Merrick - Anne Rice [121]
He laughed at himself proudly, then drank from his greasy brown bottle. His lips were pink, and his chin covered in a grizzled beard.
Louis stared at him without answering. I watched in fascination. Louis’s face gradually lost all expression, all semblance of feeling. It might have belonged to a dead man as he sat there, as he stared at the victim, as he marked the victim, as he let the victim lose his poor desperate humanity, as the kill passed from possible to probable and finally, to a foregone conclusion.
“I want to kill you,” Louis said softly. He leant forward and peered very close into the man’s pale and red-rimmed gray eyes.
“To kill me?” said the man, raising one eyebrow. “You think you can do that?” he asked.
“I can do it,” said Louis gently. “Just like this.” He bent and sank his teeth into the man’s thick unshaven neck. I saw the man’s eyes brighten for one instant as he stared over Louis’s shoulder, then the eyes became fixed, and very gradually they went dull.
The man’s cumbersome and bulky body rested against Louis, his thick-fingered right hand quivering before it went limp beside the bottle of beer.
After a long moment, Louis drew back and helped the man to lay his head and shoulders down on the table. Lovingly, he touched the man’s thick grayish hair.
On the street, Louis breathed deep of the fresh night air. His face was full of the blood of his victim, and richly colored with the tints of a human. He smiled a sad, bitter smile as he looked up, his eyes seeking the faintest stars.
“Agatha,” he said softly, as if it were a prayer.
“Agatha?” I repeated. How I feared for him.
“Claudia’s mother,” he replied, looking at me. “She said the name once in those first few nights, exactly as Merrick put it. She recited both their names, father and mother, in the manner in which she’d been taught to tell strangers. Agatha was her mother’s name.”
“I see,” I replied. “Merrick will be very pleased with that. It’s the style of the old charms, you understand, when calling a spirit, to include its mother’s name.”
“Pity about that man drinking only beer,” he said as we commenced our walk back to Merrick. “I could have used just a little heat in the blood, you know, but then perhaps it’s better. Better to have a strong clear mind for what happens. I believe Merrick can do what I want.”
19
AS WE MADE OUR WAY along the side of the house, I saw the candles burning, and when we emerged into the rear yard, I saw the great altar under the shed, with all its tall blessed saints and virgins, and indeed, the Three Magi, and the angels Michael and Gabriel with their spectacular white wings and in their colorful garb.
The scent of incense was strong and delicious to my nostrils. And the trees hung low over the broad clean flagstone terrace with its uneven purple stones.
Far back from the shed, indeed, very near the closest edge of the terrace, there stood the old iron pot atop the brazier tripod, the coals beneath it already glowing. And on either side were long iron tables, rectangular in shape, on which many different objects had been laid out with obvious care.
The complexity of the whole display amazed me faintly, but then I saw, standing on the back steps of the house, only a couple of yards from the tables and the cauldron, the figure of Merrick, her face covered in the green jade mask.
A shock went through my system. The eye holes and mouth opening of the mask appeared empty; only the brilliant green jade was filled with reflected light. Merrick’s shadowy hair and body were scarcely visible, though I saw her hand when she lifted it and beckoned for us to come close.
“Here,” she said, her voice slightly muffled by the mask as she spoke, “you will stand with me behind the cauldron and the tables.