Merrick - Anne Rice [157]
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, chérie,” 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—as far as we know—they’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—these 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—.”
“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