

"They will appear in it," I murmured, "and you think the incense will contain them."

"If I must, I will tell them that the incense contains them," she said coldly. "Now, you must govern your tongue if you can't govern your heart. Offer no prayers as you watch this. I am ready for this to begin."

"What if there isn't enough incense!" I demanded in a whisper.

"There is plenty of it to burn for hours. Look at the small cones with your clever vampire eyes, and don't ask me such a foolish question again."

I resigned myself. I couldn't stop this. And only now did I feel in my resignation a certain attraction to the entire process as she made to begin.

From beneath the table, she lifted a small bundle of twigs and fed these quickly to the coals in the brazier beneath the iron pot.

"Make this fire hot for our purposes," she whispered. "May all the saints and angels witness, may the glorious Virgin Mary witness, make this fire burn for us."

"Such names, such words," I murmured before I could stop myself "Merrick, you play with the strongest powers known to us."

But on she went, poking at the fire until its flames licked the sides of the cauldron. Then she lifted the first bottle of rum, uncapped it, and emptied its acrid contents into the pot. Quickly, she took up the crystal bottle and poured out the pure, fragrant oil.

"Papa Legba!" she called out as the smoke rose before her. "I can begin nothing without your intercession. Look here at your servant Merrick, listen to her voice as she calls you, unlock the doors to the world of the mysteries, that Merrick may have what she desires."

The dark perfume of the heated concoction overcame me as it rose from the iron pot. I felt as if I ought to be drunk, when I wasn't, and it seemed my balance had been affected, though why I couldn't know.

"Papa Legba," she cried. "Open the way."

My eyes shot to the distant statue of St. Peter, and only then did I realize he stood in the center of the altar, a fine effigy of wood, his glass eyes glaring back at her, his dark hand wrapped about its golden keys. It seemed to me that the air changed suddenly about us, but I told myself it was only my raw nerves. Vampire or human, I was susceptible to the tiniest suggestion. Yet the yews began ever so slightly to sway on the outskirts of the garden, and there came through the trees above a soft wind that sent the leaves down all around us, tiny and light, without a sound.

"Open the gates, Papa Legba," she called out, as her deft hands emptied the second bottle of rum into the cauldron. "Let the saints in Heaven hear me, let the Virgin Mary hear me, let the angels be unable to turn away their ears." Her voice was low yet full of certainty.

"Hear me, St. Peter," she declared, "or I shall pray to Him who gave His Only Divine Son for our Salvation that He turns His back on you in Heaven. I am Merrick. I cannot be denied!"

I heard Louis give out a faint gasp.

"Now, you angels, Michael and Gabriel," she said, her voice rising with increasing authority, "I command you, open the way to the eternal darkness, to the very souls whom you yourself may have driven out of Heaven; put your flaming swords to my purpose. I am Merrick. I command you. I cannot be denied. I will call upon all the Celestial hosts to turn their backs on you should you hesitate. I will call upon God The Father to condemn you, I will condemn you, I will loathe you, should you not listen; I am Merrick, I cannot be denied."

There was a low rumbling from the statues in the shed, a sound very like the earth makes when it's shifting—a sound which no one can imitate, but which anyone can hear.

Again came the sound of the rum pouring, from the third bottle.

"Drink from my cauldron, all you angels and saints," said Merrick, "and allow that my words and my sacrifice rise to Heaven. Hear my voice."

I strained in my focus upon the statues. Was I losing my mind? They appeared animate and the smoke rising from the incense and candles seemed thicker. Indeed the whole spectacle intensified, colors becoming richer, and the distance between the saints and us smaller, though we had not moved.

Merrick lifted the perforator with her left hand. Instantly, she cut the inside of her right arm. The blood poured down into the cauldron. Her voice rose above it:

"You Watcher Angels, the first to teach mankind magic, I call upon you now for my purpose, or those spirits that answer to your name.

"Ham, you son of Noah and pupil of the Watchers, I call upon you now for my purpose, or that powerful spirit which answers to your name.

"Mestran, son of Ham, who passed on the secrets of magic to his children and others, I call upon you now for my purpose, or that powerful spirit which answers to your name."

Again she slashed herself with the knife, the blood sliding down her bare arm and into the cauldron. Again there came that sound, as if from the earth beneath us, a low rumbling that mortal ears perhaps would disregard. I looked helplessly to my feet and to the statues. I saw the faint shiver of the entire altar.

"I give you my own blood as I call you," Merrick said. "Listen to my words, I am Merrick, daughter of Cold Sandra, I cannot be denied.

"Nebrod, son of Mestran, and powerful teacher of magic to those who came after him, bearer of the wisdom of the Watchers, I call upon you for my purpose, or upon that powerful spirit which answers to your name.

"Zoroaster, great teacher and magician, who passed on the mighty secrets of the Watchers, who brought down to himself from the very stars the fire which destroyed his earthly body, I call on you, or that spirit which answers to your name.

"Listen to me, all you who have gone before me, I am Merrick, daughter of Cold Sandra, I cannot be denied.

"I shall cause the Host of Heaven to declare you anathema should you attempt to resist my powers. I shall withdraw my faith and withdraw my blandishments should you not grant the wish that comes from my tongue. I am Merrick, daughter of Cold Sandra; you will bring to me those spirits whom I call."

Again the perforator was lifted. She cut her own flesh. A long gleaming seam of blood flowed into the aromatic brew. The scent of it inflamed me. The smoke from the mixture stung my eyes.

"Yes, I command you," she said, "all of you, most powerful and illustrious ones, I command you that I may achieve what I say, that I may bring forth out of the whirlwind those lost souls who will find Claudia, daughter of Agatha, Yield up to me those Purgatorial souls who will, in exchange for my prayers, bring forth the spirit of Claudia. Do as I command!"

The iron altar before me was shivering. I could see the skull moving with the altar. I could not discount what I saw. I could not challenge what I heard, the low rumbling of the ground beneath me. Tiny leaves came down in a swirl, like ashes before us. The giant yew trees had begun to sway as if in the early breezes of an approaching storm. I tried to see Louis, but Merrick stood between us. Her voice came unceasingly:

"All you powerful ones, command Honey in the Sunshine, restless spirit of my sister, daughter of Cold Sandra, that she bring Claudia, daughter of Agatha, out of the whirlwind. Honey in the Sunshine, I command you. I will turn all Heaven against you if you do not obey me. I will heap infamy upon your name. I am Merrick. I will not be denied." Even as the blood flowed down over her right hand, she reached with it for the skull beside the smoking cauldron and lifted it up.

"Honey in the Sunshine, I have here your very skull from the grave in which you were buried, and all your names are written upon it in my hand. Honey Isabella, daughter of Cold Sandra, you cannot deny me. I call you and command you to bring Claudia, daughter of Agatha, here now, to answer to me."

It was exactly as I'd suspected. She had done the awful deed of violating Honey's poor pathetic remains. How vicious and how dreadful, and for how long had she kept this secret, that she possessed the skull of her own sister, her own blood kin.

I was revolted yet magnetized. The smoke from the candles grew dense before the statues. It seemed their faces were full of movement, their eyes sweeping the scene before them. Even their drapery appeared alive. The incense burnt bright in the circle on the flagstones, fanned by the breeze that steadily increased.

Merrick laid aside the cursed skull and the perforator.

From the table she lifted the gold pitcher of honey, and poured it into the jeweled chalice. This she lifted with her bloody right hand as she went on:

"Ah, yes, all you lonely spirits, and you, Honey, and you, Claudia, smell this sweet offering—Honey, the very substance after which you in your beauty were named." Into the cauldron she poured the thick sparkling liquid. Then she lifted the pitcher of milk. Into the chalice it went, and then she lifted the chalice, gathering up the deadly perforator again in her left hand.

"And this, too, I offer you, so delicious to your desperate senses, come here and breathe this sacrifice, drink of this milk and honey, drink it from the smoke that rises from my cauldron. Here, it comes to you through this chalice which once contained The Blood of Our Lord. Here, partake of it. Do not refuse me. I am Merrick, daughter of Cold Sandra. Come, Honey, I command you, and bring Claudia to me. I will not be denied."

A loud breath came from Louis.

In the circle before the statues, something amorphous and dark had taken shape. I felt my heart skipping as my eyes strained to make it out. It was the form of Honey, it was the very figure which I had seen many years before. It flickered and wavered in the heat as Merrick chanted:

"Come, Honey, come closer, come in answer to me. Where is Claudia, daughter of Agatha? Bring her here to Louis de Pointe du Lac, I command you. I cannot be denied."

The figure was almost solid! I saw the familiar yellow hair, the candlelight behind it rendering it transparent, the white dress more spectral than the solid outline of the body itself. I was too stunned to utter the prayers that Merrick had forbidden. The words never formed on my lips.

Suddenly Merrick laid down the skull. She turned and caught Louis's left arm with her bloodstained hand. I saw his white wrist above the cauldron. With a swift movement, she slashed at his wrist. I heard him gasp again, and I saw the glittering vampiric blood gushing from the veins into the rising smoke. Again she gashed the white flesh and again the blood flowed, thickly, freely, and more abundantly than her own blood before. In no way did Louis resist her. Mute, he stared at the figure of Honey.

"Honey, my beloved sister," said Merrick, "bring Claudia. Bring Claudia to Louis de Pointe du Lac. I am Merrick, your sister. I command you. Honey, show your power!" Her voice became low, crooning. "Honey, show your immense strength! Bring Claudia here now."

Again, she cut the wrist, for the preternatural flesh was healing just as soon as she opened it, and she again made the blood flow.

"Savor this blood which is shed for you, Claudia. I call your name and your name only now, Claudia. I would have you here!" Once more the wound was opened.

But now she gave over the perforator to Louis, and she lifted the doll in both her hands. I glanced from Merrick to the solid image of Honey, so dark, so distant, so seemingly without human movement.

"Your possessions, my sweet Claudia," Merrick called out, snatching up a twig from the fire and lighting the clothes of the unfortunate doll, which all but exploded in a draught of flames. The little face turned black in the blaze. Still Merrick held it with both hands.

The figure of Honey suddenly began to dissolve.

Into the cauldron Merrick dropped the burning object, and then lifted the page of the diary, as she continued to speak.

"Your words, my sweet Claudia, accept this offering, accept this acknowledgment, accept this devotion." She dipped the page into the fire of the brazier, then held it aloft as it was consumed.

The ashes fell into the cauldron. She took up the perforator once again.

The form of Honey lingered only in shape and then appeared to be blown away by the natural breeze. Again the candles blazed violently before the statues.

"Claudia, daughter of Agatha," said Merrick, "I command you, come forward, become material, answer me from the whirlwind, answer your servant Merrick—all you angels and saints, and Blessed Mother Ever Virgin compel Claudia, compel her to answer my command."

I couldn't take my eyes off the smoky darkness. Honey was gone but something else had taken her place. The very gloom seemed to shape itself into a smaller figure, indistinct but gathering strength as it appeared to extend its small arms and move towards the table behind which we stood. It was above the ground, this small being, the sudden glint of its eye on our level and its feet walking on nothing as it proceeded towards us, its hands becoming clearly visible, as well as its shining golden hair.

It was Claudia, it was the child of the daguerreotype, it was whitefaced and delicate, its eyes wide and brilliant, its skin luminous, its loose and flowing white garments soft and ruffled by the wind.

I stepped backwards. I couldn't stop myself, but the figure had stopped; it remained suspended above the ground and its pale arms relaxed and fell naturally at its sides. It was as solid in the dim light as Honey had been so many years before. Its small stunning features were filled with a look of love and quickening sensibility. It was a child, a living child. It was undeniable. It was there.

A voice came out of it, fresh and sweet, a girl's natural treble:

"Why have you called me, Louis?" it asked with heartbreaking sincerity. "Why have you roused me from my wandering sleep for your own consolation? Why wasn't memory enough?"

I was weak almost to fainting.

The child's eyes flashed suddenly on Merrick. The voice came again with its tender clarity:

"Stop now with your chants and commands. I do not answer to you, Merrick Mayfair. I come for the one who stands to the right of you. I come demanding why you've called me, Louis; what is it that you would have me give you now? In life did I not give you all my love?"

"Claudia," Louis murmured in a tortured voice. "Where is your spirit? Is it at rest or does it wander? Would you have me come to you? Claudia, I'm ready to do it. Claudia I'm ready to be at your side."

"You? Come to me?" the child asked. The little voice had taken on a dark deliberate coloration. "You, after all those many years of evil tutelage, you think that I in death would be united with you?" The voice went on, its timbre sweet as if saying words of love. "I loathe you, evil Father," it confided. A dark laughter came from the small lips.

"Father, understand me," she whispered, her face infected with the tenderest expression. "I never could find words to tell you truths when I was living." There was the sound of breath, and a visible despair seemed to wrap itself about the creature. "In this measureless place I have no use for such curses," said the voice, with touching simplicity. "What is it to me, the love you lavished on me once in a vibrant and feverish world?"

On she went as if consoling him.

"You want vows from me," she said with seeming wonder, her whisper growing softer. "And from the coldest heart imaginable I condemn you—condemn you that you took my life—" the voice was fatigued, defeated "—condemn you that you had no charity for the mortal I once was, condemn you that you saw in me only what filled your eyes and insatiable veins ... condemn you that you brought me over into the lively Hell which you and Lestat so richly shared." The small solid figure moved closer, the luminous face of plump cheeks and lustrous eyes now directly before the cauldron, the tiny hands curled but not raised. I lifted my hand. I wanted to touch this shape, so vivid was it. Yet I wanted to back away from it, shield myself somehow from it, shield Louis, as if such a thing could be done.

"Take your life, yes," she said with her relentless tenderness, her eyes large and wondering—"give it up in memory of me, yes, I would have you do it, I would have you give over to me your last breath. Do it with pain for me, Louis, do it with pain that I may see your spirit through the whirlwind, struggling to free itself from your tormented flesh." Louis reached out for her, but Merrick caught his wrist and pushed him back.

The child continued, her words unhurried, her tone solicitous as she went on:

"Oh, how it will warm my soul to see you suffer, oh, how it will speed me on my endless wanderings. Never would I linger to be with you here. Never would I wish for it. Never would I seek you out in the abyss." Her face was stamped with the purest curiosity as she looked at him. There was nothing of visible hatred in her expression at all.

"Such pride,'' she whispered, smiling, "that you would call me out of your habitual misery. Such pride that you would bring me here to answer your common prayers." There came a small chilling laughter.

"How immense is your self-pity," she said, "that you don't fear me, when I—had I the power from this witch or any other—would take your life with my own hands." She lifted her little hands to her face as if she would weep in them, and then let them drop to her sides again.

"Die for me, my doting one," she said tremulously. "I think I shall like it. I shall like it as much as I liked the sufferings of Lestat, which I can scarce remember. I think, yes, that I might know pleasure once again, briefly, in your pain. Now, if you are done with me, done with my toys and your memories, release me that I may return to forgetfulness. I cannot recall the terms of my perdition. I fear I understand eternity. Let me go."

All at once, she moved forward, her small right hand snatching up the jade perforator from the iron table, and with a great lunge, she flew at Louis, thrusting the perforator into his chest.

He fell forward over the makeshift altar, his right hand clutching at the wound in which she ground the jade pick, the cauldron spilling over onto the stones beneath her, Merrick backing up in seeming horror, and I unable to move. The blood gushed out of Louis's heart. His face was knotted, his mouth open, his eyes shut.

"Forgive me," he whispered. He gave a soft groan of pure and terrible pain.

"Go back to Hell!" cried Merrick, suddenly. She ran at the floating image, arms out to reach over the cauldron, but the child withdrew with the ease of vapor, and, still clutching the jade pick, she lifted her right hand and knocked Merrick back with it, the frigid little face all the while quite still.

Merrick stumbled on the back steps of the house. I caught her arm and lifted her back on her feet. Again, the child turned to Louis as she held the dangerous pick in both her small hands. Down the front of her sheer white dress was the dark stain from the boiling fluids of the cauldron. It meant nothing to her. The cauldron, on its side, poured forth its contents onto the stones.

"Did you think I wasn't suffering, Father?" she asked softly in the same small girlish voice. "Did you think that death had freed me from all my pain?" Her small finger touched the point of the jade instrument. "That's what you thought, wasn't it, Father," she spoke slowly, "and that, if this woman did your will, you'd take away some precious consolation from my very lips. You believed that God would give you that, didn't you? It seemed so very right for you after all your penitential years."

Louis still held his wound, though his flesh was healing and the blood oozed more slowly out of his splayed hand.

"The gates can't be locked to you, Claudia," he said, the tears rising in his eyes. His voice was strong and sure. "That would be too monstrous a cruelty—."

"To whom, Father?" she answered, cutting off his words. "Too monstrous a cruelty to you? I suffer, Father, I suffer and I wander; I know nothing, and all I once knew seems illusory! I have nothing, Father. My senses are not even a memory. I have nothing here at all."

The voice grew weaker, yet it was clearly audible. Her exquisite face was infused with a look of discovery.

"Did you think I'd tell you nursery stories about Lestat's angels?" she asked with a low kindly tone. "Did you think I'd paint a picture of the glassy heavens with palaces and mansions? Did you think I'd sing to you some song learnt from the Morning Stars? No, Father, you will not draw such ethereal comfort from me."

On went her subdued voice:

"And when you come following me I shall be lost again, Father. How can I promise that I shall be there to witness your cries or tears?"

The image had begun to waver. Her large dark eyes fixed upon Merrick, and then on me. Back to Louis she looked. She was fading. The perforator fell from her white hand and struck the stones, breaking in two.

"Come, Louis," she said faintly, the sound of her invitation mingling with the softly stirring trees, "come into this dreary place with me, and leave behind your comforts—leave behind your wealth, your dreams, your blood-soaked pleasures. Leave behind your ever hungry eyes. Leave it all, my beloved, leave it for this dim and insubstantial realm." The figure was rigid and flat, the light barely shining upon its uncertain contours. I could scarcely see the small mouth as it smiled.

"Claudia, please, I beg you," said Louis. "Merrick, don't let her go into uncertain darkness. Merrick, guide her!" But Merrick did not move.

Louis turned frantically from Merrick to the fading image.

"Claudia!" he cried out. With all his soul he wanted to say more, but there was no conviction in him. All was despair. I could feel it. I could read it on his stricken face.

Merrick stood back, staring through the gleaming jade mask, her left hand poised in the air as if to fend off the ghost if it should strike again.

"Come to me, Father," said the child, the voice toneless now, devoid of feeling. The image was transparent, dim. The outline of the small face slowly evaporated. Only the eyes held their luster.

"Come to me," she whispered, her voice dry and thin. "Come, do it with deep pain, as your offering. You'll never find me. Come."

Only a dark shape remained for a few moments, and then the space was empty, and the yard with its shrine and with its tall forbidding trees was still.

I could see no more of her. The candles, what had happened to them? They had all gone out. The burning incense was so much soot on the flagstones. The breeze had scattered it. A great shower of tiny leaves came down languidly from the branches, and the air was full of a subtle yet biting cold.

Only the distant gleam of the heavens gave us illumination. The dreadful chill lingered around us. It penetrated my clothes and settled on my skin.

Louis peered into the darkness with a look of inexpressible grief He began to shiver. The tears didn't flow; they merely stood in his uncomprehending eyes.

Suddenly Merrick ripped off the jade mask and overturned both tables, and the brazier, the contents smashing onto the flags. The mask she cast into the shrubbery by the rear steps.

I stared in horror at the skull of Honey lying in the heap of cast-off instruments. Bitter smoke rose from the wet coals. The burnt remnants of the doll were visible in the flowing liquid. The jeweled chalice rolled on its golden rim. Merrick took hold of Louis by both arms.

"Come inside," she said, "come out of this awful place now. Come inside with me, where we can light the lamps. Come inside where we'll be safe and warm."

"No, not now, my dear," he answered. "I must leave you. Oh, I promise, I'll see you again. Let me alone for now. Take whatever promises I must give you, to quiet you. Take whatever thanks I can express from my heart. But let me go." He bent down and retrieved the little picture of Claudia from the wreckage of the altar. Then off he went down the shadowy alley, pushing the young banana leaves out of his path, his steps growing ever faster, until he was gone altogether, vanished on his own path in the familiar and unchanging night.

20

I LEFT HER CURLED UP on Great Nananne's bed in the front room.

I went back into the garden, picked up the broken pieces of the jade perforator, and found the mask broken in half. How brittle was this strong jade. How bad had been my intentions, how evil the result. These things I brought with me into the house. I could not bring myself to lay my superstitious hands upon the skull of Honey in the Sunshine.

I put the collection of jade remnants on the bedroom altar, amid the glass-covered candles, and then I settled next to her, sitting beside her, and I put my arm around her.

She turned and laid her head on my shoulder. Her skin felt feverish and sweet. I wanted to cover her in kisses, but I couldn't give in to this impulse, anymore than I could give in to the darker impulse to bring through the blood the rhythm of her heart in time with my own.

There was dried blood all over her white silk dress, and on the inside of her right arm.

"I should never have done it, never," she said in a hushed and anxious voice, her breasts yielding softly against me. "It was madness. I knew what would happen. I knew his brain would be fodder for disaster. I knew it. And now he's lost; he's wounded and lost to us both."

I lifted her so that I could look into her eyes. As always their brilliant green color startled me, and enthralled me, but I couldn't concern myself with her charms now.

"But you do believe that it was Claudia?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," she said. Her eyes were still red around the edges from her crying. I saw the tears standing there. "It was Claudia," she declared. "Or that thing which now calls itself Claudia, but the words it spoke? They were lies."

"How can you know that?"

"The same way I know when a human being is lying to me. The same way I know when someone's read another one's mind and is preying upon that other's weakness. The spirit was hostile, once called into our realm. The spirit was confused. The spirit told lies."

"I didn't feel it was lying," I argued.

"Don't you see," she said, "it took Louis's very, very worst fears and morbid thoughts for its matter. His mind was full of the verbal instruments by which he could bring about his own despair. He's found his conviction. And whatever he is—

wonder, horror, damnable monster—he's lost now. Lost to us both."

"Why couldn't it have been speaking pure truth?" I asked.

"No spirit speaks pure truth," she insisted. She wiped at her reddened eyes with the back of her hand. I gave her my linen handkerchief. She pressed it to her eyes. Then she looked up at me again. "Not when it's called, it doesn't. It speaks truth only when it comes on its own."

I took this idea into my thoughts. I had heard it before. Every member of the Talamasca had heard it. Spirits who are called are treacherous. Spirits who come on their own possess some guiding will. But no spirit can in fact be trusted. It was old knowledge. It gave neither comfort nor clarity to me just now.

"Then the picture of eternity," I said, "it was false, that's what you're saying."

"Yes," she said, "that's exactly what I'm saying." She wiped her nose with the handkerchief. She began to shiver. "But he will never accept it." She shook her head. "The lies are too near to what he absolutely believes." I didn't speak. The words of the spirit were too nearly to what I actually believed as well. She rested her head on my chest again, her arm about me loosely. I held her, staring before me at the smaller altar between the front windows, staring at the patient faces of the different saints.

A quiet and dangerous mood fell over me, in which I saw rather plainly all the long years of my life. One thing remained constant during this journey, whether I was the young man in the Candomble temples of Brazil, or the vampire prowling the streets of New York in the company of Lestat. That constant thing was that, no matter what I'd said to the contrary, I suspected there was nothing beyond this earthly life.

Of course now and then I gladly "believed" otherwise. I made my case to myself with seeming miracles—spirit winds and vampiric blood flowing. But in the final analysis, I feared there was nothing, nothing perhaps but the "measureless darkness" which this phantom, this vicious and angry phantom, had described.

Yes, I'm saying that I believe we might linger. Of course. Lingering after death for some while is not beyond the realm of science to explain someday—a soul of definable substance detached from the flesh and caught in some energy field that wreaths the planet. It is not beyond imagining, no, not at all. But it doesn't mean immortality. It doesn't mean Paradise or an Inferno. It doesn't mean justice or recognition. It doesn't mean ecstasy or unending pain. As for the vampires, they were a flashy miracle, but consider how relentlessly materialistic and how very small that miracle is.

Picture the night when one of us is captured and carefully fastened to the table in the laboratory, housed perhaps in a tank of aerospace plastic, safe from the sun, day and night beneath a flickering gush of fluorescent light. There he would lie, this helpless specimen of the Nosferatu, bleeding into syringes and test tubes, as doctors gave to our longevity, our changelessness, our connection to some binding and ageless spirit—a long Latin scientific name. Amel, that ancient spirit said by the eldest of us to organize our bodies and connect them—it would one day be classified as some force quite similar to that which organizes the tiny ant in its vast and intricate colony, or the marvelous bees in their exquisite and impossibly sophisticated hive.

If I died, there might be nothing. If I died, there might be lingering. If I died, I might never even know what became of my soul. The lights around me—the warmth of which the child phantom had spoken so tauntingly—the warmth would simply go away.

I bowed my head. I pressed my left fingers hard to my temples, my right arm tightening against Merrick who seemed so precious, so frail.

My mind shot back to the dark spell and the luminous child phantom in the middle of it. It shot back to the moment when her arm was lifted, when Merrick cried out and was thrown back. It shot back to the child's wonderfully realized eyes and lips, and the low musical voice issuing from her. It shot back to the seeming validity of the vision itself. Of course, it could have been Louis's despair which fueled her fount of misery. It might well have been my own. How much did I, myself, want to believe in Lestat's articulate angels or Armand's glimpse of crystalline celestial splendor?

How much did I myself project upon the seeming void my own late and grossly lamented conscience, straining again and again to voice love for the maker of the wind, the tides, the moon, the stars?

I could not end my own earthly existence. I was as fearful as any mortal that I might be resigning forever the only magical experience that I'd been privileged to know. And that Louis might perish seemed a simple horror, rather like seeing an exotic and poisonous flower, fallen from its secretive jungle perch and crushed underfoot. Did I fear for him? I wasn't certain. I loved him, I wanted him with us now in this room. I did. But I wasn't certain that I had the moral stamina to coax him to remain in this world another twenty-four hours. I wasn't certain of anything at all. I wanted him for my companion, mirror of my emotions, witness of my aesthetic progress, yes, all those things. I wanted him to be quiet and gentle Louis, that I knew. And if he did not choose to go on with us, if he did in fact take his own life by walking into the sunlight, then it would be all the harder for me to continue, even with my fear. Merrick had begun to shake all over. Her tears were not stopping. I gave in to my desire to kiss her, to breathe in the fragrance of her warm flesh.

"There, there, my darling," I whispered.

The handkerchief clutched in her right hand was small and wet.

I lifted her as I stood up. I pulled down the heavy white chenille spread and laid her on the clean sheets. Never mind her soiled dress. She was cold and frightened. Her hair was tangled beneath her. I lifted her head and brought her hair up and over the linen. I saw her sink into the down pillows, and I kissed her eyelids to bid them to close.

"Rest now, precious darling," I said. "You only did what he asked."

"Don't leave me just now," she said in a raw voice, "except if you think you can find him. If you know where he is, then find him. Otherwise stay here with me, just for this little while."

I went down the hall in search of a bathroom and found it to the very rear of the house, a spacious and somewhat lavish arrangement with a little coal fireplace as well as a great claw-foot tub. There was the usual pile of clean white terry cloth towels one expects amid such luxury. I moistened the end of one of these and brought it back to the front room. Merrick was on her side, knees curled up, her hands clasped together. I could hear a low whispering coming from her lips.

"Here, let me wipe your face," I said. I did it without any further concessions, and then I wiped the caked blood from her inner arm. The scratches went clear from her palm to the inside of her elbow. But they were very shallow. One began to bleed a little as I cleaned it, but I pressed on it for a moment and the blood ceased to flow. I found the dry clean end of the towel, and patted Merrick's face with it, and then the wounds, which were now completely clean and healed.

"I can't remain here like this," Merrick said. Her head went from side to side. "I have to get the bones from the rear yard. It was a terrible thing to overturn the altars."

"Be quiet now," I said. "I'll bring them in."

It filled me with revulsion to do this. But I was as good as my word.

I went back to the scene of the crime. The dark rear yard seemed uncommonly still. The dead candles before the saints seemed negligent and evidence of grave sins.

Out of the detritus fallen from the iron tables, I picked up the skull of Honey in the Sunshine. I felt a sudden chill run through my hands, but I put it off to my imagination. I gathered up the rib bone, and I saw again that both of these bore all kinds of deeply incised writing. I refused to read the writing. I brought them back with me into the house and into the front room.

"Put them on the altar," she said. She sat up, pushing the heavy covers off her. I saw that she had taken off her bloodsoaked dress of white silk, and that it lay in a heap on the floor. She wore only her silk petticoat, and I could see her large pink nipples through it. There was blood on the petticoat too. Her shoulders were very straight and her breasts high set, and her arms were just rounded enough to be delicious to my sight.

I went to pick up the dress. I wanted to clean her up completely. I wanted her to be all right.

"It's monstrously unfair that you're so frightened," I said.

"No, leave the dress," she answered, reaching out for my wrist. "Let it go, and sit here, beside me. Take my hand and talk to me. The spirit's a liar, I swear it. You must believe what I say."

Once again, I sat down on the bed. I wanted to be close to her. I leant over and kissed her bowed head. I wished I couldn't see so much of her breasts, and I wondered if the younger vampires knew—those brought over early in their manhood—how such carnal details still distracted me. Of course the blood lust rose with this distraction. It was not an easy thing to love her so terribly and not taste of her soul through her blood.

"Why do I have to believe you?" I asked gently.

She dug her fingers into her hair and swept it back behind her shoulders.

"Because you must," she said urgently yet quietly. "You must see that I knew what I was doing, you must believe that I can tell a truthtelling spirit from one who lies. That was something, yes, that being which pretended to be Claudia—

something very powerful that it could lift the pick and sink it into Louis's flesh. I'll wager anything that it was a spirit who hated him due to his very nature, that he can be dead and still walk the earth. It was something deeply offended by his very existence. But it was taking its verses from his own thoughts."

"How can you be so sure?" I asked. I shrugged my shoulders. "God knows, 1 wish you were right. But you yourself called on Honey; is not Honey lost in the same realm that this spirit of Claudia described? Doesn't Honey's presence prove there's nothing better for either one of them? You saw the shape of Honey out there before the altar—." She nodded.

"—and you went on to call Claudia from the same realm."

"Honey wants to be called," she declared, looking up at me, her fingers driven into her hair, tugging it cruelly back, away from her tormented face. "Honey's always there. Honey's waiting for me. That's how I knew for certain that I could call on Honey. But what about Cold Sandra? What about Great Nananne? What about Aaron Lightner? When I opened the door none of those spirits came through. They've long since gone on into the Light, David. If they hadn't they would have long ago let me know. I would have felt them the way I feel Honey. I would have hints of them, as Jesse Reeves had of Claudia when she heard the music in the Rue Royale."

I was puzzled by this last statement. Very puzzled. I shook my head in an emphatic no.

"Merrick, you're holding back from me," I said, deciding I must address it directly. "You have called Great Nananne. You think I don't remember what happened only a few nights ago, the night we met in the café in the Rue St. Anne?"

"Yes? What about that night?" she asked. "What are you trying to say?

"Maybe you don't know what happened," I said. "Is that possible? You called down a spell and didn't know how strong it was yourself?"

"David, talk straight to me," she responded. Her eyes were clearing and she had stopped trembling. Of this I was glad.

"That night," I said, "after we met and spoke together, you put a spell on me, Merrick. On my way back to the Rue Royale, I kept seeing you everywhere; to the right of me, and to the left of me, Merrick. And then I saw Great Nananne."

"Great Nananne?" she asked in a subdued voice, but one which couldn't conceal her disbelief. "What do you mean, you saw Great Nananne?"

"When I reached the carriageway of my town house," I said, "I saw two spirits behind the iron bars—one in the image of you, a girl of ten, the way you were when I first met you, and the other, Great Nananne in her nightgown, as she was on the only day I was ever to know her, the day of her death. These two spirits stood in the carriageway and spoke together, intimately, tête a tête, their eyes fixed on me. And when I approached them, they disappeared." For a moment, she said nothing. Her eyes were narrow and her lips slightly parted, as if she was pondering this with extreme concentration.

"Great Nananne," she said again.

"Just as I've told you, Merrick," I said. "Am I to understand now that you yourself didn't call her? You know what happened next, don't you? I went back to the Windsor Court, to the suite where I'd left you. I found you dead drunk on the bed."

"Don't use such a charming expression for it," she whispered crossly. "You came back, yes, and you wrote me a note."

"But after I wrote that note, Merrick, I saw Great Nananne there in the hotel, standing in the door of your bedroom. She was challenging me, Merrick. She was challenging me by her very presence and posture. It was a dense and undeniable apparition. It endured for moments—chilling moments, Merrick. Am I to understand this wasn't part of your spell?" Merrick sat silent for a long moment, her hands still splayed in her hair. She lifted her knees and drew them close to her breasts. Her sharp gaze never left me.

"Great Nananne," she whispered. "You're telling me the truth. Of course you are. And you thought that I called my godmother? You thought I could call her and make her appear like that?"

"Merrick, I saw the statue of St. Peter. I saw my own handkerchief beneath it with the drops of blood on it. I saw the candle you'd lighted. I saw the offerings. You had cast a spell."

"Yes, my darling," she said quickly, her right hand clutching mine to quiet me. "I fixed you, yes, I put a little fixing spell on you to make you want me, to make you quite unable to think of anything else but me, to make you come back if by the slightest chance you had decided never to come to me again. Just a fixing spell, David, you know what I'm saying. I wanted to see if I could do it now that you were a vampire. And you see what happened? You didn't feel love or obsession, David, you saw images of me instead. Your strength came to the fore, David, that's all that happened. And you wrote your sharp little note to me, and when I read it, I think I might have even laughed." She broke off, deeply troubled, her eyes large as she stared in front her, perhaps into her own thoughts.

"And Great Nananne? " I pressed. "You didn't call her?"

"I can't call my godmother," she said, her tone serious, her eyes narrow as she looked at me again. "I pray to my godmother, David, don't you realize that, as I pray to Cold Sandra, as I pray to Oncle Vervain. They're no longer near us, any of them, my ancestors. I pray to them in Heaven as I would to the angels and the saints."

"I'm telling you I saw her spirit."

"And I'm telling you I've never seen it," she whispered. "I'm telling you I'd give anything I possess if only I could." She looked at my hand, the one which she held in her own, and then she pressed it warmly and she let it go. Her hands went up to her temples again and her fingers found their way again into her hair.

"Great Nananne's in the Light," she said, as though she were arguing with me, and perhaps she was. But her gaze was lost to me. "Great Nananne's in the Light, David," she said again. "I tell you I know she is." She looked up into the airy semi-darkness, and then her eyes drifted to the altar and the candles in their long flickering rows.

"I don't believe she came," she whispered. "I don't believe they're all in some 'insubstantial realm!' No, I tell you, I don't believe it," she said. She put her hands on her knees. "I don't believe anything so absolutely awful—that all the souls of the 'faithful departed' are lost in darkness. No, I can't believe such a thing."

"Very well, then," I said, wanting for the moment only to comfort her, and remembering too keenly the spirits at the gate once more, old woman and young girl. "Great Nananne came of her own accord. It's as you indicated earlier—you said that spirits only tell the truth if they come of their own accord. Great Nananne didn't want me near you, Merrick. Great Nananne has told me that. And maybe she'll come again if I don't somewhat repair the damage I've done to you, and leave you alone."

She appeared to be thinking this over.

A long interval ensued during which I watched her intently, and she gave me no clue of her feelings or her intentions, and then finally, she took my hand again. She drew it up to her lips and she kissed it. It was painfully sweet.

"David, my beloved David," she said, but her eyes were secretive. "Leave me now."

"No, I won't even think of it, until I have to do it."

"No, I want you to go," she said. "I'll be quite all right on my own."

"Call the caretaker," I said. "I want him here before I leave the property at dawn." She reached over to the night table and produced one of those small modern cellular phones that is no bigger than a man's wallet. She punched in a series of numbers. I heard the appropriate voice on the other end, "Yes, Ma'am, coming directly."

I was satisfied.

I stood up. I took several steps towards the center of the room, and then the most desolate feeling descended upon me. I turned around and looked at her as she sat there, her knees up close to her breasts, her head resting on her knees, her arms locked around her legs.

"Am I fixed now with a spell, Merrick?" I asked her, my voice even more gentle than I meant for it to be. "I don't want to leave you, my precious darling," I said. "I can't bear the thought of it, but I know that we have to part from one another, you and I. One more meeting, perhaps two. No more than two."

She looked up, startled, and her face was touched with fear.

"Bring him back to me, David," she said imploringly. "In the name of God, you have to do that. I must see Louis and talk to him again." She waited a moment, during which time I didn't answer her. "As for you and me, don't talk as if we can simply say goodbye to one another. David, I can't bear that just now. You must assure me—."

"It won't be abrupt," I said, cutting her off, "and it won't be without your knowledge. But we can't go on, Merrick. If we try to go on, you'll lose faith in yourself and everything that matters to you. Believe me, I know."

"But it never happened to you, dearest," she said, with strong confidence, as though she'd thought through this very matter. "You were happy and independent when the Vampire Lestat brought you over. You told me so. Don't you give me credit for that much, David? Each of us is different."

"Know that I love you, Merrick," I said softly.

"Don't try to say farewell, David. Come here and kiss me and come back to me tomorrow night." I went to the bed, and I took her in my arms. I kissed her on both cheeks. And then in a sinful, wretchedly strong-willed manner, I kissed her unresisting breasts, kissed both her nipples, and I drew back, full of her scent and furious with myself.

"For now, darling," I said.

And I went out and home to the Rue Royale.

21

LOUIS WAS HOME when I reached the flat. I could sense his presence even as I came up the stairs. Only a few hours remained of the night for both of us, but I was so glad to see him that I went directly into the front parlor where he stood at the window, looking out over the Rue Royale below.

The room was full of lighted lamps, and the paintings of Matisse and Monet seemed to be singing on the walls. He had taken off his bloodsoiled clothes, and wore now a simple turtleneck shirt of black cotton, and black pants. His shoes were old and tattered, but had once been very fine.

He turned as I entered the room, and I took him in my arms. With him, I could give vent to the affection I'd held so severely in check with Merrick. I held him to myself and kissed him as men might do with other men when they are alone. I kissed his dark black hair and kissed his eyes, and then I kissed his lips.

For the first time in our existence together, I felt a great outpouring of affection from him, a deep affinity, yet something else made him stiffen suddenly, against his will.

It was the pain in his chest from the wound.

"I should have come with you," I confessed. "I should never have let you go off, but I felt she needed me. And I remained with her. It was what I had to do."

"Of course, you did," he said, "and I wouldn't have allowed you to leave her. She needed you much more than I did. Never mind this wound; it's already healing. I've decades enough behind me on the Devil's Road that it will heal in a few nights."

"Not so, and you know it," I said. "Let me give you my blood, my blood's infinitely stronger. Don't turn away from me, man, listen to me. If you won't drink from me, then let me put my blood to the wound." He was deeply distressed. He sat down in a chair and put his elbows on his knees. I couldn't see his face. I took the chair nearby and I waited.

"It will heal, I told you," he said softly.

I let the matter drop. What else could I do? Yet I could see that the wound was hurting him powerfully. I could tell it by his slightest gestures—how they began in utter fluidity, and were suddenly cut short.

"And the spirit, what did you make of it, yourself?" I asked. "Let me hear it from your lips before I tell you what Merrick felt, and what I saw."

"I know what you both think," he said. He looked up finally and sat back gingerly in the chair. For the first time I saw the darkness of the blood on his shirt. The wound was wretched. I didn't like it. I didn't like seeing blood on him any more than I liked seeing it on Merrick. It struck me hard how much I loved them both.

"You both think the spirit preyed upon my fears," he said calmly. "I knew it was what you'd say even before we ever began. But you see, I remember her too vividly. I know her French, I know her cadences, I know the very rhythm of her speech. And it was Claudia, and she had come out of darkness just as she confided, she had come from a terrible place where she's not at rest."

"You know my arguments," I said, shaking my head. "What will you do now? Whatever your plan, you can't go forward without telling me what it is."

"I know, mon ami, I'm aware of that," he answered. "And you must know now I won't be with you for very long."

"Louis, I beg you—."

"David, I'm weary," he said, "and I would swap one pain for another. There was something she said, you see, which I can't forget. She asked if I would give up my comforts for her? Do you remember?"

"No, old man, you've got it wrong. She asked if you'd give up your comforts for death, but she never promised that she would be there! That's just the point. She won't be. Good Lord, how many years in the Talamasca did I study the history of apparitions and their messages, how many years did I pore over first person accounts of those who'd trafficked with ghosts and recorded their wisdom. You can choose what you will believe about the hereafter. It doesn't matter. But once you choose death, Louis, you can't choose life again. Belief ends. Don't make that choice, I implore you. Stay for me, if you won't for any other reason. Stay for me, because I need you, and stay for Lestat, because he needs you as well." Of course my words didn't surprise him. He put his left hand to his chest and pressed on the wound lightly, and a grimace, for one moment, disfigured his face.

He shook his head.

"For you and Lestat, yes, I've thought of that. And what of her? What of our lovely Merrick? What does she need from me too?"

It seemed he had a great deal more to say, but suddenly he fell silent, and his brows were knitted, and he looked young and impossibly innocent as his head quickly turned to the side.

"David, do you hear it?" he asked with mounting excitement. "David, listen!" I heard nothing but the noises of the city.

"What is it, man?" I asked.

"David, listen to it. It's all around us." He rose to his feet, his left hand still pressed to the pain he felt. "David, it's Claudia, it's the music, it's the harpsichord. I hear it all around us. David, she wants me to come. I know it." I was on my feet in a second. I took hold of him.

"You're not going to do it, friend, you can't do it without a farewell to Merrick, without a farewell to Lestat, and there are not enough hours left in this night for that."

He was gazing off, mesmerized and comforted, and his eyes were glazed and his face was softened and unchallenging.

"I know that sonata. I remember it. And yes, she loved it, she loved it because Mozart had written it when he was only a child. You can't hear, can you? But you did once, think back on it. It's so very lovely, and how fast she plays, my Claudia."

He made a dazed laugh. The tears thickened; his eyes were veiled in blood.

"I hear the birds singing. Listen. I hear them in their cage. The others—all our kind who know of her—they think of her as heartless, but she wasn't heartless. She was only aware of things which I didn't learn till so many decades had passed. She knew secrets that only suffering can teach. . . ."

His voice trailed off. He pulled back gracefully from my grasp and he walked to the center of the room. He turned about as though the music were truly surrounding him.

"Don't you see what a kindness she's done?" he whispered. "It's going on and on, David, it's getting all the more rapid. Claudia, I'm listening to you." He broke off, and turned again, his eyes moving over everything yet seeing, nothing.

"Claudia, I'll be with you very soon."

"Louis," I said, "it's almost morning. Come with me now."

He stood still with his head bowed. His hands had dropped to his sides. He seemed infinitely sad and infinitely defeated.

"Has it stopped?" I asked.

"Yes," he whispered. Slowly he looked up, lost for the moment, then getting his bearings. He looked at me. "Two nights won't matter, will it? And then I can thank Merrick. I can give her the picture. The Talamasca may want it." He gestured to the nearby table, the low oval table which stood before the couch.

I saw the daguerreotype open on the table. Claudia's image jarred me as I met its gaze. I wanted to close the little case, but never mind. I knew that I could never allow the picture to fall into the hands of the Talamasca. I could never allow such a contact, let alone the possession of such a potent object by seers as powerful as Merrick. I could never allow such evidence to remain for the Talamasca to investigate whatever we had all seen this night. But I didn't say this thing.

As for him, he stood as before, elegant in his faded black, a man dreaming, the blood dried in his eyes and giving him a dreadful look, as he stared off again, distant from my heated compassion, cutting himself off from any solace I could bring.

"You'll meet me tomorrow," I said.

He nodded. "The birds are gone now," he whispered. "I can't even hum the music inside my head." He seemed unbearably distressed.

"All is stillness in the place she described," I said rather desperately. "Think on that, Louis. And meet me tomorrow night."

"Yes, my friend, I've already promised," he said in a dazed manner.

He frowned as if trying to remember something in particular. "I have to thank Merrick, and you of course, you, old friend, who did everything that I asked."

We went out of the town house together.

He went off to the place where he lies by day, the location of which I didn't know. I had more time than he had. Like Lestat, my powerful maker, I was not hounded by the first hint of dawn to the grave. The sun would have to come over the horizon for me to feel the paralytic vampire sleep. Indeed, I had an hour or more perhaps, though the morning birds were singing in the few trees of the Quarter, and when I reached uptown the sky had turned from a deep dark blue to a faint purple twilight color, which I lingered to enjoy before I went inside the dusty building and up the stairs.

Nothing stirred in the old convent. Even the rats were gone from it. Its thick brick walls were chilly, though it was spring. My footfalls echoed as always. I allowed that. It was respectful to Lestat to allow it, to mark my coming before I entered his vast and simple domain.

The great yawning courtyard was empty. The birds sang loudly in the lush trees of Napoléon Avenue. I stopped to glance out from one of the upstairs windows. I wished I could sleep by day high in the branches of the nearby oak. What a mad thought, but perhaps somewhere, far away from all the pain we'd experienced here, there was some deep uninhabited forest where I could build a dark and thick cocoon for hiding among the branches, like an evil insect, dormant before it rises to bring death to its prey.

I thought of Merrick. I couldn't know what the coming day would be like for her. I feared for her. I despised myself. And I wanted Merrick terribly. I wanted Louis. I wanted them as my companions, and it was utterly selfish, and yet it seemed a creature could not live without the simple companionship which I had in mind. At last I went in the great white-walled chapel. All the stained-glass windows were still draped in black serge, as was required now, for Lestat could no longer easily be moved to shelter with the rising sun. No candles burnt before these random and stately saints.

I found Lestat as he always was, on his left side, a man resting, his violet eyes open, the lovely piano music pouring out of the black machine which had been set to play the small disc recording over and over without end. The usual dust had settled on Lestat's hair and shoulders. It horrified me to see the dust, even on his face. But would I disturb him if I sought to clean it away? I didn't know, and my sorrow was leaden and terrible. I sat down beside him.

I sat where he might see me. And then boldly I turned off the music. And in a hurried voice, a voice more full of agitation than ever I imagined it would be, I poured out the tale.

I told him all of it—of my love for Merrick and of her powers. I told him of Louis's request. I told him of the phantom that had come to us. I told him of Louis, listening to Claudia's music. I told him of Louis's resolve to leave us in a matter of nights.

"What can stop him now I don't know," I said. "He won't wait for you to wake, my dearest friend. He's going. And there's nothing I can do really to change his mind. I can plead that he must wait until you've recovered, but I don't think he wants to lose his nerve again. That's what it's all about, you see, his nerve. He has the nerve to end it. And that is what's been lacking for so long."

I went back over the details. I described Louis as he listened to the music that I couldn't hear. I described the seance once more. Perhaps I told things now which I'd left out before.

"Was it really Claudia?" I asked. "Who can tell us whether or not it was?" And then I leant over and I kissed Lestat and I said to him:

"I need you so much now. I need you if only to say farewell to him."

I drew back and inspected the sleeping body. There was no change in awareness or posture that I could detect.

"You woke once," I declared. "You woke when Sybelle played her music for you, but then, taking the music back with you, you returned to your selfish sleep. That's what it is, Lestat, selfish, because you've left behind those you made—

Louis and me. You've left us, and it's not fair of you to do it. You must come out of it, my beloved Master, you must rouse yourself for Louis and for me."

No change in the expression on his smooth face. His large violet eyes were too open for those of a dead man. But the body gave no other sign of life.

I leant down. I pressed my ear to his cold cheek. Though I couldn't read his thoughts as a fledging, surely I could divine something of what went on in his soul.

But nothing came to me. I turned on the music once more.

I kissed him and left him there, and went to my lair, more ready for oblivion perhaps than I had ever been before.

22

THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, I went in search of Merrick.

Her home in the derelict neighborhood was dark and uninhabited. Only the caretaker remained on the property. And it was no problem for me to climb up to the second story window over the shed to see that the old fellow was contentedly inside, drinking his beer and watching his monstrous color TV.

I was dreadfully disconcerted. I felt that Merrick had all but promised to meet me, and where else if not in the old house?

I had to find her. I searched the city for her tirelessly, using every ounce of telepathic ability which I possessed. As for Louis, he was also absent. I returned to the flat in the Rue Royale more than four times during my search for Merrick. And at no time did I find Louis or the simplest evidence that he'd been there. At last, very much against my better judgment, but desperate, I approached Oak Haven, the Motherhouse, to see if I could spy Merrick within.

The discovery took only a matter of minutes. As I stood in the thick oak forest to the far north of the building, I could see her tiny figure in the library.

Indeed Merrick sat in the very oxblood leather chair which she'd claimed for her own as a child when we first met. Nestled in the cracked old leather, she appeared to be sleeping, but as I drew closer my fine vampiric senses confirmed that she was drunk. I could make out the bottle of Flor de Caña rum beside her, and the glass. Both were empty. As for the other members, one was busy in the very same room, going over the shelves for some seemingly routine matter, and several others were at home upstairs.

I couldn't conceivably approach Merrick where she was. And I was keenly aware that Merrick might have planned this. And if she had planned it, it might have been for her own mental safety, a cause of which I highly approved. Once released from that tidy little spectacle—Merrick out cold with no regard for what the other members thought of her—I resumed my search for Louis from one end of the town to the next with no luck. The hours before dawn found me striding back and forth before the slumbering figure of Lestat in the darkened chapel, explaining to him that Merrick had delivered herself into hiding and that Louis appeared to be gone. At last I sat down on the cold marble floor, as I had done the night before.

"I'd know it, wouldn't I?" I demanded of my sleeping master. "If Louis has put an end to himself, isn't that so? I'd feel it somehow, wouldn't I? If it happened at dawn yesterday, I would have felt it before I ever closed my eyes." Lestat gave no answer and there was no promise in his posture or facial expression that he ever would. I felt as if I were speaking fervently to one of the statues of the saints.

When the second night went in exactly the same fashion, I was thoroughly unnerved. Whatever Merrick had done by day, I couldn't imagine, but once again she was drunk in the library, a slouched figure, quite alone now, in one of her splendid silk shirtwaist dresses, this one a vivid red. While I watched from a safe distance, one of the members, an old man whom I once knew and loved dearly, came into the library and covered up Merrick with a white wool blanket that looked quite soft.

I sped off lest I be detected.

As for Louis, as I prowled those portions of the city which were always his favorites, I cursed myself that I'd been so respectful of his mind that I'd never learnt to read it, so respectful of his privacy that I'd never learnt to scan for his presence; cursed myself that I'd not bound him to a strong promise to meet me in the flat in the Rue Royale at a certain time.

At last the third night came.

Having given up on Merrick to do anything but intoxicate herself thoroughly with rum in her typical fashion, I went directly to the flat in the Rue Royale with the purpose of writing a note for Louis, should it be that he was stopping in when I was not there.

I was filled with misery. It now seemed entirely possible to me that Louis no longer existed in his earthly form. It seemed entirely reasonable that he had let the morning sun cremate him precisely as he wanted, and that I was writing words in this note that would never be read.

Nevertheless, I sat down at Lestat's fancy desk in the back parlor, the desk which faces the room, and I wrote hastily.

"'You must talk with me. You must let me talk with you. It's unfair for you not to do this. I am so anxious on your behalf. Remember, L., that I did what you asked of me. I cooperated with you completely. Of course I had my motives. I'm willing to admit them candidly. I missed her. My heart was breaking for her. But you must let me know how things go with you.'"

I had scarcely finished writing the initial "D," when I looked up and saw Louis standing in the hallway door. Quite unharmed, his black curly hair combed, he stood looking at me searchingly, and I, pleasantly shocked, sat back and gave a deep sigh.

"Look at you, and here I've been racing around like a madman," I said. I surveyed his handsome gray velvet suit, and the dark-violet tie he wore with it. In amazement I noted the jeweled rings on his hands.

"Why all this unusual attention to your person?" I asked. "Talk to me, man. I'm quite ready to go out of my mind." He shook his head, and gestured quickly with his longer slender hand for me to be quiet. He sat down on the couch across the room and stared at me.

"I've never seen you so fancily dressed," I said. "You're positively dapper. What's happened?"

"I don't know what's happened," he said almost sharply. "You have to tell me." He gestured urgently. "Come here, David, take your old chair here, sit close to me."

I did as I was asked.

He wasn't only handsomely turned out, he wore a faint masculine perfume.

His eyes flashed on me with a nervous energy.

"I can't think of anything but her, David. I tell you, it's as if I never loved Claudia," he confessed, his voice breaking. "I mean it, it's as if I never knew love or grief before I met Merrick. It's as if I'm Merrick's slave. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, I think of Merrick," he declared. "When I feed, the victim turns to Merrick in my very arms. Hush, don't say anything till I'm finished. I think of Merrick when I lie in my coffin before the coming sunlight. I think of Merrick when I wake up. I must go to Merrick, and as soon as I've fed, I go to where I can see her, David, yes, near the Motherhouse, the place you long ago forbade us ever to trouble. I go there. I was there last night when you came to spy on her. I saw you. The night before, I was there as well. I live for her, and the sight of her through those long windows only inflames me, David. I want her. If she doesn't come out of that place soon, I tell you, whether I mean to or not, I'm going in after her, though what I want of her, except to be with her, I swear to you, I can't say."

"Stop it, Louis, let me explain what's happened—."

"How the hell can you explain such a thing? Let me pour it out, man," he said. "Let me confess that it all began when I laid eyes on her. You knew it. You saw it. You tried to warn me. But I had no idea that the feelings would become so very intense. I was certain I could control them. Good Lord, how many mortals have I resisted over these two centuries, how many times have I turned my back on some random soul who drew me so painfully that I had to weep?"

"Stop it, Louis, listen to me."

"I won't hurt her, David," he said, "I swear it. I don't want to hurt her. I can't bear the thought of feeding from her as I once did from Claudia, oh, that awful awful mistake, the making of Claudia. I won't hurt her, I swear it, but I must see her, I must be with her, I must hear her voice. David, can you get her out of Oak Haven? Can you make her meet with me?

Can you make her stop her love affair with her rum and come to her old house? You must be able to do it. I tell you, I'm losing my mind."

He had scarcely paused when I broke in and would not be silenced.

"She's fixed you, Louis!" I declared. "It's a spell. Now, you must be quiet and listen to me. I know her tricks. And I know magic. And hers is a magic as old as Egypt, as old as Rome and Greece. She's fixed you, man, made you fall in love with her through witchcraft. Damn, I should have never let her keep that bloodstained dress. No wonder she wouldn't let me touch it. It had your blood on it. Oh, what a fool I was not to see what she was doing. We even talked of such charms together. Oh, she is beyond all patience. I let her keep that bloodstained silk dress, and she's used it to make an age-old charm."

"No, that's not possible," he said caustically. "I simply won't accept it. I love her, David. You force me to use the words that will hurt you most of all. I love her, and I want her; I want her company, I want the wisdom and the kindness that I saw in her. It's no spell."

"It is, man, believe me," I said. "I know her and I know magic. She used your blood to do it. Don't you see, this woman not only believes in magic, she understands it. Perhaps a million mortal magicians have lived and died during the past millennia, but how many of them were the genuine article? She knows what she's doing! Your blood was in the weave of her own garment. She's cast a spell on you that I don't know how to break!"

He was silent but not for very long.

"I don't believe you," he said. "No, it can't be true. I feel this too completely."

"Think back, Louis, on what I told you of her, of the visions of her I had after our first contact only a few nights ago. You remember, I told you I saw her everywhere—."

"This is not the same. I'm speaking of my heart, David—."

"It is the same, man," I insisted. "I saw her everywhere, and after we saw the vision of Claudia, Merrick admitted to me that those visions of her were part of a spell. I told you all this, Louis. I told you about her little altar in the hotel room, the way she'd gotten my handkerchief with my blood on it from the sweat of my brow. Louis, pay attention."

"You're vilifying her," he said as gently as he could, "and I won't have it. I don't see her in that manner. I think of her and want her. I want the woman I saw in that room. What will you tell me next? That Merrick wasn't beautiful? That Merrick wasn't filled with innate sweetness? That Merrick wasn't the one mortal in thousands whom I might come to love?"

"Louis, do you trust yourself in her presence?" I demanded.

"Yes, I trust myself," he answered righteously. "You think I would harm her?"

"I think you have learnt the meaning of the word 'desire.'"

"The desire is to be in her company, David. It's to be close to her. It's to talk with her about what I saw. It's . . ." His voice trailed off. He shut his eyes tight for a moment. "It's unbearable, this need of her, this longing for her. And she hides in that huge house in the country, and I can't be near to her without hurting the Talamasca, without rupturing the delicate privacy on which our very existence depends."

"Thank God you have that much sense," I said forcefully. "I tell you it is a spell, and if you trust yourself with her, then as soon as she leaves that house, we'll go together and ask her! We'll demand the truth from her. Demand from her whether or not this is nothing but a spell."

"Nothing," he repeated the word contemptuously, "nothing, you say, nothing but a spell? " He peered into my eyes accusingly. Never had I seen him so hostile. In fact, never had I seen him hostile at all. "You don't want me to love her, do you? It's just as simple as all that."

"No, it isn't, truly it isn't. But say for instance that you're right, that there is no spell, and only your heart's speaking to you; do I want this love of her to increase in you? No, definitely not. We made a vow, you and I, that this woman wouldn't be hurt by us, that we wouldn't destroy her fragile mortal world with our desires! Keep to that vow if you love her so damned much, Louis. That's what loving her means, you realize. It means leaving her completely alone."

"I can't do it," he whispered. He shook his head. "She deserves to know what my heart is telling me. She deserves that truth. Nothing will ever come of it, nothing can, but she ought to know it. She ought to know that I'm devoted to her, that she's supplanted a grief in me which could have destroyed me, which may destroy me still."

"This is intolerable," I said. I was so angry with Merrick. "I propose we approach Oak Haven. But you must allow me to direct what we do there. If I can, I'll draw close to the window, and I'll try to wake her. It's possible, in the small hours, that she'll be alone on the main floor. I might possibly be able to go inside. Nights ago I would have considered such an act unconscionable. But remember, you must leave such a gesture to me."

He nodded. "I want to be near her. But I must feed first. I can't be thirsting when I see her. That would be foolish. Come with me to hunt. And then, after midnight, well after midnight, we'll approach." It didn't take us long to find our victims.

It was the hour of two a.m. when we drew close to Oak Haven, and, as I'd hoped, the house was darkened throughout. No one remained awake. It took me only a few moments to survey the library.

Merrick wasn't there. Her rum and her glass weren't there, either. And when I went along the upper galleries, as quietly as I could, I did not find her in her room.

I came back to Louis in the thick of the oaks, as he waited.

"She's not at Oak Haven. I feel we've miscalculated. She must be at her home in New Orleans. She's probably there waiting, waiting for her little spell to do its work."

"You can't go on despising her for all this," Louis said angrily. "David, for the love of Heaven, allow me to go to her alone."

"Not a chance of it," I answered.

We proceeded towards the city.

"You can't approach her with this contempt for her," said Louis. "Let me talk to her. You can't prevent it. You have no right."

"I will be there when you talk to her," I said coldly. And I meant to keep my word. When we reached the old house in New Orleans, I knew immediately that Merrick was at home. Bidding Louis to wait, I went around the property, as I had several nights ago, made certain the caretaker had been sent off, and indeed, he had been, and then I returned to Louis, and I said we could approach the door. As for Merrick, I knew she was in the front bedroom. The parlor didn't mean much to her. It was Great Nananne's room that she loved.

"I want to go alone," said Louis. "You can wait here, if you wish." He was on the porch before I'd moved, but I quickly caught up with him. He opened the unlocked front door, its leaded glass glinting in the light.

Once inside he went into the large front bedroom. I was just behind him.

I saw Merrick, as lovely as ever in a dress of red silk, rise from her rocking chair and fly into his arms. Every particle of my being was on alert for danger, and my heart was breaking in two. The room was dreamy and sweet with its vigilant candles.

And they loved each other, this pair of beings, Louis and Merrick, there was no denying it. I watched silently as Louis kissed Merrick repeatedly, as he ran his long white fingers through her hair. I watched as he kissed her long throat. He drew back and he let out a long sigh.

"A spell, is it?" he asked her, but the question was really meant for me. "That I can think of nothing but you, no matter where I go, or what I do? That in each victim I take, I find you? Oh, yes, think on it, Merrick, think on what I do to survive, don't please live in dreams. Think of the awful price of this power. Think of the Purgatory in which I live."

"Am I with you in that Purgatory?" asked Merrick. "Do I give you some consolation in the very midst of the fire? My days and nights without you have been Purgatory. I understand your suffering. I did before we ever looked into each other's eyes."

"Tell him the truth, Merrick," I said. I stood apart from them, near the door. "Speak true words, Merrick. He'll know if you're lying. Is this a spell you've put over him? Don't lie to me, either, Merrick." She broke away from him for the moment. She looked at me.

"What did I give you with my spell, David?" she said. "What was it but random visions? Did you feel desire?" She looked again at Louis. "What do you want from me, Louis? To hear that my soul is your slave as surely as your soul is mine? If that's a spell, we've fixed each other with it, Louis. David knows I speak the truth." Try as I might, I could find no lie in her. What I found were secrets, and I couldn't crack them open. Her thoughts were too well guarded.

"You play a game," I said. "What is it you want?"

"No, David, you mustn't speak to her in that manner," said Louis, "I won't tolerate it. Go now and let me talk to her. She's safer with me than Claudia ever was or any mortal I've ever touched. Go now, David. Let me alone with her. Or I swear, man, it will be a battle between you and me."

"David, please," said Merrick. "Let me have these few hours with him; then the rest will be as you wish. I want him here with me. I want to talk to him. I want to tell him that the spirit was a liar. I need to do that slowly, I need an atmosphere of intimacy and trust."

She came towards me, the red silk rustling as she walked. I caught her perfume. She put her arms around me and I felt the warmth of her naked breasts beneath the thin cloth.

"Go now, David, please," she said, her voice full of gentle emotion, her face compassionate as she looked into my eyes. Never in all my years of knowing her, wanting her, missing her—had anything hurt so much as this simple request.

"Go." I repeated the word in a small voice. "Leave you both together? Go?" I looked into her eyes for a long moment. How she seemed to suffer, how she seemed to implore me. And then I turned to Louis, who watched with an innocent anxious expression, as if his fate was in my hands.

"Harm her and I swear to you," I said, "your wish for death will be granted." My voice was low and too full of malice.

"I tell you I'm strong enough to destroy you in precisely the way you fear." I saw the terrible dismay in his expression.

"It will be by fire," I said, "and it will be slowly, if you harm her." I paused. Then: "I give you my word." I saw him swallow hard and then he nodded. It seemed there was much he wanted to say to me, and his eyes were sad and eloquent of a deeper pain. At last he murmured in answer:

"Trust me, my brother. You needn't make such terrible threats to one you cherish, and I needn't hear them, not when both of us love this mortal woman so very much."

I turned to her. Her eyes were on Louis. She was as distant from me in these moments as she had ever been. I kissed her tenderly. She scarcely looked at me, returning my kisses as if she must remind herself to do it, as smitten with Louis as he was with her.

"Goodbye for now, my precious," I whispered, and I went out of the house. For one moment, I considered remaining, concealed in the shrubbery, spying upon both of them as they talked to each other inside the front room. It seemed the wise thing to do, to remain nearby, for her protection; and it seemed the very thing she would hate.

She would know I was there more surely than Louis could ever know it—know as she had known that night when I came to her window at Oak Haven, know with a witch's sensibility that was stronger than his vampiric powers, know and condemn me utterly for what I tried to do.

When I thought of the possibility of her coming out to accuse me, when I thought of the humiliation I might risk with such a choice, I left the house behind me and walked fast, and alone, uptown.

Once again, in the desolate chapel of St. Elizabeth's Orphanage, Lestat was my confidant. And once again, I was certain that no spirit occupied his body. To my woes he gave no ear. I only prayed that Merrick would be safe, that Louis would not risk my rage, and that some night Lestat's soul would return to his body, because I needed him. I needed him desperately. I felt alone with all my years and all my lessons, with all my experiences and all my pain.

The sky was growing dangerously light when I left Lestat and made my way to the secret place, below an abandoned building where I kept the iron coffin in which I lie.

This is no unusual configuration among our kind—the sad old building, my title to it, or the cellar room cut off from the world above by iron doors no mortal could independently seek to lift.

I had lain down in the frigid darkness, the cover of the casket in its place, when I was suddenly overcome with the strangest panic. It was as if someone were speaking to me, demanding that I listen, seeking to tell me that I had made a dreadful error, and that I would pay for it with my conscience; that I had done a foolish and vain thing. It was too late for me to respond to this lively mixture of emotion. The morning crept over me, stealing all warmth and life from me. And the last thought I remember was that I had left the two of them alone out of vanity, because they had excluded me. I had behaved like a schoolboy out of vanity, and I would pay as the result. Inevitably the sunset followed on the sunrise, and, after some unmeasured sleep, I woke to the new evening, my eyes open, my hands reaching at once for the lid of the coffin and then withdrawing and falling to my sides. Something kept me from opening the coffin just yet. Even though I hated its stifling atmosphere, I remained in this, the only true blackness ever bequeathed to my powerful vampire eyes.

I remained, because last night's panic had come back to me—that keen awareness that I'd been a proud fool to leave Merrick and Louis alone. It seemed some turbulence in the very air surrounded me, indeed, penetrated the iron of the coffin so that I might breathe it into my lungs.

Something has gone horridly wrong, yet it was inevitable, I thought dismally, and I lay motionless, as if fixed by one of Merrick's ruthless spells. But it was not a spell of her doing. It was grief and regretterrible, harrowing regret. I had lost her to Louis. Of course I'd find her unharmed, for nothing on earth could make Louis give her the Dark Blood, I reasoned, nothing, not even Merrick's own pleas. And as for her, she would never request it, never be fool enough to relinquish her brilliant and unique soul. No, it was grief because they loved each other, those two, and I'd brought them together, and now they would have whatever might have belonged to Merrick and me.

Well, I could not mourn for it. It was done, and I must go and find them now, I reasoned. I must go and find them together, and see the manner in which they looked at each other, and I must wring more promises from them, which was nothing more than a means of interposing myself between them, and then I must accept that Louis had become the brilliant star for Merrick, and by that light I shone no more.

Only after a long while did I open the coffin, the lid creaking loudly, and step out of it, and begin my assent, up through the steps of the damp old cellar, towards the dreary rooms above.

At last I came to a stop in a great unused brick-walled room which had once many years ago served as a department store. Nothing remained now of its former glory except a few very dirty display cases and broken shelves, and a thick layer of soil on its old uneven wooden floor.

I stood in the spring heat and in the soft dust, breathing in the scent of the mold and the red bricks around me, and peering towards the unwashed show windows, beyond which the street, now much neglected, gave forth its few persistent and sorrowful lights.

Why was I standing here?

Why had I not gone directly out to meet Louis and Merrick? Why had I not gone to feed, if it was blood I wanted, and indeed, I did thirst, I knew that much. Why did I stand alone in the shadows, waiting, as if for my grief to be redoubled, as if for my loneliness to be sharpened, so that I would hunt with the fine-tuned senses of a beast?

Then, gradually, the awareness stole over me, separating me totally from the melancholy surroundings, so I tingled in every portion of my being as my eyes saw what my mind wanted desperately to deny.

Merrick stood before me in the very red silk of last night's brief meeting, and all her physiognomy was changed by the Dark Gift.

Her creamy skin was almost luminous with vampiric powers; her green eyes had taken on the iridescence so common to Lestat, Armand, Marius, yes, yes, and yes again, yes, all of the rest. Her long brown hair had its unholy luster, and her beautiful lips their inevitable, eternal, and perfect unnatural sheen.

"David," she cried out, even her distinctive voice colored by the blood inside her, and she flew into my arms.

"Oh, dear God in Heaven, how could I have let it happen!" I was unable to touch her, my hands hovering above her shoulders, and suddenly I gave in to the embrace with all my heart. "God forgive me. God forgive me!" I cried out even as I held her tight enough to harm her, held her close to me as if no one could ever pry her loose. I didn't care if mortals heard me. I didn't care if all the world knew.

"No, David, wait," she begged as I went to speak again. "You don't understand what's happened. He's done it, David, he's gone into the sun. He did it at dawn, after he'd taken me and hidden me away, and showed me everything he could, and promised me that he would meet me tonight. He's done it, David. He's gone, and there's nothing left of him now that isn't burnt black."

The terrible tears flooding down her cheeks were glittering with unwholesome blood.

"David, can't you do anything to rescue him? Can't you do anything to bring him back? It's all my fault that it happened. David, I knew what I was doing, I led him into it, I worked him so skillfully. I did use his blood and I used the silk of my dress. I used every power natural and unnatural. I'll confess to more when there's time for it. I'll pour it all out to you. It's my fault that he's gone, I swear it, but can't you bring him back?"

23

HE HAD DONE a most careful thing.

He had brought his coffin, a relic of venerable age and luster, to the rear courtyard of the town house in the Rue Royale, a most secluded and high-walled place.

He had left his last letter on the desk upstairs, a desk which all of us—I, Lestat, and Louis—had at one time used for important writings of our own. Then he had gone down into the courtyard, and he had removed the lid from the coffin, and he had laid down in it to receive the morning sun.

He had addressed to me his candid farewell.

If I am correct I will be cremated by the sunlight. I am not old enough to remain as one severely burned, or young enough to bequeath bloody flesh to those who come to carry off what is left. I shall be ashes as Claudia once was ashes, and you, my beloved David, must scatter those ashes for me.

That you will oversee my final release is quite beyond doubt, for by the time you come upon what is left of me, you will have seen Merrick and you will know the measure of my treachery and the measure of my love. Yes, I plead love in the matter of what I've done in creating Merrick a vampire. I cannot lie to you on this score. But if it matters at all, let me assure you that I imagined I meant only to frighten her, to bring her close to death so as to deter her, to force her to beg to be saved.

But once begun, the process was brought by me to a speedy conclusion, with the purest ambition and the purest yearning I've ever known. And now—being the romantic fool I have always been, being the champion of questionable actions and little endurance, being quite unable as always to live with the price of my will and my desires, I bequeath to you this exquisite fledgling, Merrick, whom I know you will love with an educated heart. Whatever your hatred of me, I ask that you give to Merrick the few jewels and relics I possess. I ask that you give over to her also all those paintings which I have collected so haphazardly over the centuries, paintings which have become masterpieces in my eyes and in the eyes of the world. Anything of worth should be hers if only you concur. As for my sweet Master, Lestat, when he wakes, tell him that I went into the darkness without hoping for his terrifying angels, that I went into the darkness expecting only the whirlwind, or the nothingness, both of which he has in his own words so often described. Ask him to forgive me that I could not wait to take my leave of him. Which brings me now to you, my friend. I do not hope for your forgiveness. Indeed, I do not even ask. I don't believe you can bring me back from the ashes to torment me, but if you think you can, and you succeed with it, your will be done. That I have betrayed your trust is beyond doubt. No talk from Merrick of her potent spells can excuse my actions, though in fact, she does indeed claim to have brought me to her with magic I cannot understand. What I understand is that I love her, and cannot think of existence without her. Yet existence is no longer something which I can contemplate at all.

I go now to what I regard as a certainty; the form of death which took my Claudia—relentless, inescapable, absolute.

That was the letter, written in his archaic hand on new parchment paper, the letters tall yet deeply impressed. And the body? Had he guessed correctly, and had he become ashes like the child he'd lost to bitter fortune so long ago? Quite simply, no. In the lidless coffin, open to the night air, there lay a burnt black replica of the being I had known as Louis, as seemingly solid as any ancient mummy stripped of its wrappings, flesh closed securely over all visible bone. The clothes were severely scorched yet intact. The coffin was blackened around the gruesome figure. The face and hands—indeed, the entire form—was untouched by the wind and included the most minute detail.

And there beside it, on her knees on the cold paving stones, was Merrick, gazing down at the coal-black body, her hands clasped in grief.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she reached forward, and with her tender first finger touched the back of Louis's burnt hand. At once, she drew back in horror. I saw no impression made in the blackened flesh.

"It's hard as coal, David," she cried. "How can the wind scatter these remains unless you take them from the coffin and trample them underfoot? You can't do it, David. Tell me you cannot."

"No, I can't do it!" I declared. I began to pace frantically. "Oh, what a thankless and miserable legacy," I whispered.

"Louis, I would I could bury you as you were."

"That could be the most dreadful cruelty," she said imploringly. "David, can he still be living in this form? David, you know the stories of the vampires better than I do. David, can he still be alive in this form?" Back and forth I went past her, without answering her, past the lifeless effigy in its charred clothing, and I looked up listlessly, miserably, to the distant stars.

Behind me, I heard her crying softly, giving full vent to emotions which now raged inside her with a new vigor, passions that would sweep over her so totally no human could gauge what she felt.

"David," she called out to me. I could hear her weeping.

Slowly I turned to look down on her as she knelt beside him, appealing to me as if I were one of her saints.

"David, if you cut your wrist, if you let the blood flow down onto him, what will happen, will he come back?"

"That's just it, my darling, I don't know. I know only he's done as he wished and he's told me what he would have me do."

"But you can't let him go so easily," she protested. "David, please.. . " Helplessly, her voice died away. A faint stirring of the air caught the banana trees. I turned and looked at the body in terror. All the garden around us whispered and sighed against the brick walls. But the body remained intact, immobile, safe in its burnt sanctuary. But another breeze would come, something stronger. Maybe even the rain would come, as it did so often on these warm spring nights, and it would wash away the face, with its closed eyes, which was so visible still. I couldn't find words to stop her crying. I couldn't find words to confess my heart. Was he gone, or was he lingering?

And what would he have me do now—not last night when in the safety of the morning twilight he'd written his brave letter, but now, now, if he were locked in the form in the burnt wooden box.

What had been his thoughts when the sun had risen, when he'd felt the fatal weakness and then the inevitable fire? He hadn't the strength of the great ones to climb from his coffin and bury himself deep under fresh earth. Had he regretted his actions? Did he feel intolerable pain? Could I not learn something merely from studying his still burnt face or his hands?

I came back to the side of the coffin. I saw that his head was laid there as properly as that of any body to be formally interred. I saw that his hands were clasped loosely over his chest, as an undertaker might have placed them. He had not reached to shield his eyes. He had not tried to turn his back on death.

But what did these aspects of the matter really mean?

Perhaps he hadn't had the strength to do those things in the final moments. He had been numb with the coming of the light until it filled his eyes and made him shut them. Did I dare to touch the fragile blackened flesh? Did I dare to see if the eyes were still there?

I was lost in these hideous thoughts, lost and wanting only some other sound except that of Merrick's soft tears. I went to the iron steps, which came down in a curve from the upstairs balcony. And I sat down on the step which provided for me the most comfortable rest. I put my face in my hands.

"Scatter the remains," I whispered. "If only the others were here." At once, as if in answer to my pathetic prayer, I heard the creak of the carriageway gate. I heard the low shriek of its old hinges as it was thrown open, and then the click as it was closed once more, iron upon iron. No scent of a mortal signaled an intruder. In fact, I knew the step that was approaching. I had heard it so many times in my life both mortal and preternatural. Yet I didn't dare to believe in such a rescue from my misery, until the unheralded figure appeared in the courtyard, his velvet coat dusty, his yellow hair tangled, his violet eyes looking at once to the grim and appalling visage of Louis:

It was Lestat.

With an awkward step, as though his body, so long unused, revolted against him, he made his way closer to Merrick, who turned her tearstained face to him as if she too were seeing a Savior come in answer to her directionless prayers. She sat back, a low sigh escaping her lips.

"So it's come to this, has it?" Lestat asked. His voice was hoarse, as it had been when he was waked by Sybelle's music, the very last time he'd abandoned his endless sleep.

He turned and looked to me, his smooth face devoid of warmth or expression, the thin light from the distant street illuminating his fierce eyes as he looked away and back to the body in the coffin on the stones. I think his eyes quivered. I think his whole body shivered ever so slightly as though the simplest movements were exhausting him, as if he longed to rub the backs of his own arms and beat a hasty retreat.

But he was not about to abandon us.

"Come here, David," he said, appealing to me kindly in the same hoarse whisper. "Come, and listen. I can't hear him. I made him. Listen, and tell me if he's there."

I obeyed him. I stood beside him.

"He's like coal, Lestat," I answered quickly. "I haven't dared to touch him. Should we do it?" Slowly, languidly, Lestat turned to look down again at the painful sight.

"His skin feels firm, I tell you," Merrick said quickly. She rose to her feet and backed away from the coffin, inviting Lestat to take her place. "Test it yourself, Lestat," she said. "Come, touch him." Her voice was full of suppressed pain.

"And you?" Lestat asked reaching out for her, clasping her shoulder with his right hand. "What do you hear, chérie?" he asked in his raw whisper.

She shook her head. "Silence," she said, her lips trembling, the blood tears having left their streaks on her pale cheeks.

"But then he brought me over. I charmed him, I seduced him. He had no chance against my plan. And now this, this for my interference, this, and I can hear the mortals whispering in the houses near to us, but I hear nothing from him."

"Merrick," he pressed. "Listen as you've always been able to listen. Be the witch now, still, if you can't be the vampire. Yes, I know, he made you. But a witch you were before that." He looked from one to the other of us, some little visible emotion quickening in him. "Tell me if he wants to come back."

The tears came to her eyes again. Grieving, miserable, she looked down at the seeming corpse.

"He could be crying for life," she said, "but I can't hear it. The witch in me hears nothing but silence. And the human being in me knows only remorse. Lestat, give your blood to him. Bring him back." Lestat turned from her to me.

She reached out for his arm, and forced him to look again at her.

"Work your magic," she said in a low heated and insistent tone. "Work your magic and believe in it as I worked mine." He nodded, covering her hand gently as if to soothe her, most certainly to soothe her.

"Speak to me, David," he said in his roughened voice. "What does he want, David? Did he do this thing because he made Merrick, and he thought for that he should pay with his life?"

How could I answer? How could I be faithful now to all my companion had confided over so many nights?

"I hear nothing," I said. "But then it is an old habit, not spying on his thoughts, not ravaging his soul. It is an old habit letting him do what he wishes, only now and then offering him the strong blood, never challenging his weaknesses. I hear nothing. I hear nothing, but what does it mean that I hear nothing? I walk in the cemeteries of this city at night and I hear nothing. I walk among mortals and sometimes I hear nothing. I walk alone and I hear nothing, as if I myself had no inner voice."

I looked down at his blackened face again. I could see the perfect image of his mouth there. And now I realized that even the hairs of his head remained intact.

"I hear nothing," I said, "and yet I see spirits. Many a time I have seen spirits. Many a time they've come to me. Is there a spirit lurking there in those remains? I don't know."

Lestat appeared to stagger, as if from a constitutional weakness, then he forced himself to remain upright. I felt ashamed when I saw the gray dust coating the velvet of his long sleeves. I felt ashamed when I saw the knots and dirt in his thick flowing hair. But these things didn't matter to him.

Nothing mattered to him but the figure in the coffin, and, as Merrick wept, he reached out almost absently and put his right arm around her, gathering her against his powerful body, and saying in a hoarse whisper,

"There, there, chérie. He did what he wanted."

"But it's gone wrong!" she answered. The words spilled out of her. "He's too old for one day's fire to end it. And he may be locked inside these charred remains in fear of what's to come. He might, like a dying man, hear us in his fatal trance and be unable to respond." She moaned plaintively as she continued: "He may be crying for us to help him, and we stand here and we argue and we pray."

"And if I spill my blood down into this coffin now," Lestat asked her, "what do you think will come back? Do you think it will be our Louis that will rise in these burnt rags? What if it's not, chérie, what if it's some wounded revenant that we must destroy?"

"Choose life, Lestat," she said. She turned to him, pulled loose of him, and appealed to him. "Choose life, no matter in what form. Choose life and bring him back. If he would die, it can be finished afterwards."

"My blood's too strong now, chérie," said Lestat. He cleared his throat and wiped at the dust on his own eyelids. He ran his hand into his hair and pulled it roughly out of his face. "My blood will make a monster of what's there."

"Do it! " she said. "And if he wants to die, if he asks again, then I will be his servant in his extremity, I promise you." How seductive were her eyes, her voice. "I'll make a brew that he can swallow, of poisons in the blood of animals, the blood of wild things. I'll feed him such a potion that he'll sleep as the sun rises." Her voice became more impassioned.

"He'll sleep, and should he live again to sunset, I'll be his guardian through the night until the sun rises again." For a long time, Lestat's brilliant violet eyes were fastened to her, as though he were considering her will, her plan, her very commitment, and then slowly he turned his eyes to me.

"And you, beloved one? What would you have me do?" he asked. His face had now a livelier aspect to it, for all his sorrow.

"I can't tell you," I said, shaking my head. "You've come and it's your decision, yours by right, because you are the eldest and I'm thankful that you're here." Then I found myself prey to the most awful and grim considerations, and I looked down at the dark figure again, and up once more to Lestat.

"If I had tried and failed," I said, "I would want to come back." What was it that made me give voice to such a sentiment? Was it fear? I couldn't say. But it was true, and I knew it, as if my lips had sought to instruct my heart.

"Yes, if I had seen the sun rise," I said, "and I had lived past it, I might well have lost my courage, and courage he very much required."

Lestat seemed to be considering these things. How could he not? Once, he himself had gone into the sunlight in a distant desert place, and, having been burnt again and again, without release, he came back. His skin was still golden from this hurtful and terrible disaster. He would carry that imprint of the sun's power for many years to come. Straightaway, he stepped in front of Merrick, and as both of us watched, he knelt down beside the coffin, and he moved very close to the figure, and then he drew back. With his fingers, quite as delicately as she had done it, he touched the blackened hands, and he left no mark. Slowly, lightly, he touched the forehead, and once more, he left no mark. He drew back, kneeling up, and, lifting his right hand to his mouth, he gashed his wrist with his own teeth before either Merrick or I knew what he meant to do.

At once a thick stream of blood poured down onto the perfectly molded face of the figure in the coffin, and as the vein sought to heal itself, again Lestat gashed it and let the blood flow.

"Help me, Merrick. Help me, David!" he called out. "What I've begun I'll pay for, but do not let it fail. I need you now." At once, I went to join him, pushing back my awkward cotton cuff and tearing the flesh of my wrist with my eye teeth. Merrick knelt at the very foot of the coffin, and from her tender fledgling wrist the blood had begun to flow. A pungent smoke rose from the remains in front of us. The blood appeared to seep into every pore of the figure. It drenched the burnt clothing. And, tearing aside this fabric, Lestat gave yet another gush of blood to his frantic work. The smoke was a thick layer above the bloody remains before us. I couldn't see through it. But I could hear a faint murmuring, a terrible agonized groan. On and on I let the blood flow, my preternatural skin seeking to heal and halt the operation, and my teeth coming to my rescue again and again.

Suddenly a cry came from Merrick. I saw before me in the haze the figure of Louis sitting up from the coffin, his face a mass of tiny lines and wrinkles. I saw Lestat reach out for him and take hold of his head and press it to his throat.

"Drink now, Louis," he commanded.

"Don't stop, David," said Merrick. "The blood, he needs it, every part of his body is drinking it." I obeyed, only then realizing that I was growing weaker and weaker, that I could not remain steady, and that she herself was tumbling forward yet still determined to go on.

I saw below me a naked foot, and then the outline of a man's leg, and then, quite visible in the semi-darkness, the hard muscles of a man's chest.

"Harder, yes, take it from me," came Lestat's low insistent command. He spoke in French now. "Harder, more of it, take it, take all that I have to give."

My vision was hopeless. It seemed the entire courtyard was full of a pungent vapor, and the two forms—Louis and Lestat—shimmered for a moment before I felt myself lie down on the cool soothing stones, before I felt Merrick's soft body snuggled beside me, before I smelled the sweet lovely perfume of Merrick's hair. My head rolled on the stones as I tried to raise my hands, but could not.

I closed my eyes. I saw nothing, and then when I opened them, Louis stood there, naked and restored and gazing down at me, his figure covered in a thin film of blood, as though he were a newborn, and I saw the green of his eyes, and the white of his teeth.

I heard Lestat's sore voice again. "More, Louis," he said. "More, take it."

"But David and Merrick—," said Louis.

And Lestat answered, "David and Merrick will be all right."

24

WE BATHED HIM and dressed him, all of us together, in the upstairs rooms.

His skin had a white sheen to it, due to the near omnipotent blood of Lestat which had so restored him, and it was plain as we helped him with the smallest articles of clothing that he was not the same Louis whom we had so often dared to pity in the strength of our love.

At last, when he was comfortably covered in a loose black turtleneck shirt and cotton pants, his shoes tied, and his thick black hair combed, he sat down with us in the back parlor—that gathering place which had been witness to so many agreeable discussions in my brief preternatural life.

His eyes would now have to be masked with sunglasses, for they'd taken on the iridescence which had always burdened Lestat. But what of the inner being? What had he to say to us as we all looked at him, as we all waited for him to share his thoughts?

He settled more deeply into the dark velvet chair and looked about himself as if he were a monstrous newborn, dropped whole and entire into life, by myth or legend. And only gradually did his sharp green eyes move to us. Lestat had by this time brushed off the cumbersome covering of dust he wore, and taken from his own closet a new coat of dark-brown velvet, and fresh linen, so that he wore his usual thick and faintly discolored old lace. He had shaken out his hair and combed it, and put on new boots.

In sum, we made a fine picture, the four of us, though Merrick, in her customary shirtwaist of silk, bore some few stains of blood. The dress was red, however, and showed little or nothing to the eye, and about her neck she wore—and had worn all evening, of course—my gift to her of years ago, the triple-strand necklace of pearls. I suppose I found some solace in these details, and so I record them. But that detail which had the most salubrious effect upon me was the calm, wondering expression on Louis's face.

Let me add that Merrick had been greatly weakened by the blood she'd given to our communal effort, and I could see that shortly she must go out to be the vampire in the most dark and dangerous streets of the city, and it was my vow that I would go at her side.

I had too well rehearsed in my imagination what it might mean to have her with us for me to claim now some rigid moral shock. As for her beauty, Louis's gentle blood of nights past had greatly enhanced it, and her green eyes were all the more vivid, though she could still pass for human with comparative ease.

The resurrection of Louis had taken all of her heart's reserve, it seemed, and she settled on the settee beside the comely figure of Lestat, as though she might like nothing better than to fall asleep.

How well she concealed the thirst she must be feeling, I thought to myself, only to see her raise her head and glance at me. She had read my thoughts.

"Only a glimmer," she said. "I don't want to know more than that." I made a concerted effort to conceal whatever I was feeling, thinking it best for all of us to follow such a rule, as Louis and Lestat and I had followed it in the past.

At last it was Lestat who broke the silence.

"It’s not complete," he said, staring sharply at Louis. "It requires more blood." His voice was strong now and wonderfully familiar to my ears. He was speaking his usual American English. "It requires," he said, "that you drink from me, Louis, and that I give the blood back. It requires no less than that to give you all the strength that's mine to give and not lose. I want you to take it now without argument, as much for my sake, perhaps, as your own." Just for a moment Lestat's face became haggard again, as if he were the sleepwalker he'd been when last he rose. But within a split second his vitality returned, and he went on to the purpose, addressing me:

"And you, David, take Merrick with you, and go out now and feed to replenish what you've lost. Teach her, David, what she needs to know, though I think she is well versed in everything already. I think that Louis, in the little time he had last night, has instructed her rather well."

I was certain that Louis would rouse himself from his solemn silence and protest against Lestat's domination, but he did nothing of the sort. In fact, I detected in him a visible self-confidence which he had not possessed in the past.

"Yes, do it, give me all you can," he said in a low vigorous tone. "And what of Merrick? Will you give your potent blood to her as well?"

Lestat was even surprised at such an easy victory. He rose to his feet. I took Merrick by the hand and made to go.

"Yes," Lestat answered, pushing back his blond hair from his face. "I'll give my blood to Merrick if Merrick wants it. Merrick, it's what I want above anything else, I assure you. But it is your choice whether or not you take the Dark Gift from me again. Once you drink from me, you'll be quite as strong as David and Louis. Once you drink from me, we will all be fit companions for each other. And that's precisely my desire."

"Yes, I want it," she answered. "But I need to hunt first, do I not?" He nodded, and made a small eloquent gesture for us to leave him with Louis alone. I took her with me quickly down the iron steps and out and away from the Quarter.

We walked in silence except for the tantalizing click of her heels on the pavement. At once we came to the blighted and shabby neighborhood where her old house stood.

We did not go to her house, however. We pushed on.

Finally a sweet laugh escaped her lips, and she stopped me long enough for her to deposit a kiss on my cheek. She had things to say but she was cut off.

A large American automobile came crawling close to us, and we could hear from behind its thick windows the deep bass of the radio, and the nasty words of a hateful song. It seemed like so much of modern music, a din to drive human beings mad.

The car stopped only a few feet ahead of us, and we continued on. I knew the two mortals in the car meant to hurt us; I sang their requiem. Perhaps I smiled. It is a sinister thing, but I believe I smiled. What I did not expect was the quick snap of a gun, and the shining streak of a bullet before my eyes. Merrick's laugh came again, for she too had seen its brilliant arc before us.

The door of the car opened, and a dark shape moved towards Merrick, and she turned, extending her slender arms in welcome, and caught her victim in midstep. I saw the man freeze as she sank her teeth; I saw him go limp; I saw her arms easily hold his bulk. I smelled the blood, and I was nothing if not the vampire.

Out of the car came the driver, abandoning his running engine and outraged by the little scheme of rape or robbery gone wrong. Once again the gun gave its loud crack, but the bullet was lost in the blackness. I rushed the assailant and caught him as simply as she had caught her prey. My teeth were swift and the taste of the blood magnificent. Never have I drunk so greedily, so urgently. Never have I played it out, swimming for elastic moments in the desperate memories and dreams of this sad individual before I quietly flung his remains away from me and out of sight in the high grass of an abandoned lot.

Swiftly, Merrick deposited her dying victim in the same overgrown patch of earth.

"You healed the puncture wounds?" I questioned her. "You did it so as not to leave any trace of how he died?"

"Of course I did," she answered.

"Why didn't you kill him?" I asked. "You should have killed him."

"Once I drink from Lestat, I can kill them," she answered. "Besides, he can't live. He'll be dead by the time we return to the flat."

We turned for home.

She walked on beside me. I wondered if she knew what I felt. I felt that I had betrayed her and destroyed her. I felt that I had done every conceivable evil to her that I had sworn to avoid. When I looked back on our plan, that she should raise a ghost for me and for Louis, I saw there the seeds of all that had come to pass. I was broken, a man humiliated by his own failure and enduring it with a vampire's cold passivity, which can coexist so dreadfully with human pain. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was that her full measure of mortal life had not been enjoyed. I wanted to tell her that destiny had marked her for great things, perhaps, and I had broken that destiny with my careless selfishness, with an ego that couldn't be restrained.

But why spoil these precious moments for her? Why place a shroud over all the splendor she saw around her, her vampire eyes feasting as surely as she herself had feasted, on all that we saw? Why take from her the few virgin nights in which force and menace would seem sacred and righteous? Why try to turn it with grief and pain? They would come soon enough.

Perhaps she read my thoughts. I certainly didn't try to prevent it. But when she spoke, there was no evidence in her words:

"All my life," she said in a sweet confidential voice, "I've been afraid of things, as a child and a woman must be. I lied about it naturally. I fancied myself a witch and walked in dark streets to punish myself for my doubts. But I knew what it meant to be afraid.

"And now, in this darkness, I fear nothing. If you were to leave me here, I would feel nothing. I would walk as I am walking now. As a man, you can't know what I mean by what I say. You can't know a woman's vulnerability. You can't know the sense of power that belongs to me now."

"I think I know something of it," I answered in a conciliatory tone. "I was old, you must remember, and when I was old, I knew a fear I'd never experienced when I was young."

"Yes, then you do understand perhaps the wariness a woman carries always in her heart. Then you do know the force which is so glorious to me now."

I put my arm around her. I gently turned her to kiss me and I felt her cool preternatural skin beneath my lips. Her perfume now seemed something alien to her, not belonging to her deeply, though it was sweet still, and abundantly caught in the long dark tresses which I felt so lovingly with both hands.

"Know I love you," I said, and I could hear the terrible remorse, the terrible plea for penance in my own voice.

"Don't you understand, I'm with you now forever?" she asked. "Why should any one of us break away from the others?"

"It happens. In time, it happens," I answered. "Don't ask me why." Gradually our wanderings led us to Merrick's house.

She went inside alone, bidding me wait patiently for her, and came out carrying her old familiar canvas purse. My keen senses detected a strange scent from it, something acrid and chemical, something utterly alien to all I knew. It did not really matter to me, this scent, and so as we walked on together, I forgot about it, or grew accustomed to it, or stopped noticing it at all. I had no taste for lesser mysteries. My misery and my happiness were too immense. When we returned to the flat, we found Louis once more dramatically changed.

Sitting quietly again in the rear parlor with Lestat beside him, he was now so bleached and sculpted by the increased blood that he seemed, like his maker, a thing of marble rather than flesh and bone. He would have to crush ashes between his palms and spread them over his skin if he wanted to walk in places of light.

His eyes had an even greater luster than I'd observed before.

But what of his soul? What had he to say to us? Was he the same being in his heart?

I took a chair, as did Merrick, dropping her canvas bag near her feet. And I think we both agreed to wait until Louis would speak.

A long interval found us still together, still waiting, Lestat's eyes returning again and again to Merrick out of an understandable fascination, and then Louis finally began to talk:

"My heartfelt thanks go to all of you that you brought me back." It was the old cadence, the old sincerity. Maybe there was something of the old timidity as well. "All my long life among the Undead, I searched for something which I had come to believe I would never possess. Over a century ago, I went to the Old World in search of this. And after a decade, found myself in Paris, searching for this thing."

He continued, his tone rich with the old feeling.

"What I searched for was a place, a place somewhere in which I would be a part of something greater than myself. It was to be other than a perfect outcast. It was to be with those who would enclose me in a group to which I truly belonged. But nowhere did I find this, until now."

He looked at me pointedly and then to Merrick, and I saw the love come up warmly into his face.

"I'm as strong as you are now, David. And soon Merrick will be the same." He turned his steady eyes on Lestat. "I'm almost as strong as you are now, my blessed Maker. For better or for worse I feel that I am one of you all." There came from his glistening white face a long drawn-out sigh then, which was all too characteristic of him and had always been.

"Thoughts," he said, "I hear them. Music from faraway, I hear it. Those who come and go in the streets outside, I hear them. I catch their scent and it's sweet and welcoming. I look out at the night and I see far." A great wondering relief came over me. I did my best to express it by my gestures and the warmth of the expression on my face.

I felt Merrick shared it. Her love for Louis was palpable. It was infinitely more aggressive and demanding than the love she felt for me.

Lestat, somewhat weakened perhaps from all he'd endured, and his long fast of the past months, merely nodded at these words.

He looked to Merrick as if he had a task before him, and I was eager myself for that task to be done. It would be difficult for me to see Lestat take Merrick in his arms. Perhaps it would be private, as the blood exchange had been with Louis. I was ready enough to be sent away again to walk, with only the comfort of my thoughts, in the night. But I sensed that our small company was by no means ready to disband.

Merrick sat forward in her chair. She made it quite evident that she meant to address all of us.

"I have something which must be said," she began, her eyes hesitating respectfully on me for a long moment before she looked at the other two. "There is much guilt here on the part of Louis and David that I'm now one of you. And perhaps there are questions in your mind, Lestat, as well.

"Hear me out, then, for all your sakes, and decide what your feelings should be when you know the key parts of the tale. I am here because I chose to be here a long time ago.

"It has been years since David Talbot, our revered Superior General, disappeared out of the warm protective arms of the Talamasca, and I was by no means mollified by lies about how he had come to the end of his mortal life.

"As David knows, I learnt the secrets of the body switch that had removed David from the elderly body in which I'd always loved him with all my heart. But I didn't need a secret narrative written by my friend Aaron Lightner to tell me what had become of David's soul.

"I learnt the truth when I flew to London, after the death of that elderly body, that body which we called David Talbot, to pay my respects, alone with the body in the coffin before it was forever sealed. I knew when I touched the body that David had not suffered death in it, and at that unique moment my ambitions began.

"Only a short time later, I found Aaron Lightner's papers, which made it clear that David had indeed been the happy victim of a Faustian Switch, and that something unforgivable in Aaron's mind had taken David, within the young body, out of our world.

"Of course I knew it was the vampires. I didn't need popular fictions masking facts to figure how Lestat had had his way with David at last.

"But by the time I read those curious pages, with all their euphemism and initials, I had already made a potent and age-old spell. I had made it to bring David Talbot, whatever he was—young man, vampire, even ghost—back to me, back to the warmth of my affection, back to his old sense of responsibility for me, back to the love we'd once shared." She stopped speaking, and reached down and drew up a small cloth-wrapped parcel from her bag. There came the acrid smell again, which I could not classify, and then she opened the cloth to reveal what appeared to be a yellowish and somewhat molded human hand.

It was not that old blackened hand I had more than once seen on her altar. It was something altogether more recently alive, and I realized what my nostrils had failed to tell me. Before it had been severed, it had been embalmed. It was the fluid that caused the faint noxious odor. But the fluid had long since dried up and left the hand as it was, fleshly, shrunken, and curled.

"Do you recognize it, David?" she asked me gravely.

I was chilled as I stared at her.

"I took it from your body, David," she said. "I took it because I wouldn't let you go." Lestat gave a small laugh that was tender and full of easy pleasure. I think that Louis was too stunned to speak. As for me, I could say nothing. I only stared at the hand.

In the palm was engraved a whole series of small words. I knew the tongue to be Coptic, which I could not read.

"It's an old spell, David; it binds you to come to me, it binds the spirits who listen to me to drive you towards me. It binds them to fill your dreams and your waking hours with thoughts of me. As the spell builds in power it presses out all other considerations, and finally there is one obsession, that you come to me, and nothing else will do." Now it was Louis's turn for a small smile of recognition.

Lestat sat back, merely regarding the remarkable object with a raised eyebrow and a rueful smile. I shook my head.

"I don't accept it!" I whispered.

"You had no chance against it, David," she insisted. "You're blameless, blameless, as Louis was blameless for what ultimately happened to me."

"No, Merrick," said Louis gently. "I've known too much genuine love in my years to doubt what I feel for you."

"What does it say, this scribble!" I demanded angrily.

"What it says," she answered, "is a particle of what I have recited countless times as I called my spirits, the very spirits I called for you and Louis the other night. What it says is:

"'I command you to drench his soul, his mind, his heart with a heat for me, to inflict upon his nights and days a relentless and torturous longing for me; to invade his dreams with the images of me; to let there be nothing that he eats or drinks that will solace him as he thinks of me, until he returns to me, until he stands in my presence, until I can use every power at my command on him as we speak together. Do not for a moment let him be quiet; do not for a moment let him turn away.'"

"It wasn't like that," I insisted.

She went on, her voice lower, kinder:

"'May he be a slave to me, may he be the faithful servant of my designs, may he have no power to refuse what I have confided to you, my great and faithful spirits. May he fulfill that destiny which I choose of my own accord.'" She let the silence fill the room again. I heard nothing for the moment, except a low secretive laughter from Lestat. But it was not mocking, this laughter. It was simply eloquent of astonishment, and then Lestat spoke:

"And so you are absolved, gentlemen," he said. "Why don't you accept it, accept it as an absolutely priceless gift which Merrick has the right to give?"

"Nothing can ever absolve me," said Louis.

"Let it be your choice, then, both of you," answered Merrick, "if you wish to believe you are responsible. And this, this remnant of your corpse I'll return to the earth. But let me say, before I put a seal on the subject for both of your hearts, that the future was foretold."

"By whom? How?" I demanded.

"An old man," she said, addressing me most particularly, "who used to sit in the dining room of my house listening to Sunday Mass on the radio, an old man with a gold pocket watch which I coveted, a watch which he told me, simply, was not ticking for me."

I winced. "Oncle Vervain," I whispered.

"Those were his only words on the matter," she said with soft humility. "But he sent me to the jungles of Central America to find the mask I would use to raise Claudia. He had sent me earlier, with my mother and my sister, to find the perforator with which I would slash Louis's wrist to get the blood from him, not only for my raising of a spirit, but for the spell with which I brought Louis to me."

The others said nothing. But Louis and Lestat understood her. And it was the pattern, the intricate pattern which won me over to accept her utterly, rather than keep her at a remove, the evidence of my awful guilt. It was now close to morning. We had only a couple of hours left. Lestat wanted to use this time to give Merrick his power.

But before we disbanded, Lestat turned to Louis and asked a question which mattered to us all.

"When the sun rose," he said, "when you saw it, when it burnt you before you were unconscious, what did you see?" Louis stared at Lestat for some few minutes, his face blank, as it always becomes when he is in a state of high emotion, and then his features softened, his brows knitted, and there came the dreaded tears to his eyes.

"Nothing," he said. He bowed his head, but then he looked up helplessly. "Nothing. I saw nothing and I felt that there was nothing. I felt it—empty, colorless, timeless. Nothing. That I had ever lived in any shape seemed unreal." His eyes were shut tight, and he brought up his hand to hide his face from us. He was weeping. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all."

25

NO AMOUNT of blood from Lestat could make Merrick his equal. No amount could make any of us his equal. But by the relentless blood exchange, Merrick was immensely enhanced.

And so we formed a new coven, lively, and delighted in each other's company, and excusing each other all past sins. With every passing hour, Lestat became more the old creature of action and impulse which I had loved for so long. Do I believe that Merrick brought me to herself with a spell? I do not. I do not believe that my reason is so susceptible, but what am I to make of Oncle Vervain's designs?

Quite deliberately, I put the matter away from my thoughts, and I embraced Merrick as truly as I ever had, even though I had to endure the sight of her fascination for Louis, and the fascination which he held for her. I had Lestat again, did I not?

It was two nights later—nights of no remarkable events or achievements, except for Merrick's ever increasing experience—that I put the question to him that had so troubled me about his long sleep. He was in the beautifully appointed front parlor in the Rue Royale, looking quite wonderful in his sleekly cut black velvet, what with cameo buttons, no less, and his handsome yellow hair shimmering as it ought to do in the familiar light of his numerous lamps.

"Your long slumber frightened me," I confessed. "There were times when I could have sworn you were no longer in the body. Of course I talk again of a form of hearing denied to me as your pupil. But I speak of a human instinct in me which is quite strong."

I went on telling him how it had so completely unnerved me to see him thus, to be unable to rouse him, and to fear that his soul had taken to wandering and might not return.

He was silent for some moments, and I thought for a split second that I saw a shadow fall over his face. Then he gave me a warm smile and gestured for me to worry no more.

"Maybe some night I'll tell you about it," he said. "For now let me say that there was some truth in your conjecture. I wasn't always there." He broke off, thinking, even whispering something which I couldn't hear. Then he went on. "As for where I was, I can't now explain it. But again, maybe some night, to you, above all others, I will try." My curiosity was dreadfully aroused and for a moment I was maddened by him, but when he began to laugh at me, I remained silent.

"I won't go back to my slumber," he said finally. He became quite sober and convincing. "I want you all to be assured of it. Years have passed since Memnoch came to me. You might say it took all my reserve to weather that terrible ordeal. As for the time when I was waked before by Sybelle's music, I was more nearly close to all of you than I came to be some time later on."

"You tease me with hints that something happened to you," I said.

"Perhaps it did," he answered, his vacillations and his playful tone infuriating me. "Perhaps it did not. David, how am I to know? Be patient. We have each other now again, and Louis has ceased to be the emblem of our discontent. Believe me, I'm happy for that."

I smiled and I nodded, but the mere thought of Louis brought to mind the gruesome sight of his burnt remains in the casket. It had been the living proof that the quiet omnipotent glory of the daily sun would never shine upon me again. It had been the living proof that we can perish so very easily, that all the mortal world is a lethal enemy during those hours between dawn and dusk.

"I've lost so much time," Lestat remarked in his habitual energetic fashion, eyes moving about the room. "There are so many books I mean to read, and things I mean to see. The world's around me again. I'm where I belong." I suppose we might have spent a quiet evening after that, both of us reading, both of us enjoying the comfort of those lushly domestic Impressionist paintings, if Merrick and Louis had not come so suddenly up the iron stairs and down the corridor to the front room.

Merrick had not given up her penchant for shirtwaisted dresses and she looked splendid in her dark-green silk. She led the way, the more reticent Louis coming behind her. They both sat upon the brocade sofa opposite, and straightaway Lestat asked:

"What's wrong?"

"The Talamasca," said Merrick. "I think it's wise to leave New Orleans. I think we should do it at once."

"That's sheer nonsense," said Lestat immediately. "I won't hear of it." At once his face was flushed with expression.

"I've never been afraid of mortals in my life. I have no fear of the Talamasca."

"Perhaps you should have," said Louis. "You must listen to the letter which Merrick has received."

"What do you mean, 'received?'" asked Lestat crossly. "Merrick, you didn't go back to the Motherhouse! Surely you knew such a thing couldn't be done."

"Of course I didn't, and my loyalty to the rest of you is total, don't question it," she fired back. "But this letter was left at my old house here in New Orleans. I found it this evening, and I don't like it, and I think it's time that we reconsider everything, though you may lay it down as my fault."