Merrick [Paperback]

With the splendid Merrick, Rice is firing on all cylinders, and this latest volume in the best-selling Vampire Chronicles has all the elements that we expect from her: richly evocative use of locales; flesh-creeping horror (the squeamish should steer clear); rich, operatic characterisation and (most of all) that strange, overwrought prose style which is hers alone. The Vampire Armand ended with Lestat being revived in modern-day New Orleans. But the central character in this new volume is Lestat's friend Louis de Pointe du Lac (who first appeared in the 18th-century France of Interview with the Vampire ), another one of Rice's tortured vampires. Louis is dealing with the memory of the dead child vampire Claudia, to whom he was devoted. But when the Machiavellian organiser David Talbot joins Louis in appealing to the beautiful Merrick (mixed-race daughter of a New Orleans Mayfair clan) to invoke the ghost of Claudia, Merrick's very individual brand of black magic becomes the one thing that can save Louis' sanity. This tampering results in other malign spirits being released, and soon Rice's narrative is knee-deep in bloody mayhem and voodoo.

The novel has the feel of a massive, sprawling canvas, teeming with colour and invention, the locales move from her beloved New Orleans to a colourfully realised Brazilian jungle, and set against this are the larger-than-life characters Rice excels in. Merrick takes a little while to establish herself but when she assumes centre stage, the reader will find the wait well worthwhile. The big set pieces are as gripping as ever (in the usual sanguinary fashion):

Suddenly she lunged at the altar, never letting go of her bottle, and, grabbing the green jade perforator in her left hand, she slashed a long cut into her right arm. I gasped. What could I do to stop her, I thought, what could I do that wouldn't enrage her? The blood streamed down her arm and she bowed her head, lifted it, drank the rum and sprayed the offering on the patient saints once again. I could see the blood flowing down her hand, over her knuckles. The wound was superficial but the amount of blood was awful. Again she lifted the knife...

--Barry Forshaw --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Vampires, witchcraft and voodoo come together in this vivid, exotic and terrifying new novel from Anne Rice, merging the worlds of the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches.

When last the vampire Lestat was seen, he was rising from the dead in present-day New Orleans to walk again among Anne Rice's unforgettable undead. Now Lestat lives again, but in a twilight world of music and memory.

His charismatic friend Louis de Pointe du Lac is tortured by the memory of the child vampire, Claudia, whom he loved and lost. He calls on Merrick, young and gorgeous mixed-race by-blow of the rich New Orleans Mayfair clan. To save Louis' sanity, Merrick must use her black witchcraft to call up the ghost of Claudia - however dangerous this may be. There are other Mayfair spirits who will not lie still, and her search takes her close to the edge, through blood and terror, ritual and violence.

Sweeping from New Orleans to the Brazilian jungle and the island of Haiti, this is vampire literature at its most tantalising, sexy and irresistible.

The Vampire Armand finished with a tantalising moment - the Vampire Lestat rising from the dead in present-day New Orleans to walk again among Anne Rice’s unforgettable undead. Now Lestat lives again but in a twilight world of music and memory.

In this volume it is his mesmerizing friend and coeval Louis de Pointe du Lac (originating in 18th century France and Interview with the Vampire) who is tortured by the memory of the child vampire, Claudia, whom he loved and lost. Louis calls on the help of Merrick, young, beautiful mistress of the dark arts. To save Louis’ sanity, Merrick must use her black witchcraft to invoke Claudia’s ghost – but there are other Mayfair spirits who will not lie still, and her search takes her through blood and terror, ritual and violence.

Louis is a vampire tortured by guilt. His status as a killer has left him conflicted for much of his immortal life, but after the murder of Claudia, his beloved child vampire, he spirals into a state of depression. And in a moment of desperation he decides to bring her back with the help of the beautiful witch Merrick.

To save Louis' sanity, Merrick must use black magic to call up the ghost of Claudia - however dangerous this may be. But in the dark unknown of the underworld there are other spirits who will not lie still, and her search takes her close to the edge of peril.

'Rice knows what her readers want - scene after scene of magic and conjuring, with a liberal sprinkling of horror and eroticism.'

Times Literary Supplement

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Anne Rice is the author of The Vampire Chronicles and creator of phenomenally successful fictional worlds in 25 previous novels, most recently Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle. She recently moved from her native New Orleans to La Jolla, California. (20010730)

One
"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 flare 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.
There was a rough sound from the kitchen door, the creak of neglected hinges. A wraith of a waiter in a soiled apron appeared at our side, his feet scratching against the dusty flagstones of the floor.
"Rum," she said. "St. James. Bring a bottle of it."
He murmured something which even with my vampiric hearing I did not bother to catch. And away he shuffled, leaving us alone again in the dimly lighted room, with all its long doors thrown open to the Rue Ste. Anne.
It was vintage New Orleans, the little establishment. Overhead fans churned lazily, and the floor had not been cleaned in a hundred years.
The twilight was softly fading, the air filled with the fragrances of the Quarter and the sweetness of spring. What a kind miracle it was that she had chosen such a place, and that it was so strangely deserted on such a divine evening as this.
Her gaze was steady but never anything but soft.
"Louis de Pointe du Lac would see a ghost now," she said, musing, "as if his suffering isn't enough."
Not only were her words sympathetic, but also her low and confidential tone. She felt pity for him.
"Oh, yes," she said without allowing me to speak. "I pity him, and I know how badly he wants to see the face of this dead child vampire whom he loved so much." She raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. "You come with names which are all but legend. You come out of secrecy, you come out of a miracle, and you come close, and with a request."
"Do it, then, Merrick, if it doesn't harm you," I said. "I'm not here to bring harm to you. God in Heaven help me. Surely you know as much."
"And what of harm coming to your Louis?" she asked, her words spoken slowly as she pondered. "A ghost can speak dreadful things to those who call it, and this is the ghost of a monster child who died by violence. You ask a potent and terrible thing."
I nodded. All she said was true.
"Louis is a being obsessed," I said. "It's taken years for his obsession to obliterate all reason. Now he thinks of nothing else."
"And what if I do bring her up out of the dead? You think there will be a resolution to the pain of either one?"
"I don't hope for that. I don't know. But anything is preferable to the pain Louis suffers now. Of course I have no right to ask this of you, no right to come to you at all.
"Yet we're all entangled-the Talamasca and Louis and I. And the Vampire Lestat as well. It was from the very bosom of the Talamasca that Louis de Pointe du Lac heard a story of the ghost of Claudia. It was to one of our own, a woman named Jesse Reeves-you'll find her in the archives-that this ghost of Claudia supposedly first appeared."
"Yes, I know the story," said Merrick. "It happened in the Rue Royale. You sent Jesse Reeves to investigate the vampires. And Jesse Reeves came back with a handful of treasures that were proof enough that a child named Claudia, an immortal child, had once lived in the flat."
"Quite right," I answered. "I was wrong to send Jesse. Jesse was too young. Jesse was never-" It was difficult for me to finish. "Jesse was never quite as clever as you."

"People read it among Lestat's published tales and think it's fancy," she said, musing, thinking, "all that about a diary, a rosary, wasn't it, and an old doll. And we have those things, don't we? They're in the vault in England. We didn't have a Louisiana Motherhouse in those days. You put them in the vault yourself."
"Can you do it?" I asked. "Will you do it? That's more to the point. I have no doubt that you can."
She wasn't ready to answer. But we had made a great beginning here, she and I. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.