Mekare is the twin sister of Maharet, Akasha’s mortal enemy. Mekare kills Akasha and becomes the next Queen of the Damned until her own death, whence she surrenders Amel to Lestat, who becomes the Prince of all vampires. Mekare appears in The Vampire Lestat (1985), The Queen of the Damned (1988), Blood and Gold (2001), and Prince Lestat (2014).
In the northern lands of Israel, more than four thousand years before the Common Era, in the caves of Mount Carmel, two red-haired, green-eyed twins are born into a family of witches. The firstborn is named Mekare; her younger sister, Maharet. For the first sixteen years of their lives, the twin sisters grow up learning their family tradition of communing with spirits. They are aware that spirits are divided into good and bad. They are to avoid the bad whenever possible, yet the good spirits will do them favors, such as manipulating the weather, an integral part of their village life. The village shepherds and potters who trade in the markets of Jericho often come to the twin sisters and their mother for counsel. The witch family communes with the spirits and provides guidance for the village’s religious practices. Mekare is a more powerful witch than Maharet. Considered second only to their mother in authority, Mekare leads Maharet and acts as spokeswoman for the two. One spirit they commune with is Amel, who brags how he enjoys the taste of blood.
When the Queen of Egypt, Akasha, summons Mekare and Maharet to the royal court to defend Akasha’s position on outlawing ritual cannibalism, the twins refuse. Shortly after this, Mekare and Maharet’s mother dies. When the twins prepare to cannibalize their mother according to their witching tradition, the King’s steward, Khayman, arrives with the King’s army. They slaughter most of the villagers, destroy the village, and force Mekare and Maharet down into Egypt to appear at the royal court.
The King and Queen ask them numerous questions about spirits and the afterlife. Mekare and Maharet answer truthfully, chiefly that the Queen is misguided about her spiritual beliefs and that she does not understand spirits. Enraged by their response, Akasha has them thrown into prison, yet the twins are continually brought back before the court and forced to answer the same questions. At length, Mekare grows tired of the Queen’s relentless ignorance; against Maharet’s better judgment, Mekare summons to the court the spirit of Amel, who is all too eager to demonstrate his prideful power. The Queen punishes the twins by having them raped by Khayman before the entire court. Afterward, Akasha and Enkil allow the twins to return to their village, where Maharet gives birth to Mekare’s niece, Miriam.
The following year, Khayman returns with the royal army and brings the twins back into Egypt before the King and Queen. The twins discover that the spirit of Amel has fused with Akasha’s blood, that the fusion transformed Akasha into the world’s first blood drinker, and that Akasha has changed Enkil into a blood drinker also. Akasha and Enkil are confused by their unnatural and insatiable bloodlust, and they demand answers from Mekare and Maharet. Maharet suggests that, because spirits are such large entities, one possible way to alleviate the bloodlust is to turn other mortals into vampires, which might more fully dissolve the potency of the spirit’s thirst for blood. To test this, Akasha turns Khayman into a vampire against his will, but that does nothing to alleviate her suffering. Mekare mocks Akasha, which infuriates the Queen so much that she sentences them both to death. Mekare then curses Akasha and promises that she will one day return for vengeance, calling her the Queen of the Damned and commencing a prophecy of the Legend of the Twins.
Akasha cuts out Mekare’s tongue and plucks out Maharet’s eyes. Before the death sentence can be carried out, Khayman helps the twins escape by turning Mekare into a vampire, who then turns her twin sister into a vampire. They flee from prison to Memphis’s necropolis Saqqara. Along the way they turn numerous mortals into vampires in an effort to raise an army, called the First Brood, to fight against Akasha and Enkil. Less than a week later, as they are still learning how to hide their victims, the royal army follows their trail and captures the twins. Only Khayman escapes. Because vampirism is still so new, the Queen is afraid of killing another vampire. So she entombs the twins in separate sarcophagi and sets them adrift off different coasts, one to the east and the other to the west, separating Mekare from Maharet for thousands of years. Less than a century after Mekare’s tomb washes ashore, she makes her way to the jungles of Peru. She climbs a mountain to a cave above the jungles where she draws cave paintings that tell the story of the Legend of the Twins.
For the next six thousand years, Mekare does not reunite with her sister, not until the twentieth century, when the music of the vampire Lestat rouses Queen Akasha from her statuesque torpor. Akasha immolates the vast majority of vampires. Some of the survivors gather in Maharet’s compound in the Sonoma Mountains, where Akasha meets them for a final confrontation. After a brief battle ensues, where it seems that none can defeat the Queen of the Damned, Mekare arrives, covered in a thin layer of soil, having recently exhumed herself from the earth. Mekare clashes with Akasha and decapitates her. As the life drains from the Queen, vampire existence is also being extinguished, until Mekare, in performing their ancient ritual of cannibalizing a mother, consumes Akasha’s brain and heart, effectively taking into herself Amel, the Sacred Core, and becoming the new Queen of the Damned and host carrier of vampire existence.
Mekare accompanies her sister back to the Sonoma Compound, but the two eventually relocate to Maharet’s secluded compound in Java, Indonesia. Mekare is so traumatized by the past six thousand years that she resembles an impassive animal. Not even Lestat feels entirely safe around her, not knowing whether she is friendly or fearsome. Maharet spends many nights by Mekare’s side, reading to her, speaking with her, walking beside her, singing to her, and doing numerous other activities to try to heal Mekare’s trauma and restore the sister she loves. Mekare does show Maharet love, but not in the way she used to, when they were living with their family at Mount Carmel. Maharet is devastated, having spent centuries seeking the long-lost sister she remembers.
When the young vampire scientist Fareed, fledgling of Seth, Akasha’s son, replaces Maharet’s eyes with permanent immortal eyes, Maharet has Fareed’s computer equipment transferred from New York to their compound in Java. Fareed commences numerous tests and experiments on Mekare to try to restore her sanity, but all of the experiments are for naught. In the end, Fareed can only conclude that Mekare is like a waking-coma victim, alive yet unconscious. He does discover that Amel, inside Mekare, has a physical component that is possibly capable of being manipulated, like any common creature under the proverbial knife. But nothing more comes of his deductions until much later. Fareed also offers to give Mekare a new tongue, in much the same way he’d given Maharet new immortal eyes, but there is no way to communicate this to Mekare. Fareed attempts to narcotize her three times, but she is inactive only for brief intervals. Maharet tries assisting Fareed’s attempts by singing and caressing Mekare, but he is able to take small samples of Mekare’s hair and skin. Replacing her tongue proves impossible. Ultimately it is concluded that Mekare’s unimaginable trauma is preventing her from knowing the greatness of her power, for she does not even seem to know that she has fulfilled her curse by defeating the Queen of the Damned.
Mekare’s queenship only lasts for a few decades. The great damage of her mind brings Amel to consciousness. He can no longer abide living inside her traumatized mind, which is detrimentally wounded by the last six millennia of trauma. He also becomes aware of Maharet’s obsessive idea to end her life and Mekare’s by throwing them both into an active volcano. Seeking to escape, Amel convinces the five-thousand-year-old Rhoshamandes to destroy Mekare and take into himself the Sacred Core. Amel shows Rhoshamandes and his fledgling Benedict the location of Maharet’s hidden compound. Mekare observes them arrive, but her trauma prevents her from caring about their presence. Rhoshamandes and Benedict decapitate both Maharet and Khayman and immolate their remains with the Fire Gift. They kidnap Mekare and extort Lestat and the other vampires, demanding that Fareed perform surgery that can successfully transfer Amel, the Sacred Core, from Mekare into Rhoshamandes, killing Mekare in the process. Lestat and the other vampires rescue Mekare and return her safely to their vampire sanctuary.
When Lestat is alone, Mekare approaches him. Aware that she wants to be with her sister in death, he watches her reach up and pluck out her right eyeball. As the blood drains from her eye socket down her cheek, she gives herself to Lestat. Reluctantly accepting her, Lestat destroys Mekare by sucking her brain through her eye socket, taking into himself Amel, becoming the new host carrier of vampire existence, and receiving the title “Prince Lestat.”
As Mekare’s remains lay at his feet, her skin, bones, and organs become as translucent as glass. The vampire coven buries Mekare’s remains in the rear garden, surrounded by flowers. Two vampires return to the Amazon to retrieve the remains of Maharet and Khayman, then the entire tribe buries Khayman near Mekare before resting Maharet right beside Mekare, so that the two sisters will be together forever.
For more perspectives on Mekare’s character, read the Alphabettery entries Akasha, Benedict, Enkil, Khayman, Lestat de Lioncourt, Maharet, and Rhoshamandes.