Merrick (33 page)

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 regret—terrible, 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

H
E 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 tear-stained 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.”