Maharet is one of the first vampires ever made and one of Akasha’s first enemies. She is a founder of the First Brood and the Mother of the Great Family. Through her work chronicling the Great Family tree, Maharet is the only vampire who never goes into a torpor underground like Lestat, nor does she turn statuesque like Akasha. Maharet appears in The Queen of the Damned (1988), Memnoch the Devil (1995), Blood Canticle (2003), Prince Lestat (2014), and Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016).
Maharet is born more than four thousand years before the Common Era with her twin sister, Mekare, both of whom have fiery red hair and green eyes. Their family is already ancient at the time, having lived in the caves of Mount Carmel in the north of Israel as far back as fifty generations, to the Time Before the Moon. As her family grows over the centuries, some move out of the caves and build round mud-brick houses with thatched roofs at the mountain’s foot on the valley floor. Their principal profession is herding sheep and goats, yet they also produce pottery, which they trade at the markets of Jericho. Occasionally Maharet’s village grows crops, some of which are hallucinogens, which the villagers regularly employ in their spiritual practice. The women in the direct line of Maharet’s family are considered to be the witches who help guide their religious belief. Maharet defines this particular vocation not as controlling nature but as presiding over the ritual cannibalism of other witches, experiencing out-of-body pilgrimages through time and space, and communicating with ghosts and spirits who help them predominate over nature and give them knowledge. Each mother instructs her daughter how to hone and perfect this gift. They divide spirits into two categories, good and evil. All spirits have the ability to influence nature, sometimes influencing the weather, other times manipulating small physical objects. The good spirits do favors for the witches, while the bad spirits are mercurial and entirely untrustworthy.
By the time Maharet and Mekare are sixteen years old, the Queen of ancient Egypt dies without a daughter to succeed her. The young King Enkil takes the throne and takes from the city of Uruk a beautiful young woman who becomes his wife and queen, Akasha. One of her first proclamations is instituting a more enlightened philosophy from her culture, which is to ban the common practice of cannibalism, but the people rebel and cause numerous revolts. To ensure that this edict is fulfilled, Akasha seeks to convince people that it is better for the spirits of their ancestors to enter the afterlife with bodies that were not divided for consumption but kept whole and unmolested by wrapping the corpses in burial cloth. To further convince the people of this practice, Akasha invites Maharet and Mekare to the royal court, because their reputation for communicating with spirits is well known. The twins laugh at the idea of not eating the dead, as if the spirits will care. But they distrust Akasha’s messenger. The spirits tell them that great danger will befall them before the King and Queen, so Maharet and Mekare refuse the Queen’s invitation to the royal court.
Following this, the spirit of Amel appears before them and reveals that he can wound human skin enough to cause tiny pinpricks of blood, which he enjoys tasting. Maharet’s mother, a powerful witch, dismisses Amel but worries over his strange ability. When she dies a few months later, Maharet and Mekare prepare her body for ritual cannibalism. After many hours of fasting, Maharet plans to eat the heart, while Mekare plans to eat the brain and eyes. Hundreds of people from many villages come to partake of the ritual. But before the ritual can commence, more of Akasha’s messengers arrive from Egypt, who desecrate their mother’s body, destroy the villages, kill many villagers, capture Maharet and Mekare, and bring them back to Egypt. During their sojourn, over a week’s travel on foot, the King’s steward, Khayman, shows them great compassion. When Maharet and Mekare are finally brought before the Queen and King, Akasha and Enkil question them about spirits and demons. Against Maharet’s protestations, Mekare summons Amel, who torments Akasha and Enkil. The Queen punishes the twins by having them raped by Khayman before the royal court. After this, Akasha and Enkil allow Maharet to return to her village with her sister. As a result of the rape, Maharet bears a daughter, whom she names Miriam.
One year later, Khayman returns to their village accompanied by an army. He takes Maharet and Mekare back to the royal court, where they discover that the spirit of Amel has fused with Akasha’s blood and transformed her into the world’s first vampire, and Enkil has become her first fledgling. The King and Queen seek answers from the twins, but neither Maharet nor Mekare can explain their aversion to sunlight, their superior faculties and strength, their rapid healing ability, or their insatiable bloodlust. Maharet suggests that, because spirits are incredibly large entities, one way to reduce the bloodlust would be to make more vampires, effectively disseminating the spirit and diluting its potency. To test this, Akasha turns Khayman into a vampire against his will, but this proves futile. Mekare loathes the Queen and believes that Akasha has gotten what she deserves, referring to her as the Queen of the Damned. In bitter response, Akasha has Maharet’s eyes torn out and Mekare’s tongue cut off and sentences them to death on the following day. But before her tongue is severed, Mekare curses the Queen and promises to return and have her vengeance, instigating a prophecy that will come to be known as the Legend of the Twins.
Before dawn the next morning, Khayman, who is extremely angered by what has happened to him, turns Mekare into a vampire, who then turns Maharet into a vampire. At the instant of their transformation, Maharet can see again with her mind’s eye, yet her ability to communicate with spirits is cut off forever. They flee from the King and Queen. Five nights after her transformation, Maharet discovers that she can steal the eyes of her victims, place them in her own sockets, and allow her body’s newfound regenerative abilities to fuse them into place, so that she can see the way other vampires see. Maharet, Mekare, and Khayman then turn numerous mortals into blood drinkers, creating a vast army, known as the First Brood, which combats Akasha’s cultic forces. Unfortunately, Maharet, Mekare, and Khayman have not yet learned how to hide the bodies of their victims and leave a trail for Akasha’s army to find. Two weeks after their flight, Maharet and Mekare are captured at Saqqara, the necropolis of Memphis, ancient Egypt’s capital. Only Khayman escapes.
Akasha and Enkil fear harming another vampire. So instead of killing Maharet and her sister, they imprison them in stone tombs and set them adrift in different oceans. After sailing for many days and nights, Maharet finally lands ashore on the African coast. She finds a victim and takes new eyes, but she quickly learns that, because they are not vampiric eyes, they will not last long, and she must keep replacing them with fresh eyes from new victims.
Maharet searches many centuries for her twin sister, going west across Africa, traveling south, searching from one tip to another. She travels into the land that will become Europe, as high as the northernmost islands where the landscape is all ice and snow. But Mekare is nowhere to be found.
When Maharet realizes that her own daughter, Miriam, is now twenty years old, she returns to her old village at the foot of Mount Carmel. Miriam has grown into a beautiful woman who knows the Legend of the Twins, but she does not know that the younger-looking Maharet is her mother. Maharet befriends her daughter and tells her stories of their ancient ancestors, yet she warns her to avoid witchcraft, effectively breaking the traditional line of mothers teaching daughters how to communicate with spirits. Maharet takes up residence in Jericho, where killing victims is easier, but she returns to her old village often to visit Miriam, who begins to have her own children.
After two hundred years pass, Maharet begins chronicling her offspring, writing down her family tree on clay tablets. Occasionally she pauses her chronicling to search for Mekare, but she never finds her and returns to her village to continue recording her family’s progress. For thousands of years, Maharet remains her family’s chronicler in anonymity. In some generations, she goes to her family pretending to be a long-lost kinswoman and offering help with advice or money.
When Maharet turns three thousand years old, she returns to Egypt, shrouded in black robes. She discovers that a blood cult has grown around Akasha and Enkil. Maharet pretends to be a younger vampire and is invited to view the fate of the Queen and King, who are now referred to as the Mother and the Father. She is told by a priest vampire that if she wishes to drink from the blood of the Queen, she must present herself before the Elder and prove the purity of her fidelity to the cult. Maharet beholds that Akasha and Enkil have turned into something like statues, sitting mute and immovable on thrones. She stands before them and speaks to them, but they show no hint of recognition or intelligence. Maharet learns that the Mother and the Father have been like this for so long that the Blood Genesis and the Legend of the Twins are considered to be nothing more than myth. Even the oldest vampire in Egypt at that time does not know whether the story of the First Brood is even true.
Maharet then goes to India. She turns a twenty-nine-year-old mortal named Eric into a vampire and her companion. But at the beginning of the first millennium of the Common Era, Maharet’s fledgling is nearly destroyed when, back in Egypt, the Elder puts the Mother and the Father in the sun, which causes the Great Burning of 4 C.E. Eric is charred and blackened, while Maharet has merely bronzed, like other vampires of her great age. She must let her fledgling drink from her own blood to restore him to health. Maharet discovers that Akasha and Enkil are now called “Those Who Must Be Kept” and are being cared for by a young vampire named Marius. He has taken them out of Egypt and is keeping them in Antioch. Maharet finds them easily and, with a long dagger, slices open Akasha’s chest and watches the Queen’s heart stop beating for a brief moment. In that moment, Maharet feels dizzy and disconnected, as if she is about to die. Maharet then understands that if anything happens to Akasha it affects every vampire, for Akasha keeps within herself Amel, the Sacred Core, the foundation of all vampire existence.
Maharet continues chronicling her family’s progress. She stops using clay tablets and starts binding their stories in books. The name Maharet becomes synonymous with the family-tree record keeper. Each generation knows that this Maharet will come to them and make inquiries of parents and children. And with each new generation, an “old Maharet” dies, and a “new Maharet” takes her place. The progress of time never drives her mad, never drives her into the earth, or makes her become a statue like the Mother and the Father. Chronicling her family’s progress is an anchor that keeps her sane, for she always returns to them, always learns their new language, always befriends them and dons each branch’s particular customs. Out of all the vampires that have ever lived, Maharet’s interest in mortals extends beyond a love for beauty or a need for blood; in the same way that deeply religious individuals can endure great suffering by looking forward to an afterlife, Maharet can always look forward to the next generation of her growing family, knowing that each new line and branch of the Great Family’s tree is a further defeat of her ancient foe, Akasha.
As the centuries elapse, Maharet continues to search for her sister, Mekare, yet she never finds her. At first, she can feel a telepathic bond with her sister, at least subconsciously, in a dreamlike state, experiencing Mekare’s ineffable suffering. As they continue to age into immortality, they become less human, which weakens the bond of their unique sisterhood. Feeling only silence from her sister, Maharet returns to the place of her old village, to Mount Carmel, where she paints images of their story in the mountain’s caves, which eventually mortals will find, contemplate, yet never fathom the truth.
Maharet and Eric separate. In search of companionship, she turns the Viking warrior, Thorne, into a vampire. But he grows incessantly jealous of the way she behaves around other male vampires, particularly Mael. Eventually, Maharet and Thorne also go their separate ways, but Maharet remains with Mael all the way into the twentieth century.
By then, Maharet hears the tale of an archaeologist who saw Maharet’s grotto images and has compared them with similar images in the jungles of Peru. Maharet knows instantly that Mekare drew those same cave paintings of their life’s story. She travels with Eric and Mael to South America in search of her. They see Mekare’s paintings and realize that they are nearly six thousand years old. But Maharet never finds any other trace of her twin sister.
Later that century, one of Maharet’s descendants, Miriam Reeves, dies in a fatal car crash, but not before prematurely giving birth to her daughter, Jesse Reeves. Maharet identifies the newborn in the hospital and sends her to live with relatives in New York. Over the years, the ancient vampire often visits young Jesse, who knows only that Maharet is her aunt. Jesse soon shows the signs of family witchcraft, demonstrating how she can see ghosts, even the ghost of her dead mother. When Jesse turns twenty, Maharet invites her to live at her compound in the Sonoma Mountains. It is there that Jesse begins to see signs that her aunt Maharet might not be entirely human. The Talamasca recognizes that Jesse is a powerful psychic and invites her to join the Order. Maharet objects to this vehemently, but in the end, she allows it to happen. Jesse’s work for the Talamasca makes her aware that Maharet is a vampire; through Jesse’s work, Maharet learns that the books and music of the vampire Lestat are revealing vampire identities and secrets. Jesse attends Lestat’s concert, where she is fatally wounded. Mael rushes Jesse to Maharet, who reluctantly turns her mortal descendant into a vampire to save her life.
When Lestat’s works awaken Akasha, the Queen of the Damned kills Enkil, commences the Great Burning of 1985, and takes Lestat as her new companion. Maharet summons a council at her compound in the Sonoma Mountains, consisting of herself and eleven vampires who have survived Akasha’s massacre: Khayman, Mael, Marius, Pandora, Jesse, Santino, Eric, Armand, Daniel, Gabrielle, and Louis. Maharet tells them the Legend of the Twins, and the council determines that they have to destroy Akasha, only they do not know how to do so. When Akasha finally appears before them accompanied by Lestat, she reveals her plan for world domination, at which point Lestat turns on her. All the vampires now fight against Akasha, but she cannot be defeated, not until Mekare appears. Fulfilling the prophetic curse of the Legend of the Twins, Mekare decapitates Akasha, consumes her heart and brain, and takes into herself the spirit of Amel and his Sacred Core, effectively becoming the new Queen of the Damned, the host carrier for all vampire existence.
Maharet moves Mekare from her Sonoma compound to a new compound in Java, Indonesia, where many vampires are welcome, including Jesse and David Talbot, to search through her vast library and even study Maharet’s chronicles of her Great Family. Maharet learns that Mekare is severely traumatized. Her twin sister expresses the mysterious and unreachable face of a savage animal. Sometimes Mekare demonstrates love to Maharet, but beyond that the traumatized sister shows no sign of self-awareness. Maharet spends countless nights trying to help Mekare heal by speaking with her, singing to her, walking with her through the jungles, showing her all the wonders of the modern age, but Mekare never verbalizes any coherent thought. Maharet is devastated by Mekare’s seemingly irreversible traumatic state. She has spent the last six millennia searching for her sister, and now that she is not the same sister that was taken from her, Maharet is utterly crestfallen.
She occasionally aids other vampires across the world, such as delivering to Lestat a message from Memnoch the Devil and then binding him with her hair when the message drives him mad. She also helps Lestat, Mona Mayfair, and Quinn Blackwood find the hidden island of the Taltos. She even welcomes to her compound the vampire scientist Fareed, whose scientific breakthroughs for the Undead enable him to permanently replace her vampire eyes. Maharet also listens for endless hours to Benji’s radio broadcasts and his observations on the state of the world and of vampire existence.
Through it all, she is dying inside, and she wants to end her life, as well as the life of Mekare, which will end vampire existence altogether. She considers numerous times flinging herself and Mekare into an active volcano and letting them be burned to death. Jesse urges her not to do this. Reluctantly, she agrees to forestall her plans. But she begins the process of relinquishing her duties to the Great Family. Whereas before, she cared for the genealogical records, allocated financial support, and kept the numerous branches of the Great Family aware of one another—by then living in almost every country in the world—now she builds libraries and archives, and organizes and facilitates the distribution of her duties to law offices and bank offices, to guarantee that the Great Family can function independently of her, that it will survive without her, if anything should happen.
One night, Maharet’s Java compound burns to the ground in a mysterious fire that might have been started by Mekare. So she takes her sister and Khayman to the uncharted jungles of the Amazon, where they set up a new home. Despite their newfound seclusion, Maharet continues to dream of throwing herself and Mekare into an active volcano, destroying not only themselves and the vampire race but also the spirit of Amel. Aware of this threat, Amel speaks to the five-thousand-year-old Rhoshamandes as the mysterious Voice and convinces him that they are all in jeopardy if Rhoshamandes does not destroy the twins and take the Sacred Core into himself. Thus, Rhoshamandes and his fledgling Benedict steal into the Amazon compound, pick up machetes, and attack Maharet. Although Maharet could easily destroy Rhoshamandes and Benedict, she feigns a brief fight against them before allowing them to fulfill her innermost desire. Maharet calls for Khayman. She calls for Mekare. She speaks numerous names of her long history. And then, moments before Rhoshamandes’s machete strikes the final blow, severing Maharet’s head, her final words can be heard echoing through the Amazon jungles: “I am dying. I am murdered!”
For more perspectives on Maharet’s character, read the Alphabettery entries Akasha, Benedict, Enkil, Eric, Great Family, Jesse, Khayman, Lestat de Lioncourt, Mael, Marius, Mekare, Rhoshamandes, and Thorne.