by Rice, Anne
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 burn 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 bef
ore. “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.”