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Excerpt
Proem
My name is David Talbot.
Do any of you remember me as the Superior General of the Talamasca,
the Order of psychic detectives whose motto was "We watch and we
are always here"?
It has a charm, doesn't it, that motto?
The Talamasca has existed for over a thousand years.
I don't know how the Order began. I don't really know all the secrets
of the Order. I do know however that I served it most of my mortal
life.
It was in the Talamasca Motherhouse in England that the Vampire
Lestat first made himself known to me. He came into my study one
winter night and caught me quite unawares.
I learnt very quickly that it was one thing to read and write about
the supernatural and quite another to see it with your own eyes.
But that was a long time ago.
I'm in another physical body now.
And that physical body has been transformed by Lestat's powerful
vampiric blood.
I'm among the most dangerous of the vampires, and one of the most
trusted. Even the wary vampire Armand revealed to me the story of
his life. Perhaps you've read the biography of Armand which I released
into the world.
When that story ended, Lestat had wakened from a long sleep in New
Orleans to listen to some very beautiful and seductive music.
It was music that lulled him back again into unbroken silence as
he retreated once more to a convent building to lie upon a dusty
marble floor.
There were many vampires then in the city of New Orleans --- vagabonds,
rogues, foolish young ones who had come to catch a glimpse of Lestat
in his seeming helplessness. They menaced the mortal population.
They annoyed the elders among us who wanted visibility and the right
to hunt in peace.
All those invaders are gone now.
Some were destroyed, others merely frightened. And the elders who
had come to offer some solace to the sleeping Lestat have gone their
separate ways.
As this story begins, only three of us remain in New Orleans. And
we three are the sleeping Lestat, and his two faithful fledglings
--- Louis de Pointe du Lac, and I, David Talbot, the author of this
tale.
Excerpted from MERRICK (c) Copyright 2000 by Anne Rice. Reprinted
with permission from Knopf. All rights reserved.
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