Merrick

'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