"'Why do you ask me to do this thing?'
She sat across the marble table from me, her back to the open doors of the café.
I struck her as a wonder. But my requests had distracted her. She no longer stared at me, so much as she looked into my eyes.
She was tall, and had kept her dark-brown hair loose and long all her life, save for a leather barrette such as she wore now, which held only her forelocks behind her head to flow down her back. She wore gold hoops dangling from her small earlobes, and her soft white summer clothes had a gypsy flair to them, perhaps because of the red scarf tied around the waist of her full cotton skirt.
'And to do such a thing for such a being?' she asked warmly, not angry with me, no, but so moved that she could not conceal it, even with her smooth compelling voice. 'To bring up a spirit that may be filled with anger and a desire for vengeance, to do this, you ask me, for Louis de Pointe du Lac, one who is already beyond life himself?'
'Who else can I ask, Merrick?' I answered. 'Who else can do such a thing?' I pronounced her name simply, in the American style, though years ago when we'd first met, she had spelled it Merrique and pronounced it with the slight touch of her old French."
-David Talbot & Merrick Mayfair, in Merrick by Anne Rice.
"Oh, how I had missed her! This was more tantalizing than I'd ever expected, to be locked once more in conversation with her. And with pleasure I doted upon the changes in her: that her French accent was completely gone now and that she sounded almost British, and that from her long years of study overseas. She'd spent some of those years in England with me."
-David Talbot, in Merrick by Anne Rice.
"The Witch of Endor. And so I had always thought of Merrick, no matter how close to her I'd become later on. She was Merrick Mayfair, the Witch of Endor. At times I'd addressed her as such in semi-official memos and often in brief notes.
In the beginning, she'd been a tender marvel. I had heeded Aaron's summons, packing, flying to Louisiana, and setting foot for the first time in Oak Haven, the splendid plantation home which had become our refuge outside of New Orleans, on the old River Road.
'Merrick Mayfair,' I'd said warmly. I took her in my arms.
She had been tall for her fourteen years, with beautifully shaped breasts quite natural under her simple cotton shift, and her soft dry hair had been loose down her back. She might have been a Spanish beauty to anyone outside of this bizarre part of the Southland, where the history of the slaves and their free descendants was so full of complex alliances and erotic romance. But any New Orleanean could see African blood in her by the lovely café au lait of her skin."
-David Talbot, in Merrick by Anne Rice.
"It was, very simply, the expression on her face when her eyes fell upon Louis as he stepped into the light. Though she was as poised and clever as always, there came about a complete change in her face. She rose to her feet to meet him, which surprised me, and her countenance was smooth and open with utter shock.
It was then that I realized how skillfully Louis had attired himself in a finely tailored suit of thin black wool. He wore a shirt of a creamcolored silk with a small gold pin beneath his rose-colored tie. Even his shoes were deliberately perfect, buffed to a high luster, and his rich black curly hair was combed neatly and entirely. But the glory of his appearance was, of course, his keen features and his lustrous eyes.
I need not repeat that they are a dark-green color, because it was not the color of his eyes which mattered so much. Rather, it was the expression with which he gazed at Merrick, the seeming awe that setfled over him, and the way that his well-shaped mouth slowly relaxed. He had seen her before, yes, but he was not prepared to find her so very interesting and comely at the same time. And she, with her long hair brushed straight back to the leather barrette, looked utterly inviting in her sharp-shouldered white silk dress, with its small fabric belt and its loose shimmering skirt.
Around her neck, over the fabric of the dress, she wore pearls, in fact, the triple strand of pearls that I myself had long ago given her, and in her ears were pearls, and on the ring finger of her right hand she wore a stunning pearl as well.
I recite these details because I sought to find some sanity in them, but what I was experiencing, what humbled me and made me livid was that the two of them were so impressed with each other, that, for the moment, I was not there. It was undeniable, the fascination with which she stared at Louis. And there was not the slightest question about the awe in which he held her.
'Merrick, my darling,' I said softly, "let me present Louis." But I might as well have been babbling. She never heard a single syllable I uttered. She was silently transported, and I could see in her face a provocative expression which up until this time I had never beheld in her except when she was looking at me. Quickly, obviously struggling to disguise her immense response, she reached out for his hand. With a vampire's reluctance, he met her gesture, and then, to my complete consternation, he bent down and kissed her - not on the hand which he gripped so tenaciously - but on both her lovely cheeks.
Why in the world hadn't I foreseen this? Why had I thought that she would not see him except as an unapproachable wonder? Why hadn't I realized that I was bringing into her presence one of the most alluring beings I've ever known? I felt the fool for having not foreseen it, and I also felt the fool for caring so very much. As he settled in the chair closest to hers, as she sat down and turned her attention to him, I found a place on the sofa across the room. Her eyes never left him, not for a second, and then I heard his voice come low and rich, with his French accent as well as the feeling with which he always spoke.
'You know why I've come to you, Merrick,' he said as tenderly as if he was telling her that he loved her. 'I live in torment thinking of one creature, one creature I once betrayed and then nurtured, and then lost. I come because I believe you can bring that creature's spirit to speak with me. I come to you because I believe I can determine through you whether that spirit is at rest.'"
-David Talbot and Louis de Pointe du Lac, in Merrick by Anne Rice.
"She opened his palm beneath the lamplight. She drew up as if she was shocked. 'Never have I seen a life line such as this,' she whispered. "It's deeply graven, look at it, there is no end to it really," she turned his hand this way and that, 'and all the small lines have long ago melted away.'
'I can die,' he answered with a polite defiance. 'I know I can,' he said sadly. 'I shall when I've got the courage. My eyes will close forever, like those of every mortal of my time who ever lived.'
She didn't answer. She looked down into his open palm again. She felt of the hand, and I could see her loving its silky skin. 'I see three great loves,' she whispered, as if she needed his permission to say it aloud. 'Three deep loves in all this time. Lestat? Yes. Claudia. Most assuredly. And who is the other? Can you tell me that?'
He was in a state of complete confusion as he looked at her, but he hadn't the strength to answer. The color flared in his cheeks and his eyes seemed to flash as if a light inside them had increased its incandescence. She let his hand go, and she blushed."
-David Talbot, Merrick Mayfair and Louis de Pointe du Lac, Merrick by Anne Rice.
"He wasn't only handsomely turned out, he wore a faint masculine perfume. His eyes flashed on me with a nervous energy.
'I can't think of anything but her, David. I tell you, it's as if I never loved Claudia,' he confessed, his voice breaking. 'I mean it, it's as if I never knew love or grief before I met Merrick. It's as if I'm Merrick's slave. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, I think of Merrick,' he declared. 'When I feed, the victim turns to Merrick in my very arms. Hush, don't say anything till I'm finished. I think of Merrick when I lie in my coffin before the coming sunlight. I think of Merrick when I wake up. I must go to Merrick, and as soon as I've fed, I go to where I can see her, David, yes, near the Motherhouse, the place you long ago forbade us ever to trouble. I go there. I was there last night when you came to spy on her. I saw you. The night before, I was there as well. I live for her, and the sight of her through those long windows only inflames me, David. I want her. If she doesn't come out of that place soon, I tell you, whether I mean to or not, I'm going in after her, though what I want of her, except to be with her, I swear to you, I can't say.'
'Stop it, Louis, let me explain what's happened—.'
'How the hell can you explain such a thing? Let me pour it out, man,' he said. 'Let me confess that it all began when I laid eyes on her. You knew it. You saw it. You tried to warn me. But I had no idea that the feelings would become so very intense. I was certain I could control them. Good Lord, how many mortals have I resisted over these two centuries, how many times have I turned my back on some random soul who drew me so painfully that I had to weep?'
'Stop it, Louis, listen to me.'
'I won't hurt her, David,' he said, 'I swear it. I don't want to hurt her. I can't bear the thought of feeding from her as I once did from Claudia, oh, that awful awful mistake, the making of Claudia. I won't hurt her, I swear it, but I must see her, I must be with her, I must hear her voice. David, can you get her out of Oak Haven? Can you make her meet with me?'"
-David Talbot and Louis de Pointe du Lac, Merrick by Anne Rice.