Merrick (The Vampire Chronicles 7)

During that time of coming together, I had managed to persuade Armand to dictate his life story to me; and I had circulated, with her permission, the pages which the vampire Pandora had given me sometime before.

These stories attracted even more of the maverick blood drinkers¡ªthose creatures who, being masterless and giving out lies as to their beginnings, often taunt their mortal prey and seek to bully them in a way that can only lead to trouble for all of us.

The uneasy convocation did not last long.

But though Marius, a child of two millennia, and his consort, the lovely Pandora, disapproved of the young blood drinkers, they would not lift a hand against them to put them to death or to flight. It was not in their nature to respond to such a catastrophe, though they were outraged by the conduct of these baseborn fiends.

As for Lestat's mother, Gabrielle, one of the coldest and most fascinating individuals whom I have ever encountered, it was of absolutely no concern to her at all, as long as no one harmed her son.

Well, it was quite impossible for anyone to harm her son. He is unharmable, as far as we all know. Or rather, to speak more plainly, let me say that his own adventures have harmed Lestat far more than any vampire might. His trip to Heaven and Hell with Memnoch, be it delusion or supernatural journey, has left him stunned spiritually to such a point that he is not ready to resume his antics and become the Brat Prince whom we once adored.

However, with vicious and sordid blood drinkers breaking down the very doors of St. Elizabeth's and coming up the iron stairs of our very own town house in the Rue Royale, it was Armand who was able to rouse Lestat and goad him into taking the situation in hand.

Lestat, having already waked to listen to the piano music of a fledgling vampire, blamed himself for the tawdry invasion. It was he who had created the "Coven of the Articulate," as we had come to be called. And so, he declared to us in a hushed voice, with little or no enthusiasm for the battle, that he would put things right.

Armand¡ªgiven in the past to leading covens, and to destroying them¡ªassisted Lestat in a massacre of the unwelcome rogue vampires before the social fabric was fatally breached.

Having the gift of fire, as the others called it¡ªthat is, the means to kindle a blaze telekinetically¡ªLestat destroyed with flames the brash invaders of his own lair, and all those who had violated the privacy of the more retiring Marius and Pandora, Santino, and Louis and myself. Armand dismembered and obliterated those who died at his hand.

Those few preternatural beings who weren't killed fled the city, and indeed many were overtaken by Armand, who showed no mercy whatsoever to the misbegotten, the heartlessly careless, and the deliberately cruel.

After that, when it was plain to one and all that Lestat had returned to his semisleep, absorbed utterly in recordings of the finest music provided for him by me and by Louis, the elders¡ªMarius, Pandora, Santino, and Armand, with two younger companions¡ªgradually went their way.

It was an inevitable thing, that parting, because none of us could really endure the company of so many fellow blood drinkers for very long.

As it is with God and Satan, humankind is our subject matter. And so it is that, deep within the mortal world and its many complexities, we choose to spend our time.

Of course, we will all come together at various times in the future. We know well how to reach one another. We are not above writing letters. Or other means of communication. The eldest know telepathically when things have gone terribly wrong with the young ones, and vice versa. But for now, only Louis and Lestat and I hunt the streets of New Orleans, and so it will be for some time.

That means, strictly speaking, that only Louis and I hunt, for Lestat simply does not feed at all. Having the body of a god, he has subsumed the lust which still plagues the most powerful, and lies in his torpor as the music plays on.

And so New Orleans, in all her drowsy beauty, is host to only two of the Undead. Nevertheless, we must be very clever. We must cover up the deeds that we do. To feed upon the evildoer, as Marius has always called it, is our vow; however, the blood thirst is a terrible thing.

But before I return to my tale¡ªof how Louis and I went out on this particular evening, allow me a few more words about Lestat.

I personally do not think that things are as simple with him as the others tend to believe. Above, I have given you pretty much "the party line," as the expression goes, as to his comalike slumber and his music. But there are very troubling aspects to his presence which I cannot deny or resolve.

Unable to read his mind, because he made me a vampire and I am therefore his fledgling and far too close to him for such communication, I, nevertheless, perceive certain things about him as he lies by the hour listening to the brilliant and stormy music of Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Chopin, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky, and the other composers he loves.

I've confessed these "doubts" about his wellbeing to Marius and to Pandora and to Armand. But no one of them could penetrate the veil of preternatural silence which he has drawn about his entire being, body and soul.

"He's weary," say the others. "He'll be himself soon. " And "He'll come around. "

I don't doubt these things. Not at all. But to put it plainly, something is more wrong with him than anyone has guessed. There are times when he is not there in his body.

Now this may mean that he is projecting his soul up and out of his body in order to roam about, in pure spirit form, at will. Certainly Lestat knows how to do this. He learnt it from the most ancient of the vampires; and he proved that he could do it, when with the evil Body Thief he worked a switch.

But Lestat does not like that power. And no one who has had his body stolen is likely to use it for more than a very short interval in any one night.

I feel something far more grave is wrong there, that Lestat is not always in control of either body or soul, and we must wait to discover the terms and outcome of a battle which might still be going on.

As for Lestat's appearance, he lies on the Chapel floor, or on the fourposter bed in the town house, with his eyes open, though they appear to see nothing. And for a while after the great cleansing battle, he did periodically change his clothes, favoring the red velvet jackets of old, and his lacetrimmed shirts of heavy linen, along with slim pants and plain black boots.

Others have seen this attention to wardrobe as a good sign. I believe Lestat did these things so that we would leave him alone.

Alas, I have no more to say on the subject in this narrative. At least I don't think so. I can't protect Lestat from what is happening, and no one really has ever succeeded in protecting him or stopping him, no matter what the circumstances of his distress.

Now, let me return to my record of events.