Merrick - Anne Rice [147]
Nothing mattered to him but the figure in the coffin, and, as Merrick wept, he reached out almost absently and put his right arm around her, gathering her against his powerful body, and saying in a hoarse whisper,
“There, there, chérie. He did what he wanted.”
“But it’s gone wrong!” she answered. The words spilled out of her. “He’s too old for one day’s fire to end it. And he may be locked inside these charred remains in fear of what’s to come. He might, like a dying man, hear us in his fatal trance and be unable to respond.” She moaned plaintively as she continued: “He may be crying for us to help him, and we stand here and we argue and we pray.”
“And if I spill my blood down into this coffin now,” Lestat asked her, “what do you think will come back? Do you think it will be our Louis that will rise in these burnt rags? What if it’s not, chérie, what if it’s some wounded revenant that we must destroy?”
“Choose life, Lestat,” she said. She turned to him, pulled loose of him, and appealed to him. “Choose life, no matter in what form. Choose life and bring him back. If he would die, it can be finished afterwards.”
“My blood’s too strong now, chérie,” said Lestat. He cleared his throat and wiped at the dust on his own eyelids. He ran his hand into his hair and pulled it roughly out of his face. “My blood will make a monster of what’s there.”
“Do it!” she said. “And if he wants to die, if he asks again, then I will be his servant in his extremity, I promise you.” How seductive were her eyes, her voice. “I’ll make a brew that he can swallow, of poisons in the blood of animals, the blood of wild things. I’ll feed him such a potion that he’ll sleep as the sun rises.” Her voice became more impassioned. “He’ll sleep, and should he live again to sunset, I’ll be his guardian through the night until the sun rises again.”
For a long time, Lestat’s brilliant violet eyes were fastened to her, as though he were considering her will, her plan, her very commitment, and then slowly he turned his eyes to me.
“And you, beloved one? What would you have me do?” he asked. His face had now a livelier aspect to it, for all his sorrow.
“I can’t tell you,” I said, shaking my head. “You’ve come and it’s your decision, yours by right, because you are the eldest and I’m thankful that you’re here.” Then I found myself prey to the most awful and grim considerations, and I looked down at the dark figure again, and up once more to Lestat.
“If I had tried and failed,” I said, “I would want to come back.”
What was it that made me give voice to such a sentiment? Was it fear? I couldn’t say. But it was true, and I knew it, as if my lips had sought to instruct my heart.
“Yes, if I had seen the sun rise,” I said, “and I had lived past it, I might well have lost my courage, and courage he very much required.”
Lestat seemed to be considering these things. How could he not? Once, he himself had gone into the sunlight in a distant desert place, and, having been burnt again and again, without release, he came back. His skin was still golden from this hurtful and terrible disaster. He would carry that imprint of the sun’s power for many years to come.
Straightaway, he stepped in front of Merrick, and as both of us watched, he knelt down beside the coffin, and he moved very close to the figure, and then he drew back. With his fingers, quite as delicately as she had done it, he touched the blackened hands, and he left no mark. Slowly, lightly, he touched the forehead, and once more, he left no mark.
He drew back, kneeling up, and, lifting his right hand to his mouth, he gashed his wrist with his own teeth before either Merrick or I knew what he meant to do.
At once a thick stream of blood poured down onto the perfectly molded face of the figure in the coffin, and as the vein sought to heal itself, again Lestat gashed it and let the blood flow.
“Help me, Merrick. Help me, David!” he called out.