25

NO AMOUNT of blood from Lestat could make Merrick his equal. No amount could make any of us his equal. But by the relentless blood exchange, Merrick was immensely enhanced.

And so we formed a new coven, lively, and delighted in each other's company, and excusing each other all past sins. With every passing hour, Lestat became more the old creature of action and impulse which I had loved for so long.

Do I believe that Merrick brought me to herself with a spell? I do not. I do not believe that my reason is so susceptible, but what am I to make of Oncle Vervain's designs?

Quite deliberately, I put the matter away from my thoughts, and I embraced Merrick as truly as I ever had, even though I had to endure the sight of her fascination for Louis, and the fascination which he held for her.

I had Lestat again, did I not?

It was two nights later¡ªnights of no remarkable events or achievements, except for Merrick's ever increasing experience¡ªthat I put the question to him that had so troubled me about his long sleep.

He was in the beautifully appointed front parlor in the Rue Royale, looking quite wonderful in his sleekly cut black velvet, what with cameo buttons, no less, and his handsome yellow hair shimmering as it ought to do in the familiar light of his numerous lamps.

"Your long slumber frightened me," I confessed. "There were times when I could have sworn you were no longer in the body. Of course I talk again of a form of hearing denied to me as your pupil. But I speak of a human instinct in me which is quite strong."

I went on telling him how it had so completely unnerved me to see him thus, to be unable to rouse him, and to fear that his soul had taken to wandering and might not return.

He was silent for some moments, and I thought for a split second that I saw a shadow fall over his face. Then he gave me a warm smile and gestured for me to worry no more.

"Maybe some night I'll tell you about it," he said. "For now let me say that there was some truth in your conjecture. I wasn't always there." He broke off, thinking, even whispering something which I couldn't hear. Then he went on. "As for where I was, I can't now explain it. But again, maybe some night, to you, above all others, I will try."

My curiosity was dreadfully aroused and for a moment I was maddened by him, but when he began to laugh at me, I remained silent.

"I won't go back to my slumber," he said finally. He became quite sober and convincing. "I want you all to be assured of it. Years have passed since Memnoch came to me. You might say it took all my reserve to weather that terrible ordeal. As for the time when I was waked before by Sybelle's music, I was more nearly close to all of you than I came to be some time later on."

"You tease me with hints that something happened to you," I said.

"Perhaps it did," he answered, his vacillations and his playful tone infuriating me. "Perhaps it did not. David, how am I to know? Be patient. We have each other now again, and Louis has ceased to be the emblem of our discontent. Believe me, I'm happy for that."

I smiled and I nodded, but the mere thought of Louis brought to mind the gruesome sight of his burnt remains in the casket. It had been the living proof that the quiet omnipotent glory of the daily sun would never shine upon me again. It had been the living proof that we can perish so very easily, that all the mortal world is a lethal enemy during those hours between dawn and dusk.

"I've lost so much time," Lestat remarked in his habitual energetic fashion, eyes moving about the room. "There are so many books I mean to read, and things I mean to see. The world's around me again. I'm where I belong."

I suppose we might have spent a quiet evening after that, both of us reading, both of us enjoying the comfort of those lushly domestic Impressionist paintings, if Merrick and Louis had not come so suddenly up the iron stairs and down the corridor to the front room.

Merrick had not given up her penchant for shirtwaisted dresses and she looked splendid in her darkgreen silk. She led the way, the more reticent Louis coming behind her. They both sat upon the brocade sofa opposite, and straightaway Lestat asked:

"What's wrong?"

"The Talamasca," said Merrick. "I think it's wise to leave New Orleans. I think we should do it at once."

"That's sheer nonsense," said Lestat immediately. "I won't hear of it." At once his face was flushed with expression. "I've never been afraid of mortals in my life. I have no fear of the Talamasca."

"Perhaps you should have," said Louis. "You must listen to the letter which Merrick has received."

"What do you mean, 'received?'" asked Lestat crossly. "Merrick, you didn't go back to the Motherhouse! Surely you knew such a thing couldn't be done."

"Of course I didn't, and my loyalty to the rest of you is total, don't question it," she fired back. "But this letter was left at my old house here in New Orleans. I found it this evening, and I don't like it, and I think it's time that we reconsider everything, though you may lay it down as my fault."

"I won't reconsider anything," said Lestat. "Read it."

As soon as she drew it out of her canvas bag, I saw it was a handdelivered missive from the Elders. It was written on a true parchment meant to stand the test of centuries, though a machine had no doubt printed it for when did the Elders ever put their own hands to what they wrote?

"Merrick,

We have learnt with great dismay about your recent experiments in the old house in which you were born. We order you to leave New Orleans as soon as you possibly can. Have no further discourse with your fellow members in the Talamasca, or with that select and dangerous company which has so obviously seduced you, and come to us in Amsterdam directly.

Your room is already prepared for you in the Motherhouse, and we expect these instructions to be obeyed.

Please understand that we want, as always, to learn with you from your recent and illadvised experiences, but there can be no miscalculation as to our admonitions. You are to break off your relations with those who can never have our sanction and you are to come to us at once."

She laid it down in her lap.

"It bears the seal of the Elders," she said.

I could see this wax stamp plainly.

"Why are we to care that it bears their seal," demanded Lestat, "or the seal of anyone else? They can't force you to come to Amsterdam. Why do you even entertain such an idea?"

"Be patient with me," she spoke up immediately. "I'm not entertaining any such idea. What I'm saying is that we've been carefully watched."

Lestat shook his head. "We've always been carefully watched. I've masqueraded as one of my own fictions for over a decade. What do I care if I'm carefully watched? I defy anyone to harm me. I always have in my fashion. I've rarely ... rarely ... been wrong."

"But Lestat," said Louis, leaning forward and looking him directly in the eyes. "This means the Talamasca has made what they believe to be a sighting of us¡ªDavid and me¡ªon Merrick's premises. And that's dangerous, dangerous because it can make enemies for us among those who truly believe in what we are."

"They don't believe it," declared Lestat. "No one believes it. That's what always protects us. No one believes in what we are but us."

"You're wrong," said Merrick before I could speak up. "They do believe in you¡ª."

"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¡ªat least the three of you choose to sleep in hiding¡ªbut 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¡ª."

"I don't care," Lestat said.

"¡ªand 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, cherie," he said, "that they tell us to give you over to them? Do they think you're a precious jewel? My, but these mossbacked scholars are misogynist. I've never been such a perfect brute myself "

"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¡ªas far as we know¡ªthey'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¡ªthese 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 brain. There crept into his expression something utterly hostile and mischievous which I had certainly seen in years past.

"Of course, if I go to them," said Merrick, "if I give myself over to them¡ª."

"That's unthinkable," said Louis. "Even they must know that themselves."

"That's the worst thing you could do," I interjected.

"Put yourself in their hands?" asked Lestat sarcastically, "in this era of a technology that could probably reproduce your cells within your own blood in a laboratory? No. Unthinkable. Good word."

"I don't want to be in their hands," said Merrick. "I don't want to be surrounded by those who share a life I've lost completely. That was never, never my plan."

"And you won't be," said Louis. "You'll be with us, and we're leaving here. We should be making preparations, destroying any evidence with which they can back their designs for the rank and file."

"Will the old ones understand why I didn't go to them," she asked, "when they find their peace and solitude invaded by a new type of scholar? Don't you see what's involved?"

"You underestimate us all," I said calmly. "But I think we are spending our last night in this flat; and to all these various objects which have been such a solace, I'm saying my farewell, as should we all."

We looked to Lestat, each of us, studying his knotted angry face. Finally, he spoke.

"You do realize, don't you?" he asked me directly, "that I can easily wipe out the very members who made the observations that are threatening us now."

At once Merrick protested, and so did I. It was all a matter of desperate gestures, and then I gave in to a rapid plea.

"Don't do this thing, Lestat," I said. "Let's leave here. Let's kill their faith, not them. Like a small retreating army, we'll burn all evidence which might have become their trophies. I cannot endure the thought of turning against the Talamasca. I cannot. What more can I say?"

Merrick nodded, though she remained quiet.

Finally, Lestat spoke up.

"All right then," he said with vengeful finality. "I give in to you all because I love you. We'll go. We'll leave this house which has been my home for so many years; we'll leave this city which we all love; we'll leave all this, and we'll find someplace where no one can pick us out of the multitudes. We'll do it, but I tell you, I don't like it, and for me the members of the Order have lost by these very communications any special protective shield they might have once possessed."

It was settled.

We went to work, swiftly, silently, making certain that nothing remained which contained the potent blood which the Talamasca would seek to examine as soon as it could.

The flat was soon clean of all that might have been claimed as evidence, and then the four of us went over to Merrick's house and carried out the same thorough cleansing, burning the white silk dress of the terrible seance, and destroying her altars as well.

I had then to visit my erstwhile study at St. Elizabeth's and burn the contents of my many journals and essays, a task for which I had no taste at all. It was tiresome, it was defeating, it was demoralizing. But it was done. And so, on the very next night, we came to leave New Orleans. And well before morning, the three¡ªLouis and Merrick and Lestat¡ªwent ahead. I remained behind in the Rue Royale, at the desk in the back parlor, to write a letter to those whom I had once trusted so very much, those I had once so dearly loved. In my own hand I wrote it, so that they might recognize that the writing was of special significance to me, if to no one else.

To my beloved Elders, whoever you might truly be,

It was unwise of you to send to us such caustic and combative letters, and I fear that some night you might¡ªsome of you have to pay dearly for what you've done.

Please understand, this is no challenge. I am leaving, and by the time you claim this letter by means of your questionable procedures, I will be well beyond your reach.

But know this. Your threats have greatly roused the tender pride of the strongest among us, one who had for some time now regarded you as quite beyond his eager reach.

By your illchosen words and threats you have forfeited the formidable sanctuary which enshrined you. You are now as exquisitely vulnerable to those whom you thought to frighten as any other mortal woman or man.

Indeed, you have made another rather grievous error, and I advise you to think on it long and well before plotting any further action in regard to the secrets we both share.

You have made yourselves an interesting adversary to one who loves challenges, and it will require all of my considerable influence to protect you individually and collectively from the avid lust which you have so foolishly aroused.

I had read this over carefully, and was in the act of affixing my signature when I felt Lestat's cold hand on my shoulder, pressing firmly on my flesh.

He repeated the words "an interesting adversary," and there came from him a sly laugh.

"Don't hurt them, please," I whispered.

"Come on, David," he said confidently, "it's time for us to leave here. Come. Prompt me to tell you about my ethereal wanderings, or perhaps give you some other tale."

I bent over the paper, completing my signature carefully, and it occurred to me that I had no count of the many documents I had written for, and in, the Talamasca, and that once more, to one such document, a document which would go into their files, I had put my name.

"All right, old friend, I'm ready," I said. "But give me your word."

We walked down the long corridor to the back of the flat together, his hand heavy but welcome on my shoulder, his clothes and hair smelling of the wind.

"There are tales to be written, David," he said. "You won't keep us all from that, will you? Surely we can go on with our confessions and maintain our new hiding place as well."

"Oh, yes," I answered. "That we can do. The written word belongs to us, Lestat. Isn't that enough?"

"I'll tell you what, old boy," he said, stopping on the rear balcony and throwing a passing glance over the flat which he had so loved. "Let's leave it up to the Talamasca, shall we? I'll become the very saint of patience for you, I promise, unless they raise the stakes. Is that not fair enough?"

"Fair enough," I answered.

And so I close this account of how Merrick Mayfair came to be one of us. So I close the account of how we left New Orleans and went to lose ourselves in the great world.

And for you, my brothers and sisters in the Talamasca, as well as for a multitude of others, I have penned this tale.

4:30 p.m.

Sunday

July 25, 1999