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.
