Then I let my mind drift back to him, my friend Aaron, my colleague, my companion. I seized on memories far larger than any one incident. I envisioned him, his genial face and clever gray eyes. I saw him strolling along the brightly lit Ocean Avenue in Miami Beach, looking wonderfully out of place and richly like a splendid ornament to the bizarre scenery, in his three-piece cotton pinstripe suit.
I let the pain have me. Murdered for the secrets of the Mayfair Witches. Murdered by renegade beings in the Talamasca. Of course he had not given up to the Order his report on me. It had been a time of troubles, hadn’t it, and he had ultimately been betrayed by the Order; and so my story would, within the fabled archives, remain forever incomplete.
“Was there more?” I asked Merrick finally.
“No. Only the same song with different rhythms. That was all.” She took another drink. “He was terribly happy at the end, you know.”
“Tell me.”
“Beatrice Mayfair, he loved her. He never expected to be happily married, but it had happened. She was a beautiful highly social woman, rather like three or four people rolled into one. He told me he’d never had so much fun in his life as he had with Beatrice, and she wasn’t a witch, of course.”
“I’m so very glad to hear it,” I said, my voice tremulous. “So Aaron became one of them, you might say.”
“Yes,” she answered. “In all respects.”
She shrugged, the empty glass in her hand. Why she waited to take more, I wasn’t certain; perhaps to impress me that she wasn’t the famous drunk that I knew her to be.
“But I don’t know anything about those white Mayfairs,” she said finally. “Aaron always kept me away from them. My work for the last few years had been in Voodoo. I’ve made trips to Haiti. I’ve written pages. You know I’m one of the few members of the Order who is studying her own psychic power, with a license from the Elders to use the damnable magic, as the Superior General calls it now.”
I hadn’t known this. It had never even occurred to me that she’d returned to Voodoo, which had cast its generous shadow over her youth. We had never in my time encouraged a witch to practice magic. Only the vampire in me could tolerate such a thought.
“Look,” she said, “it doesn’t matter that you didn’t write to Aaron.”
“Oh, doesn’t it?” I asked in a sharp whisper. But then I explained: “I simply couldn’t write to him. I simply couldn’t speak on the phone. As for seeing him, or letting him see me, it was out of the question!” I whispered.
“And it took five years,” she said, “for you to finally come to me.”
“Oh, right to the point!” I responded. “Five years or more to do it. And had Aaron lived on, who knows what I would have done? But the crucial factor was this: Aaron was old, Merrick. He was old and he might have asked me for the blood. When you’re old and you’re afraid, when you’re weary and you’re sick, when you’ve begun to suspect that your life means nothing . . . Well, that’s when you dream of vampiric bargains. That’s when you think that somehow the vampiric curse can’t be so very dreadful, no, not in exchange for immortality; that’s when you think that if only you had the chance, you could become some premier witness to the evolution of the world around you. You cloak your selfish desires in the grandiose.”
“And you think I never will think such thoughts?” She raised her eyebrows, her green eyes large and full of light.
“You’re young and beautiful,” I said, “you were born and bred on courage. Your organs and limbs are as sound as your mind. You’ve never been defeated, not by anything, and you’re in perfect health.”
I was trembling all over. I couldn’t endure much more of this. I’d dreamt of solace and intimacy, and this was intimacy, but at a terrible price.
How much easier it was to spend hours in the company of Lestat, who never spoke anymore, who lay still in a half sleep, listening to music, having been waked by it and now lulled by it, a vampire who craved nothing more?
How much easier to roam the city in the company of Louis, my weaker and ever charming companion, seeking out victims and perfecting the “little drink” so that we left our prey dazzled and unharmed? How much easier to remain within the sanctuary of the French Quarter town house, reading with a vampire’s speed all the volumes of history or art history over which I’d labored so slowly when a mortal man?
Merrick merely looked at me with obvious sympathy, and then she reached out for my hand.
I avoided her touch because I wanted it so much.
“Don’t back away from me, old friend,” she said.
I was too confused to speak.
“What you want me to know,” she said, “is that neither you nor Louis de Pointe du Lac will ever give me the blood, not even if I beg you for it; that it can’t be part of any bargain between us.”
“Bargain. It would be no bargain!” I whispered.
She took another drink. “And you’ll never take my life,” she said. “That’s what makes it a bargain, I suppose. You won’t ever hurt me as you might some other mortal woman who crossed your path.”
The question of those who crossed my path was too troubling to me for any good response. For the first time since we had come together, I truly tried to divine her thoughts, but I could read nothing. As a vampire, I had great power in this respect. Louis had almost none. Lestat was the master.
I watched her drink the rum more slowly, and I saw her eyes become glazed with the pleasure of it, and her face soften wonderfully as the rum worked in her veins. Her cheeks were reddening slightly. Her complexion looked perfect.
Chills ran through me again, through my arms and shoulders and up the side of my face.
I had fed before I’d come here, or else the fragrance of her blood would have clouded my judgment even more than the excitement of this intimacy clouded it. I had not taken life, no, it was too simple to feed without doing it, attractive though it was. I prided myself on that. I felt clean for her, though it was becoming increasingly simple for me to “seek the evildoer,” as Lestat had once instructed—to find some unwholesome and cruel individual whom I could fancy to be worse than myself.
“Oh, I wept so many tears for you,” she said, her voice more heated. “And then for Aaron, for all of your generation, leaving us suddenly and too soon, one after another.” She suddenly hunched her shoulders and leant forward as though she were in pain.
“The young ones in the Talamasca don’t know me, David,” she said quickly. “And you don’t come to me just because Louis de Pointe du Lac asked you to do it. You don’t come to me just to raise the child vampire’s ghost. You want me, David, you want my witness, David, and I want yours.”
“You’re right on all counts, Merrick,” I confessed. The words spilled from me. “I love you, Merrick, I love you the way I loved Aaron, and the way I love Louis and Lestat.”
I saw the flash of acute suffering in her face, as though it were the flash of a light from within.
“Don’t be sorry you came to me,” she said as I reached out to take hold of her. She caught my hands and held them in her own, her clasp moist and warm. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not. Only promise me you won’t lose heart and leave me without explanation. Don’t break away from me hurriedly. Don’t give in to some skewed sense of honor. If you did, my sanity might actually break.”
“You mean I mustn’t leave you the way I left Aaron,” I said thickly. “No, I promise you, my precious darling. I won’t do it. It’s already much too late for such a thing.”
“Then, I love you,” she announced in a whisper. “I love you as I always have. No, more than that, I think, because you bring this miracle with you. But what of the spirit that lives within?”
“What spirit?” I asked her.
But she’d already gone deep into her own thoughts. She drank another swallow directly from the bottle.
I couldn’t bear the table between us. I stood slowly, lifting her hands until she stood beside me, and then I took her warmly into my arms. I kissed her lips, her old familiar perfume rising to my nostrils, and I kissed her forehead, and then I held her head tightly against my beating heart.
“You hear it?” I whispered. “What spirit could there be except my spirit? My body is changed, and no more.”
I was overcome with desire for her, the desire to know her utterly through the blood. Her perfume maddened me. But there wasn’t the slightest chance that I’d give in to my desire.
But I kissed her again. And it wasn’t chaste.
For several long moments we remained locked together, and I think I covered her hair with small sacred kisses, her perfume crucifying me with memories. I wanted to endow her with protection against all things as sordid as myself.
She backed away from me, finally, as if she had to do it, and she was a little unsteady on her feet.
“Never in all those years did you ever touch me in this way,” she said under her breath. “And I wanted you so badly. Do you remember? Do you remember that night in the jungle when I finally got my wish? Do you remember how drunk you were, and how splendid? Oh, it was over way too soon.”
“I was a fool, but all such things are past remembering,” I whispered. “Now, don’t let’s spoil what’s happened. Come, I’ve gotten a hotel room for you, and I’ll see that you’re safely there for the night.”
“Why on earth? Oak Haven is exactly where it’s always been,” she said dreamily. She shook her head to clear her vision. “I’m going home.”
“No, you’re not. You drank even more rum than I predicted. Look, you drank over half the bottle. And I know you’ll drink the rest of the bottle as soon as you get in the car.”
She laughed a small scornful laugh. “Still the consummate gentleman,” she said. “And the Superior General. You can escort me to my old house here in town. You know perfectly well where it is.”
“That neighborhood, even at this hour? Absolutely not. Besides, your friendly old caretaker there is an incompetent idiot. My precious darling, I’m taking you to the hotel.”
“Foolish,” she said as she half stumbled. “I don’t need a caretaker. I’d rather go to my house. You’re being a nuisance. You always were.”
“You’re a witch and a drunk,” I said politely. “Here, we’ll just cap this bottle.” I did it. “And we’ll put it in this canvas purse of yours and I’ll walk with you to the hotel. Take my arm.”
For a small second she looked playful and defiant, but then she made a languid shrug, smiling faintly, and gave up her purse to my insistence and wrapped her arm around mine.
3
W
E HAD NO SOONER
begun our walk than we gave in to rather frequent and fervent embraces. Merrick’s old favorite Chanel perfume enchanted me, carrying me back years again; but the blood scent from her living veins was the strongest goad of all.
My desires were commingled in a torment. By the time we reached the Rue Decateur, scarcely a block and a half from the café, I knew we needed a taxi. And once inside of the car, I gave myself up to kissing Merrick all over her face and her throat, luxuriating in the fragrance of the blood inside her and the heat coming from her breasts.
She herself was rather past the point of return, and pressed me in confidential whispers as to whether or not I could still make love in the manner of an ordinary man. I told her it wouldn’t do for me, that she had to remember, drunk or sober, that I was, by nature, a predator and nothing more.
“Nothing more?” she said, stopping this glorified love play to take another deep drink from her bottle of rum. “And what happened in the jungles of Guatemala? Answer me. You haven’t forgotten. The tent, the village, you remember. Don’t lie to me, David. I know what’s inside you. I want to know what you’ve become.”
“Hush, Merrick,” I said, but I couldn’t restrain myself. I let my teeth touch her flesh with each kiss. “What happened in the jungles of Guatemala,” I struggled to say, “was a mortal sin.”
I covered her mouth, kissing her and devouring her tongue but not letting my evil teeth harm her. I felt her wipe my brow with a soft cloth, possibly her scarf or a handkerchief, but I pushed it away.
“Don’t do that,” I told her. I feared that a few beads of blood sweat might have appeared. She went back to kissing me and whispering her words of Come Hither against my skin.
I was miserable. I wanted her. I knew that even the smallest drink of her blood would prove too risky for me utterly; I’d feel I possessed her after that, and she, in spite of all her seeming innocence on the matter, might well find herself my slave.
Elder vampires had warned me on just about every aspect of what could happen to me. And Armand and Lestat had both been adamant that the “little drink” must not be conceived of as harmless. I was furious suddenly.
I reached to the back of her head and ripped the leather barrette out of her thick brown hair, letting the barrette and its cross-pin fall carelessly, and I ran my fingers deep against her scalp and kissed her lips again. Her eyes were closed.
I was immensely relieved when we reached the spacious entrance of the Windsor Court Hotel. She took another drink of her rum before the doorman helped her out of the cab, and in the manner of most experienced drinkers seemed sober on her feet when in fact she was not sober at all.
Having obtained the suite for her earlier, I took her directly to it, unlocked the door, and set her down on the bed.
The suite was quite fine, perhaps the finest in town, with its tasteful traditional furnishings and muted lights. And I had ordered bountiful vases of flowers for her.
It was nothing, however, that a member of the Talamasca wouldn’t expect. We were never known for economy with our traveling members. And all my many memories of her encircled me like vapor, and wouldn’t let me loose.
She appeared to notice nothing. She drank the rest of the rum without ceremony and settled back against the pillows, her bright green eyes closing almost at once.
For a long time I merely looked at her. She appeared to have been tossed on the thick velvet counterpane and its nest of cushions, her white cotton clothes thin and friable, her long slender ankles and leather-sandaled feet rather Biblical, her face with its high cheekbones and soft jawline exquisite in sleep.
I could not be sorry that I had made this friendship. I could not. But I reiterated my vow: David Talbot, you will not harm this creature. Somehow Merrick will be better for all this; somehow knowledge will enhance Merrick; somehow Merrick’s soul will triumph no matter how badly Louis and I fail.
Then, seeing further to the suite—that the flowers ordered had indeed been properly set out on the coffee table before the parlor sofa, on the desk, on her dressing table; that the bath held abundant cosmetics for her comfort; that a great thick terry cloth robe and slippers were in their proper place in the closet; and that a full bar of small bottles awaited her, along with a fifth of her rum which I had provided—I kissed her, left a set of keys on the night table, and went out.
A brief stop at the concierge’s desk, with the requisite offering, assured she’d be undisturbed for as long as she wished to stay at the hotel and that she might have anything that she liked.
I then made up my mind to walk to our flat in the Rue Royale.
However, before I left the beautifully lighted and somewhat busy lobby of the hotel a faint dizziness surprised me and I was assaulted by the peculiar sensation that everyone in the place was taking notice of me, and that their notice was not kind.
I stopped immediately, fishing in my pocket as though I were a man about to step aside for a cigarette, and glanced about.
There was nothing unusual about the lobby or about the crowd. Nevertheless, as I went outside the sensation overcame me again—that those in the driveway were looking at me, that they had penetrated my mortal disguise, which was by no means easy, and that they knew what I was and what evil things I might be about.
Again, I checked. Nothing of the sort was happening. Indeed, the bell boys gave me rather cordial smiles when our eyes met.
On I went towards the Rue Royale.
Once more, the sensation occurred. In fact, it seemed to me that not only were people everywhere taking notice of me, but that they had come to the doors and windows of the shops and restaurants especially for the purpose; and the dizziness which I seldom, if ever, felt as a vampire increased.
I was most uncomfortable. I wondered if this was the result of intimacy with a mortal being, because I’d never felt so exposed before. In fact, due to my bronze skin I could move about the mortal world with total impunity. All my supernatural attributes were veiled by the dark complexion, and my eyes, though too bright, were black.
Nevertheless, it seemed people stared at me surreptitiously all along the route which I took towards home.
Finally, when I was about three blocks from the flat I shared with Louis and Lestat, I stopped and leant against a black iron lamppost, much as I had seen Lestat do in the old nights when he still moved about. Scanning the passersby I was reassured again.
But then something startled me so that I began to tremble violently in spite of myself. There stood Merrick in a shop door with her arms folded. She looked quite steadily and reprovingly at me, and then disappeared.
Of course it wasn’t really Merrick at all, but the solidity of the apparition was horrifying.
A shadow moved behind me. I turned awkwardly. There again went Merrick, clothed in white, casting her long dark glance at me, and the figure appeared to melt into the shadows of a shop door.
I was dumbfounded. It was witchcraft obviously, but how could it assault the senses of a vampire? And I was not only a vampire, I was David Talbot who had been a Candomble priest in his youth. Now, as a vampire, I have seen ghosts and spirits and I knew the spirits and the tricks they could play, and I knew a great deal about Merrick, but never had I witnessed or experienced a spell just like this.
In a cab which crossed the Rue Royale, there was Merrick once again, looking up at me from the open window, her hair loosened as I had left it. And when I turned around, quite certain she was behind me, I saw her unmistakable figure on a balcony above.
The posture of the figure was sinister. I was trembling. I disliked this. I felt a fool.
I kept my eyes on the figure. In fact nothing could have moved me. The figure faded and was gone. All around me the Quarter suddenly seemed quite desolate, though in fact there were tourists everywhere in great numbers, and I could hear the music from the Rue Bourbon. Never had I seen so many flowerpots spilling their blooms over the iron lace railings. Never had so many pretty vines climbed the weathered facades and the old stuccoed walls.
Intrigued and slightly angry, I went into the Rue Ste. Anne to see the café in which we’d met, and as I suspected it was full to overflowing with diners and drinkers, and the wraith of a waiter seemed overwhelmed.
There sat Merrick in the very middle of it, full white skirt flaring, stiff, as though she’d been cut from cardboard; then of course the apparition melted, as the others had done.
But the point was the café was now crowded, as it should have been when we’d been there! How had she kept people away during our meeting? And what was she doing now?
I turned around. The sky above was blue, as the southern sky is so often in the evening, sprinkled with faint stars. There was gay conversation and happy laughter all about. This was the reality of things, a mellow spring night in New Orleans, when the flagstone sidewalks seem soft to the step of your foot, and the sounds sweet to your ears.
Yet there again came the sensation that everyone nearby was watching me. The couple crossing at the corner made a point of it. And then I saw Merrick quite some distance down the street, and this time the expression on her face was distinctly unpleasant, as though she were enjoying my discomfort.
I drew in my breath as the apparition melted away.
“How could she be doing this, that’s the question!” I muttered aloud. “And why is she doing it?”
I walked fast, heading for the town house, not certain as to whether I would go into it, with this manner of curse all around me, but as I approached our carriageway—a large arched gate fitted into a frame of brickwork—I then saw the most frightening image of all.
Behind the bars of the gate stood the child Merrick of many years ago, in her same skimpy lavender shift, her head slightly to the side as she nodded to confidences whispered in her ear by an elderly woman whom I knew for a certainty to be her long-dead grandmother Great Nananne.
Great Nananne’s thin mouth was smiling faintly and she nodded as she spoke.
At once the presence of Great Nananne deluged me with memories and remembered sensations. I was terrified, then angry. I was all but disoriented, and had to pull myself up.
“Don’t you vanish, don’t you go!” I cried out, darting towards the gate, but the figures melted as if my eyes had lost focus, as if my vision had been flawed.
I was past all patience. There were lights in our home above, and there came the enchanting sound of harpsichord music, Mozart, if I was not mistaken, no doubt from Lestat’s small disc player beside his four-poster bed. This meant he had graced us with a visit this evening, though all he would do would be to lie on his bed and listen to recordings till shortly before dawn.
I wanted desperately to go up, to be in our home, to let the music soothe my nerves, to see Lestat and see to him, and to find Louis and tell him all that had occurred.
Nothing would do, however, except that I go back to the hotel at once. I could not enter our flat while under this “spell,” and must stop it at the source.
I hurried to the Rue Decateur, found a cab, and vowed to look at nothing and no one until I had faced Merrick herself. I was becoming more and more cross.
Deep in my thoughts, I found myself mumbling protective charms, calling upon the spirits to protect me rather than to injure me, but I had little faith in these old formulae. What I did believe in were the powers of Merrick, which I’d long ago witnessed and would never forget.
Hurrying up the stairs to Merrick’s suite, I put my key into the lock of her door.
As soon as I stepped into the parlor, I saw the flicker of candlelight and smelled another very pleasant smell which I had connected with Merrick in years past. It was the scent of Florida water, redolent of fresh cut oranges—a scent loved by the Voodoo goddess Ezili, and by the Candomble goddess of a similar name.
As for the candle, I saw it atop a handsome bombe chest just opposite the door.
It was a votive light, sunk deep and safe inside a water glass, and behind it, looking down upon it, was a fine plaster statue of St. Peter with his golden keys to Heaven, a figure about a foot and a half in height. The complexion of the statue was dark, and it had pale amber glass eyes.
It was clothed in a soft green tunic etched with gold, and a cloak of purple on which the gold was fancier still. He held not only the proverbial keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, but also, in the right hand, a large book.
I was shocked all over. The hair came up on the back of my neck.
Of course I knew it was not only St. Peter, this statue, it was Papa Legba in Voodoo, the god of the crossroads, the god who must unlock the spiritual realms if you are to obtain anything with your magic.
Before you begin a spell, a prayer, or a sacrifice you honor Papa Legba first. And whoever had made this statue realized these things. How else explain the deliberately darkened complexion of the saint who appeared now to be a man of color, or the mysterious book?
He had his complement in Candomble, whom I had so often saluted. This was the orisha, or god, by the name of Exu. And any Candomble temple would have begun its ceremonies by first saluting him.
As I stared at the statue and the candle, the very scents of those Brazilian temples with their hard-packed dirt floors came back to me. I heard the drums. I smelled the cooked foods laid out in offerings. Indeed, I let the sensations come.
There came back other memories, memories of Merrick, as well.
“Papa Legba,” I whispered aloud. I’m certain that I bowed my head ever so slightly and felt a rush of blood to my face. “Exu,” I whispered. “Don’t be offended by anything that I do here.”
I uttered a small prayer, more formulaic in the Portuguese that I had long ago learnt, asking that whatever realm he had just opened, he not deny me entrance, as my respect was as strong as that of Merrick.
The statue of course remained motionless, its pale glass eyes staring quite directly into mine, but I had seldom beheld something which seemed so animate in a sly and unexplainable way.