Anne Rice - Merrick

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, cherie. 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, cherie, 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, cherie," 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."

"Do it! " she said. "And if he wants to die, if he asks again, then I will be his servant in his extremity, I promise you." How seductive were her eyes, her voice. "I'll make a brew that he can swallow, of poisons in the blood of animals, the blood of wild things. I'll feed him such a potion that he'll sleep as the sun rises." Her voice became more impassioned. "He'll sleep, and should he live again to sunset, I'll be his guardian through the night until the sun rises again."

For a long time, Lestat's brilliant violet eyes were fastened to her, as though he were considering her will, her plan, her very commitment, and then slowly he turned his eyes to me.

"And you, beloved one? What would you have me do?" he asked. His face had now a livelier aspect to it, for all his sorrow.

"I can't tell you," I said, shaking my head. "You've come and it's your decision, yours by right, because you are the eldest and I'm thankful that you're here." Then I found myself prey to the most awful and grim considerations, and I looked down at the dark figure again, and up once more to Lestat.

"If I had tried and failed," I said, "I would want to come back."

What was it that made me give voice to such a sentiment? Was it fear? I couldn't say. But it was true, and I knew it, as if my lips had sought to instruct my heart.

"Yes, if I had seen the sun rise," I said, "and I had lived past it, I might well have lost my courage, and courage he very much required."

Lestat seemed to be considering these things. How could he not? Once, he himself had gone into the sunlight in a distant desert place, and, having been burnt again and again, without release, he came back. His skin was still golden from this hurtful and terrible disaster. He would carry that imprint of the sun's power for many years to come.

Straightaway, he stepped in front of Merrick, and as both of us watched, he knelt down beside the coffin, and he moved very close to the figure, and then he drew back. With his fingers, quite as delicately as she had done it, he touched the blackened hands, and he left no mark. Slowly, lightly, he touched the forehead, and once more, he left no mark.

He drew back, kneeling up, and, lifting his right hand to his mouth, he gashed his wrist with his own teeth before either Merrick or I knew what he meant to do.

At once a thick stream of blood poured down onto the perfectly molded face of the figure in the coffin, and as the vein sought to heal itself, again Lestat gashed it and let the blood flow.

"Help me, Merrick. Help me, David!" he called out. "What I've begun I'll pay for, but do not let it fail. I need you now."

At once, I went to join him, pushing back my awkward cotton cuff and tearing the flesh of my wrist with my eye teeth. Merrick knelt at the very foot of the coffin, and from her tender fledgling wrist the blood had begun to flow.

A pungent smoke rose from the remains in front of us. The blood appeared to seep into every pore of the figure. It drenched the burnt clothing. And, tearing aside this fabric, Lestat gave yet another gush of blood to his frantic work.

The smoke was a thick layer above the bloody remains before us. I couldn't see through it. But I could hear a faint murmuring, a terrible agonized groan. On and on I let the blood flow, my preternatural skin seeking to heal and halt the operation, and my teeth coming to my rescue again and again.

Suddenly a cry came from Merrick. I saw before me in the haze the figure of Louis sitting up from the coffin, his face a mass of tiny lines and wrinkles. I saw Lestat reach out for him and take hold of his head and press it to his throat.

"Drink now, Louis," he commanded.

"Don't stop, David," said Merrick. "The blood, he needs it, every part of his body is drinking it."

I obeyed, only then realizing that I was growing weaker and weaker, that I could not remain steady, and that she herself was tumbling forward yet still determined to go on.

I saw below me a naked foot, and then the outline of a man's leg, and then, quite visible in the semi-darkness, the hard muscles of a man's chest.

"Harder, yes, take it from me," came Lestat's low insistent command. He spoke in French now. "Harder, more of it, take it, take all that I have to give."

My vision was hopeless. It seemed the entire courtyard was full of a pungent vapor, and the two forms—Louis and Lestat—shimmered for a moment before I felt myself lie down on the cool soothing stones, before I felt Merrick's soft body snuggled beside me, before I smelled the sweet lovely perfume of Merrick's hair. My head rolled on the stones as I tried to raise my hands, but could not.