Merrick - Anne Rice [159]
I had read this over carefully, and was in the act of affixing my signature when I felt Lestat’s cold hand on my shoulder, pressing firmly on my flesh.
He repeated the words “an interesting adversary,” and there came from him a sly laugh.
“Don’t hurt them, please,” I whispered.
“Come on, David,” he said confidently, “it’s time for us to leave here. Come. Prompt me to tell you about my ethereal wanderings, or perhaps give you some other tale.”
I bent over the paper, completing my signature carefully, and it occurred to me that I had no count of the many documents I had written for, and in, the Talamasca, and that once more, to one such document, a document which would go into their files, I had put my name.
“All right, old friend, I’m ready,” I said. “But give me your word.”
We walked down the long corridor to the back of the flat together, his hand heavy but welcome on my shoulder, his clothes and hair smelling of the wind.
“There are tales to be written, David,” he said. “You won’t keep us all from that, will you? Surely we can go on with our confessions and maintain our new hiding place as well.”
“Oh, yes,” I answered. “That we can do. The written word belongs to us, Lestat. Isn’t that enough?”
“I’ll tell you what, old boy,” he said, stopping on the rear balcony and throwing a passing glance over the flat which he had so loved. “Let’s leave it up to the Talamasca, shall we? I’ll become the very saint of patience for you, I promise, unless they raise the stakes. Is that not fair enough?”
“Fair enough,” I answered.
And so I close this account of how Merrick Mayfair came to be one of us. So I close the account of how we left New Orleans and went to lose ourselves in the great world.
And for you, my brothers and sisters in the Talamasca, as well as for a multitude of others, I have penned this tale.
4:30 p.m.
Sunday
July 25, 1999
A L S O B Y A N N E R I C E
Interview with the Vampire
The Feast of All Saints
Cry to Heaven
The Vampire Lestat
The Queen of the Damned
The Mummy
The Witching Hour
The Tale of the Body Thief
Lasher
Taltos
Memnoch the Devil
Servant of the Bones
Violin
Pandora
The Vampire Armand
Vittorio, The Vampire
U N D E R T H E N A M E A N N E R A M P L I N G
Exit to Eden
Belinda
U N D E R T H E N A M E A . N . R O Q U E L A U R E
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
Beauty’s Punishment
Beauty’s Release
T H I S I S A B O R Z O I B O O K
P U B L I S H E D B Y A L F R E D A . K N O P F
A N D A L F R E D A . K N O P F C A N A D A
Copyright © 2000 by Anne O’Brien Rice
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
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Knopf and Borzoi Books are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rice, Anne, [date]
Merrick / Anne Rice.
p. cm.—(The vampire chronicles)
1. Vampires—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3568.I265 M48 2000
813'.54—dc21 99-088556
eISBN: 978-0-375-41270-7
v3.0