Merrick - Anne Rice [131]
“Rest now, precious darling,” I said. “You only did what he asked.”
“Don’t leave me just now,” she said in a raw voice, “except if you think you can find him. If you know where he is, then find him. Otherwise stay here with me, just for this little while.”
I went down the hall in search of a bathroom and found it to the very rear of the house, a spacious and somewhat lavish arrangement with a little coal fireplace as well as a great claw-foot tub. There was the usual pile of clean white terry cloth towels one expects amid such luxury. I moistened the end of one of these and brought it back to the front room.
Merrick was on her side, knees curled up, her hands clasped together. I could hear a low whispering coming from her lips.
“Here, let me wipe your face,” I said. I did it without any further concessions, and then I wiped the caked blood from her inner arm. The scratches went clear from her palm to the inside of her elbow. But they were very shallow. One began to bleed a little as I cleaned it, but I pressed on it for a moment and the blood ceased to flow.
I found the dry clean end of the towel, and patted Merrick’s face with it, and then the wounds, which were now completely clean and healed.
“I can’t remain here like this,” Merrick said. Her head went from side to side. “I have to get the bones from the rear yard. It was a terrible thing to overturn the altars.”
“Be quiet now,” I said. “I’ll bring them in.”
It filled me with revulsion to do this. But I was as good as my word.
I went back to the scene of the crime. The dark rear yard seemed uncommonly still. The dead candles before the saints seemed negligent and evidence of grave sins.
Out of the detritus fallen from the iron tables, I picked up the skull of Honey in the Sunshine. I felt a sudden chill run through my hands, but I put it off to my imagination. I gathered up the rib bone, and I saw again that both of these bore all kinds of deeply incised writing. I refused to read the writing. I brought them back with me into the house and into the front room.
“Put them on the altar,” she said. She sat up, pushing the heavy covers off her.
I saw that she had taken off her bloodsoaked dress of white silk, and that it lay in a heap on the floor.
She wore only her silk petticoat, and I could see her large pink nipples through it. There was blood on the petticoat too. Her shoulders were very straight and her breasts high set, and her arms were just rounded enough to be delicious to my sight.
I went to pick up the dress. I wanted to clean her up completely. I wanted her to be all right.
“It’s monstrously unfair that you’re so frightened,” I said.
“No, leave the dress,” she answered, reaching out for my wrist. “Let it go, and sit here, beside me. Take my hand and talk to me. The spirit’s a liar, I swear it. You must believe what I say.”
Once again, I sat down on the bed. I wanted to be close to her. I leant over and kissed her bowed head. I wished I couldn’t see so much of her breasts, and I wondered if the younger vampires knew—those brought over early in their manhood—how such carnal details still distracted me. Of course the blood lust rose with this distraction. It was not an easy thing to love her so terribly and not taste of her soul through her blood.
“Why do I have to believe you?” I asked gently.
She dug her fingers into her hair and swept it back behind her shoulders.
“Because you must,” she said urgently yet quietly. “You must see that I knew what I was doing, you must believe that I can tell a truth-telling spirit from one who lies. That was something, yes, that being which pretended to be Claudia—something very powerful that it could lift the pick and sink it into Louis’s flesh. I’ll wager anything that it was a spirit who hated him due to his very