Merrick - Anne Rice [87]
“How, precisely?” I asked her.
“Honey knows it,” she answered. “Honey in the Sunshine was sixteen when we made that journey. Honey will remember. Honey will tell it to me.”
“Merrick, you can’t try to call up Honey!” I said. “You know that’s far too dangerous, that’s utterly reckless, you can’t . . .”
“David, you’re here.”
“I can’t protect you if you call up this spirit, good God.”
“But you must protect me. You must protect me because Honey will be as dreadful as she ever was. She’ll try to destroy me when she comes through.”
“Then don’t do it.”
“I have to do it. I have to do it and I have to go back to that cave. I promised Matthew Kemp when he was dying I’d report those discoveries. He didn’t know he was talking to me. He thought he was talking to Cold Sandra, or maybe even Honey, or maybe his mother, I couldn’t tell. But I promised. I promised I would tell the world about that cave.”
“The world does not care about one more Olmec ruin!” I said. “There are universities aplenty working all through the rain forests and jungles. There’re ancient cities all over Central America! What does it matter now?”
“I promised Oncle Vervain,” she said earnestly. “I promised him I’d get all the treasure. I promised I’d bring it back. ‘When you grow up,’ he said to me, and I promised.”
“Sounds to me as if Cold Sandra promised,” I said sharply. “And perhaps Honey in the Sunshine promised. You were what, seven years old when the old man died?”
“I have to do it,” she said solemnly.
“Listen,” I insisted, “we’re going to stop this entire plan. It’s too dangerous politically to go to those Central American jungles anyway,” I declared. “I won’t approve the trip. I’m the Superior General. You can’t go over my head.”
“I don’t intend to,” she said, her tone softening. “I need you with me. I need you now.”
She stopped, and, leaning to one side, crushed out her cigarette, and refilled her glass from the bottle. She took a deep drink and settled back again in the chair.
“I have to call Honey,” she whispered.
“Why not call Cold Sandra!” I demanded desperately.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve kept it locked in my soul all these years, but I have to call Honey. And Honey’s near me. Honey’s always near me! I’ve felt her near me. I’ve fended her off with my power. I’ve used my charms and my strength to protect myself. But she never really goes away.” She took a deep drink of the rum. “David,” she said, “Oncle Vervain loved Honey in the Sunshine. Honey’s in these dreams too.”
“I think it’s your gruesome imagination!” I declared.
She gave a high sparkling laugh at this, full of true amusement. It startled me. “Listen to you, David, next you’ll tell me there are no ghosts or vampires. And that the Talamasca is just a legend, such an Order doesn’t exist.”
“Why do you have to call Honey?”
She shook her head. She rested back in the chair, and her eyes filled with visible tears. I could see them in the flicker of the candles. I was becoming genuinely frantic.
I stood up, marched into the dining room, found the bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan Scotch and the lead crystal glasses on the sideboard, and poured myself a good drink. I returned to her. Then I went back and got the bottle. I brought it with me, settled in the chair, and put it on the nightstand to my left.
The Scotch tasted wonderful. I didn’t drink on the plane at all, wanting to be alert for my reunion, and it took the edge off my nerves beautifully.
She was still crying.
“All right, you’re going to call up Honey, and you think for some reason Honey knows the name of the town or the village.”
“Honey liked those places,” she said, unperturbed by my urgent voice. “Honey liked the name of the village from which we hiked to the cave.” She turned to me. “Don’t you see, these names are like jewels embedded in her conscious; she’s there with all she ever knew! She doesn’t have to remember like a living being. The knowledge is in her and I have to make her give it to me.”
“All