'And so 'they watch and they are always here,'' said Lestat, mocking the old motto of the Order, the very motto printed on the calling cards I once carried when I walked the earth as a regular man.
'Nevertheless,' I said quickly, 'we should leave for now. We cannot go back to Merrick's house, any of us. As for here in the Rue Royale, we cannot remain.'
'I won't give in to them,' said Lestat. 'They won't order me about in this city which belongs to me. By day we sleep in hiding—at least the three of you choose to sleep in hiding—but the night and the city belong to us.'
'How so does the city belong to us?' asked Louis with near touching innocence. Lestat cut him off with a contemptuous gesture. 'For two hundred years I've lived here,' he said in a passionate low voice. 'I won't leave because of an Order of scholars. How many years ago was it, David, that I came to visit you in the Motherhouse in London? I was never afraid of you. I challenged you with my questions. I demanded you make a separate file for me among your voluminous records.'
'Yes, Lestat, but I think now things might be different.' I was looking intently at Merrick. 'Have you told us everything, darling?' I asked.
'Yes,' she said, staring before her as if at the workings of the very problem. 'I've told you everything, but you see, this was written some days ago. And now everything's changed.' She looked up at me, finally. 'If we're being watched, as I suspect we are, then they know just how much everything has changed.'
Lestat rose to his feet.
'I don't fear the Talamasca,' he declared with heavy emphasis. 'I don't fear anyone. If the Talamasca had wanted me it might have come for me during all the years I've slept in the dust at St. Elizabeth's.'
'But you see, that's just it,' said Merrick. 'They didn't want you. They wanted to watch you. They wanted to be close, as always, privy to knowledge which no one else possessed, but they didn't want to touch you. They didn't want to turn your considerable power against themselves.'
'Ah, that's well put,' he said. 'I like that. My considerable power. They'd do well to think on that.'
'Please, I beg you,' I said, 'don't threaten the Talamasca.'
'And why not threaten them?' he asked of me.
'You can't think of actually doing harm to members of the Talamasca,' I said, speaking a bit too sharply, in my concern.
'You can't do this out of respect for Merrick and for me.'
'You're being threatened, aren't you?' asked Lestat. 'We're all being threatened.'
'But you don't understand,' said Merrick. 'It's too dangerous for you to do anything to the Talamasca. They are a large organization, an ancient organization—.'
'I don't care,' Lestat said.
'—and they do know what you are,' she replied.
'Lestat, sit down again, please,' said Louis. 'Don't you see the point? It isn't merely their considerable age and power. It isn't merely their resources. It's who they truly are. They know of us, they can resolve to interfere with us. They can resolve to cause us great harm wherever we might go, anywhere in this world.'
'You're dreaming, handsome friend,' Lestat said. 'Think on the blood I've shared with you. Think on it, Merrick. And think on the Talamasca and its stodgy ways. What did it do when Jesse Reeves was lost to the Order? There were no threats then.'
'I do think of their ways, Lestat,' Merrick said forcefully. 'I think we should leave here. We should take with us all evidence that would feed their investigation. We should go.'
Lestat glared at each and every one of us, and then stormed out of the flat.
All that long night, we didn't know where he was. We knew his feelings, yes, and we understood them and we respected them, and in some unspoken fashion we resolved that we would do what he said. If we had a leader, it was Lestat. As dawn approached we took great care in going to our hiding places. We shared the common sentiment that we were no longer concealed by the human crowd.
After sunset the following evening, Lestat returned to the flat in the Rue Royale. Merrick had gone down to receive another letter from a special courier, a letter of which I was in dread, and Lestat appeared in the front parlor of the flat just before her return.
Lestat was windblown and flushed and angry, and he walked about with noisy strides, a bit like an archangel looking for a lost sword.
'Please get yourself in hand,' I said to him adamantly. He glared at me, but then took a chair, and, looking furiously from me to Louis, he waited for Merrick to come into the room.
At last Merrick appeared with the opened envelope and the parchment paper in her hand. I can only describe the expression on her face as one of astonishment, and she looked to me before she glanced at the others, and then she looked to me again.
Patiently, gesturing to Lestat to be still, I watched her take her place on the damask sofa, at Louis's side. I couldn't help but notice that he made no attempt to read the letter over her shoulder. He merely waited, but he was as anxious as I.
'It's so very extraordinary,' she said in a halting manner. 'I've never known the Elders to take such a stand. I've never known anyone in our Order to be so very explicit. I've known scholarship, I've known observation, I've known endless reports of ghosts, witchcraft, vampires, yes, even vampires. But I've never seen anything quite like this.' She opened the single page and with a dazed expression read it aloud:
'We know what you have done to Merrick Mayfair. We advise you now that Merrick Mayfair must return to us. We will accept no explanations, no excuses, no apologies. We do not mean to traffic in words with regard to this matter. Merrick Mayfair must return and we will settle for nothing else.'
Lestat laughed softly. 'What do they think you are,
'What more does it say?' I asked quickly. 'You haven't read it all.' She seemed to wake from her daze, and then to look down again at the paper.
'We are prepared to abandon our passive posture of centuries with regard to your existence. We are prepared to declare you an enemy which must be exterminated at all costs. We are prepared to use our considerable power and resources to see that you are destroyed.
Comply with our request and we will tolerate your presence in New Orleans and its environs. We will return to our harmless observations. But if Merrick Mayfair does not return at once to the Motherhouse called Oak Haven, we will take steps to make of you a quarry in any part of the world to which you might go.'
Only now did Lestat's face lose its stamp of anger and contempt. Only now did he become quiet and thoughtful, which I did not interpret altogether as a good sign.
'It's quite interesting actually,' he said, raising his eyebrows. 'Quite interesting indeed.' A long silence gripped Merrick, during which time I think Louis asked some question about the age of the Elders, their identity, hitting upon things of which I knew nothing, and about which I had grave doubts. I think I managed to convey to him that no one within the Order knew who the Elders were. There were times when their very communications had been corrupted, but in the main they ruled the Order. It was authoritarian and always had been since its cloudy origins, of which we knew so little, even those of us who had spent our lives within the Order's walls. Finally Merrick spoke.
'Don't you see what's happened?' she said. 'In all my selfish plotting I've thrown down a gauntlet to the Elders.'
'Not you alone, darling,' I was quick to add.
'No, of course not,' she said, her expression still one of shock, 'but only insomuch as I was responsible for the spells. But we've gone so far in these last few nights that they can no longer ignore us. Long ago it was Jesse. Then it was David, and now it's Merrick. Don't you see? Their long scholarly flirtation with the vampires has led to disaster, and now they're challenged to do something that—as far as we know—they've never done before.'
'Nothing will come of this,' said Lestat. 'You mark my words.'
'And what of the other vampires?' said Merrick softly, looking at him as she spoke. 'What will your own elders say when they learn of what's been done here? Novels with fancy covers, vampire films, eerie music—these things don't rouse a human enemy. In fact, they make a comforting and flexible disguise. But what we've done has now roused the Talamasca, and it doesn't declare war on us alone, it declares war on our species, and that means others, don't you see?' Lestat looked both stymied and infuriated. I could all but see the little wheels turning in his
