Merrick
"It's an old spell, David; it binds you to come to me, it binds the spirits who listen to me to drive you towards me. It binds them to fill your dreams and your waking hours with thoughts of me. As the spell builds in power it presses out all other considerations, and finally there is one obsession, that you come to me, and nothing else will do... 'May he be a slave to me, may he be the faithful servant of my designs, may he have no power to refuse what I have confided to you, my great and faithful spirits. May he fulfil that destiny which I choose of my own accord.'"

It was on a particularly bleak night in London that I received Lestat’s call and the sound of it, which interrupted the otherwise perfect silence of my room, sent an eerie chill through my body. It was an enduring trait from my mortal days that the sound of a phone ringing at odd hours filled me with a sense of foreboding. I glanced at the phone before answering it, slowly awakening myself from the quiet solitude in which I had been enmeshed for several days. Lestat’s voice on the line was strained and his tone conveyed a sense of urgency and a glimpse of his underlying sorrow more faithfully than his words. I sensed instantly that something was terribly wrong. Perhaps I had sensed it before he had called. "Paris? Yes, of course. I’ll be there."

I very quickly made arrangements to travel to Paris. Most flights had been grounded on account of the weather, but a train would have me there in a few hours, just after midnight. While this mode of transport was convenient, it did little for my sanity, as I sat in solitude for the duration of the journey, staring blankly as the landscape passed me by and wondering what could have inspired Lestat’s obvious distress. I tried to tell myself that there was no sense in dwelling on it - that the possibilities were endless - but I knew that they were not. The first clue was, of course, that he was calling from Paris, the city adopted by Louis and Merrick as their home. And then, there was her failure to answer her phone. My insides had begun to churn.

I found Lestat in the apartment that I knew belonged to Louis and Merrick, on the Champs Elysees. He met me at the door to the building, embracing me briefly but forcefully, before taking the stairs with me. I could feel Louis’ presence, but all other voices and heartbeats were foreign to me. Traces of Merrick were everywhere, none so overwhelming as the Chanel perfume that had so intoxicated me in days gone by. Now, it inspired a faint queasiness and the tension between us was quickly mounting. She wasn’t merely absent from the room. The very lack of her was a powerful presence in itself, demanding to be witnessed and understood. Miserably, I conceded that there was a reason he hadn’t told me where she was. There was a reason that I hadn’t asked.

“She’s dead,” I declared, before he could speak a word. He stood and stared at me a moment and then nodded. “David, I’m sorry.” The bare truth and simplicity of his words were unbearable. Why? Why could he not obscure the heartbreak of it with some artful embellishment? Where were his jibes, now? Where were his sardonic asides? Why, of all things, must we face this with nothing but the cruelty of the miserable truth? I turned from him, seating myself in a chair that faced away from him and resting my head in my hands. I no longer saw her as the woman that she had become, but as the child who first came to me, orphaned and vulnerable and powerfully enchanting. That child was dead. I had killed her - we all had! Only she had put the loaded guns into our hands and coaxed us into destroying what we loved.

“She’s dead. Merrick is dead.” I repeated the words, punishing myself with the agony of hearing them aloud. “How?”

Lestat came and sat opposite me and calmly, he recounted her final hours. His anguish became palpable as, with tears rising, he told of her sacrifice. His lip quivered as he praised, poetically, the grace and dignity that she carried with her from this world to the next. I remained perfectly still, stirring only upon hearing how calmly and resolutely she had taken her own life. This was her, so called, ‘sacrifice’. There was a long silence after he had finished. Sadness and anger and misery were compounding in a place so deep inside me that no one else would ever reach it. My soul would be forever tainted with bitterness in memory of the mercilessness with which she came to be one of us, and the cruelty with which she left us behind.

Merrick had loved me in her time; of that, I had no doubt. But it was a love that was as selfish as it was capricious, rooted in her perception of the world around her as little more than a backdrop for her machinations. It was a love that imparted desperation above comfort and longing without hope of consolation. It was a love that had long been obscured by the vast shadow of her own self-seeking ambitions. Though I had always defended her from my own condemnation as vigorously as I defended her against others who despised her for her manipulations, her betrayal of my trust and my love weighed heavily on me till the very end. And now, as though she had not brought enough suffering to those who loved her with her untimely transformation, her untimely demise would be the last twist of the knife.

In taking her own life, she extinguished any last hope of forgiveness. It seemed to me now, in this, my darkest of moments, that despite all that she was and all that she meant to me, that was her only legacy. My heart was overwhelmed with sadness and utterly devoid of compassion. She did this. She ruined herself. She ruined everything.

“She died as she lived,” I said to Lestat, in a voice that was quiet and bereft. “In fulfilment of the destiny that she chose of her own accord. I pray she rests in peace.”