Merrick - Anne Rice [117]
“As David can tell you, they seem to hunger for the warmth and the light of life; they seem to hunger even for blood. But who knows the true intentions of any spirit? From what depth did the prophet Samuel rise in the Bible? Are we to believe Scripture, that the magic of the Witch of Endor was strong?”
Louis was fastened to her every word.
He reached out suddenly and took her hand again, letting her curl her fingers around his thumb.
“And what do you see, Merrick, when you look at David and at me? Do you see the spirit that inhabits us, the hungry spirit that makes us vampires?”
“Yes, I see it, but it’s mute and mindless, utterly subordinate to your brains and hearts. It knows nothing now, if it ever did, except that it wants the blood. And for the blood it slowly works its spell on your tissues, it slowly commands your every cell to obey. The longer you live, the more it thrives, and it is angry now, angry insofar as it can choose any emotion, because you blood drinkers are so few.”
Louis appeared mystified, but surely it wasn’t so difficult to understand.
“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 burn 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