Mended Path


by Aspen in the Sunlight

Part the First



It was a balmy evening in 1791, and I was standing on a balcony overgrown with wisteria, just outside the lace-covered French doors that stood between me and one heart-stoppingly handsome Louisiana planter. Just the night before, I'd taken him at last. I'd watched him for weeks, watched him descend further and further into a whirling pit of loneliness and guilt and despair, and when I could bear it no longer, I'd made him mine.

I was thinking of that as I stared through the lace into the dim room that housed him. I was thinking of his blood, his rich, satisfying mortal blood, and how I wanted more, how I wanted it all.

But of course it wasn't just blood that I desired of this black-haired, green-eyed plantation master. If that was all I'd wanted, I would have killed him the night before. He'd been warm and pliant in my arms, unresisting, leaning into my embrace as I'd drunk of him. A glorious kill, he would have been. But that wasn't what I wanted, either.

Plain and simple, I wanted him.

Him, for all time.

And yet I knew already that there would be nothing simple about it. He was mired in dark despair, reminding me at times of Nikki, and he wavered with baffling regularity between wanting to vanish completely from existence and an awareness that he was still responsible for a mother, a sister... an entire community of slaves at his plantation of Pointe du Lac. These concerns weighed heavy on his mind, when he was lucid enough to entertain them. More often, he was too filled with liquor to heed them.

Such suffering...

And yet I wanted him still.

Or maybe it was more correct to say that I wanted him because of it. He reminded me of myself, you see. How I'd suffered in my solitary existence there in the Auvergne! Occasionally my mother had offered me the smallest smidgen of solace, but even then she hardly ever spoke. And to her, I certainly couldn't share the great pain of my existence, for hers was ever so much worse than mine. Mother to a whole host of children she termed useless... trapped in a hateful marriage to a man she never had been able to endure for more than five minutes at a stretch... well, at least I was young; I still had some hope. But her life was all but over by the time I was twenty.

And this man, this Louis, he was called... he was as different from me as night from day, but his suffering spoke to me, seemed to me to be just the same as mine, although of course its causes were not remotely similar. I wanted to hold him close, to help him heal, to have him for all time.

And I suppose I wanted with him what I hadn't achieved with Nikki: a true communion of souls. Nikki and I could have had that, I thought, except that Magnus and my acquisition of the dark gift had driven us apart. And of course that dreadful boy-child Armand had not helped. Nikki always had been slightly mad, slightly melancholy, but it was the Children of Darkness who had truly pushed him over the edge into full-blown insanity. And they, of course, had only been following orders, puppets on a string, dancing to the tune set by the Coven Master, the manipulative one, the one who did so love his machinations...

I was bitter about it all. Armand had taken Nikki from me, and then he'd taunted me that Gabrielle wasn't going to stay with me long, either. And he'd been right on that account, damn his black soul.

But Armand wasn't going to ruin things for me, not this time. He was back in Paris, I was here in the New World, the only vampire in the New World... but not for long, certainly, not now that I'd found this one to love, this Louis. Here, though, he would be safe from Armand and his pitiful minions.

Ah, but Nikki.... some of the blame fell to me, I think, for when I'd acquired this dark blood, I hadn't yet known how to keep Nikki in my life... I hadn't wanted to walk the Devil's Road, at least not right at first. I took to it readily enough, I suppose. But I hadn't known if the gift was mine to give, or what it might do to the recipient to receive the blood from one so young, so untutored. And so I'd never really considered sharing my new life with Nikki. I hadn't known how to do it without damaging him.

And then later, when I'd gone ahead and done it anyway... well, he had been damaged, hadn't he? It was a wonder I wanted to try it again, considering. But I did want to. I had to. It hadn't been planned out, not at all. But then I'd seen Louis, and sensed his deep need for comfort, his pain, his questing soul so filled with torment and guilt...

And I'd fallen straight into love. Deep, abiding love, quite unlike the passing attraction Nikki had held for me, unlike anything I'd heretofore experienced.

The great love of my life... He was it, I knew it. It just remained to prove as much to him, and wait for his own feelings to be born and grow strong.

And they would. Oh yes, they most certainly would. For you know, he'd caught my eye most likely because in certain ways he hearkened back to Nikki, but for all that, he wasn't Nikki. He was simply himself. And things would be different with him. I was going to make sure of it. Starting now, starting tonight.

I silently opened the balcony doors and slipped inside his room, laying a foamy shawl over the eyes of his sleeping sister, and approached the bed on which he lay, feverish and ill, the idiot doctors having bled him rather than just let him rest and recover.

All this I saw in his mind.

But I saw something else there, too.

Me.

He was thinking of me, thinking of the golden-haired shimmering presence who had held him close and sweetly pierced a vein. Not that he consciously knew I had pierced a vein, mind you. He remembered the slight sting, and then the bounty of pleasure I had given him as I sipped, and then as I drank him deeper, the images I had sent flooding into his mind to soothe his wounded spirit. He didn't understand these experiences, of course; how could he? How could he possibly? But he would.

Ah, Louis...

My steady footsteps took me forward, right to his bedside, and there I knelt, and prepared to speak.


Part the Second

I prepared to speak, yes, but before I could say a word, he robbed me of my every thought. For Louis opened his eyes then, and looked upon my concerned face as I knelt there, and his eyes in candlelight were even more magnificent than they'd been out there on the moonlit street.

Green, and such a green, shade layered over shade, light hues and dark, verdant emerald rivers running in rivulets through irises underlaid with sage. The combination of colors rioting in his gaze was so stunning, so brilliant, that his eyes glowed almost preternaturally, even now, even while he was still mortal. I think I loved him more than ever in that instant, although it's hard to be sure. I loved him so very much already, you see.

But for all his eyes were the most fantastic sight in all existence, I wasn't so lost in wonder that I missed the most important thing to greet my gaze. He was sick, terribly sick. Not quite ill unto death, but not too far off, either. That green was feverish, his eyes enormous in a face somewhat sunken by the stress he'd suffered, the stress and the months of drinking that had come before.

He said just one word.

"You..."

Slurred, that word.

I wanted to reach beneath the brocade coverlet and take his hand to comfort him, but I dare not; it was just too soon. So I placed my hand lightly atop the covers, over the shape of his knuckles beneath the fabric, and lightly caressed his fingers. He didn't flinch away; he was lost in wonder at the sight of me, the gleaming cast to my skin as I leaned closer to him. A blush rose to his cheeks, his thoughts revolving around the fact that to him, I was absolutely beautiful. The only truly beautiful man he'd ever seen, he thought, a notion which made me smile. Did he never gaze into a mirror? For this one, the glory of physical perfection was no further away than his looking glass.

I could smell the sweet honey of his blood, of course I could, but the heady aroma wasn't only rising from his blush to waft through his skin. No, it was also in the room, surrounding me, all around. It didn't just come from him, you understand. They had bled him, and droplets had spilled from his arm to stain the carpets that dotted the hardwood floors. The scent was almost making me swoon, it was so potently him, and I thanked my lucky stars then and there that I had arrived well-fed. I had no intention of thirsting near Louis, not when he was still weakened from my attack the night before.

"Yes," I said, each sound a soft caress of love and care. "Me."

He stared at me for a while, then, and I just let him look. Really, it was quite fascinating to wait for his curiosity to blossom forth into words, for I could hear his thoughts as he struggled foward toward the inevitable questions.

Beautiful, so beautiful, he was thinking. But this creature is no man. The hands, not human. The eyes, unearthly. And what color are they? Blue, violet, grey? They change all the time, shifting. According to his mood? Or are they like that by nature? Transitory, hypnotic...?

It was a delight to realize how he saw me, but as attracted as I knew he was, I also knew that he was only halfway lucid. His green eyes sparkled like emeralds in starlight, but they were feverish. Not demented, just feverish.

He had almost killed a priest just a few hours past; I knew that. His family thought this proved that he had lost all reason, but he hadn't. No, Louis was stronger than that. The priest had pushed him too far, that was all, and of course Louis had dearly loved his brother. A frantic kind of love that had come too late, fully realized only when his thoughtless words, his laugh, had led to tragedy for that brother.

Oh, Louis...

So convenient to read his thoughts, and not just those on the surface.

And convenient, too, to sense the sister drifting upwards toward consciousness, her worries for Louis dragging her out of her slumbers. I soothed her mind, then, and gently pushed her back toward dreams, and then I did as she had meant to.

Removing my hand from Louis, I dipped a soft, worn, cotton washcloth in a basin of cool water and wrung it out, Then I was stroking it across Louis' fevered forehead, my every touch slow and careful.

He soaked in my love and care, relaxing beneath my touch, his eyes closing as he, too, began to slumber. I wanted to talk to him, but that could wait. He was ill, and tired, and what he needed most of all was to recover his full strength.

His needs, not yours, I thought to myself as I ministered to him. His needs, not yours. Those are what matter most tonight.

How long I bathed his face, and then his chest, undoing the tiny pearl buttons on his nightshirt, I couldn't say. But at length he came to awareness again, and looked once more at me, and spoke again, the same word.

"You."

"Yes," I said again, laying the washcloth back into the basin where is gently sank, swirling like a languid cyclone until it reached the bottom. Then, because I sensed that he was more coherent, less feverish, I added, "Do you recognize me, Louis?"

A small gasp parted his cracked lips. Oh, how I wanted to lean forward and kiss those lips. They were close to mine, you see; I was still kneeling by his bedside, my face just inches from his.

But I knew enough of Louis to know that he was an intensely private man, and that to lay my mouth on his when he knew me so little... it could only offend. As attractive as he found me, it could nonetheless only offend.

"I..." His thoughts drifted away from answering my question to the question itself. "How do you know my name?" he moaned, the effort of speaking that much tiring him.

I felt my heart almost stop, that heart that had been pounding strong, nourished in part by blood I had taken from this man's veins. And as I stared down into the deep pools of green that were his eyes, it was as though a great yawning chasm opened beneath me, and I saw two paths stretching out into eternity.

Two paths, two ways to proceed.

But only one decision.

To lie to him, to fill his head with convenient, believable lies... or tell him only the truth, the pure unvarnished truth.

Part 3

Ah, Louis...

What should I do with you, Louis? I thought, seeking for an answer inside myself. How should I proceed?

I could read his every thought, sense his every mood, and so I knew that in his essential, intrinsic privacy, he wouldn't like to learn that with me, he truly had none. He wouldn't enjoy the knowledge that I could hear him thinking just as easily as I could hear the slight swoosh of blood pulsing through his veins.

And so the lies came easily to my tongue. Expedient lies, things he would believe... of course he would believe anything I said, and it needn't even be expedient. I could do more than reach into his mind to hear his thoughts, I could influence him to think whatever I wished. And so it would be simple, such a very simple matter, to convince him that I knew his name through purely human means, that I had no power over him, no real power....

I've seen you on the streets in town, I could say. I've heard your name said aloud.

Of course I hadn't. He'd been a nameless beauty to me until the moment that I'd sensed him thinking that after the way he had treated his brother, he didn't deserve to share the name of a saint, or an appellation dedicated to the local cathedral. Cathedral! It wasn't one, not next to the glories of Notre Dame... in fact, little in this wilderness of Louisiana was up to Parisian standards. But for him, I would stay here, if he wished. And for him, I would learn to love the untamed landscape of the New World.

And I would keep him safe from Armand.

But the important thing in all this was that Louis wasn't to know that I could read him so fully, not unless I chose to tell him.

And, pray tell, why would I do that? It would frighten him, distress him. He was so uncomfortable with the supernatural that he'd scoffed at his own dear brother's visions, and throttled the priest who dared suggest that selfsame brother might have been possessed by demonic influence! I would tell him the minimum necessary, I decided, nodding a little in my conviction. Yes, that was it, the minimum. For some things simply couldn't be avoided. Louis would have to know, and soon, that I was a vampire, for I intended to bring him across the void to me just as quickly as I could secure his consent.

Which would be soon indeed, as I had no intention whatsoever of letting him slip from my grasp. He would either agree of his own free will, or I would persuade him by fair means or foul, whatever it took...

I opened my mouth to speak. To lie, a skill at which I was well-practiced, having mastered it even before Magnus had dragged me into the night.

And I looked deeply into his eyes, the better to influence him, and tried not to see the two paths stretching out before me. Two paths, one of truth, one of deceit....

But then something happened. He was nervous, yes. And frightened already, certainly with reason. He suspected that this "illness" he suffered was no stroke, as the doctors had assumed.

Far inside him, though, at the bottom of his soul, I sensed something besides his fear, his wariness, his exhaustion with life itself. It was a need.

A need for candor.

And this need inside him for truth and not deceit, it was solid and vital and desperate to be fulfilled. And too, something that meant far more to me... it was wedded to his very personality. It made him much of what he was. Louis yearned for truth, for answers. What this meant to me... I can hardly describe it. The first thought that zinged into my mind was oh God, oh no, Marius! So recently had I left Marius on his island, his prohibitions ringing in my ears.

To keep his secrets, to keep the faith, to tell no-one, ever, what I had seen in that underground room, in that veritable shrine... And of course I would do as Marius had asked, for he hadn't really asked at all, had he? He'd demanded. And threatened. To threaten me, that was one thing. But no, he had threatened to come destroy even those I made, if I should tell them the least thing that might lead them to the truth about Those Who Must Be Kept.

Ah, so matter no how much Louis hungered for truth, that was something I just couldn't grant him.

But I could make one resolve, and follow it through -- to give him what I could. A clear picture of myself, to start with. No deceit, no games with his mind. And then... well, I would see what else this fabulous creature wanted to know, once he crossed over into the night. He would have questions. Hadn't I? But the answers, those weren't mine to give. So I would see, I supposed. I would take his questions one at a time, and keep to Marius' law that I never tell him the smallest part about that island, or the history. For once you tell one secret, you will tell the next, and the next, and the next, until all is told...

Oh, no I wouldn't! Louis was too crucial to me. I wouldn't risk him, couldn't risk him, to Marius' wrath.

But now... well, he wasn't asking about the meaning of it all, was he? He wasn't begging for truths that Marius said would only disappoint him, would only conflict with the framework he'd lived with all throughout his mortal life.

He just wanted to know how I knew his name...

And he didn't want lies from me. He didn't ever want them from anyone, but I sensed that most particularly he didn't want to hear deceit spilling from my lips. He didn't know who I was, or what I was, or why I had stolen into his room by night, but he did suspect that this could be a beginning, not an end...

And too, Louis had an essential unyielding strength that wished to face life and all its troubles head-on. He didn't always heed this need, of course; he was imperfect. A fallen human struggling to be good... ah, that resonated deep within my own soul, for what else had I ever been? And what was I now? Fallen human, indeed.

And it came to me in a glimmering instant of insight, epiphany, that he was right, that his thoughts were apt. This was in truth a beginning. The beginning of the rest of time, of a new life in which I need not be so always alone, but could at last have someone with me, someone in the night, someone to love, someone who wouldn't leave me or push me away... not if I did the right thing with him from the very start.

I saw the paths before me once more, the ones shining out of his eyes, and they were taking clearer shape. And the one on the right, the path of deceit, was withering, twisting, vanishing in the distance behind his pupils.

I knew it then; I saw it.

My beginning with Louis had to be pure, unsullied. He was my heart, and to lie to him would be to tear that heart from my body. It wouldn't happen at once... it would take some time. But eventually, we'd be on the twisted part of that path, stumbling forward on thorns and rocks...and we'd be divided. I could see it happening, right there in his eyes.

All at once, it seemed unrelentingly strange to me that I had ever thought to trick him, or lie, or use my powers to dazzle and deceive. For that was what I had come to do, of course. To seduce him, to bring him to me by any means necessary.

But to do that was to start out in a way that could only lead to ruin; I suddenly knew it with the same certainty with which I knew my own name. Or his.

I had to do this right, I simply had to. This one, this Louis, he was too important to me. I couldn't step onto that hazardous path with him. I daren't place one toe upon it. And so, in that instant, I stepped instead to the left. Towards the path of truth.

And it stretched out before me straight, unbroken, leading directly into his soul.

Ah, Louis....

"I know your name because I can read your thoughts," I admitted with perfect honesty, and Louis gasped again. "For I have powers of which you cannot dream, Louis."

Enough, I thought. Enough for now. I loved him and I was suddenly determined to honor him with the truth, but not too much at once. Little by little, in snippets small enough that he could absorb them and slowly build up a new impression of the world he lived in, and his place in it, and mine...

And then he said something that surprised me.

Part the Fourth


Yes, Louis surprised me. Or rather, what he said did. I had just admitted to him that I could read his thoughts, an admission that cost me, since I had planned all along to deceive him... but I'd seen, of course that such a course really wouldn't be wise, not with one such as him.

Really, Louis' reply should not have startled me, given what I did already know of him. But I suppose my mind was focused on his uncommon beauty, and my all-encompassing love, and my need that he soon love me back with just as much devotion and passion.

But I should have known that it wouldn't take long for the skeptic in him to come to the fore. That same skeptic who had belittled his brother's report of the supernatural. That same skeptic who, even now, still doubted there had ever been visions. He was a Catholic, yes; he believed in saints. But that belief was more theoretical than a part of his experience. He'd never seen a saint with his own two eyes. Yet now he was seeing me. Not a saint, not that, no. Not ever. But supernatural? Oh, yes.

"What am I thinking now?" he challenged me, his voice rasping in the room, his throat dry.

As I spoke, I turned on my knees and poured water from a crystal pitcher into a glass.

"You're deciding that I can't answer you that because I can't really see into your mind," I replied, stating with perfect accuracy exactly what his mental energies were focused on. And then I held out the glass of water. Louis raised himself weakly, intending to drink it, but he could not hold himself long enough to manage that.

Wanting to help him, but not to startle him, I extended a hand fractionally nearer, very slowly so the motion might appear natural, and offered, "May I assist you, Louis?"

He stared at me for a moment, but his thirst soon overcame his reluctance. A good sign, that. I would have to hope that it continued when he thirsted for something more rich and hot than spring water. I lifted him easily, and held him carefully, and then gently lowered him back down when he had slaked his need for water. His head sank into the pillow, his body relaxing, his black hair spilled across the white lace cover on the pillow. Ah, his hair. Even lank and limp, in need of a wash, it was still a beautiful sight, still glorious. I could hardly imagine how he was going to appear once he was transformed by the power and magic in my blood.

His mind returned to the way I had divined his thoughts, and then he laughed, ever so slightly, and dryly returned, "Ah, that's but a logical guess. Anyone would be thinking that after what you had just claimed."

True.

"So think something more creative," I urged him, leaning closer. That time, he shrank back. Strange, considering that I'd just touched him, just helped him drink that water, and he'd found my hands on him to be loving and caring, if somewhat cool. Ah, so that was it, I realized. My fingers on his nape had been too cold, too chill. It had underlined for him, in a highly physical way, that I was no mere man.

And yet despite that, his alarmed reaction now was not so great, not so violent. I doubt that you could even call it a flinch... it was only that he was wary, a bit more so now than before, and no wonder. He didn't know me, and I had stolen into his rooms by night, and he was weakened, all but helpless. And too, the sister that he loved was there as well. Any sane man would be wary, especially after that closer contact with me.

But he recovered from the shock, and then he did as I said, and thought of something more unusual. Something that no-one could guess at, certainly.

Ah, it was delightful, truly delightful, his intelligence and his curiosity, his desire to know if what I said could be the genuine truth.

I laughed, so vast was my delight in him. He was all I wanted, all I could ever want. This one could keep me amused and entertained and enthralled for centuries without end.

"You're thinking now that if pink plantains grew underwater, the river gar might taste more interesting," I told him, smiling, letting just a hint of fang show. He didn't appear to notice that, but why should he? His whole mind all at once went into a spin, a whirl, and his senses could hardly keep up.

"You... you..."

"Know your thoughts, yes," I finished for him, thinking that if I brought the comment forth into audible reality, again, it might help him adjust.

It helped him, all right. It helped him so much that he rallied, "Not all of them, you don't. They were mauve plantains."

More laughter, more delight. I almost said right then and there that I did so love him, but I knew that for all it was true, such a declaration before he was ready would only alarm him. He didn't love me, not yet. But he would. He would have to. I was going to be my absolute most lovable, after all.

As much as I could be, anyway. If not even my own mother had cared enough to stay with me... if I'd ruined everything with Nikki, as much as I had loved him... if I'd offended Marius so much that he'd sent me away so soon, despite the bond I thought that we had formed... I guess the truth was that my "most lovable" wasn't any great shakes. But what could I do about that, except try harder with Louis than I'd ever, ever tried before? Except make him my first and only priority? Except step back, and try to think more, try not to just do things to see what would happen, but to reason them out beforehand?

I snapped out of my self-absorption then, because he had recovered enough to speak.

Part the Fifth


Louis had roused himself to speak, but it was difficult for him. His thoughts became unfocused as shock set in. He knew it was true now, what I'd said of my powers, what I'd said about being able to read his thoughts. And it was almost more than he could bear, more than he could handle, this knowledge that with me, he was at such a disadvantage, that his privacy was nonexistent.

"I.... I..." he began, but he got no further, his voice fading as it came to him to wonder what he possibly could say to a creature such as myself. He felt it now, more keenly than before, the difference between us. The sheer distance, the gulf. For he was human, wasn't he? And now he knew that I was something else again.

"You recognize me from last night?" I asked, my voice gentle, the question carefully posed.

"You... yes," he murmured, and it worked. I mean, he was starting to think back to the night before, to how he had wandered drunk through muddy alleys. That was what I wanted, for now; it was better than letting him stay mired in fear and distress that at his bedside knelt a creature who could perceive every thought flitting through his head.

"What do you remember?" I pressed. Needlessly, really, since I knew exactly what he remembered... and what he didn't. But I wanted him to talk, to verbalize the experience of his first encounter with me. I thought it would help ground that experience into his reality, to lessen the shocks that were still to come.

He drew in a shaky breath, his lips --pale after all he'd gone through-- trembling. But not with fear, not just now. Just... confusion, really.

"I was drunk," he whispered, the sound so slight I leaned forward to catch every nuance. He didn't shy away, not this time; he was too wrapped up in recalling the night before and making sense of what he'd seen, what he'd heard, what he'd felt.

"Yes," I agreed, saying nothing more. I was more interested in listening. For of course, what he chose to say and how he chose to say it, these were terribly significant to me. I could read his mind, but that alone didn't mean I would know him, truly know him. I had to listen, too, and get to know him that way -- learn what parts of himself he was willing to share with me. Because of course I had to keep in mind the veil, that veil of silence. Once I made him, I would have no way to delve inside his soul. All the more important was it, then, to start off here and now with listening to his words, to his speech; to understand him without relying so much on what he thought.

Besides, his thoughts weren't linear, in any case. They jumped all over, haphazardly, frequently contradicting and overlapping.

But Louis' speech, I was soon to find, was anything but disorganized. He was supremely well-spoken. I hadn't realized it before because during all the weeks I'd followed him, studying him, learning to love him, he'd said but little. He had been depressed, and among strangers and not friends... whores, tavern keepers, the occasional gambler or ruffian. And too, he had been drunk, as he said.

He had been drinking himself straight into the grave, which was one reason that last night I had ceased to watch and listen, and begun to act.

But now he started to speak, and I gave him my full and absolute attention, opening my mind to every slight variation of his voice, every gradation in his choice of words.

And of course I read his every thought as well. I couldn't help that, and couldn't stop myself. With anyone else I had more restraint, but with this man, whom I loved already with a depth that frankly frightened me... no, not with him. For all too soon the veil would part our minds, which made his every thought precious, something to be treasured and cherished and savored, something I could hug to myself and replay during those long, long nights to come when this special communion of his soul with mine could be no more.

But mostly, I listened to his words. And such words they were...

Part the Sixth


"I was drunk," he said again, closing his eyes and placing himself mentally at that moment in time. "Walking, I don't recall what street. It seemed like I had been walking forever."

No, not forever, just five hours, I thought, but loathe to disturb his concentration, I kept my thoughts to myself. Unlike him, I could...

"The ground was wet; it had rained earlier that day," he recalled aloud. "And I was stumbling, stepping at times into puddles that were deeper than they first appeared. I kept thinking Paul, Paul, were you well-named? Did you bear that name because you, too, were meant to do great things for our God and Father?"

Louis suddenly stopped, his eyes snapping open, his gaze seeking mine. And I saw no fear in him now, not even that wise wariness I'd sensed before. Rather, there in his gaze I saw just torment blended with a desire that I comprehend what he had said, what he had yet to say. Torment, and desire, and confusion, too, for he didn't himself know, even now, if Paul had been fated to fall down the stairs that way, or if tragedy could have been averted.

"Do... do you know about Paul?" he asked, and it seemed to me that the words came timidly, ringing out not with confidence, but with the wavery, uncertain tones of a half-cast bell.

"I know," I assured him, and then because he was suddenly thinking that I might know some, but I most assuredly couldn't know all, I gently summed up, "Your brother. He had visions, or so he claimed. And when he told you, you laughed. But Louis, he didn't tumble down the staircase because you laughed. Don't you see? It was his time."

All mortals have a time, I almost said. I know, because all too often I decide that time...

But it was too soon to discuss that.

Louis gulped. "I... I wish I knew that for certain." And then, with a heartwrenching sincerity that made tears rise to my eyes, he asked, hope in every word, "Are you an angel then, sent here to tell me these things, to tell me that Paul is safe, and content at last, and living anew amidst God's most holy love?"

"Ah, Louis," I groaned, moving my hands so that one clasped the other, then raising them and shaking slightly, "I wish I could assure you of such a thing, I truly do. But I am not an angel, no. Would that I could tell you what you want to hear, my precious one. But no, with you I have resolved to be honest, even if if hurts."

Precious one? I heard him ask himself, but he must not have thought the phrase significant, only odd, for what he said was, "No, not an angel, I see that now. But what are you?"

I smiled, the expression my very softest and most alluring. "Ah, Louis." His name rolled across my tongue like the olive oil we used to have --rarely-- in the Auvergne. Smooth, pleasant.

Sensual.

"I'd rather you continue your story to me," I continued. "For the truth of what I am will then come out, I think. And you'll be all the more likely to believe it when it is revealed in its own proper setting."

I don't know if he understood me. What I'd meant, of course, was that to announce, "I am a vampire; I drank of your blood and shall do so again," was a shock of such monumental proportions that his heart might wither. And to tell him this just after he'd dealt with disappointment that I wasn't the angel he had longed for? You see, he had longed for one, I knew that. He wanted God's validation of those visions. And sadly, he wasn't going to get it. My essential cynicism told me that much.

But to inform him in one fell swoop that fate had sent him a vampire instead? Cruel, that.

Better, I thought, to let him come to that realization on his own. And maybe by then, his head wouldn't be filled any longer with wishes for angels.

"All right," he murmured, with a sidelong glance at me. He suspected I was playing some game, but of course I wasn't.

"I was thinking of Paul," he said again, "with regret. And it seemed that I'd thought such things forever, that I'd always been the one responsible for him, for everything. It didn't seem possible that I'd ever been just a boy myself. And then, the rain began again."

Ah, I remembered the rain with perfect clarity. How it had drenched Louis, plastering his clothes to his form, the outline of his strong thigh muscles visible beneath the cotton breeches, his simple white shirt turning transparent as the water soaked through the weave. And no waistcoat, not for him, not that night. It had been months since he'd dressed properly, or paid attention to what he wore, or how long he wore it.

"Soon I was shivering," he murmured, and then his glance on me became beseeching. "May I have more water?"

Ah, perfection, that he would trust me in this small thing, that he would be enough at ease with me to issue a request.

"Of course," I easily replied. Eagerly, perhaps. I did want him to like me! I thirsted for that with a ferocity that outmatched all else... save of course the blood-thirst itself. And despite my heavy feeding earlier, that thirst in me was growing stronger, more demanding. It was because I was with him, of course, smelling his blood in that sick-room, and talking to him, the most important mortal I would ever meet, ever know...

By the time he had quenched his thirst, mine was raging all the more.

"Shivering?" I prompted him, leaning back now, away from him, further away than I'd been since he had first opened his glorious eyes. He frowned ever so slightly at that, and I felt his disappointment. And then I felt him squelching it, driving it down into some deep place in his soul, for it was wrong, wasn't it, for him to think he belonged with a creature such as me. For he was human and I was clearly not...

But it isn't wrong, Louis, I longed to tell him. It isn't wrong at all. And if the distance between our forms so torments you, I can easily change you into a being like myself...

Part the Seventh



I wanted to tell Louis that I would change him into a being like myself, but of course, I said nothing of this. Too soon... far too soon. He had yet to even reason out what I was. And that, of course, had to come before any discussion of what I wished to offer him...

"Shivering," he repeated. "Yes, I was cold. It was raining, although it seemed to me to be almost sleeting. Strange, that impression, for the rain can't have been that cold, not at this season. But all at once a terrible chill washed over me as I walked the streets alone. And I stopped walking, the unearthly cold startling me..."

He paused to take a breath, but inside he was continuing, speaking without speaking, and I didn't know if he did it purposely to see if I could follow it.

...and then I sensed a presence right behind me, he thought, and I whirled to confront the rogue who followed me, and as I turned I thought that I should at last be killed, and there was a measure of peace in that thought...

"But it wasn't a rogue," I said when even his thoughts ceased to further the story.

Louis looked at me, no longer startled, no longer impressed... just accepting of my powers. They were real to him, now.

"Wasn't it?" he asked. "It was you. And you spoke the truth just now. No angel."

"No devil either," I assured him, because having just spoken to that damned priest, that was of course the next thing occurring to him.

"No?" he said, his tone suggesting that it didn't matter. But that was pride. Inside, it mattered to him enormously. Indeed, besides his care for his family, scarcely anything else did matter. It was the visions again. He wanted to know the origins of the visions. But that was something I couldn't help him with. I frankly doubted that he would ever know.

"No," I answered his question, when it seemed that he was waiting.

Louis sighed as though I'd confirmed his worst fear: that there were no devils or angels, only us, and that nothing made sense, and nothing ever would. Ah, so much like me, I thought, deeply moved by his distress. So very much like me. Here is one who would cry in the witches' place...

"And so?" I pressed again, and he weakly moved to press his fingers against his temple.

"Do you hurt?" I asked, concerned. For if he did, I could make it better. I could steal inside his mind and do away with whatever aches and pains troubled him. That I hadn't done so already only proved how focused I was on other things. Too focused, perhaps. His physical well-being was of paramount importance to me.

"No, no," he whispered, his voice slight, and then, "Remembering, that is what hurts."

"All right," I said, but it wasn't all right with me. I hurt too, just thinking on it. And yet if it was remembrance causing his pain, his apparent headache, I didn't want to interfere. It would be too easy to alter his memories by accident. And while that might be useful, to repaint the way he recalled me or our first encounter, I sensed without a doubt that it would place us both upon that twisted, crooked path.

"But what do you remember?" I quietly asked.

"You, behind me. The moon sliding free from behind a storm cloud. Your eyes, almost invisible in the dark but somehow glowing with a strange light that... I think I fell asleep on my feet right out there in the mud-soaked street."

"Not asleep," I corrected him. "Just this." And with that, I stopped tamping down my powers, and let them flow out of me and towards him. Out of my eyes, to be precise. I knew what it looked like; I'd studied myself in mirrors enough to know that. A whir of grey, spinning in my irises, spinning like storm clouds caught inside themselves, straining to break free.

Mesmerizing.

But I only did it for a few moments before I pulled Louis out of the trance and said, "Do you see?"

"I... I..." He swallowed, the muscles in his throat distending. "You... it's as you said. You have powers the like of which I cannot even dream. But what are you? You haven't answered me that. You've yet to even tell me your name."

Well, that request was simple enough to fulfill. What's in a name?

Of course, when it comes to my kind, that's a rather problematic question. What was in a name was knowledge, and knowledge was power. I remembered the rules I'd learned, the laws I'd been told. Never reveal your name to a mortal unless you intend to bring him over to you...

Part the Eighth



Louis wanted to know my name.

And there was a rule against revealing something like that, but needless to say, I wasn't breaking the rule, not really. I had every intention of granting him the dark blood, so those rules didn't apply. But I didn't care much for rules, in any case. Those same rules hadn't stopped me from scratching Marius' name on walls and pillars all throughout the Old World, had they?

And they weren't going to come between Louis and me.

"Lestat," I answered him, and then drawing a breath, I went on. It was important that I go on. I couldn't have said why; I couldn't have even guessed at it. But somehow, I knew that it was imperative, terribly vital, that I tell him my full name. Specifically, my last name.

I had a feeling that if I didn't tell him that, and right now... that if I didn't tell him that freely, without his having to ask... then he would never truly trust me. Crooked path, I thought. Whatever you do with this precious one, stay off that crooked path....

"Lestat de Lioncourt," I added.

"De Lioncourt," he murmured, his Creole accent making the name sound somehow foreign to my ear. Louis was frowning as he said it, and he was realizing that he'd heard the name before, in some vague connection. Perhaps he'd seen it as a boy when he'd studied the glories of the Sun King's court, when the de Lioncourts had been more in favor and more important. Nowadays, of course, my family wasn't all that distinguished. Besides, now that the Revolution had begun, my family line was ashes. There would be no more de Lioncourts after us; the mobs had seen to that when they dragged my brothers off to the guillotine. Their crime? Having been aristocrats. And not even rich aristocrats! There hadn't been any money left, just titles, but even those had been enough to enrage the populace in Auvergne. Then again, it was a rage I could actually understand. My family always had been an arrogant lot, moi included.

"You come from France?" Louis thought to ask.

I almost said that that was a rather inane query; did not my accent loudly proclaim that I came from France? (Told you I was arrogant). I reminded myself then to watch it with Louis, to try my best to be sincere and caring, instead of a supercilious know-it-all swine. I didn't wish to be rude to Louis, I truly didn't. Besides, I suppose that the question was not in fact so simple as I first assumed. My accent had been blunted somewhat by my years of travel to so many diverse places, places where French was not even spoken. And too, he was ill, confused, not thinking with the keen and slicing wit I sensed was habitually his, that wit that had shown through for an instant when he had told me that the plantains were mauve, not pink...

"Oui, I come from France," I merely confirmed. "Auvergne. And Paris." Again a strange feeling washed over me, almost one of déjà vu, except that I had not in fact experienced this conversation with Louis before. Yet still I had this conviction that if I wasn't cautious, things might go another way, a worse way, one that would end tragically for Louis and me both...

"And these powers?" he returned to his former line of thought. "From whence do they come?"

Now that I cannot answer you, I thought, vaguely horrified that such questions had come already. But it was as I had thought. He hungered for truth, for answers; he was a questioning soul.

"From the one who made me," I answered, rather liking the fact that such a statement was both true and had the great merit of keeping to Marius' strict dictates.

Dictates I suddenly wanted to smash asunder, and damn the consequences.

But to do so would endanger Louis, so no... I would be good. For once in my life, I would truly be good.

"I don't understand," Louis murmured, turning his head away from me as he thought. A vague crawling uneasiness was slithering up his spine, and it made him shudder slightly. No wonder, that. We were getting to the heart of the matter, at last. About damned time, I thought, but of course that was reflex, not true thought. The truth, deep down, was that as much as I loved Louis, I knew better than to rush this... this conversation that was perhaps the most important one we would ever have.

"Made you?" he asked, frowning. "You... did not your parents make you? Your mother and father?"

"Of course," I said, and then decided it was time to let hints become facts. "For once, Louis, I was every bit as human as you are now."

"Once?" Louis gasped.

"Once," I repeated, my gaze sincere and direct on him, although he still was not looking at me. But he would, he would have to. Curiosity would draw him back. Curiosity and the questing for truth that was such a part of him...

"Then what are you, finally?" he asked, impatience in his tones.

"Think back to last night," I encouraged him, and added a little mental prodding to the verbal command. Think back, mon cher Louis, mon beau Louis. Oui, think back...

"You did that to me, then," he realized, recognizing my intent. "That trick with the eyes. I remember, now. I turned and saw you behind me, and looked into your eyes, and it felt like I was falling from a great height. I thought it was the drink affecting my senses. But it wasn't... it was you... you moved like the flow of the river, not like a man, as you walked toward me..." His voice broke as his memories began to falter and then come unhinged. "And... and you touched me, here." He glanced down at his forearm. "But not with force. Most gently, yes. And there was no violence in it, yet you held me fast, you were holding me there with you, I think."

"You think?" I echoed, my voice tender. I was standing, leaning against the wall now, giving him distance in which to collect his thoughts.

"You held me first by the arm, and then in something far more like an embrace," he whispered. "From behind, both your arms around me, my neck arched back as I strained to see you again. Because to me, you were like a pillar of fire, such a glowing presence, but such kindness in the way you gripped me. I... it seemed more dreamlike than real." Louis suddenly swallowed, his eyes taking on a somber glow rather than the wonder that had filled them the moment before. "But... but, you... you kissed me, did you?"

"No," I answered honestly, and felt his vast relief that I had not. Once upon a time, I suppose that would have offended me. I liked to think myself beautiful, you see. Desirable. Irresistible. And actually, I was all those things to Louis. They were right there in his mind, although he had yet to consciously dwell upon them. Well, what could I expect? He wasn't a suave and sophisticated Parisian, he was a rustic colonial. Charming in his innocence, really. I knew a sudden thrill to realize that he had whole worlds left to explore, and that he would explore them with me. Ah, Louis....

"Then...I don't understand," Louis murmured. "No kiss? But I do remember your lips, here."

And he reached a trembling finger to touch his throat.

"Ah," I said, thinking. "That."

Actually, I was rather surprised that he remembered anything as specific as that. My lips at his throat? Sensual, that image. And powerful. But the meaning in it, the intent... all this was of course utterly lost to him.

"Would you like to see how it was?" I asked. "Because... well, I could tell you, Louis. But it's probably best that you don't just hear it in words. If I let you see it in pictures, as it appeared to me, you'll also sense what I felt when I touched my lips to your warm skin."

"See it?" he echoed, clearly not following me.

In answer, I tapped a finger against my temple, and at once he understood. Turning more fully to me then, he stared into my face, studying my expression.

And then he said something that truly did startle me. It hadn't been in his mind before; he spoke it at the exact moment of realization.

"You love me," he said, easily reading the adoration in my expression. "Or at least you believe that you do."

"Oh, I love you," I agreed. Strange, I'd somehow thought that I wouldn't tell him that, or at least not for a long, long time... Centuries? How very odd. How could I have contemplated going centuries without sharing with him the most essential fact which bound me to him? It was unthinkable, now. Once I'd set my feet upon that path of truthfulness, so many things seemed to follow naturally, to fall into place.

"Yes, I love you," I said again, liking the sound of the words, the feel of them on my tongue. Such pleasure, and I had thought to wait centuries before indulging it? But the words were more than sensual in my mouth. They also made me feel secure, as though my feet were firmly planted now, on that wonderful path that led into Louis' soul. Such a feeling. I think my mouth opened in a little O as I pondered it.

"So, may I show you what we shared last night?" I asked when I recovered from the heady feeling of knowing that he knew about my love.

Ah, but my innocent Louis misunderstood the phrase, 'what we shared.' He reared back, alarmed, his hands suddenly shaking. "You said you didn't so much as kiss me!"

"I didn't," I assured him. "Not in the way you mean the word. But we did share something, Louis. Something profound."

"What?" he demanded to know, and I drew in a deep, deep breath.

Honesty, I reminded myself. Truth. And he had asked, and this wasn't something I could claim was forbidden knowledge on account of Marius.

"Blood," I told him, and when he didn't seem to react, I added, "Yours, Louis."

Part the Ninth



"Mine?" he asked, and he didn't seem capable of questioning that further. The notion was simply too bizarre. I mean, he didn't have the slightest idea what I could mean by such a statement as that we had shared his blood.

"Oui," I said, quite calm as I once more offered, "May I show you how it was, Louis? For then you would understand."

He stared at me for a long time, and I think what finally swayed him was the fact that he had seen my love already, and had also heard it confirmed.

Rousing himself, he pulled himself to sit rather than lie in the bed. Really, his color was much better, his breathing less labored. He was recovering from my attack and the worse than useless "cure" he'd endured. Relief flooded through me, potent relief. I'd been afraid, you see, that he might be so close to death that I would have to make him this very night.

But now it seemed that I would have more time to help him see his way into the darkness.

"All right," he agreed, but shook a finger at me in warning. "But you must stop when I say, do you understand? You must stop the instant I say, or I shall never trust you again."

Well, that simply amazed me, implying as it did that he did trust me now. I saw in his thoughts, of course, that he didn't. Not fully, not without reservation. He was cautious with it. And yet for all that, he did trust me enough to let me place images in his mind. Of course, perhaps what had made him willing was my patience, my decision to ask his consent for such a thing. I told myself to remember that. Louis was the master of a whole plantation, and head of his family. He was used to giving orders, not taking them; and he certainly wasn't used to anyone riding roughshod over his wishes. Hmm, and I was just the same...

"Lestat?" he pressed, for I had yet to answer him.

"Oh, yes, of course," I said, but even as I spoke I was savoring the sound of my name on his lips. He said it with that slight sharpness to the consonants that characterized his accent. Colonial, but charming. I knew then that I could listen to him speak forever and ever.

"Don't be afraid," I said as I came closer. "It won't hurt, this contact between our minds. But it will feel strange to you, I think." And then I began, casting my thoughts back to the night before, to the instant when I'd seen him standing drenched by rain, his verdant eyes staring up at where the stars used to be.

I sent him images, pictures, everything I'd seen and how I'd seen it. My perspective of him, that was what he saw as I continued. My appreciation of his haunting beauty... my sorrow for his loss, his pain. My confusion that I couldn't understand all he had suffered, for I'd never had a beloved brother... just a brother. Two, in fact. But nothing like his.

And then moving closer to him as he turned and noticed me. My hand reaching out to gently grasp him by the forearm, the heat of him searing through the shirt he wore to warm my fingers to a toasty blaze. So pleasant, that warmth.

And then, the dazzlement in his eyes when I'd spellbound him so that I might take the little drink. My thoughts as I did it... that I mustn't hurt him, not even a pinprick, but that I must drink because I wanted him so, and also because that was the only true comfort I could offer him: solace in the swoon, a sudden appreciation for life and all it could offer...

But no, no, I mustn't hurt him, I thought again, drawing him closer now, my lips against his beating pulse, his body molded to mine, his green eyes closing with relief as love overflowed my heart and soul and wedded itself to the pain and loneliness that was his.

And then, the bite, the feel of his skin, his warm flesh, my fangs sliding easily into the vein, the sensual zing that shot straight through my teeth and into my head... but mixed with that was anger with myself that I'd been too eager, and not careful enough, for I knew he had felt the sting of the punctures splitting open his skin...

But that slight pain did not disturb his swoon, and soon I was swooning with him, then shoving him away all at once, horrified, for I loved him too much to take him fully. I wanted him for all time, not for one night...

"Stop!" Louis shouted aloud, and at first the noise seemed to me to be just a low rumble of breath, not a command. But when he repeated it, I realized that the images were disturbing him, and that he didn't want his mind flooded any longer with pictures of the night so recently passed.

I did stop, then, and felt rather than heard Louis' sigh of relief.

I stood up, looked down at him as he lay there shivering again, almost crying in reaction, and I couldn't stand it, I simply couldn't stand it.

Sitting down by his side --the first time I'd done that-- I pulled him into a light embrace, and rested his head on my shoulder, and let him shake against me until he began to calm.

He didn't cry. Too undignified, he thought it. And that was all well and good, I suppose; Louis had formality down to a fine art, I had sensed that long before. Even when he was staggering drunk he tended to say please and thank you, even to the whores he'd patronized... But when he was this upset, I rather liked the idea that he might cry on me.

I wondered if he ever would.

And then I made a resolve that I'd try my best to see to it that he wouldn't, for of course I didn't want him to have cause to cry at all.

"You... you, you drank my blood?" he finally asked, quite plainly horrified at the concept.

"Yes," I answered, and putting him slightly away from me, I touched my cold index finger to the exact place I'd pierced. He had no pain there, not now, for I'd taken care to heal his bites the night before. But now, touching them like that, I could tell that I had triggered a memory, that he did now remember.

But what he said was the most peculiar, "And God didn't strike you dead?"

I almost asked him if God struck mosquitoes down for that, but then I decided that comparing myself to an insect would not be the best tack to take.

"No, and he didn't the night before that, or the night before that," I answered, "or at any time during the last eleven years."

"So recently you were... human?" Louis asked.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"But what do you want?" he cried, frustrated, pushing me away, now. I let him. "What can you be doing here? What do you want of me?"

His sister, roused by the noise, began to stir. With a visible motion of my hand, I caused her wakefulness to recede. Louis gasped. "And what of her?" he challenged. "What do you want with my sister?"

"With her, nothing," I said. "Although I will protect her and look out for her for the remainder of her life if that should please you, Louis. But the one I want is you."

He didn't understand, but then again, how could he?

"You've come to finish what you started?" he asked, trembling. Brave and trembling all at once, actually. "You've come to kill me?"

In a manner of speaking....

"Quite the opposite," I made my answer. "I've come to grant you a life that will endure until the end of time."

And then I explained it all. About the little drink I'd taken from him, and how it was but a precursor to something more profound. I explained how I could drain him utterly and then give the blood back, about what that would do to him and what it would mean for him. And Louis listened. Occasionally he spoke to ask me something, but mostly he listened, and thought.

And I could hear his thoughts. He wavered between fascination, disbelief, and denial. Or perhaps the latter was a bit more like disgust. It was hard to tell; all these impressions overlapped.

By the time I finished speaking, it was nearly morning, and he was soaked with sweat just from the stress of hearing such things, and worse, hearing them applied to himself.

"I must leave you now," I said to him most gently. "But do think on all I have said, Louis. Can you do that?"

He didn't answer.

"Stay awake for the sunrise," I said. "Savor it. For once you come to me you will never again be able to so much as see it. The slightest light will drive you to your hiding place where you will pass the daylight hours in a sleep so profound that nothing can disturb it."

"Savor the sunrise," he murmured, the words slurred with exhaustion. "Why? Are you going to kill me if I don't want what you have spoken of?"

"No, Louis, no!" I shouted, vexed. I shouldn't have shouted; it only raised his suspicions to new heights. "I will never kill you," I swore. "You are my other half!"

"Such passionate declarations," he scorned, the cynic in him rising to the surface. "And yet you do not know me at all, nor I you."

I almost told him that yes, I did know him, but I didn't think it wise to remind him that I could read his thoughts. I'd made that plain enough already; if he chose to disregard it, it could only mean that he preferred not to dwell on what that meant.

"We can remedy that," I said instead. "I will come to you tonight, Louis, and we will talk of it, n'est-ce pas?"

"D'accord," he sighed, which of course was not what I wanted to hear, not at all. But it would do, I decided. Ah, yes, it would do.

For now.

Part the Tenth



This wasn't how I had planned things.

For of course I'd had a plan, a plan I had not thought to let Louis interfere with. It went something like this: take a little drink one night just to familiarize him with the concept, so that later when I visit him by night he will be more apt to understand vampire in all the word's dark glory. Then, during that visit, dazzle him. Sway him. Convince him at any cost that he cannot continue as he has lived, that he must indeed give himself to me. Give him one last sunrise. And then the next night, take him. Make him mine for all time.

Actually, that last bit had several phases in my grand scheme of things.

First I would introduce him to my father and have the old man come out with us to Pointe du Lac. I didn't like that part of the plan so well. In truth, I didn't want my father near Louis. He had a tendency from decades past, you see, to taint everyone he touched. Only Gabrielle and myself had survived the abuse, and even we hadn't done so well at that. She'd become so antisocial that she'd left me for the wilds. And I, of course, had rent asunder every relationship I'd ever had. Some of that wasn't my fault, I liked to tell myself. But I knew that some of it was. So no, of course I didn't want my father's bitter outlook... or his tales of a younger me, for that matter, within a stone's throw of Louis. For once, I was going to make a relationship last, make it work, make it wonderful for both of us. And he would try to spoil that, I just knew that he would.

But there was no choice. He was my father. I couldn't leave him in town while I went to live with Louis at Pointe du Lac! And really, I couldn't have Louis continue to live in town. It wasn't good for him. He missed his plantation, his grand house, his slaves... most especially a pair of pretty, doe-eyed slave girls... I rather resented that, in a way, but I suppose it was understandable.

Louis didn't know yet what we would be to one another.

Anyway, back to my plan... originally, I had thought I would be going out to Pointe du Lac tonight, with Louis, my father blindly sitting beside us. And after I had him settled in the finest bedroom Louis could spare, I planned to usher Louis across the divide by inviting him to watch me partake of a kill. The overseer, I thought. Having seen him in Louis' mind, I recognized the man for a vicious wastrel. Feed on the evildoer... that was Marius' great teaching, and I'd done it. More or less. I mean, I wasn't fanatical about it. But it was a sound concept, I thought, a good way to be.

So yes, the overseer. I would take him in his sleep, in his own room, and Louis would watch. Part of his education. You see, my great fear was that Louis, a Catholic in his heart, not just in form and ceremony, wouldn't be able to handle the killing end of things. He seemed so sensitive, so very attuned to his own pain... how could he not feel just as deeply for the pain of others?

So the overseer, in my plan, that would be something in the manner of a test. If Louis handled it well, watching such a thing, then I would know that he was ready to come to me. And if he didn't, well, to be honest... in that circumstance I had planned to make him just the same, except that knowing of his weakness, I would be careful to take account of it in the nights to come. So maybe it was more a test for myself, than for him. My way of sounding him out, of knowing how to approach him when it came time to take him in hand.

I even had that part of it all planned out. Oh, I'd thought and thought of this for weeks. Thought of nothing but, I dare say. So if Louis was troubled by my killing the overseer, I'd proceed by taking him through his own first kill with a minimum of fuss. Without dwelling on it. I'd bring him to a gathering of escaped slaves --just the kind of human Louis had the least pity for, what with his plantation master sensibilities-- and I'd arrange for the bloodthirst to overcome him before he could grown maudlin. I even thought it a good idea to not talk about the event beforehand. Why distress Louis? He had to do what he had to do, after all. I couldn't see any purpose in making him suffer guilt before as well as after.

Although, I hoped of course that none of this would come to pass, that he would adjust without my having to go to these measures.

But the death of the overseer would inform me.

And directly afterwards, I'd make Louis mine. I planned to warn him first that he must struggle to stay alive, that he must keep his eyes open and focus all his energies on me, on the blood. And all this I would say because it would have helped Nikki, had I known enough to say it then.

But as I said already, things weren't going as I had planned. I'd left Louis with instructions to watch the sun come up, of course, but that was it.

I was going back to his house in town, now, to talk to him further.

There'd be no rushing out to Pointe du Lac, not tonight.

And no overseer killed in his own bed, not tonight.

And my father was still tucked away in my own rooms on the other side of town.

And most of all...

Well, this was supposed to be the night that I would fill Louis' veins with dark, powerful blood.

But that wouldn't happen, would it? Not tonight. For once I'd stepped upon that path of truth with him, I'd found it frankly repugnant that I had thought to bring him across to me without his true consent.

Yes, consent.

What good could I ever be to him, I wondered, if in time he came to realize that he had been tricked, seduced, into this nocturnal existence? No, he had to want it, I had realized. He had to truly want it. Just as he had to truly want me.

And that, of course, was going to take longer than a night.

But perhaps that was for the best. This way, I wouldn't have to usher him into his new existence with such haste that things were overlooked. This way, I could build up in him a sincere understanding of myself. I could introduce him more slowly to the reality of the kill.

And, of course, one thing more.

This way, I could, from time to time, sip and feast upon my dear Louis himself. Ah, that thought. His blood was as finest wine to me, only far more rich and mellow. To drink of him again, and again...

And that was bonding, was it not? The most significant bond that I could have with him whilst he was yet mortal. And to build it up, to forge it so that when he came to me he was really coming to me, to my real self, revealed for him to love...

Well, I liked that idea.

So of course nothing was going according to my plan, but that was all right. I was starting to understand that my plan had been an echo of what my mother had said to me... Disaster, my son.

Yes, disaster.

I knew it, I could feel it, I had seen it with my own eyes. There in Louis' gaze, I'd seen it. The twisted path of dishonesty and deceit... the path I'd almost stepped on, the one I didn't want to take.

If I rushed Louis into the night, I'd be bolting down that horrid, thorn-laden path.

And you know what? I'd almost done it, almost almost done it. I would have been so simple, so easy, to make that mistake.

It would still be easy to make one, as selfish as I knew I liked to be.

But I had to avoid that temptation, I simply had to. I had to stay the course with Louis, had to keep to the left, keep my feet firmly planted on the straight and sincere path that led into his heart, instead of the one that would shatter his soul.

I was outside his window again, now, and I knew great confidence that this was right, that this was proper, that I was doing the only thing that could lead to happiness instead of despair.

Not just for me, but for him as well. For us.

Ah, us...

And just at that moment, I glanced through the filmy lace covering the window panes of the French doors, and my heart sang hymns of wonder. And gratitude.

For Louis was in there, my precious one, my Louis, and he was standing, looking through the sheer curtains out at the darkness.

Waiting.

For me.

And then he saw me, and he smiled.

Part the Eleventh



"Lestat," he said, as soon as I had silently opened the door and drifted within, moving more like a wraith than a man. When I saw in his mind that he had marked that, I made a conscious effort to walk in a more human manner.

But for all he noticed my otherworldliness, he still welcomed me. His green gaze studied me from head to toe, caressing me with warmth. And affection? I thought so. Yes, affection. A little.

Because he seemed so well-disposed toward me, I felt no hesitation to take him by the hand, and draw him over to the bed, and bid him sit.

"How are you feeling tonight, Louis?" I asked, and he blanched slightly under the force of my stare.

"Oh, you mean about... what you said? Do you want an answer so soon, is that it?"

The moment I heard him say it, I knew a true and profound, a soul-gripping relief that I hadn't been so crass as to expect his answer so soon. I'd been right to veer toward waiting, I saw that at once. If I'd come tonight to make him... well, I had to think that somewhere deep down, Louis would always resent it. He might come to think that I wanted him for something... for the ease of life out at his plantation, perhaps. Or maybe it would be even worse than that, and he would start to suspect that I lusted after his wealth, the plantation itself!

I almost laughed, for I could see how such a misunderstanding could arise and surge and come to be held as fierce a conviction as something written in black and white. I could see Louis convincing himself of it, of his holding it as gospel truth. Funny, I had a sudden, violent premonition of his doing just that! It seemed all at once that he would tell literally millions about this delusion, that I had wanted to make him a vampire merely so that I might take hold of his plantation. Absurd, utterly absurd.

I could see, though, that I would have to take especial care to see to it that he never believed such a patently ridiculous, transparent, nonsensical notion.

I would move most deliberately so that Louis might learn --and be able to believe-- what did truly motivate me. Not his plantation, not the houses he owned in town or his vast accounts of cash and credit. Not his ready access to slaves who would feed my thirst... No and no... not any of that.

Just one thing.

Just him.

That was all I wanted. And I had to be sure that he understood as much.

I sat beside him and took his hand in mine, and looked into his eyes as I spoke. Not to mesmerize him, no... just to let him see my sincerity, my wish for a union of souls...

"Louis," I rasped, my voice emerging rough with the heavy weight of emotion I had churning inside me, "I won't be asking for your answer tonight. When I asked how you were feeling, I meant it literally. Has the doctor been? I most certainly hope not, considering as the quack almost killed you yesterday."

I must, at some level, have sounded offended. For Louis grasped my fingers slightly -- before this his hand had been resting limp and unresisting in mine. But now he squeezed my fingers.

Such a contact. Communion in a gesture. I think I almost fainted. I'm sure I moaned aloud.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought..."

"You thought I didn't really love you," I accused.

Louis smiled much in the manner of a parent tolerating a wayward child. "Oh, I know you don't," he lightly answered. "You think you do, that's all. But it's infatuation. I think you want to be mortal once more, that's all. And so you've drawn near to me, lured by the heat of me, I think."

"I do love your heat," I admitted. "But if that was all I loved, why would I wish to make you over into a creature as cold as myself?"

Louis shook his head. "You're confused, that's all. You haven't been a vampire long."

Ah, interesting. Last night as we spoke, he had studiously avoided the word, although I had used it sparingly. Now he said it with ease; he had accepted what I was.

"And how are you feeling?" I asked again, although it was plain to me that his wit and intelligence had fully recovered. His physical self, though... that was something else. He still seemed weak to me, terribly weak. Just standing at the window, watching for me, had depleted his energies, his reserves. "Louis?" I prompted.

"Oh, it's nothing," he excused his infirmity, but his voice shook as he said it.

I groaned. "You're hurt and it is my fault! I... I drank too much of you, ah, Louis, if you only knew how rich and delicious and you your fine blood was!"

"You mustn't do this," he said, all concern and caring. "Mustn't blame yourself. I know too well what that is like. You must remember that it wasn't you who brought me to this pass, not truly. It was the physicians. I dismissed them, today, and insisted that bed rest and plenty of rich broth would do me more good than being bled once more."

I groaned again at the mention of blood, the thirst rising in me like a potent tide. And yet I had fed before I had come, of course I had. I didn't want the killing thirst to overtake me while I was with Louis. At least... not until he was ready to accept me, ready to be remade in my image...

Louis shook his head at my thick-throated noise. "It bothers you, Lestat, the mention of blood?"

"What bothers me most is that you suffer from the loss of it," I answered, my voice still rough with passion unfulfilled. "Lie down, Louis," I rasped. "You need more rest, still."

Trusting, he did as I suggested, seeming unalarmed when I continued to sit beside him. I wanted to ask him if he had watched the sunrise, but I found I couldn't broach the subject lest he misunderstand, again, and think I was asking some hackneyed question like whether he had said his good-byes to the light.

"I have a few things to ask you," Louis murmured after a moment.

I was really rather proud that I managed not to groan a third time when I heard that. Questions? Marius came at once to mind; of course he did. Please, not those questions, not ones I can't possibly answer, Louis....

"Does your family know?" he asked. "About what you have become?"

Ah, not such a daunting question, after all.

"No," I answered honestly, for in that moment I was thinking of my brothers, my fathers. But then I remembered Gabrielle. Really, I should have thought of her sooner but for the fact that the powerful resentment I'd always had of her had only grown when she'd decided she cared more for the company of jungles and deserts than for mine.

"Mostly no," I amended that, sticking to my vow to be honest in all that I could. "The Revolution took almost all my family, Louis. My father's here in New Orleans, and no, he doesn't know."

"Then who does?" he pressed.

In some strange, indefinable way, it pained me to speak of Gabrielle. Yet I did it, for him.

"My mother," I sighed. "I tried to keep it from her, Louis, tried to hide in shadows when I had to visit her. But she was dying, and she saw me in the firelight, and with that clarity that comes just before death, she knew at once."

"I'm sorry," Louis murmured, his face a portrait of compassion.

But it was a compassion I didn't understand. "Sorry?" I echoed.

"For your loss," Louis explained.

At once I realized that he'd missed my implication. I could have let it stand, I suppose, but ever since I'd first set out to be honest with him, I'd felt that it was working. That he was more at ease in my company, and coming to trust me, to regard me as a friend.

And nothing must shatter that, nothing.

"Ah," I began, wondering how to continue, "about my mother, Louis... she didn't die."

Part the Twelfth



He was slow to get the point, but I supposed I would be, too, in his place. "She recovered?" Louis finally asked, which was a logical enough assumption, considering that I had just told him that my mother had been deathly ill but had not died.

"No."

"Then..." I knew the instant that his keen wit uncovered the answer. "Oh, you did to her what you described last night? The transfer of blood? To your own mother?"

I nodded.

Louis seemed thoughtful, and I heard him thinking that I must know what I was doing, if I'd been willing to play the dark trick on my own mother...

"And what of your father, then?" he next asked. "You said he didn't yet know; are you going to tell him, to change him, as well?"

"Mon Dieu, non," I breathed, the thought lending a chill to my voice. When Louis appeared startled, I shrugged and tried to be nonchalant, to hide how much the dreadful truth still did bother me. "My father," I explained, "he's here with me; he had to flee the Revolution. I have him in rooms across town, and I see him every night. But for all that... well, we're estranged."

Estranged... now there was a euphemism if ever I'd used one. And yet it was true, so I was still keeping to my resolve. I was estranged from my father.

And really, did Louis have to know every last detail of why?

As it turned out, he did. And then it was difficult to stay the course, to honor him with the truth, for what was the truth in this instance but a catalog of pain? Personal pain, at that.

But I told him all I could bear to speak of, opening my heart, letting him come to know me, all of me, not just the carefree flamboyant parts.

The monastery school. The troupe of traveling actors. The beatings. My father's disapproval of Nikki, his lifelong disappointment with me.

And yes, I even told him of the terrible night-time visits of a drunken marquis to his youngest and most defenseless son... and of the mother who for all her love, had not troubled herself to find out why, at the age of eight, that son suddenly became sullen and withdrawn...

Louis didn't speak. Well, not much. He made an occasional sympathetic noise as he lay there, a sporadic murmured comment that life really was unfair...

And when I had finished speaking, he allowed me the respect of a few moments to collect my thoughts.

When I finally had, I tried to smile, but it was a wan effort. "So," I lightly tossed out, "any more questions?"

"Lestat," Louis softly said, "I... I'm sorry."

Again the apology, and again I didn't understand. You know what that told me? One, that Louis was a real gentleman. He had manners enough even to be civil to the likes of me. But more importantly, it told me that I'd had so little kindness in my life that even now I couldn't recognize it.

"Sorry?" I echoed, and then I thought I understood. "Oh, sorry that you asked? But you must ask me what you need to know, mon Louis. And I will answer you, just so long as those answers are mine alone to give."

Satisfied, Marius? I shot the thought out towards the Old World, but I doubted that he heard it, or that he was even listening. Marius had washed his hands of me the moment I'd played the violin, hadn't he?

"No, I am sorry that you've been hurt," Louis explained, slitting open his eyes so that I could see his loving gaze. He was tired, so very tired, and his eyes had been closed for some time. He needed rest, and I'd been a fool not to mark it before. Drunk on the feeling of openness, of honesty flowing between us, I'd stopped giving so much thought to him. Caught up in the retelling of my troubles --for when had I ever divulged any of my troubles, really? My mother hadn't wanted to hear them, for all she did make them go away, always selling one of her precious jewels so that I might have hounds, or a fine hunting gun, or a horse... all designed to give me confidence, to give me a place of respect in that horrid castle... -- well, the point is that I wasn't used to this, to talking out my troubles.

But with Louis, once I started, all else just seemed to flow. It was as if, by placing my feet on that path of truth, I'd opened doorways I never knew existed. For the truth is that I never thought I'd be able to speak aloud what my father had done to me. Never, ever, not to anyone. But with Louis... ah, Louis...

Still, I had to stop indulging this sudden desire to show him all that was in me. He wasn't well yet; he did need rest.

Really, I should leave him to it. I stood up, and recalling how he had just said that he was sorry for what I'd suffered, I murmured, "It's all right."

It really wasn't. All right, I mean. It never had been, not since that first night when my father came to my room and my whole world --always brittle and tenuous-- became truly grim. The darkness that assailed me later --when I realized that the witches burned at the stake would never be avenged, when I realized that there was nothing beyond this existence, nothing at all, and the horror of that choked off my breath -- was born that night, I think. And yet for years I didn't realize this myself, didn't see the connection. But with the dark blood had come a detachment I didn't have before, an ability to step outside myself and put together some of the shattered pieces of my soul.

And then I saw it... that the darkness hadn't come when I was nearing what would be the end of my mortal life, but all the way back when I was just a boy, just eight years old. It made me angry, even still. It made me want to take Louis off, away from here, just so that I could be far from the man I didn't even like to call "Father." The term was supposed to mean something, after all. But it didn't, not to me. I'd never had a father. And in many ways I'd never had a mother, either, Gabrielle being always so distant and unwilling to even be touched. Of course she loathed my father, with reason. For years and years I thought she loathed all her own children, too, just because we were born of his blood. Then I came to realize that she didn't hate us, but rather that she wasn't a person who much cared about other people. And of course I'd never had a maker, not really. Not one to teach me things, anyway.

You know, as much as I couldn't stand that horrid child Armand and his disgusting Children of Darkness, at least in that system the fledglings were raised, taught, mentored. Whereas I'd just been set adrift.

And I was still adrift, yet I had to let myself be anchored for a while. You see, as much as detested the old Marquis, Marius had been right to advise me to live out a life, to face death head-on and watch my father's waning years, and his death. So of course I couldn't take Louis off, not just yet.

Well, I'd told him that things with me were all right when they in fact were not, but I didn't count that as a lie. It was more a hope.

And it was time to stop thinking only about myself, my troubles, my past. Because I had a future now. One with him, and that was what I had to preserve and protect at any cost.

"I will go now so that you can sleep, cher," I said, noticing that he didn't flinch from the endearment. But then, I could see in his mind that he didn't understand the sense in which I used it. To him, it was a familiarity between friends. And he was beginning to think us friends. He had no concept really, of what more we could be, although he had correctly deduced from my behavior that I did love him. Of course, he kept insisting that I only thought I did. Again, his discomfort with the idea of love between us. "But Louis, may I visit again tomorrow?"

I sensed his hesitation, but I wasn't alarmed, for what prompted it was not a desire to deny my request, but other things.

"Oh, this is difficult, Lestat," he murmured, and again my name in his mouth was a sound to savor. "I... I would like to speak with you more, yes. But I fear I will not be here tomorrow night."

I knew why not; Louis' resolution toward this end had been building all the while as we had spoken that night, and shared a little bit of our hopes and dreams, and too our regrets, the things that we had suffered. For him, those things revolved around Paul and the visions, Paul and the staircase.

Louis had dealt with his grief and guilt by sublimating it into a whirlpool of drunkenness. He had pushed it aside, refused to face it and deal with it and put it behind him. And the moment I thought that, I thought as well that such denial was only human of him. But then it came to me that I was just as good at denial, at refusing to resolve my issues. Witness my father, how I would talk to him without talking to him, without ever saying those things which screamed to be said! Well, I reasoned that that either meant that I was still more human than I liked to think, or that the trait was common to all sentient beings.

Probably it was both.

Louis, though, he was starting to come out of his depression, his angst. Well, perhaps I state the case too strongly, but it was certainly true that he was ready to face his recent past rather than flee from it.

In a flash of blinding insight, I saw the other path, the crooked one, and I knew that there was no more sure way to place my feet on the trail of error than to have made Louis my fledgling on this very night. Oh God, and that was what I had planned! And what a blunder, what a monumental mistake that would have been! I could see it unfolding before my eyes, now. That grief of his would have been made permanent, would have become solidified into his very essence, and he would go through the centuries, the millennia, as a sufferer! And I would love him still, would love him always, but his despondency would drive me to rages, and drive us apart, over and over...

Ah, never ever had I been so grateful that I'd thought past my first inclination, thought ahead to the results, before I acted!

For this way, he could come to me healed instead of wounded.

And you know, healed wasn't even the key point, although it was significant in the extreme. No, the most vital matter was that *he* come to *me.*

No seduction, no tricks... well, perhaps some seduction, but not the destructive kind. I wasn't going to lure him into the night, no. He had to come because he wanted it, because he'd found it in himself to love me and want to be with me throughout time.

In any case, I already did know what he had meant by his saying that he wouldn't be around if I should come the next night to visit him.

"You're going back to Pointe du Lac," I surmised, having seen the intent be born and grow strong in his mind.

He gasped slightly. Not just because I'd read his mind, but because I knew the name of his plantation, a name he hadn't mentioned. For all he had accepted the existence of my powers, he wasn't used to them.

But the shock passed quickly and then he was weakly nodding. "Yes. I need to... I think I need to see where it happened, go back into the room where they laid him out."

"Of course you do," I agreed, because to me it sounded as healthy an impulse as I think I'd heard. "And afterwards," I continued, "it will still hurt, all that happened. But it won't be the kind of pain you've suffered up until now, the kind that destroys."

"I hope not," Louis murmured. His eyes closing again, the skin beneath them tinged blue with exhaustion, he tried to go on. "But you... when shall I see you, Lestat? Are you..."

His voice failed, but not from weakness. All at once, he was afraid to say the words that rose to his lips. Afraid of what I might think, of how I might react, of what my plans might be...

"Am I what?" I asked, although I knew. But he had to say it, you see. He had to be the one to approach me. I was still leery that if I was too open about what I wanted, he might think I wanted him for his plantation. (Please, that place? Oh, it was nice enough, very provincial in a way, but nothing compared to Paris!)

But that was how Louis was, you see. He put a low value on himself, especially now. He actually thought that the slave girls accepted his ardent attentions because they had to! It was beyond him to see that someone could want him for himself. But we'd work on that, he and I. I thought that with time, and a gentle hand, Louis could come to see himself for the beauty and the glory that he was.

"Am I what?" I prompted again, my voice soft.

Louis shook his head convulsively, and I realized that he hadn't spoken because he'd started to drift into some state of semi-hypnosis. Not my fault! Well, not on purpose. He was simply so attuned to me, so sensitive, that I'd lulled him without meaning to.

"Oh," he said, coming out of it, looking me again with those verdant green eyes. But he sighed before he could speak. "Are you going to seek someone else out then? Someone else to whom you shall give this 'dark gift' as you call it?"

Ah, temptation....

Rich temptation, and in came in the exact flavor of his own blood.

For I knew, you see, that if I told him yes, he would acquiesce at once, would fall straight into my arms and accept the gift from me rather than see me take another for my companion.

But he would have taken it while he was still depressed and melancholy.

He would have taken my gift not because of love, but fear...

And the future, years and years of it, centuries without end, would reflect these things.

Not good, not good at all.

And so once more I stayed firm to that path of truth.

"No," I told him in perfect honesty. "No, Louis, never. It's you I want with me as the years become eons. You're the only one I want, and all I've ever wanted."

"You do like your melodramatics," he whispered in reply.

Oh, so he didn't believe me, eh? Well, he would. He most certainly would.

I was going to make sure of that.

See, I had a new plan, now. A better one than I'd ever had before. And it started like this:

"Go back to Pointe du Lac as you wish, Louis," I told him, caressing his name. "And when you want to see me, you have only to think so, and I will come."

Louis fingers had been clenched, but at that they slowly uncurled. And then his wit shone forth, his brilliant wit that I knew could fill me with joy untold in the years to come.

"I suppose I'd do well to think so long before sunrise," he murmured. "Or you won't have time to get out to Pointe du Lac."

"Oh, I'll be nearby," I assured him, and he frowned slightly as he realized that would take me away from my father's side. And he knew by then that my father was not only blind, but sick. And Louis had a deep, abiding conviction that one must look after one's family, come what may. It was this conviction that tormented him so very much, that made him think he had failed, utterly failed, his younger brother.

After what I had told Louis about my father, though, my dear Louis was reluctant to mention the man.

"I..." Louis smiled slightly. "I will go back and look over where it happened, Lestat. And I will think, as you told me to do last night. And when I wish to talk more with you, I will call out in the manner you suggested."

When.

Not if, when.

Music to my ears.

Emboldened by that, I leaned down over Louis as I took my leave, and laid my lips across his forehead. Gently, reverently, yet with all the passion I could grant the gesture.

Louis thought it sweet. Brotherly. Well, it wasn't brotherly, but he could think that, for now. He would come to sense the depth of my feelings for him.

"Rest now," I bid him and he murmured that my lips were cold.

But he said this in a tone of wonder, of curiosity... not revulsion.

"Not so very cold," I said, and lifting his hand, I kissed that too. And then, before he could draw me into further converse, I left. Not that I didn't want converse -- I most certainly did. But I wanted him healing even more.

I lithely jumped down to the patio below his balcony, and listened to him from there. Ah, Louis. Thoughts of me, nothing but me. Well, almost nothing... and then so soon he was lost to dreams.

And I smiled, deeply content... for they were dreams of me.

Part the Thirteenth



That feeling of deep contentment faded fast, I must admit. The next night I watched Louis from afar, watched him wander from room to spacious room in his mansion at Pointe du Lac. Ah, so glorious he was, even from a distance, the candlelight playing off his ebony hair and lighting it up with sheens of blue and black... absolutely beautiful.

But it was hard to be content when I wasn't with him. And yet I'd told him I would wait for his call, so I was bound to that, to do that.

I scanned his thoughts continuously, and it was some solace that I was frequently in them, but what little solace that was next to the pleasure of his company, for which my whole soul craved.

Besides, I often didn't like the thoughts I perceived flitting through his head.

It wasn't real, he would think. That man, that Lestat, the vampire... he wasn't real. He was a delusion brought on by fever. Grief and fever both. I wanted proof of the supernatural, I wanted a confirmation that there was more to life than just this mortal coil, and in my agony, my imagination conjured him. Not angel to console me nor devil to torment me... but an answer so mysterious that it was my own soul crying out that nothing makes sense, that I will never know what's become of Paul...

Ah, such thoughts flayed me, they really did. I wanted to go to Louis then, and assure him that his nights with me had been no delusion, no dream. But I sensed quite strongly that Louis was working these issues through. And when he was ready to face the truth, ready to face me again, he *would* call out.

And so I waited.

I could get out to Pointe du Lac with great speed, of course, although it did take some time. Before ten o'clock each night I was with him, with my Louis, watching and listening from afar, and there I stayed until the coming dawn forced me to retreat back to my hiding place. It would have been far more convenient to simply arrange a lair out near the plantation, but that would mean I'd never see my father.

Appealing thought, actually.

But not an impulse I was disposed to give in to. I had to spend some little time with him each night; it was my duty. Well, it was both my duty and Marius' wisdom that I do so, much as I detested it.

When I would leave my complaining father to the woman I paid to sit with him, and go out to Pointe du Lac, my whole heart would burn with need, with desire that this be the night during which Louis finally bid me come in. He knew I was out there, I was sure of that.

But he waited.

And I waited.

And I gnashed my teeth each and every time he summoned one of the house maids to come "see to the general cleanliness" of his private suite. That was his euphemism; Louis was far too polite and genteel to directly order the quadroon lovelies who served in his mansion to bed him.

But bed them he did, night after night. He seemed to distribute his favors quite widely among the servants, although a lovely demure thing named Colette appeared to be his favorite.

He would summon these beauties after his mother and sister had retired, and romp with them for some hours before sending them back to their own poor quarters. Although poor is a relative term; I don't mean to imply that Louis treated his slaves to less than their proper due. They were well-fed and had decent housing, and neither did he work them like draft animals. And the women... ah, the women... he didn't just use their bodies for his carnal satisfaction. What he did with them was far more like making love. Reciprocal, I mean. They moaned with delight to be touched and fondled and caressed by the handsome Louis de Pointe du Lac.

I moaned too, but not with delight. Jealousy, rather. Base, absolute, awful jealousy.

I wanted Louis, of course I did. And I didn't just want him for a companion, but to be my love. Physical, spiritual, mental, carnal... every kind of love possible, that was what I needed with him.

And he must have sensed this, as strange and threatening as he found it.

For why else would he flaunt these liaisons in my face? He knew I was watching, knew I was tracking his every thought. And this is what he forced me to watch, time and time again, his beautiful, muscled body straining and heaving against the lithe curvy form of one of his slaves.

It made my thirst burn so hot I thought I'd be seared.

And when I couldn't stand the sight, I'd go indulge that thirst. I would go and hunt, although never on the Pointe du Lac plantation itself. Those slaves were Louis' property, so I would no more interfere with them without his consent than I would set his mansion ablaze. Horrible, that thought, the idea of his great huge elegant home going up in flames. Ah, God, I could just see it in my mind's eye, and it looked so real I had to wonder where the vision was coming from. Awful, just awful, Louis' beautiful home... and him in it? Where were these notions coming from?

I was going mad, that was all. Mad for wanting him, mad for needing him... going mad with the waiting.

Well, except for Louis himself, there was just one thing I knew of that would alleviate these visions --dreadful ideas not only of his house burning to the ground but of Louis shunning me to live in the damp, rotting oratory!-- and that was blood. Since I forbad myself to feast from Louis' slaves, I went downriver to the Frenière plantation to hunt. Or I set upon travelers on the coach road that flanked the banks of the Mississippi.

I tried to not let this separation from Louis bother me; I tried to be restrained, to keep tight control of my volatile temper. And largely, I think, I did succeed.

Sometimes, though, I wasn't as controlled as I should have been. Enraged when he summoned Colette three nights running, I caught her one night in a merciless grip when she went outside after she had well-served... or should I say serviced?... her master. Holding her from behind, I dove my teeth into her neck and drank of her, but I let her go before I'd taken more than a brief sip.

It was enough, that sip. I saw Louis in her thoughts, Louis in her blood, and I knew in my own body the rush of passion she'd so recently felt in hers. I knew more than that, of course. I knew his pleasure as well, for she had felt it...

And I knew that sometimes, in the midst of making love, Louis would moan under his breath, and stroke her dark hair, stare into her dark eyes, but be thinking rather of gold and glorious sincere grey...

That much I knew from reading Louis' mind, of course. It tormented me. Because he wanted me, you see. He wanted me utterly. But this was not something he could recognize in himself, let alone come to terms with. He tried to banish thoughts of me by summoning Colette. And it didn't work, of course, though he did try and most valiantly.

Back to what I did that night with Colette. The little drink, that was it. I wanted more. Well, of course I wanted more! Didn't I always? Drinking a mortal down was never to be missed, and when that mortal was one with whom my Louis tended to dally... well, there would have been a certain raw satisfaction, a primal fulfillment in seeing to it once and for all that he didn't waste his precious sighs and moans with her again. But I didn't kill Colette. I knew it to be a pointless exercise. She was Louis' favorite bed partner, certainly, but he had other women available, women who would be only too delighted to take Colette's place in his affections.

But really, I wasn't as practical about the matter as it likely sounds in retrospect. I spared Colette for one reason, actually. I thought her death would upset Louis. And just then, the notion of distressing Louis was absolute anathema to me. He had started to come out of his depression, his deep-seated angst over his brother's death. Another death near him, so soon afterwards... well, I couldn't think that it would do his state of mind any good. And what would it do to his consideration of the dark gift were he to confront the fact that his precious Colette --for he did care for her, in his own way-- had been drained by a vampire?

No doubt the attack would upset him almost as much. If I had been thinking more clearly, I'd not have indulged the essential selfishness in my nature... I'd have left the slave woman strictly alone.

Well, I hadn't. She was swooning in my arms, the salty tang of her blood thick in my mouth as I pushed her away. I healed the puncture wounds in her neck and staring into her eyes, suggested she forget she ever saw me. And so she did.

But I noticed that some well of self-preservation in her kept her from going outside at night after that.

Weeks more passed, weeks of this waiting... and keeping to my unstated vow to control my destructive impulses better, I left Colette alone. Even when she came down the great oak staircase, damp and musky-scented from having taken my beloved Louis inside herself... well, I gnashed my teeth and strode away and found relief in the blood of one of the escaped slaves who congregated in the swamps.

And then when I was in despair that Louis would never, ever call out to me, he did.

Part the Fourteenth



Louis' call came one night just past midnight. A murmur at first, a murmur in my mind, and then a bit louder, until I could not fail to mark the difference between Louis' previous thoughts and this one. Those had been things I'd eavesdropped on. But this, this call... it was careful, slow, deliberate. He wanted me to hear him.

Lestat, Louis thought, and it wasn't in the manner he'd so often thought my name before, as though wondering if I'd been real or just a phantom of his imagination, chased away by the light of day. No, this was a summons, and it rang out as clear as a bell when it came yet again. Lestat...

I sprinted toward the mansion, then sprang up like a panther to the landing outside his window, and climbed over the wrought iron railing to peer inside Louis' bedroom window.

I thought I'd knock on the French doors, and then go straight in to pull Louis into my arms so that I could tell him eye to eye that I had missed him.

But I didn't go in, not then... Instead, I found myself staring through the glass at a tableau I'd seen before.

Louis was with the slave girl again, the soft-spoken one, his favorite. Colette. I thought about her blood, about how I'd held her pinioned, about how I could have so very easily have killed her, how I could have crushed her in my strong hands.

When I'd seen them before, I'd watched from afar. This time, invited, I found myself transfixed and staring. For Louis had bid me come, I thought... he must want me to see this, whatever it shall be. Perhaps he plans to reject the slave woman before my eyes, I thought with some measure of hope. Perhaps Louis has had enough time to think and reflect and realize that it is I whom he truly loves, and he wishes to demonstrate this to me in terms so clear and plain that they shall communicate without words.... With that thought in the forefront of my mind, I stayed, and I watched the scene unfold.

But it wasn't a rejection of Colette that Louis had thought to have me witness. Quite the contrary. .

I sensed that almost at once. Louis was rife with desire, his green eyes lighting on the curve of her breast beneath her simple homespun gown...

It was difficult for me to stay there and simply watch. I wanted to smash into the room and feed my hunger from Colette, or from her and Louis both. Either that, or I wanted to open the French windows and stride straight in, and take Louis in my arms and bedazzle him until he lost all vestige of desire for any creature on earth save me...

Difficult, yes, but I did neither of those things. Leaning closer toward the French doors, I forced myself to stay... stay and watch whatever it was that Louis wished me to see. If I'd been human, my breath would have steamed the glass. As it was, my nose collided with the pane, my palms resting on the smooth cool surface, my eyes aglitter as I studied the scene unfolding before my hungering eyes...

I must say, Louis' timing in calling me had been impeccable; Colette had just entered the room when I sprang up to the balcony. And now, through a film of lace I saw her shut the door, and turn the key in the lock, and walk forward to stand just before the foot of Louis' bed. He lay there, covered by a sheet but bare to the waist, his feet crossed at the ankles, his back resting against plump cushions so that he was half-sitting rather than prone. His hands languidly crossed behind his neck, he smiled, and simply watched her.

And I smiled, and watched him, absolutely entranced. I'd seen his bare chest before, but only when he was ill from fever and blood loss. And even then I had thought him beautiful. Now, he was strong and solid and healthy. A gorgeous specimen of masculine glory. Really, I had to think him exemplary.

I stared at the soft rise and fall of his firm pectorals as he breathed, and from out of nowhere came the potent phrase, Beautiful One. Louis de Pointe du Lac is my Beautiful One...

Then my smile died, because I knew from watching him out at the plantation these past weeks, just how serious and determined a man my Louis was. He might appreciate being called Beautiful One, I thought, but that sentiment would die a quick death if I used the appellation too much. Louis would think me shallow, would think me consumed by no emotion other than a hedonistic pleasure in his appearance. And of course he would be right in part; I was consumed by just that.

Yet, there was more to it than merely that.

And I determined then and there to make sure that Louis never came to mistakenly believe that my love was directed at his surface instead of his spirit, heart, soul, and mind. You know, I loved him most of all for his thoughts. In so many ways we were so alike. Despairing of ever being able to really be good; tortured by notions of what might have been; compelled by a quest for ultimate truth, ultimate answers...

Louis chest, and the sight of him lying there on a bed plumped high with decadent pillows... well, that entranced me for some time. But eventually I came back to myself, and directed my gaze back to the slave girl Colette.

In all this time, she had said not a word, and Louis was equally silent, but then, no words were needed. He had sent for her many times before; she knew his preferences, his needs, his desires. In short, she knew just what to do. And what was more, she didn't mind doing it. There was a great thrill humming through her, enveloping her whole mind in a sensual haze, for of course like all the house maids she was half in love with Louis and only too delighted to be called up to his bed.

She wished she could be so called every night.

Louis perceived nothing of this. He had an essential modesty which kept him humble. More than that, though, he saw all his slaves as duty-bound to do his bidding. And deep down somewhere in his soul, he regretted that he was driven to order his women to such things, but overlaid atop that was the simple fact that he was a man with all a man's needs. In New Orleans itself it had been a simple matter to partake of prostitutes, for Louis would not dream of besmirching a good Creole lady's name. At his own home, though, the slave girls were the most convenient option, even if he did believe they possessed no true desire for him as a man.

Blind, how could he be so blind?

I found myself impressed, though, as I watched him and read his mind, for I saw that while he did resent in some measure that Colette did not truly want him (although she did), he did not allow that resentment to seep forth to taint his treatment of her. Not in the slightest way. Oh, no, he was at all times most gentle and considerate of her.

She stood at the foot of his bed for a moment, and then, with one smooth motion of her fingers, she undid the drawstring tie at her throat and pulled the fabric until the neckline widened and the nightdress could drop unimpeded to her feet.

She stood before him nude, unashamed, her coffee-tinted nipples hardening as Louis watched, his green eyes slitted so that only the barest streak of color was visible. And then she let down her hair as well, and down and down it tumbled in long black waves until it reached the small of her back.

Louis smiled, then, and crooked a finger to beckon her.

Crawling onto the edge of the bed, Colette lovingly took Louis' feet in her hands, and massaged them well while Louis sighed with pleasure and stretched out a bit more fully on the bed. And then the girl crawled again, this time under the sheets, the bed seeming to undulate as I watched. Now, I couldn't see beneath the linen to know for certain just what Colette was doing, but it's a fair bet she stopped with her mouth just at the level of his hips, and pleasured him well with her mouth.

Oh, why dissemble? I couldn't see, but I could most definitely peer into his mind and hers, so of course I knew exactly what was going on beneath those rippling sheets. Her sweet mouth was warm and wet and stretched wide to accommodate the generous size that was Louis' width and length.

Well, I couldn't see that, more's the pity... but what I could see, ah, now that was a sight.

Louis, with his head thrown back against his pillows, his fingers making fists in the bedding, his voice thick with passion as Colette worked him. He groaned and strained, sweat breaking on his brow, and in quick, urgent tones told her what to do. No more silence between them now. At least, not on his part. He was undisputed master of his domain, and for all his humane compassion toward his slaves --for he was a good-hearted man-- they were nonetheless his slaves. He had no hesitation to command them. Not even sweet Colette, for whom he had a fondness I could not fail to miss.

But it was just that, a fondness. It wasn't love; it wasn't even close. No, Louis had never loved anyone with the raw romantic emotion that he would give to me...

"Plus lentemente, ma belle," he bid her in a low, urgent tone. Slower, my beauty...

Well, I must admit that this was all very instructive. He liked it slow, not hurried... He liked his passion to build slowly, to gradually increase in wave after wave of need, this need reflected not only in his sighs and languid instructions to the slave, but also in his body itself. He was hardening... not just there, but all over. The muscles braiding his arms and legs stiffening, tensing, his stomach contracting to a rippled plane, the planes of his face snapping taut as a low groan rumbled deep in his throat to hiss through his clenched teeth...

Ah yes, Louis liked it slow and long, and what was more, he also liked variety, for before he reached the pinnacle of his pleasure, he tossed the sheet off, grabbed her pretty shoulders, and thrust Colette to her back.

She squealed with anticipation, with delight.

I saw him in all his beauty and glory as he rolled atop her and prepared to mount her. Ah, glory isn't even the word. The man was gorgeous, truly gorgeous. Finely delineated muscles wrapped around his arms and legs, his skin a perfect tableau of moonlight, his hair caressing the slave girl's curves as he moved above her, his male glory springing proudly from a thatch of black curls. Thick and strong and long, and every bit of it delicious, as Colette herself could attest to... not that I needed her opinion on the matter. I knew full well that Louis would be scrumptious in every aspect, not just his blood.

Colette wanted him; she could hardly stand the waiting. And that was what Louis was doing, making her wait. He stared down at her as he held himself poised atop her; he emerald eyes gleaming with an expression that was both lazy and invigorating all at once. Colette thrust herself up at him, her nipples grazing his chest as she lunged, and then Louis thought that he had better not torment her too much, or she might scream aloud in frustration. Not that he would have minded that so much; he rather liked a bit of noise when he made love, but he was conscious that it was late and that his sister was sleeping in a room just three doors down...

So with an elegant, smooth thrust down and in, he was inside her, and then, ironically, his mercy was for naught; she was beginning to shriek with the pulsations of sheer ecstasy that poured through her.

Louis placed a hand most gently over her lips even as he eased himself further within her, which of course only produced yet more screams of delight. Muffled screams, that time, muffled behind his palm.

"Quiet, petite," he told her, his voice a low hush of affection and caring, yet laced with a resolve like steel, a resolve Colette knew better than to ignore. "You'll wake the house, ma chère, ma petite chère, Colé, ma belle chou-fleur..."

Colé... that was his pet name for her. For some strange reason, hearing him call her by those affectionate little names bothered me more than any of the rest, more than seeing him in the throes of intimacy with her. For some reason? Well, in truth the reason wasn't so very hard to define. It centered his attention on her. When he was utterly lost in sensation, his thoughts were amorphous, drifting in a sea of pleasure, a sea of pleasure in which I too, languidly swam. I was in there with him... when he wasn't really thinking, that was.

But when he spoke to Colette like that, I was locked out, left out... no part of this interlude.

When Louis told her to be quiet, she subsided, and I saw in her mind several things all at once. She didn't want to anger Louis, that was part of it. He favored her and she most particularly wanted to keep him well-disposed to go right on favoring her. And then there was a slight worry in her mind that if Louis' mother were to come investigate the noise, there might be such a scandal that Louis would cease paying such attention to the slave girls. (I could have told her that Louis' staid and straight-laced mother was no fool; she knew exactly what went on in that house. And for that matter, the sister, while innocent, was aware that Louis was a man and that men would be men, come what may). But most of what was in Colette's mind was a consciousness that Louis was her master, and a good one, and she simply wanted to do whatever he said.

That caught my interest, in a way. I mean, it might be rather diverting for a vampire to have such mortals underfoot, ones who wished to serve, ones who wished to do as they were told...

But no, it struck me then that keeping mortal pets, as it were, wouldn't be so well done of me. For some reason, it struck me as a thing Armand was quite likely to do. I wondered why I thought that? It wasn't as though I'd seen him select a mortal to feed from over and over, to taunt and play with and order about... I suppose he had fed from Nikki, and taunted him plenty, but that wasn't what I meant, either. I had a sudden violent vision of a man with blond hair, darker than mine... burnished gold, almost ash... and vibrant vibrant eyes... and this man was begging blood from Armand! And he wasn't merely asking to be made, although he did most desperately want that... no, he was begging for even a drop of blood, such as Armand had let him have time and time again... Armand controlled him with the blood.

Pet, indeed; the man would perform for Armand, doing whatever his master said. Literally, whatever. I felt slightly ill just watching; then the mental picture blurred into nothingness.

I shuddered at the vision; the last thing I desired was to emulate that horrid child in any way. So no, I guess I wouldn't set myself up to be master to any slaves, and I certainly wouldn't be treating Louis to the casual contempt it seemed Armand exercised toward the purple-eyed man, whoever he was.

I wanted to drink of him, and he of me... but not to control him, not to make him perform. To bond us, that was it. But the vision made me understand that I would have to be careful not to abuse the power that seemed to come right along with that bonding...

But just now, of course, he was bonding --so to speak-- with his slave Colette.

Part the Fifteenth



Louis seemed to me to be a consummate lover, and it wasn't long before Colette began to gasp out her pleasure. One peak, and then another, as Louis plundered her, his hands upon her upturned breasts, his fingers teasing her nipples, his palm slicking down her sweat-soaked side to feel the curve of her hips.

And from time to time he would lower himself fully onto her and kiss her, his hips moving sensuously against hers in perfect tempo to the pairing of their lips. Colette almost fainted at one point, she was so overcome by sheer physical pleasure and the heady lure of Louis himself. For he was beautiful. Really, more so than I can convey. And healthy at last, his movements unburdened by drink, he was a wonder to behold.

She began speaking again, moaning something in the slave patois that Louis frowned on. He wanted his house maids to be well-spoken, you see, and insisted they learn and use proper French. Colette tried, she really did. She so did want Louis to like her. But habit had her always slipping back into the dialect spoken by her mother, her father, her sisters... all slaves, all owned by Louis. She liked that, the notion that she and all her kin were utterly his...

In the throes of passion, Louis ignored her lower-class words, his concerns entirely focused on more immediate sensations than hearing. His sleek bare body atop hers, white against dark, his hips thrusting home in a primeval rhythm, these were the things foremost in his mind.

And then, he chanced a glance to the side, toward the window behind which I had stood this entire time.

His gaze collided with mine.

And as he stared at my figure, visible through the filmy lace curtains, his eyes locked to mine, his thoughts revolving around me and not Colette beneath him, he reached a shuddering climax that tore a scream from his throat.

The most intense, incredible pleasure he had ever felt poured through him, racing along his veins, delineating them so that he could feel something he had never in his life before felt: his own mortal blood as it heated and churned within him. Another scream as the sensation continued to pulse, not just in his rigid manhood but indeed throughout his entire body. And then a gasp, hoarse, surprised, Louis easily marking that a climax was one thing but that this had been something rather more...

And all the while, his eyes were locked to mine; I could feel the sexual pleasure, the tension and then the release, flowing through his body. I could feel it as keenly as though we were joined, he and I.

Colette was forgotten until she convulsed beneath him, a new series of waves rocking through her. "Master," she cried out as the feelings became so intense as to border pain. But it was a pain she welcomed, and that wasn't the only kind she welcomed... I saw it then. She loved Louis so intensely that she most desperately longed to bear a child for him. That this child would be a slave... his slave... was no deterrent at all. For Colette had her whole life accepted that any child she bore would be a slave. That she might grow round with the Master's child... well, she knew that Louis didn't love her, not the way she loved him. But such a child would keep him always close to her, she thought. And so each time she left Louis' room she was in the habit of taking out her voodoo charms in the dark and wishing with all her heart for his seed to take root within her...

Louis' thoughts were of an entirely different variety. The moment her climax ebbed to a halt, he moved off her and stared morosely at the wallpapered wall. "I told you not to call me that, not here," he commented, his voice rather grim. That was when I sensed more clearly than before just how Louis saw himself. To him, the title of "Master" only represented the fact that Colette was bound by law and duty and tradition to please him. And he wanted to be wanted, not merely to be served.

But as abhorrent as he found the word "Master" while making love, he wasn't quite so free-thinking as to want a slave to call him by his first name, either.

"Yes, monsieur de Pointe du Lac," Colette murmured, all obedience. Louis hadn't had cause to rebuke her for that in some time, but she knew his preferences well enough. She was almost in tears that she had disappointed him, that he might summon Sylvie next time, or Anne-Marie...

Louis resumed staring out the window at me. And I stared back, fascinated. It wasn't just that he was unclothed, although that was surely part of it. It was also that I had never seen him so relaxed, so at ease. True, he had corrected Colette, but he wasn't obsessing over her small error as she was. No, he was languid in the afterglow of the physical pleasure he'd indulged. And the guilt that had plagued him for so long appeared to be... well, not gone, I will admit. But no longer his constant torment, either.

"You may go, Colette," Louis then said with a slight wave of his hand. She nodded in answer and hurriedly threw on her homespun nightdress, but before she could depart, Louis wrapped a sheet about his waist, and standing, went to her. Gathering her into his arms, he kissed her long and sweet, and called her Colé once more. She smiled at that; she knew it meant she was forgiven. Then her smile became wider as he pressed a new hairbow into her damp palm.

Colette was delighted, her troubles forgotten. Well, she should be delighted. I knew from haunting Pointe du Lac that she was the positive envy of all the house maids, seeing as she was the one most frequently called to his bed. And not only was Louis handsome and fastidiously clean, he was always generous too, always without fail providing some small trinket, a token of his appreciation. These trinkets were almost worthless, of course. Louis wasn't fool enough to give a slave anything of value; it would only cause dissension out in the slave quarters. But he wanted Colette (and the others, although less so) to feel special. And so the trinket. This time, a simple hairbow.

He didn't have to do these things. He owned these women just as he owned the fields that surrounded the house. And it was a common enough practice in Louisiana for the French to disdain their African slaves; for the slavemaster to treat his women worse than he would treat the lowest whore. But Louis... well, he had a gentleman's heart, I suppose. He treated Colette --and the others, of course-- more like his lovers than anything else.

It gave me a new measure of respect for him, in a way.

It was also damned irritating to watch a display such as this one that he --I had to think-- had staged for me. I thought of him as mine already, although I knew in my heart that he wasn't yet, and that he wouldn't ever be that if I gave in to potent temptation and ripped Colette's delicate little neck out.

Louis disappeared into his dressing room and emerged in simple clothes. Only then did he come to the balcony, to the French windows where I was still standing, and opening one a crack, say in tones that were calm and light, "Ah, Lestat."

He seemed to beckon me inside, although that might have been my imagination, but I went in and stood awkwardly beside the fireplace where dim coals still burned. The room was lit by candles, but I could see well enough. Louis, I knew, was squinting to make me out. Yet he came no closer.

"I didn't call you," he claimed first of all.

A flat-out lie, it was, and the first lie between us. With a sudden blinding insight I knew that for all Louis was a basically good man, he was not the very soul of truthfulness. He deluded both himself and others from time to time, a trait I could well understand since I shared in it in equal measure.

But this particular lie... perhaps he was just throwing that out to see how I would react. I squelched an impulse to grab him bodily and press my lips to his and show him by example that he had called me and that he did most definitely want me. But no, I decided not.

No, no, far better to wait and watch and try to fathom what he was up to, telling me such a lie. He knew I knew it for what it was... I tried to read his mind more fully then, to know his motives, but he knew them so very little himself that reason was a great cloud in his head, not a thin line dividing truth from falsehood, darkness from light...

"Didn't you?" I smoothly replied, a touch of sarcasm emerging as I continued, "Didn't you, indeed?"

He blushed, blood-scent pouring into his cheeks, his lips flushing with it, his eyes seeming to gleam in a way that was positively eerie. "Well, perhaps I did," he acknowledged, the truth coming rather stiltedly to his lips, but at least it was emerging, "but I wasn't actually expecting you to stand outside and watch me dally with Colette, you know," he added.

Ah, so it had been a test I'd failed, then? I was supposed to show him more consideration, something like that? Well, two could play that game, I thought.

"But neither did you tell me to go when you saw me there," I pointed out. "And you could have; you know you've merely to think such things for me to perceive them."

"Oh," he mocked, his green eyes sparkling, the combatant in him alive and well now that he was no longer so lost in despondency and despair, "and you'd have gone, just like that, would you? My smallest wish is your command?"

I didn't want to go there, certainly. I didn't want to promise him things I couldn't possibly hold to. We were fated, he and I, but I was not so great a fool as to see nothing but beds of roses ahead for us. There would be hard times, too; weren't there always? But we would prevail.

Unless I began with declarations such as that, declarations I could not hold to....

"I wouldn't say that your slightest wish is my command, no," I admitted. "Honestly, I don't take well to commands. Those who try to control me..." I shrugged. "Well, usually they learn that it's as much use as sowing seed in a whirlwind. But you, I love. And so for you, I will try my best to honor your needs, your requests," I assured him. "It's not my aim to make you feel trapped in any way, mon cher Louis. I merely wish for you to understand what I offer."

"Immortality," Louis said then, looking me up and down as he spoke. He gave the word a hard edge, and I wasn't quite sure why. His own thoughts on the matter were of little use, since he quite simply didn't know what to think.

"That, yes," I admitted. "Although I wasn't thinking of immortality just now. What I offer, Louis, is even simpler still." I paused, wondering if he was ready to hear this from me. But then again, he was the one who had summoned me knowing that I would see him while he was in the midst of bedding Colette. He was the one who had let me watch. So I had to think that somewhere deep down in his soul, he knew we were fated to be more than mere friends. I think his true desire was to push me to the limit of my tolerance, and see what would happen.

But I also thought he realized none of this himself, not consciously. He thought of me as... well, not quite a friend, I must admit. More a potential friend. Anything more than that he simply could not envision, not in any part of his wakeful, aware, mind.

My most sincere hope, of course, was that we would become true abiding friends as well as lovers, soulmates, mates...

"What I offer you..." I mused, then paused again to reflect. Was it time? Was he ready? Was his dalliance with Colette a valiant last stand against what he knew deep inside to be inevitable?

"I offer you myself," I went on, my voice awash with such sincerity that it emerged hoarse. "Myself, Louis, for all eternity."

Part the Sixteenth



Louis abruptly sat down, and not on his bed. No, he shied away from that to sit on a chair decked out in damask and brocade. I knew at once that I had startled him, that his actions --involving me in his dalliance with Colette that night-- hadn't been planned out. He'd been acting on instinct.

Good instinct, of course, and I understood its genesis. In years past --with Nikki, for example-- I might have reacted to such a scene with jealousy, outrage and immediate retaliation. Now, I wasn't above those emotions --oh, most certainly not; I had wanted to rip Colette limb from limb for having Louis when I had not-- but I had enough common sense to try to fathom out his motives before I judged him, before I retorted in word or deed in some way that might well prove to be irreparable.

Ah, common sense.... For some reason, the phrase hung in my mind like moss on cypress, insidious. Common sense... I can't say I would claim to have an abundance, but I was trying to exercise what little I might possess. Louis was too important to do otherwise. And once I'd sent my feet on that path, the right path to follow... well, from that one good decision seemed to flow dozens more.

I had a sudden sensation of the other path, the wrong one, being real and in existence, in another place, on another plane, perhaps. Strange... it felt real, it felt so very possible, so very likely that I had walked that thorny, crooked, twisted path... that I had lost my way upon it, and in the doing, lost my Louis as well. Horrid, that thought.

But still the phrase common sense reverberated inside me, taking on new life, new meaning, echoing through what felt like centuries in my soul.

I was talking about my first kill. Lestat bungled it with his characteristic lack of common sense...

Ah dear God in Heaven, that wasn't Louis talking, was it? Louis, talking to me out of the void that was my mind? It seemed like it was, and then it seemed like it wasn't, too. As though the words had been through several iterations, and had twisted back upon themselves to be both from Louis and not from Louis.

And yet the words were impossible from the very beginning, for Louis could state nothing whatsoever of his "first kill," an event which had yet to transpire.

And yet more impossibilities surged in my mind, for I had a sudden vision of Louis together with the blond-haired man, the violet-eyed one, the one who came to mind when I thought of how Armand was quite likely to make of a mortal some hideous species of follower, of pet.

I drew in a deep breath, and tried to steady myself, tried to keep from swaying on my feet.

Common sense, the saying came again and again, and then all at once it was as if a bright light had vanished, a light that had been blinding me, and I could see the path once more, see the way to go, the manner in which to proceed.

And it was to not resent his decision that I should watch him with Colette, not to berate him for it... and most particularly, not to enact any vengeance against him or her for the lust I'd witnessed here tonight. For with my common sense, however much of it I possessed, I could see what Louis' sudden impulse toward exhibitionism --most strange for him-- must mean.

At some level he understood that he and I were sexually attuned to one another. He understood it, but he did not know it, if that made sense.

Some level... but most definitely not the conscious one.

But now I had brought the concept up out of the depths of his soul into full consciousness, by stating that what I offered him was most simply my very self. And now, he had to confront it, had to react, had to decide if he would allow his hidden desires to flower forth... and if he would admit all these things to moi.

"You sound serious," he finally managed to say, but his voice sounded as though he had drunk some fine French brandy far too fast. As though he were still attempting to gulp it down, actually.

"Louis, mon cher, I'm quite serious," I answered, because having gone this far, I sensed it would be a mistake to turn back. Stay on the path, stay on the path...

Louis sucked in a long breath. "Is this... is this common among your kind then? This is how you live? You... prefer for your companions those like yourself?"

A bittersweet smile settled into my eyes. "Those few I've met of my kind, Louis, were either fawning sycophants, power-obsessed demons, or solitary souls who appeared to need no companionship whatsoever. I don't speak for my kind, I speak only for myself."

He closed his eyes briefly, and thought --most flatteringly, I must admit-- that I was quite handsome and dashing and debonair, so much so that I could get any woman I wanted, so what was I doing resorting to pursuing not just a man, but one so unworthy as himself. Ah, Louis. His perception of myself... well, that did encourage me, gave me a heated rush all through my veins. It was all I could do not to latch onto him and drink anew, drink and drink and drink until there could be no doubt but that I needed him, wanted him... But I was more heartbroken than elated, when all was said and done, for his perception of himself just absolutely flayed my soul. He thought himself unworthy of me! Ah God, Louis, if you only knew, if you could only read my thoughts the way I read every last one of yours...!

Well, he couldn't. He was mortal; he didn't have the gift. And he never would read my thoughts, would he? The damned veil would rear its ugly head between us the instant I had made him truly mine. So I had to talk, didn't I? I had to tell him what was in me, and hope that he would take the words to heart, and believe them for the truth they were.

"You are not unworthy, Louis my love," I said in tones so soft they might have been fashioned of the finest silk. "You are my own dear heart, and I love you more than can truly be expressed in French. And yet that is the language of love itself, is it not? Yet it cannot hold the depths of what I feel for you. I don't pursue you as some sort of second or third choice, or because I must settle. You are right; the wide world and all within it are open to me. And yet I choose you."

He seemed transfixed, and yet I knew that this time, my powers were not stealing forth from my eyes to bedevil his sense of awareness. This time, he was under his own control. My words had reached him, that was all; had reached him in some dark and fathomless place where he had never gone before. Some place so deep in his soul that he hadn't realized it was even there. But now, he knew.

"You choose me," he slowly repeated, unnatural emphasis on the word me, as though he still could not make sense of such a choice. And this impression of mine was bolstered when he went on to press, "Why?"

Ah, danger ahead, danger even on the path of truthfulness, for too much truth could be twisted into some travesty by which Louis would come to believe that his beauty was all the allure he held for me. Travesty, indeed.

"Because I've suffered in my life," I told him. "Suffered terribly. Someday, you'll know all there is to know of that. But for now, what matters is that you understand that when I saw you, heard your tortured thoughts, your longing to die, and your simultaneous sense of horror that you might die only to be damned.... and yet you were not sure deep inside yourself if the devil even existed, let alone can damn souls... well, Louis..." I paused, thinking. "You touched a part of me. A part I had thought to be dead and gone. I... I thought I couldn't feel, Louis. I thought I was every bit as dead as a vampire is reputed to be. But for you I came alive again, and love flowed through me as though bubbling forth from a magic, eternal spring..." I stopped suddenly. "I can't tell whether you think I'm making the slightest sense at all," I confessed.

Louis smiled, very slightly. Just a fractional lifting of the lips, that was all. "That's because I'm thinking that you do and that you don't, both," he informed me.

"Ah," I said. "I can understand that."

"So you love me because we both have suffered," Louis aptly summed up what I had been trying --not too successfully, I fear-- to say. "Is that the only reason?"

God, no, there were hundreds more. Thousands. Millions. But I couldn't list them all, so I said what came second in my mind. "No, I love you also because neither in my life before nor this one now have I ever seen such devastating beauty in one being," I stated. "I've had lovers both male and female," I spelled it out. "Such differences were not terribly significant for me in mortal life, and they mean absolutely less than nothing now. And you are beautiful, Louis. Gorgeous. I look at you and my blood --and such blood it is, you have no idea-- turns to hot syrup within my veins. I look at you and I feel, and not just emotions, either. Emotions, they're mental. I look at you and I feel sensation. Wonderful potent sensation."

Well, I probably should have stopped short of the part about sensation. It was a great deal for Louis to absorb. He was still caught in a frame of reference which paid great mind to differences of sex. And race, come to think of it. But really, those distinctions were nothing. It was the soul that counted. And Louis' soul was an apt match for mine own.

As long as I had spoken only of sympathizing with his suffering, he had managed fairly well to consider the value in my words, my claims. Because to him, that was an acceptable kind of love between two men. Brotherly love. Fraternity. But to tell him in such graphic terms that my desire for him was physical? Sexual? That was hard for Louis, very hard.

He had jerked back, away from me, his shoulders touching the damask of the chair back as he tried to rear away, so alarmed had he become. I responded by sitting down and leaning back myself, the better to give him distance, and a sense that I could not pounce on him at any instant. Of course, I could, but he did not know, had no idea, of the speeds at which I could move.

I had hoped to relax him, at least in some small measure, but it hadn't worked. He still sat frozen, staring at me much as if I were a viper in the room. Apt term, viper. I did have fangs, and the need to bite. But it wasn't venom that I would share with him when he was ready. It was the opposite. Elixir, magic, the power resident in my blood.

"Why so very shocked, Louis?" I questioned, thinking to help him examine his own feelings, his own behavior. "You knew already that I loved you, and you suspected that it was not merely a love between friends that had inspired me to seek you out. After all, you suspected that I had kissed you, an idea you found frightening but not truly off-putting. Not entirely, at any rate. And now tonight you had me watch you bed the slave girl. Surely you understood that such a display would encourage me to declare myself more fully?"

Louis had blushed furiously when I had claimed --accurately-- that he'd fantasized about our imagined kiss. When I finished speaking, however, he went pale with shock. "I didn't seek to encourage you!" he denied.

"You didn't think of it like that," I generously conceded, "but Louis, everything we say and do reflects not just the reality we perceive, but also that which exists deep inside us. You are not a man who, in the normal course of things, wishes to be seen making love. It's an intimate act, a highly personal act. Yet you invited me to watch."

My logic was excruciating for him because he knew that he truly could not refute it, and yet it led to conclusions that were for him almost unthinkable.

It pained me to do this, to challenge his most basic assumptions about himself, about life... but I had to do it. There was no other way. The path of truth demanded that I did not bring him into the night in a state of ignorance about my true needs, my true intentions for the two of us.

"Ask yourself," I gently suggested, "why called me to your window when you knew Colette was on her way."

"I don't know!" Louis cried out in frustration. Mental frustration, yes. But it was sexual as well, and that despite the fact that he had spent himself in Colette not an hour past. The erection in his trousers should have told him, as nothing else could, that my mere presence, my aura, was an aphrodisiac to him. But it didn't. He wasn't there yet, wasn't ready.

"Perhaps you don't know," I acknowledged, and lightly added, "Give it some thought, eh? And when you wish, when you ask, Louis... well, at that time we will speak more of what exactly it is that I offer you."

Louis sighed, the tension in his frame receding as he realized that I had let him off the hook, that I would not here and now force him to confront every last truth lurking in his soul. And it was that, more than anything... my lack of insistence, that is, that spurred him on to say what had been on his mind for several days.

"I... I called you tonight because I wished to offer you something, actually," he said.

Part the Seventeenth


Louis had just said that he wished to offer me something...

"Yes?" I asked.

He frowned, his beautifully made lips turning down. "I'm not sure I should say it now," he murmured. "You... you might misunderstand. And it's not my wish to.... well, if you love me, and in that particular way you seem to imply... you may not even like my idea. For I'm far from ready to... I don't even know the words to use. And I'm not sure I'll ever wish to know them."

"Louis," I gently said, "you are rambling quite incoherently."

And that fact, more than anything else, gave me a true measure of how on-edge the mere subject of love between us made him.

He drew in another long breath. "Well, I'll say it then," he added. "But you can read my thoughts, so you're not to misinterpret me or twist my words, is that clear?"

He was the one who twisted words, an entire volume of them, I dimly thought. But I didn't know where the thought had come from, I really didn't. Louis hadn't twisted anything that I'd said. Not that I knew of...

"Is that clear?" Louis repeated, a trifle impatiently.

"Oh, as blue skies," I said, covering my momentary distraction with a little witticism. It fell flat, though. Louis simply wasn't up to appreciating it, not then.

"Fine," he agreed, his voice all at once cold. It had to be that way, I knew, because he was steeling himself for what he had planned to tell me. It was a big step, huge really, and most particularly for him. Of course I knew in advance what his offer to me was going to be; how could I not? It was right there in his mind, and had been for some time. But it was most important... vital, really... that he speak the words himself.

That the offer be made by him, not deduced by me.

"I wanted to invite you to come live here at Pointe du Lac," he said. "You and your father both."

"Why?" I softly pressed, leaning forward and staring into his emerald orbs.

"Because..." he flung his hands high into the air. "Because I've thought about all you said before, and I've savored the sunrise, and I don't know what I want. Except for one thing. I... I want to get to know you better. Not that way," he hastened to add. "Don't you see? You offer me all this, and then yourself on a silver platter, but I don't know you. And I couldn't take such a thing from you without trusting you utterly... and that, I had decided before you announced that you wanted to give me not just your sort of life but also yourself."

He was rambling again, precious Louis, but I didn't point it out. Why would I, when it was heaven to listen to him?

"But I can come and converse with you as much as you like," I told him, not really knowing why I said it, "without coming to live here. I've been waiting for weeks for you to want to talk to me, you understand."

"So I didn't imagine it," he murmured. "You... you've been out there, night by night?"

"Oh, I leave to hunt," I told him, and when he drew in a shocked gasp, I gently explained, "I have to, Louis. Blood is what sustains me."

With great effort, he moved past that, shoved that issue to the side. No doubt we'd revisit it before he consented to become my most cherished fledgling, but I was content to address it then, and not now.

"But you do need to come live here," he said. "Because... well, I thought you were out there. And sometimes that bothered me, but sometimes I hoped you were waiting for a word from me. But all along I've been aware that your father is back in town, and this issue between us... whatever it may be... well, you said you were estranged from your father, and you explained why. Yet all this is only making you all the more estranged, n'est-ce pas? And that.... well, I know what you told me, and I understand, I truly do. But if you care enough about your father to look after him, Lestat, you must look after him better than this."

Rambling, again. Poor Louis wasn't sure how to couch his words, he was almost terrorstruck to speak of such things, to allude to the abuse I had suffered, or to suggest that despite it all, I wasn't doing my duty by my father.

Which I wasn't, of course. I couldn't possibly do my duty when there was no duty owed. What I did for my father was done on account of Marius, on account of his prediction that to flee a key experience of mortal life --that of facing death head on-- was to stunt some vital part of my personality. I'd always wanted to be a good person. And I'd always failed, not the least because I felt that vital pieces of me had been destroyed forever by that very father. I wasn't going to let him destroy yet more, by driving me away. No, Marius had been right, and I would stay the course. My father would live out the rest of his natural life, and I would watch him, and learn at the end of it that I could face death in others. Not cause it, but face it. That I could watch the last vestige of my mortal life pass from existence.

Of course Louis knew nothing of any of this. To him it was indeed a matter of duty. Of loyalty. "Ah," I said then, understanding better his intent. "Family's very important to you, is it not, Louis? And for you to play a role, however unwitting, in my neglect of my father... it makes you less than at ease in your own conscience."

"It's intolerable, yes," he agreed. "And I have decided that I've neglected my own duties quite long enough. Pointe du Lac needs its master. Therefore, if you and I are to continue to explore... ehem, what you offer... well, you and your father must really come out here to live. It isn't as though I don't have room in the house. You..." At that he gulped, his eyes suddenly haunted, but he bravely moved forward. "If you wish, you may have Paul's room, Lestat."

"Paul's room," I echoed, thinking about that. I hadn't seen that in his mind. It seemed a spur-of-the-moment decision, rather. "Why?"

"Because..." Louis closed his glorious eyes. "As he was focal to me for so long, I sense that you may become just the same. And too, my mother is inclined to turn it into a shrine. That, I can't have, neither I nor my sister. The constant reminder... well, we don't need that to burden us. I'd rather know his room's in use, and by a friend."

"A friend," I said, liking that. Of course it wasn't all I wished. It wasn't the smallest part of what I wished. But it was a good beginning. I was no longer so much a potential friend but one in fact. Ah, Louis...

"I should be pleased to occupy Paul's room," I said. "But Louis, there are things you do not understand about my nature. I can't take my rest in there. My daylight rest, I mean. It wouldn't be safe for me, or for anyone in the house who ventured too near. If you want me near you, I will move my things into Paul's room as you suggest. But I will search out a hiding place where I can sleep in true security by day."

I don't think Louis understood what I meant about safety, but he evidently trusted my judgment enough not to argue. "Very well," he merely agreed, and then in softer tones, "and yes, Lestat. I do want you near me. For a while, at least. That is... at least until I decide."

"I understand," I told him, sitting up again in my chair and smiling. "And my father?"

"Oh, he can have his pick of rooms," Louis breezed. "There are several lovely ones empty. And this will be better for him, Lestat. He'll have plenty of servants to see to his needs when you aren't able to."

I guessed from that comment that Louis supposed me to be without funds. I suppose I could have let the false impression stand, but this invitation, nice as it was, nonetheless had me deeply concerned that in time, Louis would come to think of me as someone who had used him for his wealth. Who had coveted his plantation.

I can't say for sure why that danger kept occurring to me, but it most certainly did.

It was strange to realize now that Louis assumed me all but destitute, though. What did he think I was, some sort of peasant? Amusing, that thought. I wondered what had led to such a notion. More than a little curious, I delved deeper into his mind and saw that although my clothes were fine enough, he considered my manners rather coarse. My manners, and my speech. Ah, so very sweet he was in innocence. Marooned in the wilds of Louisiana, he had never seen a true aristocrat before. He had no idea that those who already possess a high station have no need, and in my case no inclination, to stand on ceremony in some vain effort to impress others. That was for his class to do to effect airs to a higher station than birth had granted them...

Well, no matter. The only thing of import was to clear up Louis' misconception of me, and to do it now, before any damage was done to our fledgling relationship. When I had first arrived in Louisiana, I had rented a miserable room near the ramparts, and installed my father within. It had been a petty, almost vicious thing to do, an act born of anger and spite, really. For while I tried not to hate my father, it was only to easy to act toward him in hate.

But after that night I'd spent with Louis, when I had decided to grant him time to consider the dark blood and all it could mean... well, I suppose that a few of his good qualities had rubbed off on me. I wanted more than ever to be good as he was good. And how could I be good when I not only could not forgive my father but also could not even pretend that such was the case?

So I'd move him forthwith to a better location. A much better location. Money, after all, was no object for me.

Deep down, though, there was more to this move than virtue. I suppose I also sought to shame my father. He knew, he knew full well that I owed him nothing. I suppose I imagined that showering luxury on him, that returning goodness for his evil, might help him see his own evil all the more clearly in the light of blinding contrast.

Yes, that was some of it; I wasn't perfect.

"About my father," I told Louis, "He has plenty of servants right now. I've rented a house across from the local church... do you really call it a Cathedral? You should see Notre Dame. But at any rate, my father's well looked after even as we speak."

"I didn't mean--" Louis began, but I waved a hand to silence him.

"Yes, you did," I said. "But I take no offense. Indeed, I take great heart. I see in your thoughts now that you've asked around, done a spot of research into the old French family lines? You weren't sure that I came from the aristocratic branch of the Lioncourts in any case. But even if I did, it wouldn't matter to the state of my purse; you've discovered that the de Lioncourt wealth has long since been drained away. That all we had left was our castle and our name?"

Louis nodded, but he looked rather shamefaced to have been caught out.

"None of that," I chided. "I'm pleased, really, that you would be inclined to ask about me. It shows... well, that you want to trust me, I suppose. That you aren't indifferent."

Rallying, Louis leaned forward, too. A scant yard between us, he then said, "Then how do you afford a house near the Cathedral? And it is a Cathedral, Lestat... but the homes there are luxurious and priced accordingly. I should know, I've bought several over the years."

"Including one at the corner of St. Ann and Chartres?" I asked, knowing the answer. I'd made it my business to know all about Louis. Don't ask me why I chose to move into a house of his... I don't really know for certain. I just know that when I decided to exert myself to support my father in baronial splendor, the idea of being in a house Louis owned appealed, and so I rented one.

Perhaps it was just a way to be closer to him in some slight form.

Louis, meantime, had put it all together. He slapped a palm to his forehead. "You're the French gentleman!"

"Marquis," I casually corrected, because if I was going to conceal nothing except what I must on account of Marius' hideous threats... well, I had to start now.

He frowned at my answer. "No, your father yet lives."

"True," I acknowledged, shrugging. I don't know what Louis made of that, for his thoughts had flown back to the substance of his original question.

"The rent on that house is quite substantial," he hinted, still thinking that things did not make sense. He knew now that my lineage was noble, but he knew just as well that I must be destitute. His research into all things de Lioncourt had been as detailed as was possible, given the state of the papers in the library of New Orleans.

"The rent is exorbitant," I teased him. "But my personal finances can suffer the loss," I went on to explain. "Not the de Lioncourt fortune, certainly. No, your inquiries are quite correct; that's ashes. And for all I know, after the reports I've heard of the mobs... well, our castle itself may well not stand any longer. No great loss, that. I never did like it. Too many bad memories. But I've great wealth all the same. I received a legacy, you see."

Louis tilted his head to one side and thought about that. "A relative?"

Hmm, what to say to that? "Not in the sense you mean," I explained. "But yes, in another sense. The one who made me, Louis. He had amassed great wealth, and he gave it all to me. More wealth than I could ever hope to use, really."

Something startling occurred to him. "But... he didn't want you the way you insinuate you want me?"

Insinuate, hell. I'd said it, plain and simple. Oh, well. We'd get there.

Sensible question, I suppose, yet it set me on edge. Well, why shouldn't it? It reminded me, like I *needed* reminding, that no-one had ever truly wanted me.

"No," I answered, my voice all at once as cold as my hands. "He didn't. He only wanted an heir. And the very night he made me, that very hour in fact, he killed himself before my eyes and left me alone to rule the night in his stead."

Louis' eyes widened, and his thoughts were torn between thinking that that must have been truly awful for me, and wondering how my maker could have "killed himself" if he was immortal.

"Oh, we can die, even us," I answered that, unconsciously including him in the statement. I thought of him already as mine, at times. "But death from illness, or old age, no... those aren't possible."

Louis gave a shaky nod; the conversation had veered into avenues far too supernatural for him to take it in stride. And besides, it was growing light. Not so mortal eyes would see it, but I don't see with mortal eyes.

"I must go now," I announced. "But with your kind consent I will indeed arrive here tomorrow with my father."

"Yes," Louis breathed, almost eagerly, and yet his anticipation was mixed in equal measure with dread. And with a sentiment that shook me to my core: that of Louis in the process of convincing himself that he could talk me out of wanting him that way.

Time to put an end to nonsense such as *that*.

"Oh, Louis..." I breathed right back, leaning close to him as he, too stood. Face to face, chest to chest, hip to hip... ah, Louis.

"Yes?" he asked, that time as a question.

"I don't know that I can live here with you and watch you take a slave girl to bed each night," I admitted, brutally honest. I had to be. "In fact, I'm quite sure I can't endure it. So if I am to stay here, you must abstain."

Louis looked taken aback, his eyes almost blank, and then he laughed. "Abstain?" he echoed, the concept quite obviously foreign. Or unheard of, even. "But Lestat, I've... hmm, how to phrase it... well, I've quite an appetite, we'll say."

"I've marked it," I told him, my voice dry. "Even when you were staggering drunk you managed to do justice to the women you would hire. But no, Louis, I mean what I say. If you dally with these slave girls while I'm just two doors down--" He gasped that I knew precisely where Paul's room was-- "then I fear that in my jealousy, they shall be the ones to feed my thirst. And then you would have cause to hate me, don't you see? So you simply must abstain."

Louis looked shocked, and then horrified, and then really quite concerned about the entire matter. "For how long?" he finally asked.

I leaned forward and spoke right against his lips, my cold breath raising gooseflesh on his arms and legs and back.

"Until you're ready to come to me," I said.

He didn't get it. If he hadn't mattered so very much to me, I might have laughed. But he did matter. "To come be made into a vampire, is that what you mean?" he questioned.

"I will welcome that at any time," I promised. "But no, what I meant was that I will be all things to you. Maker, mentor, friend, and lover. So when you find yourself in need, even that kind of need... ah, sweet Louis, my Louis... you must bring your need to me."

Louis understood then, and stepped back from me. And evidently, I had finally stated things in a way he couldn't evade, couldn't change to something brotherly and innocent. He had to confront it, now.

And so he did.

"That's... that's wrong," he protested, the words coming slowly and with thought..

"Is it?" I asked, and then I left him to ponder that very question.

Part the Eighteenth


"Sophie," Louis said, "I should like to present you to Lestat de Lioncourt, who will be staying at Pointe du Lac for a time. Lestat, this is my sister, Sophie."

"Mademoiselle," I said, executing a neat bow in her general direction. I would have liked to take her hand and kiss it in proper courtly fashion. She would have liked that, I knew. She thought me handsome --as I was indeed and of course still am-- and she would not have been adverse at all to attentions from my direction.

But Louis would not have approved, not one whit. He had a protective streak a mile wide when it came to Sophie.

And so I did not even use her name. I sensed it was a familiarity that she would welcome but that he would not appreciate.

A vague look of disappointment settled on her features when I gave her no more than the most cursory of glances.

Since Louis was my host, I had allowed him to make his own introductions first. I had already met his mother. She had looked at me as though I were some particularly lowly species of worm. Astute, that mother. Given to fits of the vapors and all that --well, it was the vogue-- but nonetheless, she was wise enough in the ways of the world to mark at once that my romantic interest was not directed at her daughter, but rather at her son.

Her unmarried son.

Even as I was presented to her, she was scheming, her mind racing ahead to ways she could contrive to rid the house of me.

She wanted grandchildren, you see. Most particularly, she wanted Louis to marry and produce heirs to carry forward the Pointe du Lac name. Ironic, really. Family lines die out, eventually, but I was her one true hope that that name would endure until the end of time, yet she wished me to be gone before I could "corrupt" her precious Louis.

And she would be able to be with Louis during the day, to fill his ears with malicious talk of me...

And short of killing her --tempting although quite obviously out of the question-- or manipulating her mind --a last resort, in my view--, I knew of only one way to temper her desire to badmouth me.

I could play upon her colonial sensibilities, the essential mortal silliness to which she was prey...

It wasn't often that I liked to crow about my lineage. I so detested my family and at times myself that it was no source of great pride to be a de Lioncourt. But if it would silence Louis' mother for even ten minutes, I would play the part of the aristocrat.

"Madame, mademoiselle," I said with great pomp, my gloved hand drawing my blind old father close by my side. He started, as he was entirely unused to being touched by me. "I should like to present you both to his Lordship, the Marquis René Pierre St. Yves de Lioncourt."

I must say, the full name with all the titles attached really did do wonders for Louis' mother. Her scowl changed all at once to a rather pleased expression, and then to avarice --for unlike Louis, she did not realize that the de Lioncourt wealth was long since gone.

"Enchantée," she simpered, and held out her hand to be kissed!

Alas, my father couldn't see it. But there the woman waited, her fingers flexed and poised, so what was I to do? I took her hand and kissed it myself, knowing that Louis wouldn't mind. He had no worries that I could possibly have designs upon his mother! And rightly so!

She all at once began revising her opinion of Sophie's chances with me. And I wanted her thinking that way --better that than have her convince Louis to toss me off the plantation, after all--, so I let slip a little tidbit that I knew would thrill her to the marrow of her bones.

"I do so wish that Louis' family could meet my brothers also," I crooned, my voice a soothing balm. "But those who lived to adulthood met their end in the Revolution. The mobs, you know, the tendency toward violent excess as the peasants rose up against their masters..."

Well, that did the trick, in more ways than one. The French planters lived in a constant state of fear that the slaves might rise up against their masters, so I had her sympathy at once. And of course my other implication was not lost on her. Oh, not for an instant. I was counting on that.

"Ah, so you're the eldest, are you?" she asked.

"Born the youngest," I admitted. "But yes, now, sadly I am all that remains of the line."

The next marquis... she thought, as wedding bells rang so loudly in her head that I feared they would erupt into the night air and deafen us all. Of course the very thought was absurd. The Revolution was in full swing and anybody with half a grain of sense knew that henceforth, there would be no nobility in France. At some level, she knew that. She was thinking that if things in France did not settle down satisfactorily, then I could live on in Louisiana and take full advantage of my title here...

Louis didn't appear to notice anything amiss, but of course he could not read her mind. He was only relieved that his mother's hostility, so evident when I had been presented to her, was now beginning to ebb away.

My father made some weak noises about this or that. Polite chatter, I don't know. I wasn't listening. But Louis replied at once and said, "Ah, monsieur, you must be exhausted. It's a long journey from New Orleans, n'est-ce pas? Come, you must let me show you to your rooms. Lestat, if you would be so kind?"

That last was said so that after we settled in my father, he and I could wander a bit further afield and have a space of time to ourselves.

Ah, Louis, sweet Louis...

I must say, Louis had certainly spared no expense where my father was concerned. Fine draperies and tapestries, freshly polished furniture, a gold candelabra with five tall wax tapers lighting the room. Really, it was quite a nice suite he had allocated to my father.

And he introduced my father to two slave girls who had been brought in from the fields to care exclusively for him.

I watched all this in silence, leaning laconically against the doorway to the bedroom proper as my father was led by dark hands toward the bed, as Louis inquired once more if there was anything he needed.

When my father said no, I turned to leave, but his voice forestalled me.

"Lestat," my father asked, "are you there?"

"Yes, Father," I answered, my voice as smooth and flat as I could make it. No emotion, that was it. Never show him an emotion, for he will only ridicule it. Never show him a weakness, for he will turn it back upon you with all his strength and destroy you utterly...

"You aren't going back to New Orleans, aren't going to leave me here?" he asked, his voice frail. Louis thought it more a whimper, but I knew better than to be fooled by the old man's tricks.

"No, Father, of course not," I said, my voice still modulated to be courteous but nothing else. "I shall be staying on at the plantation as you are."

"I'll finally see you in the mornings, now that you're away from those filthy taverns and houses of ill-repute? You won't sleep all day anymore?"

"Sir," I said, "I'm a man of more than thirty years. I shall arrange my schedule as best suits me, as you well know."

He sighed. Always such an actor, my father. Well, at least I come by it honestly. Although I'd thought on many an occasion that I couldn't fault Gabrielle one bit if I'd been sired by someone else. A fantasy, only. I knew the Marquis was in fact, in truth, my father. I suppose I just wished that he were not.

"I have some matters to settle with our host, Father," I explained now. "I will see you tomorrow. Sleep well."

And unable to bear his presence for one instant longer, I left the room, left him to Louis and the maids.

Louis came out on the gallery in just a moment more, and surprisingly, he took my by the arm --a casual grip, not an intimate one-- and steered me down the hallway, down the back stairs, and out into the night.

I was intrigued, and really, enjoying the sensation so much --so much delight to be had in this green-eyed one-- that I didn't try to read his mind to know what he had in mind. I was content to be surprised.

Well, as it turned out, I was surprised indeed.

Part the Nineteenth


"What matters?" Louis asked me as soon as he had sat us both down on the damp meadow grass beneath an enormous weeping willow tree.

"Matters?" I echoed, not understanding.

"You said you had some matters to discuss with your host," Louis reminded me. "What are they? Are you disappointed in some way? Now that you've seen Pointe du Lac up close you're inclined to think it doesn't suit your needs?"

Suit my needs? Suit my NEEDS?

He was inclined to devalue himself even as he valued his damned plantation!

"My needs are very simple," I told Louis. "And they all revolve around you, Louis. Not your house, not your money. You."

He smiled slightly, somewhat appeased. "Ah. Well, I suppose it was a rather nonsensical thought. After all, you've money enough of your own."

"Enough to buy Louisiana," I agreed, thinking that I had better put to rest once and for all his strange tendency toward delusions concerning my motives.

He laughed. "Buy Louisiana?"

I laughed too, feeling carefree. "I doubt it's available for sale. But should it come on the market, yes, I daresay I could afford it."

Louis leaned back against the weeping willow. "So what were these matters, then?"

"Oh, nothing really," I admitted. "That was just my way of excusing myself from the old man's presence."

"It troubles you still, doesn't it?" Louis asked, his voice all sympathy. "What he did. You're grown, a strong, confident man; but still inside sometimes you are that hurt child again. I could see it on your face when I was polite to your father. You didn't like it. You'd rather he be treated to the contempt he no doubt deserves."

I hadn't realized that my expression had given so much away. "No, I didn't like it," I admitted. Might as well.

"But Lestat," Louis urged, "you were unfailingly polite to him yourself. Even when you told him that your hours were none of his business, you did it in a way that was courtesy itself."

I shrugged, the motion feeling jerky and unnatural. Well, it should. What show of nonchalance is not?

"I have to be polite to him," I said. "He's my father."

"And I have to be polite to him as he's my guest," Louis added. "So there it is."

"There it is," I agreed, rather glumly. "Let's not talk of him any longer, Louis."

He smiled. "All right. So what, then? What shall we discuss?"

All at once, every topic in the world deserted me, and I groped, as blind as my father. "Er, the weather?" I finally suggested.

Louis raised an ebony eyebrow, the fine arch of the motion delineating the beautiful planes of his face. "The weather," he repeated, humor in his voice. "No, I think not. Why don't we discuss instead why you seem so nervous now when you have been nothing but brash and swaggering with confidence the other times you've been talking with me?"

"I don't swagger!" I protested at once.

"You told me that vampires can see themselves in mirrors," Louis smartly replied. "Why don't you take a look, sometime? You do swagger, Lestat."

"I love mirrors," I came back. "How can I not?"

"You've cause to positively adore mirrors," Louis returned, which bolstered me considerably, I must say.

But I still had to rebuke him. My voice lower, I quietly said, "Don't refer to me that way, please. Don't say the word aloud. You're special, don't you see? I don't run hither and yon telling mortals what I am. Those few who somehow realize are marked for death."

"But not me," Louis said, cocking his head to one side. The motion elongated his neck and brought a vein into succulent prominence. I drew in a gasp.

"No, not you, not until you wish it," I quickly said, as I lectured myself with strict determination that I would not drink of him again, not even a sip, until he asked. The first time... well, he had excused me that on the grounds that I was acquainting him with what the transfer of the dark blood would entail. But to take him again? He would not forgive that. Unless, of course, it was entirely consensual and so there was nothing to forgive.

"Until I wish it?" Louis asked now, but he referred not to my making occasional love to him --love through the blood, that is-- but to my previous comment about being marked for death. He sounded puzzled now.

"Of course you realize that to come to me will entail the passing through a human death and emerging as a creature like me," I explained, sure I had covered this when I had told him what a total exchange of blood would mean, what it would do to him. Suddenly I was horrified, wondering if he did in fact understand these things. "Louis? I did explain that part adequately, did I not?"

"Yes," he acknowledged. "It's just... well, I understand, but the concept is still foreign. Incomprehensible, really. How can you be sure that the dark gift will actually take? This is of paramount concern to me, you realize. If the dark trick, as you call it, somehow fails, I'll end up simply dead. And these last few weeks of relative peace... becoming more reconciled to Paul's tragic end, that is..."

His voice trailed off, but it was important that he say it. For himself, it was vital. To bring his healing out into the cool night air, to speak it aloud, to grant it real and substantial existence... "Yes, Louis?" I prompted.

His smile was wan, poignant... regretful in some measure, but no longer the complete subsuming despondency that he'd worn for months untold.

"I've come to understand that I've no wish to truly die," he told me. "For a time, I did. I had a squeamish reluctance to commit suicide... or maybe it was an awareness that such an event would injure Sophie and my mother beyond measure, our being Catholics, but nonetheless, I did wish to die. I made myself an easy mark, you know that. My invitation was open to thieves, murderers..."

"But it was a vampire who found you," I quietly put in as he paused.

"Yes," Louis acknowledged. "And for that I'm grateful, Lestat. You've helped me. Even if you were to leave me now --mortal-- and we never spoke again, you have already helped me immeasurably. Your attack awoke something in me. A desire to not give up, to prevail, to cherish life rather than be defeated by it." His smile lost its poignant air. "Thank you, my friend."

I smiled, too. "Ah, Louis, I'm just so glad that you've found some healing in yourself. I can't bear the thought of you suffering."

"But that brings me back to my concern," Louis said. "The Dark Trick. How can you know that it will work, Lestat? The way you've described it, I can't help but think that any miscalculation would prove entirely fatal."

I didn't know what to say, or how to reassure him. For the truth, of course, was that perhaps the Dark Trick could fail, perhaps it did sometimes fail. How would I know? But how could I possibly tell Louis a thing like that?

Part the Twentieth


Louis had just expressed a concern that the Dark Trick might not work, that he might die a mortal in my arms without emerging into a new existence as a vampire.

"It's never failed me yet," I told him. Truth, yes. But hardly all truth...

"Oh?" Louis said, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankles. His trousers were growing rather damp from sitting in the grass, but he didn't appear to mind that. Or rather, he hadn't noticed it. He was too intent on me, on our conversation. "I somehow had gained the impression that you had only done it once, and that to your mother?"

"Ah," I said, thinking. What to do, what to say? I didn't want to speak of Nicki. Oh God, quite obviously not. Louis might think he was some sort of replacement for Nicolas. And nothing could be farther from the truth. I hadn't wanted Nicolas for a fledgling; I'd done all I could to keep him mortal, a state in which his madness wouldn't prevail over the things I had loved about him. Armand had ruined it all, Armand and his horrid coven. Children of Darkness, indeed!

I wanted to lie, to tell Louis that he had it right, that there'd been for me only Gabrielle and none other... And yet I couldn't bear to veer onto that rightmost path, the one of deceit, the one that would bring us both to what I sensed would be a bad, bad place indeed.

"Twice," I told him, then. "I've twice made a fledgling."

Louis laced his fingers together, his hands laying in his lap, his beautiful skin moonlit and so alluring that I wanted him most fiercely. "I see," he said. "Your mother, the Marquesse, she was first of all, yes? And then to whom else did you give your Dark Gift?"

I closed my eyes, a rush of pain consuming me. "A friend," I said. "A friend from Auvergne, from my mortal days." Oh God, this was awful. I was speaking, dispensing truth, and yet there was a lie behind almost every word. Friend! Such a deceptive term, for yes he had been that, but that barely encapsulated what Nicki --for a brief space of time-- had truly been to me. "Wait, Louis!" I said, interrupting him. "He was my friend, yes, but more than that. Back when we were both human, we were lovers, he and I. We ran off to Paris together, full of dreams."

"And once you had changed, you changed him too," Louis said, as though he thought that made adequate sense.

"Not at once, but eventually, yes," I murmured.

"But here you are, alone, speaking with me? Did he not become for you the companion you wished?" Louis asked, confused. Well, why wouldn't he be? He knew me to be a social creature. So where had this second young one of mine gone to, then?

"I didn't make him to be my companion," I answered truthfully. "In truth, I didn't want to make him at all. I knew it would be wrong for him, you see; knew that he didn't have a temperament that could withstand the peculiarities of this dark life. When I was changed, I tried to hide all inkling of it from him. But he found out, and it drove him mad, the knowledge of what I had, what he thought he wanted. He begged me, pleaded... he railed against me and said I'd never cared for him at all..." Almost sobbing, my heated words trickled to a stop.

"I think I understand," Louis murmured, sweet Louis who wasn't judging me, Louis who was instead listening with his whole heart, and feeling my pain. "You couldn't bear it; you're a sensitive soul. You want to be good to others, you want to be loved by those whom you love. And so you gave in to his pleadings. Even knowing that it would turn out for ill, you gave in."

"Yes," I whispered, guilty of all he'd said. "I yielded to him, Louis. And turned out ill? Ah, my God, you've no concept. He was mad before. The dark blood took that and twisted it and drove him to new heights --or perhaps lows, they were-- of insanity. It wasn't long before he pushed me away and bid me leave him there in Paris. I... I was heartbroken, devastated. Not because he had rejected me... you must understand, Louis... what I did was so wrong for him that afterwards I could not bear to so much as look at him. I was heartbroken that he had misunderstood every good deed I'd tried to do for him. That our friendship which had once seemed so very sublime and enduring, was in the end only ashes. And loneliness... ah, I had never known such loneliness. Gabrielle only stayed with me as long as she did because she sensed that after all this, I was fragile."

"Yes, you are sensitive, I knew it at once," Louis sympathetically told me.

"You'd be almost alone in thinking so," I tried to joke, but Louis didn't smile. "I've told you so much more than I planned... I suppose I might as well admit to the rest, and tell you that I did leave him... and not too many years later I received word that his madness was worsening... until the point when he went into the fire as my maker had done."

Leaning forward now, away from the tree, Louis laid one of his beautiful tapered hands upon the fabric covering my knee, and said, "No wonder you told me that you had suffered too. No wonder we seem to harmonize, in some strange way. For you've blamed yourself for all this, for doing the wrong thing at a critical moment, just as I blamed myself for laughing when Paul told me of his visions."

"I didn't think about the parallels, not like that," I whispered. Touched, and not just in body. "You're right, yes."

"And so you've made two fledglings, and in one way or another they both abandoned you," Louis said then, moving his hand off my leg. He rested his chin on his fingers and sighed. "But two is all you've made?"

I nodded.

"So how can we know with any certainty that the trick will work a third time? Perhaps there is a limit, unknown to you... After all, if every creature such as yourself could propagate endlessly, the world would be filled with all the offspring, non?"

"No, no," I argued. "You don't know; you can't know. But the making of others is emotionally exhausting, Louis. Or perhaps more like crippling when it leads to discord instead of abiding love. I... do you know I thought I wouldn't make another for at least a hundred years? And I wouldn't, I swear, save that I saw you and I could not let you pass by just because.... I'm still half-destroyed by all that happened to me in Paris."

"But if it doesn't work," Louis began.

I couldn't bear it, simply couldn't bear it. "But it will, Louis," I told him sincerely. "It will surely work. I can't tell you how I know, except to say that I am entirely certain. You can trust yourself to me and know that I will not allow the slightest harm to come to you. For you are my life, Louis. You're all that matters. Why else would I come out here to live at Pointe du Lac when I could have the run of any city in the world?"

A little dig at his plantation, probably unwarranted, but I was still intent on driving home to him that lands and titles and deeds were not what interested me.

"So have you thought about it, about giving yourself over to me, about ruling the night at my side?" I couldn't contain the question any longer, I really could not. Weeks I had waited, weeks that had stretched into months while he dallied with his slave girls and tried not to think of me. Tried, and failed.

"Don't you know the answer?" he asked then, quick as a whip. "Don't you know everything that I think, the instant that I think it?"

"I know the answer," I admitted. "You're still considering it. And I swear to you by all I hold holy--" not much of a vow, but oh well-- "that you shall have as much time as you need. But to answer you more fully, you're right. You can't think something and have me not know, not unless I decide to stay clear of what goes on in your head."

Black hair blew across his smooth forehead. He brushed it away with an elegant gesture of his fingers. "Would you do that if I asked?" he said, curious. Intrigued, even.

I closed my eyes, ashamed. Because I had told him that I would respect his requests, and I had meant it, but that one...

"No," I admitted, honesty pouring out right along with my love. "No. I... I need your thoughts, Louis. They're all I have of you."

Louis sighed, and I opened my eyes to see him looking pensive. "Why do you have me talk at all, when you can just go inside my mind and pluck thoughts like flowers?"

"Because talking helps me understand even more," I explained. "And sometimes it helps you become aware of thoughts you've had but pushed away."

He nodded as though that made sense, but I knew for a fact that he had missed my point. He did not realize I was speaking of his attraction to me...

A smile slid into his eyes. "Well, assuming that I decide to accept your offer, Lestat, all talk will become superfluous, will it not? We won't have to open our mouths again; we'll just think things at each other. Interesting to contemplate."

A logical assumption on his part. Logical, but wrong.

"Oh, Louis," I said, wishing I didn't have to frustrate his obvious hope. I could tell --of course I could-- that he longed for communion with me such as I already had with him. But that wasn't meant to be. It was better for him to know that now than to be disappointed with me later. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but... no, no, what you said won't work. You won't be able to read my mind. Ever. I am so terribly sorry."

He sat up a little straighter, slightly startled. "Oh, I see," he murmured. "I'll have no talent in that regard? You can tell such things somehow?"

I blinked, suddenly sure that my blood would work upon his own to indeed create a fledgling who had almost no capacity whatsoever for mind tricks. Oh, the horror of that thought! He would be so disadvantaged! Unable to mesmerize, barely even able to shield his thoughts from hazards like that horrid Armand who had tried so hard to kill me!

Ah, I couldn't bear it! Louis would be so weak, so very weak! I can't say how I knew this, except that perhaps I was extrapolating from my previous experiences. Gabrielle had been a titan, but Nicki had had less than half her strength... and it was too soon, too soon to make another; Marius had told that a strong one could be made but once a century, perhaps. Louis would be my third in little more than one-tenth that span of time! He would be weak, so very weak! I knew it with a certainty that filled my every vein, every pore.

What was I going to do? I didn't want him weak! And yet I didn't want him to perish, either, and that was my only other choice. I couldn't leave him mortal, could I? Of course not!

But of course this awful business about his weakness hadn't been what I had meant. And it wasn't something I needed to elucidate just now. The veil, the veil of silence, that was what he had to understand. I explained to him then, about the veil, about the terrible silence that would descend between us, about the fact that we would have no way to communicate save in words, and how that made his thoughts just now all the more precious to me.

He nodded, understanding that, and thank God above, he didn't ever issue that request that I cease to read his thoughts.

"I suppose," he did say, "that in that case, we should strive to learn each other, learn how to talk and listen, the two of us... if that's all we'll have to rely on."

But by that he didn't mean that he had decided, but rather that he was thinking all the ramifications through to their logical end.

And then his thoughts led him once more back to the idea of mortal death.

"Was it terrible for you," he asked, "when the one who made you... what was his name?"

"Magnus," I whispered in the dark.

"Ah," Louis said. "Well, was it very terrible when Magnus took you across? That is, knowing that you would experience this mortal death you told me of? Knowing that if something went wrong you would die in truth instead of being transformed?"

So much to tell, so much to tell...

"The knowing wasn't terrible," I said. "For I didn't know. Louis. I didn't know a thing! Magnus didn't come upon me sweetly and explain all these things and give me to time to consider them. He simply forced his blood on me and I emerged changed into this against my will. I had told him no, a thousand times no. He had taunted me that I could have it and live forever if only I would ask, and I had refused to be beaten, refused to ask. And then of course not an hour later he was jumping into a fire as I watched. And in that hour he'd told me some very few things about what I had to do, how I had to live. But very little information, really, was ever given me. The bulk of what I learned, I learned entirely by my own wits."

"Truly," Louis breathed, staring at me, his green eyes wide and horrified as a shaft of moonlight slid across them. "You were transformed by force? Such a thing is possible? You don't need my consent? You could... you could just do it... drain me, and make me drink it back again... and it would take? The magic, the power, it would take?"

"I love you," I said at once to alleviate the glimmering of suspicion and fear beginning to dawn in his mind. "I'd never do that to you, Louis. You must believe me. It's not in me to do that to you. You're precious to me."

"Did not Magnus love you just as much, though?" Louis pressed, insistent. "He must have, surely? He chose you, he made you..."

So much to tell, so much to tell...

"Louis, he did not even know me," I explained. "I never had three words converse with him before the night he ripped me away from the mortal world and took me to his tower and there changed me for all time."

"Ah, that's so awful," Louis moaned, hurting for me. He did that; he was empathetic; he could feel the pain in others. He'd hurt for me when I had first spoken of my father, too. No great wonder that I did love this man, this fine Louis.

"I survived," I dryly pointed out. "It could have been worse. I could have died a mortal death and had no chance at another one. And Magnus had slayed many a young man who looked just like me. Why he didn't simply kill me, also... well, it's a long story."

Louis looked me in the eyes, a challenge in that look.

"Very well," I acquiesced. "I'll tell you."

And I did... everything I could think of that was relevant, starting with the wolves on my father's land in the Auvergne. And he listened, rapt until with an almost preternatural instinct he was the one to tell me, "Dawn is not far off, Lestat."

"Of course," I said. Standing, I took his hand in mine and pulled him to his feet.

I hesitated, but not for long, and then I drew him into my arms and kissed him on the mouth. No great passion, nothing terribly daunting. Just a gentle press of my closed lips against his, then a slow, smooth movement, cold flesh on warm. Ah, so deliciously warm. I could smell the blood pooling in his lips, smell it through the thin covering of skin that held it in. A bite, just a little bite...

But no, I would hold to my vows, I would be good. Louis would ask me, first.

"I love you, Louis," I said, pulling my head back, almost swooning with need. "Don't forget that. If you mother begins to carp about me, or worse, fantasize of pairing me with Sophie... well, don't forget that it is you whom I love."

"Sophie?" Louis echoed, confused.

"Matchmaking," I explained. "All mothers do it."

"You aren't right for Sophie!" Louis exclaimed.

"D'accord," I easily agreed, wondering if I had made a mistake mentioning it. But I didn't want Louis to be taken unawares by the schemes of his mother.

He cleared his throat. "You... stay away from Sophie."

"D'accord, Louis," I repeated. "What are you even thinking? She's your sister! She'll be as a sister to me as well, because once I bring you over, you shall be my brother. My dark brother who shares my very blood. And it you don't want the blood, well, then Sophie shall be nothing to me. I'll never trouble her. For I'll love you until the end of time whether you want to be with me or not. And for your sake, Sophie shall indeed be safe. Didn't I already tell you that I would look after her and provide for her for the rest of her life, if that would please you?"

I suppose my speech was rather florid but it certainly did ease my Louis' mind.

"I'll tell my mother you're married already," he decided. "That should put an end to her schemes."

"As you wish," I said, offhand. I didn't personally think this a brilliant idea, since it would only bring Madame de Pointe du Lac back to the point of worrying that I would turn her son away from the eligible young ladies on the neighboring plantations... but neither did I want to tell Louis how to manage his own mortal family. I respected him, you see. And I would certainly not want him to tell me how to deal with my father. Although, come to think of it, he had already done that in some measure...

Well, no matter.

"Goodnight then, Louis," I said, and leaning towards him, kissed him once again. "I shall see you tomorrow, and we will talk a bit more, eh?"

Louis sighed, but at least he hadn't pushed at me while I was kissing him. Neither did he respond. He merely stood there and... well, not endured it, for the implied that it was in some degree unpleasant for him. It was more as though he allowed it, experienced it... and really, reserved all judgment.

"I have responsibilities, Lestat," he told me. "I... I can't stay up talking all night long night after night. I have work to do in the day."

"Of course," I said, and then, even knowing he would be somewhat alarmed at my phrasing, I was truthful enough to tell him my plan. "So I will hunt quickly and then come to you. We won't talk all night again unless you wish it. Just a couple of hours, all right? And then I'll let you rest."

Louis had flinched at the mere word "hunt." A bad omen, I thought it, that he should be so very uncomfortable with the mere notion that human blood was what sustained me...

"I... I think I'd prefer it that you talk to me first and then attend to ...other matters," he informed me. "D'accord?"

"No," I denied him this. "You don't understand thirst such as I have, or what it means to me to be in the presence of one of whom I want to drink. If I don't see to my needs first of all, I shall thirst for you. It's a powerful feeling, Louis. I might give in to it. And you wouldn't welcome that, would you?"

He hesitated, he actually hesitated! Ah, choruses of hope singing inside me...

And then, "Ah, no, no, of course not," he said, but his tone was more one of I am supposed to say this than I say this because it's so...

"Beautiful One," I breathed. "Ah, Louis, you are so very beautiful. Inside as well as out. You may as well know once for all, and now, that for those who walk the night... a bite, a drink of a loved one... well, it is making love. It is physical and sensual and spiritual and intensely sexual, all at the same time. And nourishing too, but feeding not just the body but the entire mind and soul. It would be pure pleasure to drink of you once more. Anytime you think you might like that... or if you are perhaps curious to experience it again, this time sober instead of drunk... well, you've only to ask. Or hint. Or just think."

Louis appeared entirely startled. "You would want that?" he asked, all innocence. "I thought... I thought you would drink of me just once more, and never again, and that once would be born of the necessity, of the requirements to make me into what you are?"

"Such beauty," I murmured again. "And so much left for you to learn, to experience... with me. No, no, you've misunderstood. I long for you. I will always long for you. And if you are agreeable, I will have you many times, many many times."

"Until you make me," he murmured.

"And forever after also," I put in. "And your mortal blood... well, that will be lovely for me, of course it will. But once you are like me, when we make love... ah, Louis, you've no idea. Together, locked in each other's arms, we will experience the delights in all creation."

"Make love?" he gasped.

"That's what drinking is to vampires," I told him again, using the word I'd told him to avoid. "The nightly hunt is a pale glimmer of it. Drinking from a mortal one loves is yet more potent, and drinking from a vampire one loves is yet more potent still. And the pinnacle of physical pleasure is obtained through the simultaneous drinking and yielding of blood. A circuit, a circle of love. Of course there must be love for this to be so. I suppose that rape is just as possible among my kind as it is among yours."

Ah, mistake. Too much at once. Too much for him to absorb. But I had wanted him to understand me. And my desire for him was so linked to my desire for his blood that it seemed deceptive to dwell upon one and never mention the other...

He stretched his neck out, almost as though in invitation, but it was reflex, beautiful instinct. Not a true request. Alas.

"I will feed first and then see you tomorrow," I repeated. "But in the meantime, Louis, remember our agreement."

"Agreement?"

"Mortal passion is rising in you much like floodwaters," I pointed out. Pity that he wasn't ready to reason out why this should be so. My talk of drinking had been responsible, of course. He wanted that... "Beautiful mortal passion in all its intensity. But don't indulge it during the day, Louis. Wait for night. Wait for me; and I will show you pleasures of which you've never dreamed."

"It's... it's too soon," he whispered, alarmed. Well, at least he hadn't said that it was wrong. Yet he still did think that. Of course, he thought that fornicating with the slave maids --some of them married, for heaven's sake-- was also wrong. His awareness of these standards had not stopped him from indulging his appetites, which were as he said... considerable.

"Perhaps it is too soon," I agreed. "So wait. Take hold of your passions, and think on all I offer, and wait. And when it is no longer too soon... when it is time to take a step forward, into my arms... well, you will tell me, Louis."

"Do you mean," he slowly asked, "that I must restrain my passions until such time as I feel I can accept your dark blood inside my body?"

I shouldn't have laughed, I suppose, but that was what I did. He was so delightfully innocent!

"No," I said. "There's mortal passion, and there's my kind, and we shall indulge them both just as long as you wish to stay mortal."

"And later?"

"You'll make love only as I do, through the blood," I explained. "But this will be no source of grief, you understand. The ecstasy you feel with Colette is but the smallest shard of what awaits you in the night with me."

"Sensualist," Louis accused.

"Yes," I simply said. "Sleep well, Louis. But not all day. You are right; you must enjoy the daylight hours that are left to you."

"It's a matter of duty, not pleasure," he rebuked me. Still stung by my easy acceptance of the term sensualist, he was. It was the colonial in him coming to the fore. What was it about colonies that encouraged a return to prurience, a return to values the mother country had long since left behind?

No matter.

"Duty's very important to you, isn't it?" I asked then, but not to mock him.

Louis misunderstood. "And is it not to you?" he challenged. "You move through the night like a breeze, unfettered by any concerns?"

I wish I could, actually. What would it be like to be this way with Louis, and not have Marius wielding the veritable sword of Damocles over my head? Every word I said to Louis must be weighed and measured and approved before I dared to speak it!

"You misinterpreted what I said about duty, Louis," I told him now. "I merely wished to ask if you would do for me what I cannot... and look in on my father during the day? Once each day, perhaps? I know you are occupied with business affairs, but is that too much to ask?"

I said this all sincerely, not snidely. Louis nodded in approval. Not why I'd said it, actually, not to get his approval. At least, not directly. It was more that his essential goodness and care for others inspired me to be as good as I could, too. Which wasn't so very good at all, but I couldn't help that.

"It shall be my pleasure to do you this small service," Louis answered. "It is not too much to ask at all. In fact, the maids have instructions to notify me at once if his health appears to falter, or if he needs aught. And I myself have already invited him to join the family at table each evening. I... I meant to mention that to you. I trust this will not offend you? Because, I do understand Lestat, I do... what he did to you."

"You're a good man," I answered, and Louis shook his head. "You are," I insisted. "No wonder I do so love you. But now I must leave you to seek out my rest."

"Bonne nuit" Louis said, and with a final bow in his direction, I vanished into the night.

Part the Twenty-First


Life fell rather into a pattern after that night, my first at Pointe du Lac. I would arise from my secret lair come evening and hunt fast... evildoers, always evildoers. Even since my time with Marius, I had held to that goal. Now, I'm not saying that I was perfect, because I wasn't. Sometimes I was just hungry and impatient and I took the first mortal to cross my path.

Hmm, the first to cross my path.... Now why did I feel like that was significant, like that might mean something? To someone... to me? But I didn't know anybody who hunted that way, did I? Couldn't tell what it might mean. Too abtruse.

But in any case, yes, I sometimes did fail slightly at my vow to hunt only the evildoer. But these times weren't so very frequent, after all, and I salved my conscience afterwards with the realization that the mortal I had struck down hadn't been perfect goodness any more than he'd been evil incarnate.

But now, with Louis curious about my life, and about the dark gift, I wanted to be able to state, absolutely and unequivocally, that my hunting patterns worked to the greater good of mankind, not to his detriment. Louis, you see, was a good man. A moral man. Just what I'd always wanted to be.

So I hunted the evildoer. I found thieves on the many waterfronts along the Mississippi, and all manner of lowlife on the boats the cruised gracefully down the great river. And then of course there were always the riverfront tavern whores who had stabbed many a man for no better reason than that he'd dropped a wallet full of cash when he'd dropped his pants... And there were always others who could count as evildoers. Runaway slaves were actually the easiest... nobody much to miss them or kick up a fuss about their disappearance... but even among them, I was careful to pick out the worst examples of humanity.

I kept expecting Louis to ask me about my kills, but he didn't. He didn't even think about them all that much, actually. And I found that exceedingly strange. His reaction to his brother's death had been so extreme that I was certain, absolutely certain, that the kill would be the issue upon which all else rested. Almost every night as we walked, and talked, and I waited for the inevitable questions about my feeding patterns.

How do you do it, Lestat, how can you bear to take life?

How do you decide, Lestat, how do you know whom to strike down?

or even...

Was it difficult for you, Lestat, that first time? That first kill?

But those questions didn't arise. Indeed, Louis didn't question me all that much, any longer. We had moved into the far more natural exchange of information that sincere conversation offers. (That was Louis' doing; more on that a bit later). So perhaps Louis was waiting for me to volunteer the details to him? But no, I would know if that were so; he would be thinking about it, wondering; the waiting would be obvious. And it wasn't.

Louis simply didn't concern himself with my kills, and I was at a loss to explain it. His apparent disregard of them contravened everything I had been so sure of, about him.

And yet it wasn't as though my desire for human blood didn't bother him at all; I knew it did. He had asked me, after all, to hunt after I saw him and not before, and I had refused him this. So now, when he first saw me of an evening, I knew he noticed that my color was better, that I looked more human than I sometimes did, and he thought about the fact that someone else's blood was flowing in my veins, and it made him sort of shudder all over, only on the inside. He didn't like it... Well, I honestly wasn't sure just what his attitude was, and I was afraid to broach the subject, lest it add a note of discord to our evenings together. And discord was something I definitely didn't want. Louis and I were getting on so well, you see, so very well.

I spent time with him each and every evening. And ah, such times these were. Wonderful, just wonderful. I think I must have fallen ever deeper in love with him for every moment I spent in his precious, beautiful company. And no wonder, for what I came to understand almost from the first out there at Pointe du Lac, was that Louis wanted to get to know me. Truly wanted to know me.

He wasn't just tolerating me for the sake of the dark gift.

Indeed, he wasn't even so certain as of yet that he would ask me for it. He understood, by then, that this gift came... well, not with strings attached... that wouldn't be the right way to put it. But he understood that I would offer him life eternal because I wanted him to spend that life eternal with me. And so he couldn't possibly contemplate accepting unless he felt he could also accept me.

Honor, that was it. Mon Louis was a man of honor, and he was disposed to treat me honorably, which to him meant that he must decide in truth if he could love me first of all. For without that crucial element, he would not abuse my love for him by asking me for the blood which would of necessity bond us together, forever...

But when I say that Louis wanted to know me... ah, it's difficult to explain all that phrase entails. You see, until I came to live at his plantation, Louis had more or less been interviewing me. Asking me pointed questions about this, or that...

....Interview....

....Interview with the Vampire Lestat....

No, no, something was wrong with that phrase. It kept resounding in my head, yet it sounded wrong. Off, somehow. Off in one detail, but I couldn't have said which. Irritated, I pushed the sound of it to one side.

At any rate, that second night out at Pointe du Lac, his questions stopped. Oh, I don't mean that they stopped completely. But they took on a different character; that is, they were questions no longer. Ah, I fear I am explaining so ill that no one will so much as follow me. But that's what love does to me, n'est-ce pas? You'll see what I mean.

It happened on the second night on his plantation, as I've indicated. I had hunted fast and then gone to him, but when I arrived at his mansion, he wasn't alone. He was sitting in the downstairs parlor with his family, listening as Sophie played a beautiful French folk song on the harpsichord. Ah, such lovely cadences she gave the music. And Louis was relaxed, his eyes half-closed, his hand lightly resting on his knee, his elegant long fingers tapping out a soft rhythm that matched the gentle strains of the music.

His mother was there also, her beadlike eyes nit-picking as she watched Sophie play the piece. "Eyes on the music, not the keys," she sharply rebuked her daughter once, and then "Posture, ma fille, posture!" Louis frowned at these unnecessary critiques, and even darted a warning glance at her mother, but she curled a disdainful lip in reply, and turned her face away. I could hear her thinking that Louis was far too easy on Sophie, that deportment mattered more than the music, at least when it came to winning a suitor. And then I saw that I led the list of potential suitors.

Mild surprise gripped me that Louis had not done as he had planned, and told his maman that I was a married man! Delving into his mind, I read from him that he had meant to, but my father's presence in the house had stymied that plan. For what father would not know that his son was in fact married?

Well, mine well would, of course. If I had been mortal and interested in marriage, I had no doubt that I'd tell my father after the fact, or not at all. None of his concern. Besides, he'd likely try to wreck the marriage should he learn of it. He was like that. Out to destroy me, in any way he could. Why else had he done what he'd done to me on those cold winter nights in Auvergne? Winter nights, hell. Summer, fall, spring... the abuse was continuous until I grew tall and strong enough to fight him, to make him stop...

But this was too much to go into with all and sundry, and so Louis had given up his brainstorm about telling his mother that my marrying Sophie was out of the question. Just as well, I thought. This way his mother would not begin to carp about me during all his waking hours.

Louis suddenly looked up, his eager gaze directed straight toward me. It was dark outside, of course, and I was doing my best to blend into the oaks that shaded his home. I've no doubt that he in fact could not see me. But he knew I was out there, all the same. He sensed me.

Or perhaps I had been too blunt in searching his mind, and he had felt the peculiar sensation... a slight whirling... that he now knew to associate with my probing his thoughts.

"Lestat," I saw him mouth, but he did not speak aloud. And then in my mind I heard him call me to come in, to join them... a request that I should sit with the family and listen to Sophie play.

I took a step forward, intending to fall in with his suggestion, and that was when I saw something that I'd overlooked before. Vampire eyes are keen, of course, but when we don't wish to see something, we can be just as imperceptive as any mortal.

My father.

Sitting in the lavish parlor with the Pointe du Lacs.

It had been one thing to introduce him to Louis' family the night before. Necessary, if I wanted to smooth the way so that I could be as close as possible to Louis. It had also been obligation that had me see him to his room and see to it that he was comfortable. I had moved him, after all. I wasn't totally heartless and callous.

But to go into that parlor, and sit down, and make polite small talk, and socialize with the man who had, more times than I could count, made me wish that I could die because even burning in hell had to be preferable to his not-so-tender, not-so-loving care?

I couldn't do it. No matter than my refusal would offend Louis. No matter even that my beloved Louis would think me hard and uncaring, a cynical dried up husk of a man. No matter -- I simply could not do it.

Instead of striding forward, I took two steps back. Away from my hideous father, away from them all.

And Louis felt me do it.

Lestat, his thoughts called again, his foremost emotion concern for me. Ah, Louis...

It's all right, truly, Lestat. Just come in. He's an old man, an old blind man made bitter by the terrible knowledge of his own dreadful blunders. He's pitiful, Lestat. And you're brave and beautiful and a survivor of all you've suffered. He can't harm you now.

True, all true. But what Louis didn't seem to understand was that it didn't matter, any of it. The way I felt, the way I acted... it might not have been logical, it might not have been sensible, or even understandable. But I couldn't help it. What was, was. And there was no changing it, not for me.

I'll wait for you at the stables, I silently projected into his mind.

I saw him start, visibly jerk, his body convulsing much as if he had the falling sickness, but it only lasted an instant before he got himself under control. He cast a rather baleful glare toward the windows, afterwards.

Sorry, I projected, much more softly, that time. I'm upset, Louis. And I forgot I hadn't done that to you before, or told you I could do it.

I can read your mind after all, I heard him marvel.

No, I projected then. You can't. You aren't. It's hard to explain. You aren't reading me, I'm sending this to you. Rather like shouting loud enough for a deaf man to hear. Something like that. But I'll wait for you at the stables as I said.

And then I vanished in that direction.

Part the Twenty-Second



My thoughts were still focused on Louis, of course. I felt him settle back down into the settee, felt him absently listen to Sophie's music as he pondered what to do. A part of him... a large part of him, I should say, intended to stand up forthwith and go to me. For he thought I was hurting and he wanted to help, sweet Louis. But another part of him argued against going to me.

He said he was upset, Louis remembered. And if you were upset and went off by yourself, you would want to be left to the privacy of your thoughts, for a time. You're enough his friend to respect that, to not intrude.

And there were other reasons flitting around in Louis' head, too. You can't just go running whenever he calls you, he reasoned. He'll think his whims control you if you aren't careful.

Louis was especially worried about that, about our respective roles. It wasn't lost on him that I'd been the one chasing him, and that he'd been letting me. He was uncomfortable with that, for it put him in what he regarded as a rather submissive role. And yet he wasn't certain that he wanted me, so he wasn't about to do some chasing of his own.

And now, the notion that he would come out to me upon command, or even suggestion... well, he didn't like it. He didn't want me to think I could control him...

I almost laughed at the irony of that. Apparently Louis didn't have the vaguest notion that I could indeed control him, completely and absolutely, and it was my very love that kept us from coming to such a pass. Well, of course he didn't know that. I hadn't shown him the least part of my powers. Why would I, when a simple thought projected into his mind had made him leap like a madman?

He wasn't ready to know everything in one fell swoop.

So Louis waited. Or perhaps I should say that he let me wait for him. I suppose that if I could not read his mind, I would be hurt. But I could read his mind, so I knew he wasn't trying to be cruel. He just didn't understand me. He didn't understand that unlike him, I didn't want to lick my wounds in private. Rather, I preferred not to lick them at all. I'd much rather have some diversion to occupy me --Louis, for instance-- than sit about bewailing my fate that I'd never had a proper father or mother, or indeed anybody who had ever loved me the way I wanted to be loved. Physically and unconditionally.

He let Sophie finish her movement --she was playing something classical by then. Mozart, I do believe. I tried not to think of Nicki when I realized that-- and then Louis politely stood and made some sort of excuse to his mother and my father. I don't know for sure what he said, for I was too far to listen, and his thoughts were leaping ahead towards me. He wasn't focused on his own words.

Well, that was nice.

I was in the stables, as I'd said. Actually, I was in one of the stalls, stroking my hand along the neck and flanks of a lovely chestnut bay mare that Louis --I presumed-- owned. Beautiful animal. Of course I have an innate talent for calming and even communicating with animals. I always have, but the dark blood had just intensified it, like all else. The mare was practically purring beneath my hands.

Louis stopped at the door to the stall, and watched my care of the animal --he approved wholeheartedly, he believed in being human even to animals; I mean, he didn't really even like to kill rats on the plantation, although it was necessary-- and quietly said, "Shall we ride?"

I stepped away from the horse, and never really answered, but I think Louis rather caught on to the idea that I wasn't in the mood to sit astride and gallop through the meadows that night.

"Let's walk," he suggested instead, and amenable to that, I set off in a rather random direction. It ended up taking us toward the swamps, but I didn't know that. Well, actually I suppose I did know it, but I wasn't considering it, that was what I meant.

Louis caught up to me and walked at my side. And unlike previous nights we'd spent together, he didn't ask me anything. Not directly, at any rate. This was the start of the change, as I've said. Because he had decided that he really did want to get to know me, and he was wise enough to realize at once that he couldn't do it via the lengthy question-and-answer sessions we'd been having prior to this.

Actually, he didn't say anything at all as we walked, not for a long time. And I didn't say anything because I didn't know what to say. I think I was the slightest bit --or more than that-- humiliated that here I had wanted to dazzle Louis and impress him, but instead he'd seen me act terrified of an old, frail, blind man that couldn't lay a finger on me these days, not unless I let him!

Finally Louis did speak to me, but not to ask a question about this or that. He was far more direct, far more open about what he wanted.

"Lestat," he said, "you need to talk to me."

"What?" I asked, astonished. "We talk and talk and talk, Louis. All the time." That was more or less my way of grumbling that I wanted to do more than talk, but he of course did not understand my words that way. So I went on, "If I want a space of quiet this evening, is that too much to ask?"

"No, of course not," Louis murmured. "And I'm content to walk in silence with you if that is what will suit you this evening. But you misunderstand me, all the same." He suddenly chuckled, his good humor providing me with just the respite from my dark thoughts that I needed. "You may be able to read my mind but you don't do it all the time, do you? For if you did, you would have realized what I meant."

I stopped walking and smiled at him, and felt his heart catch against his ribs. His pants all at once grew uncomfortably tight, and he shifted restlessly on his feet, aware that he wasn't as hard as this when waiting for Colette, or even while bedding her. And it was all on account of a simple smile, mind you. Let's just say that I was pleased, and encouraged. Oh yes, encouraged.

My problems with my father paled, fading into insignificance for the moment. For what was I doing devoting my attention to the likes of him when I had Louis at my side? Silly, Lestat, so very silly, to waste a single evening with your treasured Louis.

"Ah, I realize what you meant, now," I whispered, leaning closer to him. He didn't return the favor, but neither did he shy away. "You think you ask too many questions. But don't you know that I love your questions, Louis? I don't mind them."

"Well, I mind them," he smartly replied, tossing his head a little bit to lend emphasis to his words. "I shouldn't have to dig every last iota of information out of you, Lestat. If we are friends..." He suddenly paused. "Are we friends?"

"Friends, yes," I lightly answered. "And someday, more than friends."

Louis ignored that, which was rather good of him, really. I knew what he thought, what his mortal preoccupations were, so I suppose I should not have been teasing him, not like that. But he took it in tolerable good humor, which only showed me how much he secretly did want to be more than just my friend.

"Well," he went on, "then you must talk without my prompting you. About yourself, I mean. Your life, your hopes, your dreams, your past... all the things that make you what you are, and determine what you can be."

Lovely speech...

"Ah, so I need to talk more," I said, understanding completely, now. "But then I suppose that so do you, Louis mon cher."

He narrowed his eyes to green slits. "You can pick up much of what you know from my thoughts. Besides, I am not the one inviting you to share all that can be shared, Lestat."

"More's the pity," I put in.

"You've already chosen me," Louis went on, his tone beginning to take on a long-suffering aspect. Ah, but I couldn't help teasing him. He colored so beautifully, and every time I dropped a suggestive line, his loins reacted too, blood surging downward to make him so hard that he throbbed and ached. And yet he continued to ignore his obvious state of arousal. And I do mean obvious. I could sense everything with my finely tuned vampire powers, but even a mortal observing him could not have failed to notice the impressive bulge in his crotch. I rather liked looking, imagining...

"So one must think you know all you believe you need to know of me. Whereas I know almost nothing of you," Louis continued, so correct and proper, just as if we didn't both know he was hard as a log and practically bent double in the tight confines of his pants. Well, perhaps he didn't realize that I knew all this.

I almost said something, something truly bratty about it, but I was enjoying his company --and most especially the delectable view-- so the last thing I wanted was to drive him away. And he was a gentleman to the core. If I said something crude, he would turn and walk off.

If I was sure of anything, it was of that.

Part the Twenty-Third


So I withheld all observation of his arousal, and exclaimed, "How can you say you know almost nothing of me, Louis? I've withheld nothing from you!" I wasn't exactly offended, but I was close. And then it came to me that I'd just lied to him. "Nothing about myself, I mean," I quickly added. There, that should do it, should keep me on the straight and narrow.

"You're good to answer all my questions," Louis freely acknowledged. "It's what has brought us this far, Lestat. But don't you see? I need you to share yourself freely, not just in fits and starts at my request."

Ah, those words. Such double entendres, such puns. Such fun I could have twisting what he had said! Share myself freely with him.... fits and starts... But I skipped all impulse toward levity, and merely said, "You're right. You see, Louis? That's another thing I love you for. When it comes to relationships, you're... I don't know. You have a certain je ne sais quoi... a certain self-confidence and knowledge... I mean, you think things out."

I almost told him that on occasion I did bizarre things just to see what would happen, but I decided I'd rather not have him thinking that making him to be my lifelong companion and lover was nothing but a stunt.

"So what can I tell you?" I mused. "Really, it's easier to answer your questions." He was about to speak, but I interrupted him. "No, no, I understand now. You think you'll come to know me far better from what I say on my own, eh? And likely you are right." I suddenly stopped, a horrid thought overtaking me. "Louis... Gabrielle knew me better than anyone else who has ever walked this earth. And Nicolas knew my darkest depths. And they didn't want me, Louis, either one of them, in the end!"

Louis looked straight ahead. "What do you expect me to reply to that, Lestat? I can't promise here and now that I shall want you. Most especially not in the way you keep implying, a way that is utterly foreign to me. All I can say is that I will never be able to want you in any way at all, unless I feel that I truly do know you."

You know, for all Louis was a compassionate, moral man, he also had a little bit of a cruel streak in him. I mean, did he really have to tell me that? And just when I was agonizing that nobody had ever wanted me? Well, I suppose that he did. Part of his essential honesty.

But then again, part of his essential *dis*honesty had him ignoring the palpable truth that was... well, not staring him in the face... I mean, he couldn't see himself unless he bent over, could he? But he could feel it, certainly. He was aware of his raging bull of an erection, and ignoring it with all his might.

We were rather far into the swamps by then, and a slithering noise caught my attention. I don't think Louis heard it, truly, but some primordial part of his mind must have sensed it, for he stiffened (those parts of him that weren't already stiff, heh heh) and looked about with more alarm than he'd felt yet that night, and then, much to my chagrin and regret, his seeming-perpetual arousal fell off.

So he was both alarmed and relieved, the truth be told.

"It's nothing," I told him. "Just a snake. But not a venomous one, I don't think."

Relaxing marginally, Louis raised an eyebrow and stared at me. It took me a moment, but then I got it. This was my chance. He was telling me, loud and clear although silently and without words!, that I might elaborate on what I had just said, and so get used to talking, to openly sharing myself with him.

I laughed slightly. "Ah, I see. It's like this, mon Louis. To snakes and insects I am utterly invulnerable. In fact, they don't bother me at all; it's my belief that they don't recognize me as prey. Or as part of the natural world, perhaps."

Louis arched an eyebrow and walked toward a gnarled old tree, then leaned against it. "Can you read their thoughts, too?" he asked.

"That sounds remarkably like a question," I teased him, but he thought I was sincere.

"Any conversation has a certain ebb and flow, give and take," he told me, quite seriously. "I never said I'd forswear all questions. I just prefer not to feel as though I'm dragging answers from you, Lestat. This is supposed to be a friendship we have, not an interview."

Interview... interview... interview...

"Do you hear that?" I suddenly asked. "That voice?"

"We're all alone," Louis pointed out. But then he frowned. "Or are we? You can tell such things as that, I suspect."

Not another question, but a stated desire to know.

"I can tell that, yes. And yes we are alone," I said. "And no, I don't believe I can truly read thoughts from beings that don't think in a human language. But I can sense things. Feelings, I think they are."

"That makes sense," Louis commented, but his attention was distracted. "Do you still hear it, then, the voice?"

"No," I said, weaving a hand through my hair. Louis gave a little gasp when the moonlight glanced off highlights in it. "Ah, you like that," I said, my voice sultry. "You like the way I look."

He swallowed, and pressed himself back more fully against the tree. "I... I... well, your hair just then... actually always, it has this sheen, this sheer lustre. I can't explain it, except to say that it looks angelic."

"My feelings for you are not angelic, Louis," I announced in a grave voice as I walked steadily towards him. I stopped when our bodies were a scant inch apart. "Have you thought about what I said? About abstaining?"

He shook his head but then he nodded. He'd thought about it, all right. All day long, in fact. But he hadn't wanted to think about it.

He hadn't been able to help himself.

"And how do you feel about that?" I pressed, leaning both my palms on the tree trunk, one to either side of Louis' chest, which heaved with his heavy breaths. The closer I came, the more he had to remind himself to breathe. He was just inches from being spellbound, but not by my power. Rather by myself, by my sheer presence. I wasn't causing it, except by being there.

"I... I..." he murmured.

"Your impeccable diction does desert you at times," I whispered, and leaning fully in, then, I laid my lips against his cheek. Louis shuddered, but not with revulsion. His heartbeat accelerated, thudding against his ribs, almost bruising them. Lovely sound, that heartbeat. Deep and full, and faster all the time as I wooed him.

"With you, I forget myself," he gasped, and then blushing, amended it to, "I forget how to speak." Well, that wasn't much better, at least as far as Louis was concerned, and in sudden desperation, he begged me, "Back up, I can't breathe!"

A lie.

He could breathe. He was breathing. He was panting with need of me.

But he didn't mean to lie; he actually did believe that he wasn't breathing, for he had a constricted feeling in his lungs, a feeling of being cut off from all air.

I backed off as he had asked, though. Too much too soon would probably just panic him. Not the effect I was after.

"Now, tell me," I requested. Oh, I suppose it was more of a command, actually. I was feeling desperate to hear him admit it, so I was a little more than merely insistent. "Have you thought about it? About abstaining until you can bring your need to me?"

Part the Twenty-Fourth


I must say, he did respond quite beautifully to the tone of command. Where before he'd been stammering and dithering, now he finally managed to get something said. Something really quite luscious.

"Yes," he choked out. Nervous, yes, but at least dealing with it. "It's been difficult not to think on that, Lestat. I... all day long I've been aware --bodily aware, that is-- of the restriction."

Ah, Louis had such a genteel manner, such a way with words. Without being vulgar in the slightest, he could get his point across. Whereas I was always... well, a bit more blunt in my approach to life and love.

"You've been aroused, you mean," I said with a wicked smile. "All day for thinking of me and my offer. And it's been worse than ever since we've begun this moonlit walk alone."

Louis shook his head. "Oh, no, no.... your facts are accurate but you've got it wrong all the same. It's your prohibition that's been on my mind all through the long day. Of course I've been... stirred up. What man wouldn't be, when he's been told he mustn't indulge?"

"Ah, now no-one told you that, did they?" I questioned, silky. "Don't you know, Louis? I want you to indulge. I want you to indulge it all, your wildest pleasure, your most intense fantasy, indulge it all with me."

"I can't do that!" Louis objected. "I don't even know you."

"You will," I stated with confidence.

"Perhaps," he acknowledged. "But until such time as I feel I can... oh, this is absurd, Lestat. I'm not... er, inclined the way you are!"

"You're not, eh?" I asked, looking deeply into his eyes, into the green dancing there, the dark and light greens turning in upon themselves as he tried to hide from himself, to lie to himself. Oh, Louis...

"No," he insisted. "Well, not that I know of, perhaps that would be more accurate. I... I am trying, Lestat."

"Trying?" I asked. Now, this sounded interesting. And promising. But his thoughts were all over the place. When he thought of me, it was with love and passion and longing and hope and rejection and denial and opposition, all at once. So I had to make him talk, make him straighten all these thoughts out. Not just for me, of course, but for himself as well.

"It's hard!" he said, his eyes flashing anger at me, now.

"I know, I know it's hard. It's very hard indeed," I soothed him, stroking a hand across his hair. He didn't get my little jest. Just as well, I suppose. I don't imagine he would have liked it.

"I want Colette," he said then, hurting me. But I didn't show it.

"You think so because you're running," I gently told him. "Running back to what's familiar, to what you know. But inside you grasp the truth, the fact that she isn't the one whom you want with all your heart, Louis."

"Abstain," he suddenly scoffed. "Why don't you just ask me to swear off food? That would likely be easier! My natural desires will keep me from being able to last very long at all, Lestat. Abstain! It's utterly absurd! You... you don't understand, you aren't human in that sense anymore."

I shook my head at him. "Oh, I understand, Louis. I even remember. But there's no need for this to torment you. Don't you remember what I said to do? Bring your need to me."

Louis made a sort of choking noise, and shook his head frantically, as though he were desperately afraid that I would follow up my words with action. Actually, he was afraid and not afraid. Part of him just wanted me to take charge, to divest him of the responsibility I had dumped in his lap. Ah, nice thought, that.

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't have him in years to come telling me that I'd forced him, or tricked him, or seduced him against his will. He had to want it enough to ask me, to participate, to be my partner, not some mortal I could hold in thrall.

"Bring your need to me," I said again, softly, hoping to spur him on. Because he was in need. Ah, he was in such potent need, and I was afraid that if I let it continue, he would take the coward's way out and seek Colette to give him ease...

"I can't do that," he told me then. "I... I wouldn't even know how, wouldn't have the slightest idea. You forget, I'm not... experienced in this particular avenue, Lestat."

"I forget nothing," I told him firmly, and feathered my gloved fingers down the side of his cheek.

"But how... how would we even begin a thing like that?" he whispered.

"Oh, how," I drawled, delighted. I mean, the fact that he could ask that meant that he not only wanted me, but wanted me enough to reach out towards me. Wonderful. "The how is quite simple, Louis," I said. "Quite like all the things I saw you do with Colette, actually. To start, I think..." I paused, considering. "We kiss," I decided. That should be relatively simple, relatively easy for him. "See? Just what you are used to, only... well, when you kiss me, things will be a little more exotic than usual, that is all."

"Exotic, how? Why?" he pressed, but his pulse accelerated every time I said the word "kiss." And too a fierce curiosity was taking hold of him. He liked that word, exotic; he wondered what it might mean in practice...

"Ah, well I'm a little colder than your average mortal," I remarked in explanation. "Surely you have noticed?"

"Yes, but I didn't think about it," Louis murmured. "Cold? I can't imagine that would make for a good kiss."

"You'd be surprised," I told him. "It's a nice mix, heat and cold. You'll get chills all over, and fever. And then it can be exotic as well because you'll feel pleasure in your own blood, Louis. Systemic pleasure, a precursor to what you'll be able to feel and enjoy when you are as I am."

Louis frowned. "But you've kissed me before," he said, shrugging. "It wasn't so very exotic."

"I pecked you before," I informed him. "We've never kissed passionately, Louis. We've never kissed as lovers."

He blanched, his face so starkly white that it grieved me. But I didn't want to be grieved, not with him, so I decided to be amused instead.

"Tomorrow, maybe," I laughed. "You think on it, eh?"

And then he shocked me.

Part the Twenty-Fifth


"No, not tomorrow," Louis suddenly said. "Kiss me tonight. Now. This very instant. I can't stand it, Lestat."

My heartbeat stopped for a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity. "You can't stand the not knowing?" I asked.

"I can't stand the knowing," he moaned. And then all at once in a panicked rush, "No, wait! Never mind, I didn't mean it!"

"You meant it," I said, dipping my head. Ah, he was shorter than me by just a scant margin. Just the right amount. Well, of course he was. He was perfect for me.

"No!" he screeched, his moral sensibilities coming to the fore.

"Shhh," I hushed him, my lips moving against his as I spoke. "It's all right, Louis. You're right that we should do this now. I want you to know how it can be between us." His breathing had calmed. "All right, now?" I asked.

"There's nobody within a mile, is there?" he asked, his emerald gaze darting to this side then that.

"No, I promise you," I said to him, my voice sincere. "I swear, Louis. We are private here, you and I."

And then I waited.

"All right," he finally said, his tone the same as that of a child who's been persuaded to take some rather foul-tasting medicine. Rather unflattering, that tone. But I wouldn't hold that against him. He'd never use such a tone again, not once he knew...

My lips swooped down the scant fraction of an inch that separated them from his, and as my mouth connected with his, I parted my lips in a way that urged his open as well.

My hands, which had for so long been resting on the bark of the tree, came away as I slid my arms behind him and pulled him close into an embrace. His heartbeat thudding against me, so that I could feel it through my clothes, I pressed him even tighter to me. And then I felt the hardness that was plaguing him, his mortal hardness that was so tempting and delicious to me.

My open mouth began to tease his, my tongue tracing his teeth, my lips caressing his own. A low moan burned in his belly and began to scale his throat, and as the noise surged forth to be captured in my own mouth, he shuddered, his body straining towards mine even as it also strained toward climax, toward a release from the pent-up passion inside him. It had been building for hours, this need.

Bring your need to me.

Then he remembered that this kiss was no ordinary kiss... that I was a man, or at least that I did used to be one... and all at once he began to struggle against me, his hands on my shoulders now, pushing, shoving, panic overtaking him when he found he could not move me an inch, when he began to understand the extent of my strength in contrast to his own.

I lifted my head, but I didn't let him go.

"Shhh," I soothed him again, one hand moving to stroke his black hair, to feather my fingers through the strands, my sharp nails scratching his scalp. He began to slump slightly, almost as the horse had earlier, and I realized to my regret that in my own need, my own rising passion for his blood, my powers had begun spilling from my eyes.

Louis was falling under my spell, but this time, it was one I'd created.

I closed my eyes then, and let him come out of it naturally.

When he did, he gave his head a little shake. "I feel odd," he said, his voice weak.

I didn't know what to say in return, except one thing, one important thing: "I love you," I answered.

And that time, Louis didn't say that I only thought I did.

"I know," he replied, his voice thoughtful. "That... that was unexpected."

"My love?" I asked, confused. I was afraid to read his thoughts just then, afraid I would mesmerize him again if I brought forth my powers.

"Your kiss," he said, and then with a rather self-deprecating frown, added, "Our kiss."

"Unexpected?" I questioned, wanting to hear him say he'd loved every second. Well, he didn't say that, but what he did come out with was quite nice, all the same.

"You're not cold, not as you said," Louis murmured. "No, not truly cold. You're cool, that's all."

I didn't think it politic to chime in at that point and inform him that I'd fed recently enough that a bit of the warmth still lingered...

"I..." Louis stopped, glanced at me uncertainly, and then began again. "I thought it would be off-putting," he said, his voice strained. "That is, I thought we'd kiss just once and the coldness of your flesh would be so unpleasant that we'd conclude the proposed... er, relationship, was not to be pursued, after all."

Ah, so *that* was what had spiked his courage! He'd thought to get it over with, to have it confirmed that my plan was daft, clear through...

"But that didn't happen, did it, Louis mine?" I quietly asked.

He shook his head, a lock of hair falling across his eyes. "No," he admitted. "The cold, the coolness to your skin... it's... ah, my impeccable diction, as you call it, fails me yet again. I don't believe there are words to describe it. How can you feel so cool and yet the feel of you only makes me feel all the hotter?"

"Because we're meant to be," I explained. "Your body knows it."

"Perhaps," Louis whispered, looking away. "But how can you know it, Lestat? How can you be sure that I'm the one for you? You thought the same of Nicolas, didn't you?"

"You weren't listening," I chided him. "I never thought that of Nicky. I didn't even want to bring him to me, remember?"

Louis blushed. "No, I meant before. When you were both mortal, when you ran off to Paris to have a grand adventure together. You loved him, n'est-ce pas? You thought that he was the one."

I laughed. "Ah, Louis. I wasn't yet even your age. I was young! It was thrilling! I was living day to day, never even giving a thought to the future! Whereas with you..." I paused, and trailed a hand down the side of his face, my gloved fingertips lingering on the exquisite softness to his warm, mortal skin. "With you, " I finished, sultry, "I think of nothing but the future."

I saw the tendons in Louis' sculpted throat convulse as he swallowed. "This Nicolas, Lestat... what did he look like?"

Part the Twenty-Sixth



I flinched, jerked my hand from his face, and growled low in my throat. "What can that matter?"

Louis closed his eyes. "He looked like me," he said, in tones of dull confirmation. "That's it, isn't it? Nicolas looked just like me. And he failed you in the end, but you want a second chance, you want to redeem your past. And I'm a means to that end."

"No, no, no!" I shouted, furious, stamping my feet. "No, Louis! You aren't like him, not in the ways that matter! You're strong, Louis! I love you, Louis!"

I didn't know what else to say, so I leaned in and kissed him again, and as I did I heard him thinking that he wasn't sure whether I knew my own mind. Great, just great!

But at least as I laid my lips on his, he didn't struggle and he didn't object. He seemed more curious than alarmed, now, even if, right at the start, he was wondering if I had kissed Nicky like this, too. Jealous, he was so very jealous... and then he forgot about anyone but me, his lips parting to let me love him as I wished.

More relaxed, he pressed against me as though that first true kiss between us had loosened in him some binding, some chain that had been holding him in abeyance.

For this time was different. I didn't kiss him; instead, we kissed each other, his mouth opening willingly to mine, his tongue darting forth, shyly, but still intent, to enter my mouth. He licked my gums, then began to kiss me as he'd kissed Colette. A full on kiss, our tongues dancing in intimate swirls and twirls, our hearts pounding in unison as it went on and on. And it was as he'd said. He felt the coldness coming off me like an aura, and it made him feel his own heat all the more intensely, his heat and his pleasure, and it was a pleasure that encompassed not just the long, strong length that hung between his thighs, but indeed his whole body.

His hands came up from his sides where they had hung when he was finished pushing at me, but this time he used them to accept, not to reject. He wrapped both his arms around my back and I heard him thinking --it wasn't conscious on his part; it was a feeling such as I can sense in animals-- that really I felt wonderfully big and strong and firm, and it was rather nice to hold someone he didn't have to worry about inadvertently hurting, someone he could play rough with if he liked...

He thought that there was something so *right* in holding me thus, in knowing me to be his, and knowing himself to be mine...

Oh, Louis...

Overcome, I began to lower him to the damp grass. Just as well, too, for his knees were buckling, his muscles turning to water beneath the onslaught of pleasure that our kiss provoked. The tall grass surrounded us, swaying in the breeze as we made love. And yes, we were only kissing. But yes, we were making love. It was that potent, that kiss.

I lay beside him at first as I continued to take his mouth, to make him mine, to show him that his mortal pleasure and his mortal needs could be fulfilled with me, only with me. But he began to wonder what it would be like to feel the heavy weight of me atop him. No wonder he would be thinking that. When we'd been standing, he'd been unknowingly pressing his full erection against me, the better to seek relief. And he'd lost that contact once we had lain; he felt bereft.

I obliged him at once, shifting my body over his, our legs entangled, my hips pressing down into his so that he might have that contact that I knew he wanted.

And the kiss went on and on, Louis' breathing labored, for more often than not, he would forget to breathe.

He began to feel it again, that sensation he'd felt when his gaze had collided with mine while he was riding Colette. That potent aura of his own blood heating within his veins, of his blood pulsing through his body in waves that were excruciating in their intensity, so much so that he felt wracked by pleasure and by pain all at once.

I thrust my hips more firmly against his and began to undulate in that very rhythm that echoed the pulse of blood in his body, my tongue thrusting deep now, thrusting as I wished my lower body could still thrust, doing to his mouth what I longed to do to other far more intimate parts of him.

He violently ripped his face to one side, breaking the kiss, his hands clenching my shirt back, yanking it, ripping it, a surge of pleasure overtaking him as he gasped for air, his other senses grappling just as fiercely for another kind of relief.

"I love you," I told him, my voice low, deep and sincere, and that was all it took to push him over the edge into blessed oblivion, physical release. All at once he trembled all over, waves of trembling that caught him from head to toe, as if a storm had him in its grip and would not let him go.

A scream hit the back of his teeth as that trembling coalesced deep in the pit of his stomach and then exploded out the end of his hard member as he thrust it up against me, against the tight covering of my own trousers, his gasps coming short now, short and fierce, his eyes clenched as spasm after spasm shook him.

I gathered him even closer and held him to my heart as he rode it out.

"Ah!" he cried, his back arching to mold his whole body to mine, and then, as he thrashed his head to and fro, his lips grazed my neck. "Ah, so good..."

I clutched the back of his head then, and shoved his mouth more firmly to the place on my neck where he'd been drawn.

And Louis, mindless, throwing himself to pure and unfettered instinct, made a guttural noise as he opened his lips wide and violently kissed my neck.

He was trying to bite me, but he didn't know it.

And of course he couldn't bite through my hard skin; he couldn't even scratch me with his mortal teeth. But what he could do was what he did do, gnaw a bit, and lave me with his beautiful soft tongue.

I think I almost died.

I know I called his name.

And hearing it, he drew back a fraction and called mine, as well. "Lestat!" he moaned, the sound coming up from the very bottom of his soul. And then, softer but somehow just as intensely, "I think I must love you---" And then, as though to cover the slip he hadn't meant to make, he cried aloud, fiercely but in tones of wonder, "So good...."

And it was. It was absolutely and utterly good as his whole being focused completely on the pulsation of his male fluids pumping out in surge after powerful surge that had him clutching me, his fists actually tearing my shirt now as his arms spasmodically jerked in tempo to his climax, his mouth finding my neck again and again, but not to bite this time. Only to kiss, and nibble.

His heart began to beat so hard and fast and strong that I feared it would burst right through his ribs.

And then he began to calm, the storm waning, the convulsions of pleasure dying down to shudders and then mild tremors. He stopped clutching me and relaxed on his back upon the ground, and his face tilted towards the night sky. I heard him thinking that the stars had been witness to our interlude... and then he found the courage to meet my grey eyes, which were gazing down at him full of love and tenderness and need of my own.

He blushed, full on, the scent of it rousing my thirst.

"I love you," I said to him again.

He gave a strangled groan. "I... I... I'm sorry for what I said."

Delving into his thoughts, I knew what he meant. "That you love me, too?"

"Oui," he admitted, tears rising to his eyes, for all at once he felt miserable and wretched and as worthless as a human being can be. "I am sorry. Desolate. I... It was unforgivable to say that when... it isn't true."

Well, if I couldn't read his thoughts, I'd have been hurt. Crushed. As desolate as he. But I could read his thoughts, so I knew better than to panic. He hadn't meant to say what he had said, that was the truth. He didn't know what he felt towards me, that was the truth. He'd been so seduced by my kiss that in that instant, he had wanted to love me, and that hope had come spilling out his mouth... that was the truth.

"You're a good man," I told him. "That goodness drew me, for it was such a waste to see such suffering in one such as you. So why did you tell me that you loved me, then, if it wasn't so?"

"I don't know!" Louis cried, struggling beneath my weight. I let him up then, but he didn't stand and run away as I had expected. He simply rolled on his side, towards me, and buried both his hand in my lapels, crushing his face against my cold neck.

"I'm sorry, sorry!" he said again, his tears wetting my skin. I reached a hand down and gently wiped them away.

"Hush, Louis," I told him. "It's all right. You're beautiful and sweet and shy and powerful, Louis. And I love you for all of it."

The "powerful" reference, of course, meant the force of his orgasm and he knew it. This in turn only drove his blush to greater heights. I couldn't see it, but I could feel the heat of it against my shirt.

I moved him up so were were face to face, then kissed first one scarlet cheek and then the other.

"It was marvelous to feel the pleasure taking you," I softly told him. "To watch as you found pure release in my arms, mon ange."

Louis, with a strangled groan, admitted, "Oh... but I couldn't stop it, Lestat. I tried, but... I couldn't stop from..." His voice trailed off.

"Ah, of course not," I sympathized. Really, there was little to sympathize with. Louis was embarrassed that he'd come like that, like a young unseasoned boy who couldn't control his urges. But I was delighted. What better omen for our first kiss, eh? Or second, but who was counting?

"Maybe we'd better not kiss any more," he said, but I wasn't worried, for I knew he did not mean it. He was just struggling to cope with the sense of humiliation that mortal standards imposed on him. Standards that meant nothing to me. No, less than nothing, for they were simply wrong. And stupid. Why shouldn't he come while kissing me? I certainly had no problem with it.

Except one, the thirst.

But I didn't mention that. Louis had enough to cope with, just figuring out himself. There'd be time for me, later.

"I'd like to kiss you again," I told him.

"You aren't..." He swallowed, insecure. Even though I'd told him that I'd enjoyed the look and sound and feel of his climax, he was still unsure that it was all right to have done such a thing with me. But I suppose I understood that. This was a new world for him. He didn't know that men could share such experiences with other men. Innocent, my Louis. You know what, though? I liked that, the fact that all this was new to him and he was discovering it with me. Liked it, hell. I loved it. I was eating it up. It made Louis mine in a special way; nobody had ever been mine like that before. And I did so want someone of my own.

"You aren't revolted?" Louis finished, still uncertain, still tentative.

"Quite the contrary," I told him, and to prove it I gave him a kiss which made the whole length and breadth of him twitch, *that* part as well. But it was too soon for him to rise to the occasion again, so to speak. He was mortal; he had limitations.

Cradling him closer by my side, I whispered in his ear, "When you join me in the night, we'll have ecstasy a hundred thousand times more potent, Louis mine. And it will go on and on, as long as we wish it. There won't be a point of final release such as ends your mortal passion. The pleasure will just spin itself out all night. And we shall have centuries worth of nights, Louis."

He gasped, his mind just then, and for the first time, beginning to grasp some of the ramifications of what I'd promised. Beginning to see, really see, what the meaning of eternity could really be...

And his beautiful long smooth hardness convulsed again. Or tried, that is. He cried out softly, a whimper only, for his nether regions, after his shattering climax, were sensitive to the point of pain.

Ah, mortal pleasure. I did remember it.

I held him as he calmed, then, saying nothing more, for I didn't wish to cause him the slightest physical discomfort, and his mortal body needed time to recover.

And then I felt the tension leave his thighs, felt him restlessly shifting as though he might get up and leave me, and it was too soon, too too soon. I could have held him for hours more.

Oh, I could not wait for the day when I could hold him in my arms like this throughout the long days, when I could wake embracing him, and know that he was mine forever and that nothing could ever harm him, not ever again...

To share the lair... to share the days and nights both...

Louis sighed when I stroked his hair, arching his head, welcoming my touch, and I heard him thinking that this was really quite nice, and that he liked to be quiet with me, too, and that for all my manner was sometimes rather crude, I did know how to care for someone, for him...

Emboldened, I put my left hand to my mouth and with my teeth yanked off my glove; then I reached my hand down and slipped my fingers beneath the waistband of his trousers, my hand questing for him, for the lovely fluid he had released. I wanted to touch it, to feel connected to his pleasure. Physically connected. I needed that, for I hadn't drunk a drop of his blood; I hadn't even let myself nuzzle his neck. Too tempting, that.

But when my questing fingers reached the shock of thick dark hair above his thighs, Louis jerked and announced "No," in a voice that brooked no argument.

Too pushy, Lestat...

I reluctantly withdrew my hand and rested it instead atop the pearl buttons which held his shirt closed. But I didn't unfasten them. I wasn't in the mood to listen to him tell me no to that, too. And he would have. We'd kissed, and he'd come shuddering in my arms. But we were both fully clothed all the while. Which to Louis, made it strangely... well, not all right, I will admit. He still had his doubts about the wisdom of entering into such relations with me. But the fact that no-one had undressed let him tell himself --lie to himself, that is-- and say that we weren't truly lovers. Despite the evidence plain before his eyes, he was convincing himself of this lie. I suppose it was the only way he had to reconcile what he'd always thought before with what he now knew to be truth indeed.

"It's late," he finally said. "I told you I can't spend all night with you like this."

Defensive, he sounded defensive. Actually, he sounded a bit offensive as well, but I didn't let him see that he'd piqued me.

I helped him to his feet, and dropped another lingering kiss on his delicious mouth, and then we walked back to his plantation house. In silence, again, but this time it was a companionable silence.

When we reached the mansion and I made to go in alongside him, he questioned me with his eyes.

"I can't stay in Paul's room in the day, as you know," I explained. "But at night after you retire, I'll lie in there and think of you sleeping so near."

Louis shuddered slightly, but not with dread. The image I painted was intimate, and threw him back to a state rather near the one that had caused his violent climax.

"Can you see my dreams?" he wanted to know.

"Yes, and enter them," I said.

"No," he told me to that, too.

"As you wish," I conceded.

He turned to go, but I caught him by the shoulder and leaning close, told him in a low voice, "Remember, Louis. Don't forget. You know you can do it, now."

"Do what?" he asked nervously, brushing my hand off his shoulder.

"Bring your need to me," I crooned, and he swayed on his feet, remembered ecstasy overtaking him. He was thinking that I was better than Colette, a thousand times better, or more... and that if things between us were so potent now, what on earth would they be like after I changed him, after we shared the dark blood that made the night exotic?

And then he was thinking that perhaps it had only been a fluke that he'd come so fiercely and so well while I held him clutched to my heart and plundered his mouth with mine!

I wanted to kiss him again and show him that it had been no fluke, but I knew he wouldn't like a blatant display like that right in the house. No matter that we were the only ones awake.

Instead I leaned closer and said in a whisper that none but him could hear, "You climaxed like that once before, Louis. Do you remember? You were with Colette, and you were nowhere near a culmination, but then you looked at me, and that was all it took; the pleasure at once spun out of control. Oui?"

"Oui," he whispered, his eyes uncertain even as they gleamed remembering the scene, and the pleasure. And it wasn't Colette he was remembering. Trust me on that one.

"So don't demean what we have by chasing after her again," I told him. "It would be an insult to what we shared tonight, don't you see that? And Louis? It would hurt me, Louis."

He gave me a shaky nod, but he didn't look sure of his promise.

I sighed and gave it up. For tonight, at least. I didn't want to pressure him, you see; I only wanted to make him think. And he was thinking, so I guess that was all right.

It was going to take longer than a night to cure him of all the mortal notions to which he was prey.

Such as that a man wasn't in truth a man unless he was at his potent best with a woman...

"Good night, Louis," I softly bid him, and honoring his concern that we be circumspect while out on the gallery there where anyone could see us --not that anyone was awake-- I didn't kiss his mouth, or even his cheek. I just smiled, and projected to him once again that I did so love him.

Louis didn't reply, except to bite his lip as he remembered that he'd said the same to me, and that he really oughtn't have. And then he left me and closed his bedroom door, a gesture which I knew meant that he wished to shut me out, for a time. For he had to think. He had much to ponder.

I went to Paul's room, and lay down, and smiled.

Part the Twenty-Seventh



Life fell into a much of a pattern out at Pointe du Lac. I took my day sleep well away from the plantation, and I woke up each night to hunt and then to seek out Louis.

Of course, my time with Louis was rather limited, for as he had said, he did have responsibilities; he was taking them seriously at last. No more self-pity, no more maudlin wishes to die. He threw himself fully into the administration of his plantation and the management of his family, and because of this, he was a busy man indeed.

I actually admired him for that. So serious, my Louis. Not that I admired solemnity, really, but what I respected was that Louis finally had his priorities well-sorted in his own mind. No more drunken revelry, no more self-pity. Ah, this Louis was strong and determined and every inch a man. I most keenly felt, then, the weight of responsibility grinding on me. Dear God above, what if I had made him over while he was still weak and weepy? When he was wanting above all to die? Or worse, to be damned for all eternity?

He would have carried these attitudes forward for all time, I just knew it! And that wasn't to be thought on, nor even to be contemplated... yet I couldn't help but ponder it, all the same. I could see the fights we would have had... I could see them in vibrant, glowing color. Orange, those fights were. Potent, brilliant orange with violent red undertones. Sometimes, as though in a nightmare tableau, I even fancied that I could see half of New Orleans set ablaze in one of those fights.... But they weren't real, these thoughts, although they felt real, they felt exactly as though I had both lived them *and* read about them. So strange.... And yet for all I knew they were unreal, these thoughts, I did have them.

They served to warn me, in some eerie, fantastical way, that things could go far wrong for Louis and I, if I were not careful. Far, far wrong. So wrong that I could scarce imagine it, yet my nightmares informed me that we would spend a century apart, a century in utter agony, the one yearning, questing for the other... and then in these visions I would see a young man again, the one with ashen hair and violent eyes, and Louis was pouring out his heart to this man --or was he a boy; he termed himself as one-- but Louis wasn't talking to the boy at all, not really, he was talking to me, all the while, talking for effect and hoping I would hear...

Ach, I was going mad; that's all it was! I was crazy in love with Louis and yet it had been months since I had partaken of the lovely elixir of his rich, red blood. And the deprivation was driving me beyond myself, driving me to fits of utter lunacy....

Yet all these warnings --or premonitions, perhaps,-- inspired me to be most careful with my Louis, as you surely can imagine.

Each night directly after my kill, when I was warm and full of blood and looking as human as I ever do, I would return to Pointe du Lac to spend some time with him. Now, as I've indicated, that was just a trifle problematical. Before it was time for the household to go to bed, time with Louis really meant time with Louis and his family. He worked hard all day, riding the fields, seeing to it that the slaves were properly supervised --he had no end of trouble with that overseer-- and that the production of indigo proceeded apace; and he also did all the accounts and was heavily involved with the bankers and lawyers who would insure that his business ran smoothly and legally. So evening was really the only time he had to spend significant time with his mother and sister.

And he wasn't always willing to leave them in order to prowl the dark lanes and swamps with me. He liked to be alone with me, of course, but more often than not I had to wait until the womenfolk retired for the night. If I wanted Louis' company sooner, I had to share him with his family. Not unreasonable of him, certainly; I wasn't the only thing of import in his life. But still, it was problematical for me.

Since Louis was such a gentleman, you see, so gracious to a fault to those he invited to live under his roof, sharing his evening hours also meant that I had to spend time with my own father. For Louis invariably invited the blind old man to partake not only in the family meals, but also in whatever entertainment was proposed for the evening. Usually this consisted of talk in the upstairs parlor, or walks along the paths through the verdant meadows out behind the house and toward the river. Louis' slaves kept these paths neat and manicured, easy for even a blind man to tramp, since of course my Louis would never dream of asking his sister or his mother to trudge through the mud. He had an essential respect for French women, and a southern genteelness which insisted they be treated with deference and honor at all times...

More rarely, the family would set itself to playing chess of an evening, or simplistic card games which even my blind father could manage. And quite often, of course, Sophie would play the lovely harpsichord which graced the parlor...

I needed to be with Louis, in whatever guise or form, so I joined in these activities, on occasion. But that wasn't so terribly often. There were several reasons for this.

First and foremost was the fact that Louis' mother kept pushing me at Sophie. To such a degree, in fact, that it made me highly uncomfortable. I was always conscious, you see, that the slightest apparent indiscretion on my part would be so very hurtful to Louis. I knew I must not give Louis the slightest cause to worry, the slightest sneaking suspicion that I might, even accidentally, cause harm to Sophie's tender feelings.

And so, as much as I did long to have time with Louis, I stayed away from most of these family gatherings.

But perhaps all my thoughts of Sophie and the mother are just a cover for a greater truth... you see, it was never lost on me, not even for an instant, that my father was present at those gatherings. Those few that I attended truly did cure me of wanting to inflict upon myself the obligation of yet more.

For he was so very devious, my father...

He knew I was happy out at the plantation; he knew I wanted to continue my residence there. And my father's greatest wish has always been to deny me mine. So he complained. And he carped. And he asked me questions and made insinuations that he knew full well would be distressing to my host's sister and mother, not to mention my host himself.

"Lestat," my father would say, when he would hear me enter the room (damn him, in his blind state his hearing was near preternatural), "Why don't you ever sup with us? We miss your lively if somewhat pointless chatter at table."

Trust my father to find a way to insult me even in the midst of a plea for my company!

Well, of course he didn't know why I couldn't dine with the Pointe du Lacs. But he knew that it was a bone of contention between myself and Louis' mother -- she was always inviting me for meals, meals I had to decline, of course. So my father worried the topic like a dog with a bone.

And of course once he started in on me, Madame de Pointe du Lac could not help but chime in with all her might.

"Yes, monsieur de Lioncourt," she would simper in her obviously artificial way. "Why don't you finally grace our table? Tomorrow night, perhaps? I will have the servants prepare your favorite, which is...?"

Blood, I wished I could tell her. Or even better, Louis' blood, a fine rich dark wine, like burgundy, to heat me from within, to take all that he is and make it part of me...

It would have shut her up, at least. But at too high a price, I fear. I could have mesmerized her, I suppose, but I sensed quite clearly that should Louis ever learn I'd done such a thing -- and he was smart, he would sooner or later come to realize it -- then he would lose all glimmer of respect for me.

And he did respect me. Especially when I would force myself to endure my father's odious company of an evening, and to ignore his taunts and insults, yes, Louis respected me.

I liked it that way.

So when the mother would bewail that I did not eat with the family, I would just smile and execute a little sweeping bow --very lordly, that; she ate it up-- and give her the line which was becoming my stock in trade: "Ah, madame, I fear I must decline your kind invitation. For I have business which fully occupies my days, as you well know. It's a mercy and a wonder I'm even able to get out to Pointe du Lac each evening. The Revolution, you know. Oh, I have consultations with-- but never mind, such matters aren't a fit subject for the delicate ears of such a lovely lady. Do you know, if I didn't know better, I could well mistake you for Sophie's sister?"

The flattery helped my cause along quite a bit. Of course, I couldn't use it toward Sophie, who soon began posing her own questions. Louis wouldn't have approved of my flattering his sister, or leading her up some garden path that he knew I had reserved for him and I alone.

Ah, and Sophie did have questions. Like her brother, her intelligence was keen and well-developed.

The fifth or sixth time she heard this same excuse from me, she raised her finely sculpted eyebrows in unmistakable challenge. "One might almost ask why you wish to live out here at all, if it entails traveling such long distances to and fro each day," she threw down much in the manner of a gauntlet. She had heard, of course, that I never appeared for breakfast because I left before dawn to go into town to conduct my business affairs.

That evening, I affected a laugh, but I think the effort came off rather strained. "Ah, you wouldn't wonder over that if you'd ever seen the Auvergne," I made up on the spur of the moment. "It's as far from Paris and the hustle bustle of the busy city as one can get. Oh, I was never so grateful as when Louis invited me to stay at his estate. Such a lovely break from the crowds and stench of New Orleans."

"Crowds, certainly, but stench?" Sophie inquired. "Oh, you must have been there when the river flooded and some of the old graves resurfaced? Yes, yes, that was a rather poor time to begin a visit to our fair city."

She said that as if I'd planned it that way on purpose! Well, she was a feisty one, we'll say. She thought me attractive, but she was far too astute to overlook the fact that I'd slighted her at every turn. By then, she knew which way the wind was blowing. Oh, I don't think she realized that I was romantically interested in Louis --that open-minded she wasn't-- but she understood by then, certainly, that her mother was trying to push us together, she and I, and that I was refusing to be pushed.

That I wasn't interested in her romantically, not in the least.

It irritated her; she would not have been averse to being courted by me, and my obvious disinterest rather piqued her sense of feminine vanity.

Of course my father could not resist putting his own in, and telling all concerned that I was a fine one to complain of stench. Why, I had practically lived with my dogs, I was so devoted to the "great kennel" I had founded, although mind you it was never so very great (according to my father, that is). And then he went on to state that I was the last one in the world who should aspire to standards of cleanliness, for hadn't I once slept in bloodied hunting clothes for upwards of a week, all on account of some trivial remark my brother Agustin had made? And on and on he went, the insults becoming ever more devious and cruel, while I sat outwardly poised, but inwardly horrified, cringing with embarrassment that my precious Louis should hear such disparaging things of me. But finally, it was Louis who said, his tone much like the firm, no-nonsense one he used to direct the wastrel overseer who supervised his slaves:

"It's ill-done of you, sir, to state such things in company. If you have aught of such a nature to tell your son again, I insist you ask to speak to him in private."

My father, though, snorted in preface to his reply. "Speak to him?" he challenged, raising his voice, his fists flailing blindly in the air. "Speak to him, you say! I've asked, don't think I haven't! And the ingrate always tells me no, now doesn't he?" he objected to Louis' plan.

It was true. The marquis had twice asked to speak to me alone since we'd come to Pointe du Lac, and I had twice refused. Well, not refused exactly. I had put him off, and then conveniently forgotten the entire conversation. And when I say forgotten, I mean forgotten completely, as if it had never happened at all. It was only then, while hearing my father complain, that it dawned on me that I'd done exactly as he said.

"Oh, Lestat would not do that," Louis had defended me, casting me a sidelong glance. "Would you, then?"

I couldn't bear to disappoint Louis, most especially not when he was looking at me with those evergreen eyes so bright with hope. He wanted me to reconcile to my father. I don't think he much liked my father, but he had these fixed ideas about family, didn't he, and he didn't seem to fully comprehend that a family such as mine was simply beyond his bayou rules of honor and respect. But I couldn't refuse Louis' request, either, not when amidst the hope in those green eyes there was, I dare say, more than a miniscule particle of love... Love for me, and faith in me as well. Misplaced faith, but I would do my best to live up to it.

"No, I won't refuse to speak," I answered, but inwardly I was sighing. Louis didn't understand that the marquis' complaints were all for show. He didn't have the slightest idea of the truth, that my father did not in fact wish to speak with me at all! That all he actually wanted was rather to get the upper hand with me by shaming me before my host!

I knew these things for truth, although not because I was in the habit of delving into my father's thoughts. Indeed, I could scarcely imagine a more repulsive pastime; I had no desire whatsoever to know in every last excruciating detail what he thought of when he thought of me. My tastes might be exotic in matters of the heart, but that much of a masochist, I most certainly am not.

No, no, I didn't read his thoughts. I never had, not once since I had been gifted with Magnus' potent powers.

But I knew what he thought, all the same. These questions and complaints were but a ploy; he hoped to humiliate me. A new continent, indeed an entire new world, but nothing had really changed. He was the same cold cruel heartless bastard he had always been.

I suppose I hoped to demonstrate this fact to Louis when I was the one, then, to challenge aloud, "You say you've need to speak to me, sir? Shall we go outside and talk then, you and I?"

The bastard smiled. To anyone else the expression might have looked pleased, but to me it was something entirely different. It was a leer, and it put me back in time to an upstairs chamber in a stone castle, to the creak of a footfall upon wooden stairs, to the feeling of being huddled in my much-mended blankets, of pretending I was in a magic cave where he could never enter, never enter... but then of course he would, and my whole world with me in it would be torn asunder... Literally, shredded, the sheets bloody when he finally left...

"I should prefer that we retire to my room," he answered me, and with so many memories crowding my head, terrible awful memories, I flinched at the notion of being alone with him in a room. Stupid reaction. Ridiculous, actually; what could a blind old man do to me, now? But still, I couldn't seem to help it; I visibly flinched.

And my father didn't see, of course, but Louis did. His beautiful lips lifted upward in a slight smile. A sad smile, one of both compassion and understanding. He knew that I detested my father, and he knew why...

"Outside," I insisted to my father, and then, because Louis was watching, I forced myself to go to my father and take him by the arm to guide him. My fingers curled like tense talons around his slender, frail arm, but I managed not to break his damned arm. Indeed, I did not so much as claw him. "This way, sir."

He whimpered and said in a stage whisper if ever I'd heard one, "Ah, you never call me Father, Lestat. Why is it that you do not call me Father, as is my right?"

All at once, I had the greatest desire to weep. Because there it was, in a nutshell, and so tragic that I could scarcely bear to contemplate it, for all I'd lived with it almost my entire life. I had a mother who didn't want to be called one, and a father who had been so cold and abusive to me that I couldn't bear to call him one.

"It's a modern age," I excused my manner of speech, and my father whimpered again. But as soon as we were well out of doors --he could mark such things easily by the scents and the temperature of the air around him-- the noise died off. Of course. Alone with me now, there was nobody to impress, and he knew it.

I leaned him against a tree so that he could orient himself, and stepped back at once. My hands, even though gloved as usual --I was too keenly aware that Louis' family must not ever sense the chill to my flesh-- tingled unpleasantly with the task of having touched him. It was all I could do not to turn and run, and run and run and never look back. But I wasn't going to abandon my relationship with Louis just to get away from my father.

"Well, sir?" I asked him, then.

I heard him sigh. Funny, that. There was no one out here to hear him. No one but me, of course, but I didn't fool myself that I mattered. Not to him.

"Why do you hate me so very much, Lestat?" he asked, his voice small.

"What do you want from me?" I coldly replied. I was not disposed to get into a discussion of why I hated him. He knew exactly why I hated him. He knew what he'd done, and how often he'd done it, years and years of it, for no other reason that I was the youngest, the smallest, the easiest to bully! He knew how I'd laid broken, bleeding on my bed after each attack, bleeding from places where no young boy should ever have to bleed! He'd known, and none of it had mattered. Your mother has refused me her bed, he said to me once when he'd had far too much to drink. Ah, horrors. I remember that night... that time, the grinding pain had seemed to go on forever, until I was screaming, pleading, not that it did me the slightest bit of good. For years now, she has refused me, he had confessed, slobbering against my ear until it was all I could do not to vomit forth what little dinner I'd managed to choke down. And I'm a man, Lestat. A man must have a way to vent his physical needs.

I'm just a child, I had cried out in agony, flailing like a crazed fish when he prepared to mount me once more. Well, I never did say that again. It didn't get me anything but a particularly harsh backhanding, and the curt reply, You're her favorite, that's what you are.

In retrospect, I suppose he did have more reason to choose me than just the fact that I was the youngest. He was also getting his own back at Gabrielle. At times I hated her, too. Not just because she had rejected my father and so contributed to my own nightmare, but also because she was always so distant from me. It might have been some solace to be her favorite, if that had meant anything at all... but it didn't. She barely looked at me, and never spent time with me except for when I was in the absolute blackest despair... and of course she never even bothered herself to teach me to read. I still resented that.

Now, standing in Louis' beautiful night-blooming garden replete with fragrant jasmine, I realized that my father had not answered me. "Well, sir?" I asked once more. "What do you want from me?"

He sighed again, a long-suffering sound drawn, or so it seemed, upon the wind itself. "Why did you come here, Lestat? I didn't expect it, you know. Smuggled out to safety in the New World, and I thought I'd never again be near a single soul I knew. And then you came and set me up in rooms by the ramparts. Why?"

"I had some advice," I said. "From someone I respect."

My tone left him in no doubt of the fact that for him, I had no respect at all.

"It's the books, isn't it," my father whispered. "You're still furious that I denied you the books. That I burned them. But you know how to read now, don't you, Lestat? I'm sure I've heard you turning pages. Not often, true, but on occasion."

"It's none of your business now if I can read or not sir," I informed him, my voice tight and silky. "You know perfectly well why I am furious!"

"You're a man now," he said, defensive. "Strong, I think. I can't see you but I can hear it; you pride yourself upon it. So what does it matter, what happened so long ago, Lestat? I... I was drunk, you know that."

"You were drunk every time?" I mocked, for of course we both knew full well that he could not blame his behavior on the wine we drank at dinner. Oh sure, he was drunk on occasion. His being drunk made the horror last all the longer. But of course he beat me far more when he was sober, and his aim was better, too. Drunk, sober, they were both framed equally in my nightmares. I'd never known which to pray for when I'd heard him plodding up the stairs.

"Lestat--" he began, but I couldn't bear it, I simply couldn't. The memories overtaking me, choking off breath I didn't need but liked to feel, my heart just shriveling as thinking made me relive the things he'd said, the things he'd done.

"There's nothing you can say now, nothing you can do," I derided him.

"But you hate me," he whimpered.

"So?" I challenged, the word growled. "What matter if I hate you sir, if I loathe the very sight of you and all you represent! What matter at all? Don't I care for you in baronial splendor? Aren't your bedclothes of the finest silk and velvet? Don't you eat with china and silver? Haven't I put a better roof over your head than you ever put over mine?"

He began crying that these things meant little to him in his old age, that he wanted to go to mass, and see old friends. Complaints, all of it. I couldn't do enough for him, that was what he meant. And if by chance I should take him to mass and to see old friends, his demands would likewise change to yet something else. It was the same as when I was a boy, before I'd learned the essential truth that characterized my existence: when it came to my family, I could not do anything right.

Well, I wasn't going to play those games this time. I wasn't going to try to please him, not when I knew there was no such thing.

"Your old friends are dead," I told him. It might sound harsh, but it was no more than truth. As was, "And they don't want you at mass, sir. You're not fit to enter the church, are you, not with what you've done! For you've never confessed to it, have you? Oh, no, the great impoverished Marquis de Lioncourt could not lower himself to admit to a mere village priest that he'd befouled an innocent, could he? Well you shall burn for it, sir, and it's my most fervent desire that each moment is as a thousand years of utter torment!"

He whimpered again, and then began to cry.

"Lestat, I'm sorry--" he started to say, and something in me snapped. I'm not even quite sure what. I just knew that I'd never heard those words from him when they might conceivably have mattered. And now, they couldn't matter. I'd go mad if I so much as heard them again, I just knew it.

Or perhaps I was mad already; I heard a tremendous crashing noise between my ears, a cacophony and then silence as a lid slammed down inside my head, a lid twice as broad and heavy as that to Magnus' sarcophagus. A lid that even I with all my strength could not lift.

It slammed down hard, shutting me off from myself, from my good intentions, from my efforts to be a decent son even if he hadn't been a decent father, and even from my wish that Louis could be proud of me, that Louis could see that I had overcome the horrors of my childhood...

And once that lid came down, there was nothing left inside my mind except raw anger and a roiling fury that could not be contained, not for one second longer. I'd held it leashed like a hound for more than twenty years, and now that hound was gnawing its way free and leaping to rip out my father's throat.

"Why won't you just die and leave me and my bankroll in peace?" I roared, throwing back my head and bellowing it into the stillness of the night, the anger shooting from my mouth like something foul, like bitter bile.

"Lestat!"

Another voice, but that one wasn't my father's. It was Louis'. Slowly, I turned to face him. Louis shook his head, and just stared at me with those green eyes for what felt like forever, and all the while, behind me, I could hear my father weeping, sobbing, moaning, gasping out pitiful things like did I really want him to die, and perhaps he should just oblige me if that was the only solace he could offer me, the only abject apology which might mean something to me...

But all this washed over me like so much water. Impressions, only. I couldn't really listen. I never liked to pay much mind to those intent on lying to me, and in any case, it was Louis who had my full attention. Mon Dieu, he was just standing there, staring at me, his expression so hard. Unlike the way he usually looked at me. And his thoughts, they were even worse.

Lestat, he was thinking, does not know how to forgive. Lestat cannot forgive; his heart is hardened to stone inside...

Then all at once Louis glared at me, and hissed, "Stop it!"

And I knew he meant that I should cease to dig amidst his thoughts, at least for a time. He was getting good at recognizing when I was doing that, although he very rarely told me to desist.

I withdrew my powers back inside myself and stood stock still, trying to get myself under control, trying to stop my thoughts from careening here and there, leaping over times and places. But I didn't try to lift that lid that had slammed down. That, I wanted firmly in place, my only defense against insanity.

Turning away from me, Louis began calling out in sharp French that monsieur de Lioncourt the elder was exhausted and must be helped to bed at once. The slave girls who cared for him came and led him away as he leaned piteously upon them as though he were too heartbroken to walk on his own...

And Louis was still glaring, furious.

I turned my back on him and walked away, straight out into the dark.

Part the Twenty-Eighth


I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't care. I just wanted to be away. Far from Pointe du Lac, for once. Far from Louis, for I couldn't bear the thought of him looking at me like that again, his eyes so hard, so cold, the colors frozen instead of marvelously alive and blending and muting as I watched.

And then I felt it, his hand on my shoulder, his wonderfully warm mortal hand. I almost shook him off, I was so agitated. But it was rare that Louis would touch me, it truly was. I was always the one touching him, leaning in for kisses, embracing him, caressing him... But now he had reached out to lay his fingers on the shoulder of the coat I wore, and I would no more consciously reject that overture than I would stay up to see the sunrise.

Drawing in a shaky breath, I let myself lean into that hand, just a little. But I couldn't listen to the lecture that was surely coming, so I cautioned him, "Don't say it, Louis." My voice broke, but I went on. "Just don't. I... I can't bear it, Louis. It's too much. I know you've strong notions of family. You don't need to tell me what you think of my behavior, my cutting words."

"No, I don't," Louis quietly agreed.

Well, that surprised me. "You don't?" I asked, feeling perhaps more stupid than I'd ever felt. And with the life I'd led... well, let's just say that I respected his intelligence mainly because I didn't believe I had too very much of my own.

"No, I don't," Louis calmly repeated, his fingers flexing against my shoulder in a rhythm much like a caress. But it was unconscious; he was not trying to arouse me. And indeed, as much as I appreciated this feeling of Louis touching me, I was in fact not aroused. I had too much on my mind to be lusting after blood. You see, he had called me sensualist, and I was... but that wasn't the only thing I was.

Louis voice grew thoughtful. "I owe you an apology, Lestat. You... you mistook what I was thinking, I believe."

"Oh, so you don't think I'm a beauty of an unforgiving self-righteous bastard?" I sneered, still offended at what I'd seen in his mind.

"A beauty, yes," Louis replied, his words soft and lovely and calculated to calm. It worked. I stopped being quite so mad at the whole world, and began to listen to what he was telling me. "But the rest, no. No, Lestat. I didn't mean that it was evil to not forgive your father."

"What did you mean, then?" I asked. Weary, but wanting the answer.

"That you're hurting, the memories festering terribly, Lestat. That if you could forgive him, you could close that chapter of your life and never look back. That... that I care about you, Lestat, and I want to see you heal this rift. Not for him, not for his sake, never. For you. All for you."

"You don't want much, do you?" I asked, but not sneeringly, for all it was sarcastic. Or not, maybe just world-weary. Defeated.

Louis moved his arm around my shoulders, then, a casual embrace that would be entirely acceptable between brothers. But I knew he didn't think of me as a brother, not at all. And by then --a couple of months had passed since that first passionate kiss-- he didn't regard me as only a friend, either.

How could he?

We were more than friends, and he knew it. We kissed frequently, kissed like lovers, like lovers courting, our breath intermingling, cold and hot to tease each other. And this kissing, it wasn't only physical. I touched his soul, and he mine, and with each and every kiss Louis came closer to the edge of his mortal life, to a precipice, to a headlong plunge into complete and utter love with me.

I encouraged him to take that plunge, of course. Whispering sweet nothings against his ear, encouragement when, our bodies intertwined amidst the grass of a lush meadow, he would clutch me with both hands, his head thrown back, his eyes murky with the maelstrom of pleasure, with the knowledge that if he wasn't careful, he would spend himself again in luxurious decadence while I held him close and kissed his cheeks and told him that he was so very beautiful, that I loved to watch him take his mortal pleasure...

Oh, we didn't indulge such a frolic every night, certainly, although we did tend to kiss at length each evening after the household was long since asleep. Louis was much the staid and repressed gentleman; in fact, for all he kissed me eagerly now, and had for weeks, he still tried his damnedest not to climax with me. It embarrassed him, you see. He thought it immature, and in more dire moments, he still thought it wrong. But he couldn't always rein in his great need for me, and it would come spilling forth in the beautifully scented fluid that he never yet had let me so much as see, let alone touch, more's the pity.

"I know I ask a great deal," Louis said now, bringing my thoughts back to his suggestion that I forgive my father. Yet for all the thought made me shudder, his arm around me was still warm and loving and very Louis. "But that's because of what you've done for me, Lestat, don't you see that? I know what it is to be mired in past hurts. And because you came to me, I now know what it is to be set free of the pain, of the never-ending torment."

"You mean Paul," I said, understanding dawning.

"Yes," he said. "I couldn't let him go, Lestat, not until I learned to forgive him."

"Forgive him?" I gasped. "What? I thought you had to forgive yourself!"

"That too," Louis said. "But it was more that I had to forgive him, Lestat. I couldn't do the one until I had done the other. You see, irrational as it might have been, I was angry at him, angry that he'd become a fanatic at the end, angry that he hadn't the sense to see this himself, and rein in his religious ecstasy before it verged on lunacy. Angry that he would demand the economic ruin of our entire family. Why, if I'd done as he'd asked, Sophie would not even have a dowry, you understand. So I had to forgive him all this, Lestat, before I could then forgive myself."

I hadn't thought of it like that before, but I suppose it made sense. Yet then again, it didn't.

"So how did you accomplish this feat?" I asked, and if I sounded scathing, it was because I felt that he was by far the better man; I didn't think I could do the same feat with regards to my father.

"Oh, it wasn't so very difficult once I realized why I'd taken his death so hard. It was because for a brief space of time, I had hated him. That was the knowledge I sought to drown with liquor and wishes to die. But you came, and made me stop and think instead of just exist in a drunken haze. And I came back to Pointe du Lac, and looked at where it had all happened, and I went into his oratory and sat down on the bare flagstones. And I thought about him. How young he was, how impressionable. I thought about how he'd always been drawn to religion, how there was something deep inside him that needed the solace of a force outside himself. And then, I suppose I could understand why he did it. I was expecting of him maturity far beyond his years or capacity. And so I could forgive him, Lestat, and then myself."

"I'm happy for you," I whispered. "So happy you can't imagine it, Louis. To see you content and at peace... do you know that was all I wanted when I first tapped you on the shoulder and took you into my arms to drink away your pain? I thought at first the way to make you forget it all would be to bring you across to me at once. Do you know that was what I planned? To seduce you right out of your mortal coil. Only... then I knew I loved you with a love that was purer than that, and I couldn't do it. Too much like what Magnus did to me. Not force, no, not that... but tricks and lies. Well, not so very much better than Magnus when all is said and done."

Louis listened to all this with a peculiar expression. As though the words were beautiful and haunting and much-appreciated, but also as though he thought them strangely beside the point. And then he spoke and I understood.

"Your father, Lestat," he reminded me, and I realized I had been rambling on in an effort to evade the issue that had brought us far out into the trees.

"Oh, him," I murmured. "It's different, Louis. I mean, it's not Paul. I can't say to myself that my father was young and impressionable and didn't know how hurtful his actions were to me. He was old already then, and hardened, and fully cognizant of the vileness of his actions. And Louis, this thing I speak of... it didn't happen just once. Did I give you that impression? It lasted years. Years and years and years. I ran away twice, did you know that? And if the old bastard didn't know at first just how devastating all this would be to his young son --highly doubtful, but just for argument's sake we'll suppose it-- well then my lightning changes of personality, my months of sullenness, the attempts to flee... well, all this should have informed him."

"Yes," Louis quietly agreed, his arm around me pulling me a little bit tighter to his side. I sighed with pleasure, but I didn't give Louis a chance to tell me yet again that I'd changed the subject.

"So you say to forgive my father, and you judge me harshly that I haven't yet; you think I'm cold and unforgiving. But I can't, Louis. And not just because I don't know how. More simply than that, I do not want to. Does that make sense at all?"

"Yes," Louis said again. "But you have it wrong, Lestat. I don't judge you at all, and certainly not harshly. It's your prerogative to hate him until the end of time, if you wish. But I do think it would do you good to move beyond the pain, instead. It eats at you like a canker, do you think I can't see that? I don't have the 'vampire eyes' you've described in such luscious detail, but I can see what's plain before my face."

"Do me good?" I gasped, unsure whether to laugh or cry. "Oh, Louis. For good or evil, it doesn't matter. I can't forgive him, not this. Not ever. All I can do is what I've tried to do these last few months. Provide for him, tolerate him, wait for him to die... and then I'll be free of this haunting pain."

"Perhaps I ask too much," Louis murmured. His voice caught a little. "I told you that I understood, mon cher, but now I know that I don't. That I can't. Because, as you know, I've not suffered that. My father... he was wonderful to me, Lestat. But yours! And you, a child, a defenseless child! I can't conceive how any father could do such things--"

"Don't," I said, pleading, tears rising to my eyes. Blood tears. And Louis didn't know about those yet, did he? This wasn't the time to explain, either. "Stop, Louis, stop it. You can't make it better. So just.. stop."

"All right," Louis agreed, and coming to stand before me, to look into my red-rimmed eyes, we were just quiet together for a time. He didn't say anything at all about the tears. Or the blood, that is. He just gazed at me with love and compassion and true friendship, and his own beautiful emerald eyes were far from dry as he stared.

"Why did you look at me so harshly if you weren't judging me for what I'd just said to him?" I finally asked.

"I was taking a hard look at myself," he told me, shaking his head in remembrance. "Because when I heard the raw pain in your voice, I realized in one fell swoop that I'd been a fool to claim I understood what you had suffered. I knew then that I would never understand it."

"I pray not," I whispered, but I don't think Louis even heard me.

"And I was horrified," Louis went on, "because at that instant I came to learn, too, that I'd done something awful to you, just awful, by insisting that your father come live here when you did. Because I thought that family loyalty should supercede all else, but that was my egotism talking. Vicious egotism... that I would think I could manage you and your father better than you could yourself. That I would presume in my egotism to know more about your situation than did you... and oh, God! how you've suffered with him under this roof! I didn't realize before. I didn't want to realize. I wanted everything as it is in my family. Maman is an irritant par extraordinaire, but her heart is in the right place. But your father..." Louis shuddered. "In one moment when I heard your cruel words to him, when I realized you'd been pushed and goaded and finally shoved into saying such things, I saw what I'd done to you, Lestat. And I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all, and I knew the blame must lay squarely with me. Can you forgive me, Lestat? I didn't intend to cause you pain. Quite the opposite. But I've heaped agony on you, haven't I? Oh, mon Dieu, I will beg your pardon on bended knee if that's what it takes for you to believe I've learned my lesson!"

He was crying by the end. Not weeping dramatically as I tend to do, but crying in a gentlemanly way, tears seeping from the corners of his eyes. And then he moved reflexively, and I knew to my shame that he had meant every word, and meant to do it, was going to kneel right there on the damp ground and beg my forgiveness.

I clutched his arm before his legs could bend, before he could abase himself like that. He wouldn't like that, I knew. Louis had pride. Yet for my he would sacrifice it. I loved that about him, but that didn't mean I needed to see the sacrifice.

"Not your fault," I murmured, my fingers lovingly supporting him, holding up his weight until he realized I had no intention of letting him kneel to me. "You... well, who would understand, Louis? Not many. At least, I hope not many. God, what a world if my childhood was typical!"

Moving across the space that parted us, Louis laid his lips on mine, and kissed me tenderly. Not as a lover, not as a friend, and not as a brother either. Something else. Something that transcends the words mortals use to limit relationships to this thing or that thing or the other. "Lestat?" he asked, tentative.

"Yes?" I said, and then rushed it out, "Can I read your thoughts again, Louis? Because I've been trying not to, ever since you said to stop, but it's like a terrible burning urge sitting in my belly, more tempting all the time. May I?"

"Oh yes, certainly, of course," Louis answered at once. "I only told you to stop because the look on your face was just terrible, and I knew you were misunderstanding what you heard. There was blame there, yes. Oh, oceans of blame. But it was self-directed, Lestat. You understand that, now?"

I nodded, and then I let myself relax, and felt as well as saw and heard the greatness of his love. Not that Louis was to the point where he could call it love, but that would come. I instantly began to feel much better. For my father hadn't wrecked everything, had he? He'd wrecked perhaps the last twenty years of my existence, but with love like this, he wouldn't have the rest of it, no.

And I read in Louis then, that he was tentative just now because he was too conscious of how he'd interfered before, and my father was my business, after all... but still, he wanted to offer, wanted me to understand that what he'd said to me two months before wasn't what he still thought or felt.

So then he said it: "Shall I send your father away, to rooms in town?" he asked, in tones of concern. "Would that be more comfortable for you?"

"Mon Dieu, yes it would," I moaned. "But don't do it, Louis. I thank you for the thought. But you know, I mentioned it before did I not, that I've been counseled otherwise? To face it, face the fact that he will die, that all those I knew in moral life will soon be lost to me? To... to watch it happen? I've been told that if I don't, my vampire consciousness, personality, whatever, will be stunted forever. And after my experiences in mortal life... well, I won't choose that for myself. I want to be whole."

Louis tilted his head to one side and considered what I had said. "Who was it who counseled you thus?"

Ah God, what to say? This was it, the tip of the iceberg. The start of the questions that I could never, ever answer! I couldn't even divulge Marius' name, could I? Or his existence! I knew I damned well better not. He'd told me that himself, and he'd made the penalty clear.

"Louis, I--" I began, but that was when we heard the noise. Or noises, I should say.

Both of us.

No need for preternatural senses to pick up these sounds.

First it was a horrified scream, or rather a woman's incoherent screech, and then the loud retort of a gunshot in the house.

And then the screaming once again, coming this time louder, panicked, and hysterical.

"Mon Dieu, non!" the screaming came. "I told Louis to lock his pistols away, and he wouldn't, and now look at what it's come to for the poor old blind Marquis!"

I don't think Louis heard his mother's screams; by then I was running at preternatural speed to gain the house, and I was pulling him along, so fast he must have been disorientated and incapable of sorting speech from the rush of wind in his ears.

But I heard.

And that was when I knew that my father hadn't been talking for effect when he'd said that perhaps he should just oblige me and die, since that was all he had left to offer me, the only solace I would accept.

But mon Dieu, Marius had counseled me to watch the marquis die, not to push him to it!

Part the Twenty-Ninth


The marquis was downstairs in Louis' office, slumped across the desk, a pistol hanging limply from his right hand, blood flowing over the mahogany and the paperwork as he lay there.

Louis' mother was there too, but she wasn't doing anything to help, was she? No, she was just staring at the scene and caterwauling. And everybody was coming, roused by her screams, streaming down the stairs from the upstairs bedrooms. Sophie, the few servants who lived in...

I rushed into the room, pulling Louis after me, and saw at once that my father was not dead, not yet, although he was bleeding so badly that unless I did something about that, it wouldn't be long at all...

The room was dimly lit by the candle Louis' mother had brought down. I read at once in her mind that she had heard suspicious noises, the sound of someone going through Louis' desk, and in the dark. She had thought it must be a thief, and had gone straight to Louis' room to rouse him, and found it empty. So she had come down herself to rout the criminal --actually, for all I truly did dislike Louis' mother, I had to respect that-- and instead had found the old blind man fumbling in the dark. By candlelight she had seen the pistol, seen him awkwardly loading it and priming it with the supplies he'd found in the lower desk drawer. She, of course, had begun to scream, perhaps the very worst reaction she could possibly have had.

Startled, my father had rushed into action, taken poor aim at his own head (well, he was blind, after all), and pulled the trigger forthwith.

And now he was bleeding badly enough to die from the wound, but apart from that he wasn't seriously injured. Well, I suppose it was serious enough to him, but I speak from a vampire's perspective. There wasn't anything there that I couldn't heal; specifically, the bullet hadn't entered his brain; I knew that with my finely tuned preternatural senses.

For a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity, but which really lasted less than an instant, I'm sure, I just stood there staring, as dumbstruck as Louis. Of course, he actually had cause to be off-kilter. I'd dragged him toward the house at an unnatural rate of speed. That alone would have disoriented him.

But me?

I was just shocked, I suppose, that my father had actually made good on his earlier insinuations. That when he had said he was sorry... well, hell. Maybe the horrible old man actually was sorry, actually could fell remorse. And it came to me all in a rush that as much as I wanted him to die at times, I didn't want it to be like this. No, not like this, with me responsible.

Strange that a vampire would flinch at death like this, and especially at the death of an evildoer such as my father, but still, I couldn't let things end, not this way.

And I sensed from the blood gushing from his head wound, pooling all across the desk and dripping upon the floor, that if I intended to save his life, I didn't have much time to waste. Certainly not enough to get rid of Louis' mother, or his sister, who had come in now with a four-taper candelabra, throwing the hideous scene into ever greater illumination.

I leapt across the room in one smooth motion that must have looked bizarre -- much the way I had twisted and danced that one time onstage -- and turning my back to the Pointe du Lacs, I straightway gashed my own wrist and let the blood flow into the wound across my father's temple and ear.

Turning my back, though, that did me precious little good, for Louis wasn't reeling so much that he wouldn't try to come and help me deal with my father's injury. He didn't see my fangs slice into my vein but he marked well enough that I was adding blood to the injury.

"Mon Dieu," I heard him breathe, and that was the first I realized that he was alongside me. My attention on my task, I'd stopped paying mind to all else.

But Louis' exclamation, a blend of fascination, horror, and disbelief, quickly made me realize that I had to deal with not only my father, but also with every witness to this little scene.

Oh, how I wished then that I had Marius' potent powers, that I could make all the candles in the room wink out upon command. How much easier it would be to plunge us all into darkness so no one could see my healing blood causing the wound to knit together and then scab, that scab healing with immortal speed into clean, fresh flesh as smooth and unmarked as an innocent baby's!

But short of leaving my father and extinguishing the candles with my hand, I had to deal with the fact that my actions were visible.

Louis was shaking by then. "What, what are you doing?" he gasped, still caught up in a mortal perspective of blood that really required one not to spill it all over one's own father, no matter what the circumstances. And then he saw the healing underway, and his gasp became a pain-laced moan as the reality he had always lived with shattered into glasslike shards that cut at his consciousness. "That can't be happening!" he said, the words emerging rather shrill.

His alarm had drawn Sophie to his side, although not the mother. She had collapsed into a chair by then and was fanning herself theatrically. Several slaves had entered the room, but they were uncertain as to what to do. After all, the master of the plantation was right there with me alongside the injured man; it wasn't their place to interfere or offer suggestions or even approach unless they were bid to.

But Sophie had no hesitation in stepping forward to see what had alarmed her brother.

When she saw me bleeding across the old Marquis, she screamed. And that wasn't the worst of it, for my potent blood meant that the gash across my wrist didn't stay open long, and ignoring Louis and Sophie, I yanked it to my mouth, bared my fangs, and ripped myself open once again.

She let out another ear-splitting scream, and not just because she had seen the fangs protruding from beneath my lip. It was also the fact that I had injured myself so severely, and without the slightest hesitation. That horrified her. And of course her own tableau of reality was splitting wide open as she watched me try to heal my father.

All this took place within the span of just a few seconds, you must understand.

Louis wrapped an arm around his sister and held her close. "It's all right," he whispered to her. Over the worst of his own shock, by then, he felt up to the task of comforting his sister. Of course it only stood to reason that he had recovered first; unlike Sophie, Louis knew me to be a creature quite apart from himself. Immortal. Inhuman. Sophie had no such knowledge to bolster her.

She was shaking horribly, tremors of fear and revulsion convulsing her slender frame, shaking so badly that Louis shook too, for no other reason than that he was holding her tight.

"It's not all right!" she wailed. "He... he... he cut himself, and--"

Well, I'd had enough mortal complications by then. I'd have straightened things out sooner, except for the fact that I was single-minded about my task. But my father was nowhere near death, by then, so I could afford to spare a little of my focus to deal with Sophie, and the mother, and the slaves.

But first I had to deal with Louis, for what was he doing but trying to console his sister and calm her down? That much was fine; it was the way he was doing it that was awkward. For me, that was.

"Sophie," he had interrupted her, his voice low and sincere, "it is all right. He isn't like us. He has powers--"

Enough of that, I thought. Almost giddy from blood loss, I was, but not so much so that I couldn't think straight.

"Quiet, Louis," I commanded him.

He gave me an astonished glare, and was steeling himself to defy me. Which was fine, in normal circumstances. I wanted him to be strong, my equal, my partner in all things. But I couldn't let him defy me in this.

"Sophie," I said, speaking right on top of whatever words had begun pouring next from Louis' mouth. My tone was hypnotic, mesmerizing, guaranteed to draw her attention and keep it. By then, my wrist had healed and I saw no need to rip it open again; my father would be fine. Well, perhaps not fine, but not much worse off than before, either.

So I pulled away from him, withdrew my wrist back into my sleeve, then grabbed the pitcher near to hand and poured a bit of water across the side of my father's face so that all could see that he was fine. Turning to Sophie, finally, I held her consciousness captive with my powerful grey gaze.

"It is all right," I said, my tones soothing, lulling her.

Louis stared, astonished, almost mesmerized himself by the sight of the raw energy churning in my eyes. He'd never seen it before, not like this, not at full force. With him, I was so careful, you see. It was my worst fear that I'd overwhelm his mortal mind --no, that wasn't true; my worst fear was that he wouldn't love me, after all-- but anyway, for all I'd put images in his head that once, I had never even tried to change his memories.

And that took power. Serious power. Sophie was getting a full measure of it, and Louis standing alongside her was almost in thrall, himself.

Almost, but not quite. I knew what I was doing; my power was focused.

I didn't want to hypnotize Louis, or deceive him about what had really passed in this room, tonight. He was fated to share the night at my side; it was just as well that he realize here and now more of what that would mean.

I must say, of all the mortals I've ever forced to think this or that, Sophie was among the most resistant. Strong-minded, that girl. It was no wonder that Louis loved her with a fierce devotion; she was worth it.

"He... he's hurt," she murmured, her voice wandering strangely. "You... you're hurt."

"No, no," I gently persuaded her, even as I upped the power in my gaze. "The gun went off but he missed, don't you remember? No harm done." And as I said this, I threw my power all across the room like a blanket, enveloping everyone except Louis; around him I erected a special shield. "He fainted from the shock, and then you all came running to help, but he doesn't need help, does he? He only needs to be put to bed."

She turned her head, a slow motion, hard for her to accomplish, and stared down at my father, saw the healed skin on his temple. "But... the blood," she remarked, her mind still fighting my control.

"There's no blood," I told her, still softly, still gently. "There's no blood at all. It's a trick of the light, it's the hour making you maudlin."

"Oh," she said, dizzy, clutching Louis, accepting it. Of course I was lying left, right, and center; there was blood everywhere. The desk was coated with it, the carpet as well.

"But Louis said you're not like us," she remembered aloud, the comment more a question than a remark.

"Oh, Louis knows I'm like you," I said in tones quite light and airy. "Isn't that so, Louis?"

He glared at me, but as much as he resented my forcing him to lie to his sister, he did understand what was prompting me.

"Yes," he said, the noise grating and discordant in the air. But he was still glaring at me. He had figured out by then what I was doing to his sister... what I was doing to all of them... and he didn't like it. Not one bit.

"Send the servants away," I told Sophie, then. "Send them all back to bed and tell them that the old Marquis is fine, remember that. He wasn't even wounded. But he needs to be put back to bed; Louis and I shall see to it."

"Yes, of course," she murmured, and went to speak to the group hovering by the door. I dove quickly into their minds and saw that they were convinced of my story, all of them. I gave everyone a few final suggestions that would sustain that story, even during the day when I couldn't meddle... and then I specially checked on Louis' mother to be sure she was still utterly in my thrall. If anyone would try to use this incident to further her own agenda, it would be her... but all was fine; she wasn't going to disrupt my plan.

"Go to your mother and help her to bed," I told Louis then. Madame de Pointe du Lac wouldn't make it on her own, I could see that. The hysteria had drained her terribly, and what little energy she had left after that had been consumed by the mesmerizing force of my suggestions, my reordering of reality to suit myself.

Louis moved away from me, the movement as violent as a flinch, although far more voluntary. And if that wasn't enough proof of his anger to suit me, there were always his eyes, always so expressive his eyes... and right now, they sparked with fierce green fire.

"Louis," I said, smiling slightly at his indignation. For what, after all, had he expected me to do? Tell the whole room that I was a vampire? That my blood healed all mortal wounds? I couldn't do that, and he knew it.

"Don't say anything to disrupt the pretense I have troubled to make real for her, for them," I cautioned him.

Louis actually clenched his fists, he was so angry, and in a low warning tone, growled, "Go to the devil!"

Been there, I almost quipped, but then in came to me in a horrifying rush that that saying that was no joke, that I had once actually been there... in hell, touring hell no less, the devil at my side. Except, he didn't call himself anything one would expect. Not Satan, certainly...

A devil named Memnoch?

But that was ridiculous! A devil named Memnoch, who wanted me to be some sort of hellish lieutenant? Utterly absurd. I mean, I know I'm sometimes deliciously evil, but I certainly wasn't suited to rule the fiery lake!

I pushed such nonsense from my mind and looked about for Louis.

Louis was gone by then, and with him the last of the mortal witnesses to this little fracas. I turned to my father and knelt at his side, my face level with his. His eyes were closed, and he looked peaceful, not like someone who had just shot himself in the head. But that was my doing, of course. I'd spellbound him --conscious, unconscious, it didn't matter-- so even he didn't know that he'd almost succeeded in killing himself. He wouldn't even know that he'd left the safe, comfortable bedroom that Louis had provided.

And no one was going to tell him otherwise; I'd seen to that. They wouldn't go within a mile of the topic, for fear that speaking of such things might cause a recurrence of his suicidal behavior. And for all I knew, it just might.

I sighed, and laid my hand on the bloodied desk --have to clean up all that, I would-- and quietly asked my father:

"Well, sir? What do we do with you, now?"

Part the Thirtieth

I must say, Louis could not have been kinder, or more supportive, or more every inch a gentleman as he and I dealt together with the mess my father had made.

I mean, when we began working, I was aware that Louis was madder than blazes at what I'd done to Sophie, and to a lesser extent, to his mother. And he was reeling with anger that I hadn't told him about being able to control thoughts, or heal like that...

And beneath his boiling fury there was a whole slew of questions he was just dying to ask... well, questions to ask and accusations to throw both, actually.

But he said none of it, not while there were urgent matters pressing on me.

First we had to help my father to bed, and unless we wanted him to wake up bloodied, we had to clean him, didn't we?

I carried him up the stairs to the suite Louis had allotted him, and after Louis kindly laid a towel across the hardwood floor in the dressing room, I began peeling off his sodden nightshirt. In particular one sleeve was dripping with blood. Funny, the smell of that blood. I mean, even when I'm well-fed, the scent of mortal blood never fails to rouse my thirst in some degree. But not his, and that despite the fact that I'd just lost blood to heal him. In normal circumstances, I'd be ravenous. But these weren't normal circumstances. Just as well. The last thing I needed right now was to be thirsting.

Although, if Louis offered, I'd certainly be happy to restore myself with a small measure of the honey that ran through his precious veins...

Well, let's just say that I wasn't exactly expecting him to offer such a thing. Not yet, at any rate. I doubted he could even perceive when I was in need. And I doubted even more that he'd be willing to satisfy my need, for all he regularly brought his need to me, these days...

Enough of those thoughts, though. My father needed my care now, didn't he?

I stripped off his garment, and without a word, began to wash him clean of blood. Squeamish, I'm not. A vampire can't be. Well, not one who intends to survive, at any rate. Louis quietly handed me wet washcloths that he dipped into a basin he had brought in, even apologizing that the water wasn't warm, and asking me if I would like a maid woken up again to see to heating a proper bath?

"No," I murmured, my thoughts wandering far afield as I bathed my father yet tried not to see his naked form. "This is fine. Thank you, Louis."

He inclined his head slightly in reply, and I heard him thinking that perhaps he should offer to do this task, as I seemed vaguely uncomfortable in the role of doting son... but then he didn't in fact offer, because he decided that if I wanted him to take charge, I would ask him.

Ah, that warmed my heart. As angry as Louis was, he still did have some measure of trust in his heart. He knew I loved him enough to rely on him... if needed. But of course it wasn't needed.

I could handle this.

Right, right, I could handle it. No matter that as I dried my father and my hands inadvertently brushed that part of him, that particular part which had caused me so much pain... I had to grit my teeth to keep from flinching back. Grit my teeth so hard and so awkwardly that my fangs chewed right through my lip... and Louis saw.

He saw my wounded flesh heal itself ever so much faster than had my father's downstairs.

His eyes widened, the questions in his head dancing with greater fervor... but still, he pushed them aside to see to my father's needs, and mine.

As I propped my father up to dress him in the nightshirt Louis provided, Louis gathered together the discarded bloodied clothes and towels, and looking at them, said, "I don't know as these will wash clean..."

"Burn them," I replied, my father in my arms now as I strode back in to lay him in his bed and tuck the covers around his pale form. Truly, he would be all right, but he had lost a considerable amount of blood. Louis knew that -- Louis believed that fact responsible for the way the marquis hadn't once woken while I had ministered to him. But of course the truth was that I'd kept my father's consciousness from rising. I didn't want him to know what he'd done, or what I'd had to do to make him presentable...

"Burn them?" Louis echoed, confused. "But even stained fabric can be put to other uses; to burn them would be so very wasteful, don't you see?"

"One way or another they're going to burn, in any case," I told Louis, passing a weary hand over my eyes as I stood up from the bedside. "My blood's on them too, you see," I explained. "And the sun will ignite my blood. It's why I can't stand the least amount of daylight, Louis."

He nodded as though that made sense, when I knew in fact that it didn't, not to him. But he didn't want to trouble me with questions, not now. Well, not that kind of questions, anyway.

"Does he need aught else?" Louis asked, glancing uncertainly toward my father.

I sighed. Quite probably he did, but I wasn't sure I could do much about that.

"Let's go downstairs," I said, evading the question.

"Ah, yes," Louis murmured. "The blood there..." He laughed, softly. Not amused, not really. More like wry. "It would ignite too, I suppose. And then Pointe du Lac would burn. Mon Dieu, I don't know as I could bear that, my beautiful mansion set ablaze."

Once again, my mind lit up with visions of just that, of the plantation house burning, viciously burning... but it was Louis himself who had set the fire, Louis who put the torch to the steps as slaves screamed and ran... but it was Louis and not Louis, for in this fleeting, horrifying vision, he was a vampire, his pale skin aglow like the luminous moon above, his green eyes demonic with the fire of a thirst he suffered but would not feed... and dear God above, he was starved, emaciated, his cheeks gaunt, his fingers thin bones barely covered with skin...

"Lestat, what ails you?" Louis asked, abruptly jerking me from my reverie.

"Wrong?" I stammered. "Oh, fire. I was thinking of fire, and your beautiful house destroyed. Awful thing to contemplate. Yes, let's get that blood cleaned up. God knows how much I spilled on your desk, on the carpets..."

We worked silently after that, Louis sensing that I needed time with my thoughts, Louis graciously giving me that time. And once the downstairs rug was rolled up, the floor beneath scrubbed clean, Louis' desk restored to order, we took all the bloodied clothes, and the rug, far out into the fields and there lit them on fire.

Louis' eyes glowed strangely as he watched that fire, and when I looked at him with some concern, he shrugged. "Fire's ever so terribly destructive, but it is beautiful as well, don't you think?" he questioned. "The way the flames leap..." His mind veered onto another track, though, when he looked at me. "Lestat, your jacket, your shirt..."

"Ah yes, of course," I murmured, and shrugged them both off. At feeding I'm quite neat, of course, so much so that never had a stray blood droplet on my clothes remained to disturb Louis when I came to him each night. But healing is another matter entirely. Inherently messy, all that blood...

I tossed my garments on the fire and stretched, rather enjoying the furtive looks of interest that Louis cast my way. He hadn't seen as much of me as this before, I don't think. And of course I'd not seen him unclothed in the slightest, save for the night when I'd visited him in his sickbed, and bathed his face and chest...

A tightness, a familiar yearning, constricted my own chest as I remembered.

Part the Thirty-First


"So, Louis," I murmured, sitting down beside the fire, which was waning now, "are you still angry?"

"Angry," he repeated, thinking about that. "No, I suppose not. It seems to have faded off. I didn't like what you did to Sophie, of course. Don't do that again."

"Not unless it's needful," I conceded. "Sophie's under my special protection now, don't you know that? I wouldn't hurt her for the world. And tonight, well, what I did was to protect myself, my secrets, of course it was. But Louis, it serves to protect her almost as much. Do you really want her whole world shattered by the knowledge that creatures such as I exist? That's hard for mortals to accept, Louis. Most who learn of us go mad."

Louis sighed, and sat down facing me, and met my gaze. "Is that so?" he pondered. "But you had no hesitation in sharing such knowledge with me, of shattering my world, did you?"

I had to smile. How much he thought he knew! And how little he really did understand! "Louis, you've no idea how I hesitated. Weeks I watched you, waiting for the right time. But then I had to act, because your drunken despair was growing all the time, and I feared you would end up dead, stabbed in some alley, lost to me for all time. And I didn't fear the knowledge would shatter you, not really, for that only tends to happen when a mortal learns of our... select club, shall we say... and finds himself aware of immortality but locked outside it, condemned to mortal death."

Louis tilted his head to one side, the sweep of his black hair falling beguilingly to the side, and said quietly, "Us, you say. Our... Of whom do you speak? Who are these other vampires, Lestat?"

Well, I couldn't tell him about Marius, could I? Not even the name. Not a single detail. Yes, best leave Marius out entirely.

And then it came to me that I really shouldn't name any of the others, either, or divulge where their lairs were... not unless I was sure that Louis was going to join me in the night.

And I was sure of that --sometimes--. But at other times, he seemed so distant, so very distant! How could I know for sure? And as I'd said, it wasn't in me to force him...

And yet the overriding factor guiding me was the fact that those rules were someone else's rules. Not my own. Marius' regulations I would respect because I simply had to; nothing must endanger my Louis. Ever.

But the rest...

Well, I heard myself talking, answering him.

"My mother is one, but you know about her already," I murmured. "I don't know where she is, these days... She knew I was coming here, to my father, but I've no doubt that she will stay well clear of the Americas as long as my father lives. I don't know how many years or centuries will pass before I see her once again..." I sighed.

"And besides the Marquise?" Louis questioned.

"I've only met a few others," I disclaimed. "And we didn't get along so well. They... well, they tortured Nicolas whilst he was still mortal, if you must know. They kept him imprisoned and feasted off him, the filthy demons. That was what made his soul, always dark, turn completely black. And before that they latched onto Nicolas, they were hell-bent on torturing me, but I wasn't disposed to let them. Actually, what they did to Nicky was a means of getting at me."

"I take it these were the power-obsessed demons, not the fawning sycophants?" Louis questioned, quoting what I'd told him.

Impressed, I slanted him a glance. Damned preternatural already, that memory... What would he be like after the blood changed him?

"Only one was a power-obsessed demon," I explained. "And even he... well, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on him. He was following things he himself had been taught. Dark things, things I couldn't believe and saw no earthly use for. But still, what he did to Nicky, what it all led to... these things were hard for me to endure, Louis."

"I know," Louis said. "You're sensitive, I knew that almost from the first."

And then, sensing that his questions had roused a well of anguish deep within me, Louis didn't press on, not even to ask where it was that I'd known these other vampires.

Thank God, I thought, for I felt then, more keenly than ever, the potent temptation which Marius had warned me of. Tell one part and you will start to tell another, then another, then another... So true, so very true. For if I had spoken more of Armand, who knows what I might have heard myself reveal? Louis might well have asked about Armand's maker!

And I would have had to lie to him, or at the very least evade the question so completely as to offend him deeply...

I shuddered. It wasn't to be thought on, it just wasn't.

It seemed that Louis had been staring at me for a long time, suddenly, and I began to wonder if I had lapsed into one of those mental states in which time itself has little meaning.

"Yes?" I asked him, swiveling my gaze his way.

Inexplicably, he blushed. Or perhaps it was not so very inexplicable, after all, for he said then, "Are you not cold, Lestat, sitting there... like that?"

His voice caught on the final two words.

"Oh, I feel cold," I told him. "But not quite as you do. I don't know how to explain it. It's like a feeling outside myself, somehow. I'm aware of it, but it's not something that I suffer. Does that make sense?"

"No," Louis answered, smiling. "It sounds nice, though, I must admit. So tell me more about what I saw happen in my office tonight. Your blood has a healing character?"

When I nodded, Louis went on, "But can you heal any injury?"

"I don't think so," I murmured. "It's not been put to the test, let us say. Tonight, for instance. If that bullet had pierced my father's brain, I don't think I could have undone the damage. But my blood will force wounded flesh to knit itself together."

"You yourself must be indestructible," Louis whispered, rather as though in awe of the concept.

I stretched my arms skyward, and saw Louis' gaze rivet itself to the play of my muscles as I moved. Ah, beautiful. He was so very attracted to me. I could hear him thinking, of course. It was a wonder he could keep hands off.

On the other hand, he was such a gentleman. I began to wonder what I might do to break him of such habits...

"Well, no," I slowly replied. "Indestructible, no. Just resilient. But the sunlight can harm me, you know that."

"And what else?" Louis pressed.

I laughed, all at once uncomfortable even though I knew he had no evil designs upon my life. But who likes to discuss the ways in which death can come? Mortals don't even like it. Immortals, I fancy, like it far less.

"Louis," I began to say, but he cut me off.

"Oh, I know you can't relish contemplating such things," he said, reading my expression although not my mind, of course. "But don't you see that I must know? I can't go into this blindly, Lestat. I must understand everything before I can make an informed choice."

"All right," I sighed, for he did have a point. "The fire, then. That's the other thing. Fire or sunlight can turn me to ashes, Louis. Rumor has it that I could survive even that, but if the ashes are scattered, then no."

Louis nodded.

And although his expression was as benign, indeed as loving as it had been the moment before, all at once a horrible sensation stole my breath.

And visions took hold of my mind, visions more powerful than I'd felt as of yet. Horrid, horrid visions! Louis. Louis and a child, a girl child. The girl, plotting my death, Louis standing by and watching. Only he hadn't known what would really kill me, and so I'd survived.

But the vision was false, because now Louis did know what to do, how to kill me. I felt sick, clear through.

And Louis noticed.

And to my vast surprise... nay, shock... he put two and two together and came up with a reasonable explanation for why I suddenly looked so peaked. An explanation that even took into account that I was a creature unlike him.

"You're hungry," he gasped suddenly, remembering all the blood I had lost in healing my father. "Oh! You said that blood is what sustains you, and you're.... er, short, aren't you?"

"True," I only said. And then, although I wasn't weakened in any true sense, it suddenly seemed like such a huge amount of trouble just to stay sitting upright. I flopped onto my back and studied the stars.

I wasn't trying to deceive Louis, but he misunderstood my action.

"Mon Dieu, it's worse than I thought," he moaned, and sidling over to me, he placed his hands beneath my head and gently cradled me. Ah, now that felt nice. When had anyone ever taken care of me? Never, I had to think. Never. Until now, until Louis.

I think I sighed in pure pleasure, but to Louis it must have sounded as though in defeat... or perhaps as though I were gasping for breath.

"Here," he suddenly said, and stretched his neck a little as I lay there looking up at him.

The world around me went black for just an instant.

"Are you offering...." I hesitated. I knew what he meant, of course I did. It was there in his mind. But still, I wanted him to say it. It was important to me, and to him both, that things like this be clear, be spoken aloud.

"Are you offering me blood, Louis?" I asked, and he nodded.

"You have to tell me so," I urged him. "In words."

Louis paled, his hands holding my head shaking a bit. But then he said it. Well, sort of. "You were wounded too, tonight," he ventured. "And you gave of yourself to save your father. I... I want to be there for you in the same way."

And then his hands beneath my head pushed a little, urging me to sit up.

I did.

And as he stretched his neck again in invitation, I rose up on my knees and gathered him to me, and bent my head until my lips grazed the tender throbbing vein in his neck.

Gooseflesh rose all across his arms and back and shoulders, a tremor not of fear, not of revulsion, but of anticipation... and something close to desire.

I arched my jaw and laid my fangs against his soft, white throat, my hands caressing his shoulders, then dropping lower to rub firm circles on the beautiful muscles that padded his chest. Of course, I was feeling all this through his shirt and coat -- fresh ones he had changed into after we'd finished cleaning up the blood in his office. If I'd been thinking straight, I'd have changed too. But my mind was on weightier matters... or maybe I had just been angling for the opportunity to strip before Louis' eyes.

No matter. I held him now in my arms, and that was all I needed.

And his thoughts as I held him, they were so beautiful, so sharply defined in love that I think I sighed aloud. "Oh, Louis," I said. "I do so love you."

"Yes," he said, his voice low, sultry and rife with that desire that was growing all the while. "And I... I..."

He loved me too, I knew he did. But he couldn't say that, not yet.

"I can't stand to see you in such pain," he said instead. "It took more than you could spare, didn't it, the healing? So..." He swallowed, but then he said it, the word he hadn't said to me before. "Drink, Lestat."

And he moved to open himself to me more fully, his shoulders leaning back against the support of my hands, his head tilting fully to the side so that his neck was absolutely exposed. Mine for the taking.

Part the Thirty-Second


But I couldn't take him, not like this. Not when his misapprehensions were standing between us... not quite lies, but something far too close for me to bear, either.

I moved away from his neck, my hands still loving him, and told him in a low, regretful voice, "To drink, Louis... that would be more wonderful than you can imagine. Truly. But I'm not in pain, not the way you mean. I didn't lose so very much blood that I'm in dire need, Louis mine. If I seem... distraught... well, the cause is emotional, I must think."

"Because you love me so much and I've not reciprocated?" Louis asked.

A low, soft chuckle from me. "Ah, I didn't expect perfection between us in one fell blow," I replied. "I'm not disappointed in you, Louis. We've come far, actually."

I heard Louis thinking that I must then be upset about my father. But he said nothing in this regard, for the last thing he wanted was to make me dwell yet longer on these sorrows.

"I'm sorry," he said then, most quietly. Almost inaudibly. "You've done so much for me, Lestat. And I've never done a thing in return..." He drew in a shaky, shuddering breath.

"Ah, don't say that, my Louis," I returned. "You're magnificent. And good for me. You make me want to be good. As good as I can, at any rate. And you've warmed my soul and thrilled my body, time and again, when you've trusted my love enough to find your pleasure in my arms."

"But I want... I want..." he murmured, and then all in a rush. "I thought you were hurting badly yes, from lack of blood. And I wanted to help you, if I could. But now I start to realize that there's more to it than altruism, or friendship...." He sighed, deeply content and yet troubled all at once. "I want you to drink, Lestat, that's the simple truth that all my fine sentiments and words seek to obscure. But I want it, yes. Not because you're hungry or in need, but because..."

"Because?" I prompted when his words fell off.

"Because that's the way you make love, is it not?" Louis questioned. "And I want that with you... Because you're dear to me."

It wasn't quite those three magic words "I love you," but the feeling was the same, clear through. Someday, I guess he'd say the words and admit to meaning them.

"Oh, Louis," I moaned. "You're beautiful, do you know that? You are absolutely and marvelously beautiful."

He laughed, thinking that it was strange to hear that, him being a man, but it was wonderful as well as strange. And then his thoughts clouded over with uncertainty, and moving his head, moving his lips to mine, he kissed me softly.

The first time he'd initiated a kiss, I do believe.

And then, even more uncertainly, "Lestat... what's wrong? Don't you... er, want me?"

"Don't I want you?" I gasped. "Oh, Louis, if only you knew! For weeks I've hungered for you, partaking of strangers who meant nothing to me, all the while longing for that special essence which is you, pure you. I... I just find that now the time has come, I fear I shall frighten you, and that would kill me Louis, it surely would."

"Not so resilient, after all," he whispered.

"No," I agreed. "Fragile. When it comes to you."

Louis ran his hands over my bare chest as he kissed me yet again.

And then, "Now, Lestat. You won't frighten me. You can't, don't you see that? I know already, what it's like. And I've been thinking on it for a while..."

"Ah, but you were in a drunken stupor the last time I came upon you," I said.

"Not stupor," Louis said. "Not once you were there with me. It was... enchantment."

Well, a saint, I'm not. I'd tried to be noble, because I sensed deep in my soul that it was wrong to drink of him under false pretenses. Utterly wrong. But he'd admitted that he wanted it, truly wanted it, that it wasn't just a means by which to provide me blood to replace that I'd lost earlier.

And then he groaned, "Please, Lestat. I... I need it, need to feel you, need to be part of you, to know I can please you as you so often pleasure me--"

And that was it. No more nobility of purpose, or of waiting; no more making sure that Louis was likewise sure.

I loved him.

I needed him.

And now, he could admit that he needed me just as much.

"I love you," I said, and gathering him close against my bare chest, stroked his back and shoulders as I pulled his neck to my mouth, his beautiful elongated neck, the vein there pulsing, already in tempo to my own heartbeat, the rhythm beautiful and utterly utterly mine. "Louis," I gasped, in the moment that with perfect love, I gently and carefully slid my fangs into his neck.

No pain, no pain, not a single glimmer of pain, I thought as I felt his warm flesh enclose my canines in an embrace more profound than any we'd shared for months. Louis, my Louis must feel nothing but pure sublime pleasure, must know from his deepest heart that it is love that flows from him to me, love in the blood...

He gasped as I pierced him, gasped and moaned, but there was only delight and love in the bite, no suffering, no doubt, and no hesitation. He yielded to me so perfectly and so completely that I felt myself drawn into the embrace, into the swoon as never before. Not even the first time with him, when I'd drunk in his pain and suffering, and tried to drink them away, had been remotely like this. He hadn't yielded consciously that time, he'd been too drunk to fight, that was all. And chasing death besides. Welcoming me because his mortal instincts misunderstood all...

But now, ah, this cognizant yielding of not only a mortal, but a mortal whom one loves with all one's heart...

It was magnificent, beyond belief.

It was everything I had wanted, everything I had waited for.

It was fulfillment.

And it wasn't only carnal, although that was certainly part of it. Strange to explain. Impossible, perhaps. Because it was erotic in the extreme, and yet retained a purity, a sanctity, that demanded absolute respect.

Ah, why dissemble? It was love, that was what it was.

Louis' blood was again that rich red burgundy I'd so often fantasized of, but this time it wasn't clouded with alcohol. Undiluted Louis. And his thoughts as well, they weren't made desperate by despair. Undiluted Louis.

And he was healthy, this time, his blood a feast in of itself.

But I didn't drink much. Well, of course I didn't. And it wasn't just thoughts of his well-being that stopped me. It was also the sure knowledge that too much Louis, all at once, would overwhelm me so much that I surely would lose control. If I took just a drop in excess of my self-control, I knew I'd drain him to the dregs.

And then I'd have to drag him into the night instead of wait until he fully wanted it, enough to ask.

But ah, was it hard to stop my little drink. My whole body was being filled, and fulfilled, tingles of delight racing across my every vein, my heartbeat thudding in rhythm to his own, that pleasure of the senses washing over me to drown me in Louis, Louis, Louis...

And it was the same for him. Or similar, at least. Aware of everything, of his least breath, of every hair rising on his skin as shivers raced through his arms and chest, I knew what he felt, what he wanted.

My own pleasure was only redoubled by the certainty of his. And of course I could feel his, could feel every tremor that coursed through him, could hear his thoughts as he grappled with and then accepted the reality that this, too, was making love, and that he was enjoying it, and that even if he hadn't been, he loved me enough to be content merely in the pleasure I was receiving from him and through him...

Oh, Louis...

But I slid my fangs out, then, and held him close, just lapping at the blood streaming and then oozing from the tiny, careful, delicate twin wounds I'd made.

He began shaking then, shaking terribly, and clutching at me, his hands like claws, he groaned that it couldn't be over, that I must take more, that this was more perfect than he'd ever envisioned and he'd never imagined that two souls could be joined that way, let alone two bodies, and on and on and on, until I could scarcely bear the listening.

"No, Louis," I said. "Shhh, just hush. I love you too, all right?"

"Yes, I do love you," he said then, in tones of wonder as though he had himself only just realized it. Strange, when I knew that he had loved me for some time... "I love you, Lestat," he repeated the words, and I could tell that he found them almost unbelievable, although true.

"I know," I told him. "I know."

"But no, I love you," he said, still marveling at it. Intent on convincing me, he was, because he thought that I didn't follow his full meaning. "Not as a brother, Lestat. Well yes, actually, as a brother. But more, so much much more. I... I want to be with you!"

Part the Thirty-Third


"You want to be with me?" I confirmed, and Louis sighed.

"Yes, oh yes," he said. "Tonight. No, not tonight. There's not much time left, is there? Tomorrow then. Yes, tomorrow. Only, Lestat? Not here. We can't, not here, with my family so close by! I... I want to go into New Orleans. Can we do that, do you think?"

His thoughts were veering left, right, and center, excitement overtaking him, the excitement of his new-found love, that flush of intoxication that comes with it, the rush of adrenaline making him giddy. So giddy, in fact, that I couldn't read him with any accuracy. Neither could I understand him all that well, actually. Can we go into New Orleans?

Well, I suppose we could, but it hardly seemed necessary. Still, if it would make Louis happy, I was game.

"Certainly," I answered him. "New Orleans will be a splendid place for this new beginning."

Louis smiled, but all at once the expression went shy. "Can we rent a discreet hotel room, do you think?" he pressed. "I... I'm at rather a loss, as you know. But you... Well, do you know how such affairs are usually conducted?

Uh-oh... something about his phrasing, about his intonation, gave me pause. But even then I still really did think I'd followed his meaning. He was just on-edge, that was all. Who wouldn't be? Really, it was no wonder he was acting sort of jumpy all of a sudden. There was so much he didn't know -- and yet he was trusting me to bring him across to me with all my skill... ah, it warmed my heart, it really did.

"Louis," I said, my voice as loving as I could possibly make it --pretty damned loving, considering how I regard mon Louis-- "There are some things you should know, some preparations you should undertake during the day tomorrow so that when I give you the Dark Gift, it will be perfect--"

I stopped because he looked so absolutely shocked by what I had just said.

And the he spoke, the shock resounding through his vocal chords so that the words resembled the twanging of a taut string. "Dark Gift?" he echoed, quite clearly taken aback by my assumption.

I'd gotten it wrong, I suddenly realized.

"That wasn't what you meant, was it?" I asked, trying not to let disappointment color my tone an ugly shade. But I'm not entirely certain that I succeeded. "You want to be with me, you said? What did you mean, then?"

Louis blushed a fascinating shade. Beet red, I do believe it's called. And his fabulous command of the French language vanished entirely. He looked away, and merely answered, "You know."

"No, I don't," I patiently explained, although I was beginning to suspect something quite lovely might be in the offing...

"Yes, you do," Louis insisted. "Don't... don't make me say it, Lestat. I... I know you like me to admit to things aloud. And I've said that I love you, and I do, I love you. But this... I'm not sure I can say it."

"Ah," I said, following him completely then, and understanding how hard it was for him to speak of his desires. I understood, yes. But I still did want to encourage him to come face to face with them. "Well, what can you say to me, Louis my love?" I softly asked.

A slight smile curled his lips when he heard the endearment.

"I thought you would know what I meant," he told me. "When I said I wanted to be *with* you. Not the Dark Gift, no. Not yet... but Lestat, the things we've done, the kissing, the way I'm with you... how easily I can find my pleasure...." He cleared his throat. "Um, do you know that with you, more and more as we grow closer, it's actually difficult not to... spend?"

"Is it?" I gently asked, loving this, loving the fact that he could say as much as he had. Ah, now that was trust. That Louis would know he could open himself like this before me, that he could let me peer down into the bottom of his soul. Of course, I did that all the time, mind-reading being a rather useful trick in that regard. But that had been furtive, and this was forthright. Forthright, and wonderful.

"Yes, it is," he confirmed, and then, his voice even smaller --for he was shy, my Gentleman Louis-- he continued, "and it just occurred to me in a blinding epiphany that I love you... did I tell you that, Lestat? That I love you?"

My, my, his mind was in an uproar indeed. But I said nothing of this. "Yes, you did," I answered him. "I love you, too, my precious Louis."

A new wave of color washed into his cheeks, yet he struggled forward. "So... so I thought... this love I feel, it's not just emotional. It has a physical presence, a powerful physical presence that demands release, and you just... you just practically worshipped me in the act of taking blood, didn't you? And that was marvelous, more so than I could have imagined, and it made me thing that there must surely be more that we can do, you and I, things beside kissing..."

"Oh, you would like to make love, you mean?" I asked, my disappointment tempered by this development, which was most assuredly something to be savored. Yes, yes, Louis could stay mortal for a while longer and I'd be in good graces about it if it meant that he wanted to deepen his physical bond to me...

Yes, I liked that. I liked that tremendously.

I hadn't had a mortal lover since I'd been mortal myself. And I know, I know, in my loneliness I'd tossed the phrase around rather liberally. But "mortal lover" meant merely that I'd loved some mortal with my vampire nature. And most often, killed them in so doing. But they died happy.

Louis was different. In the first place, I'd never kill him until he asked --ah, for one instant I had thought he'd been asking tonight... which only went to show you how carefully I had to proceed. We couldn't have a misunderstanding of that magnitude, we just couldn't. And in the second place, he'd be my mortal lover because he would love me with his mortal nature. Oh, glories of Heaven, I could hardly believe my ears.

Yet he had said it.

And what he had said was clear enough.

Louis looked away, embarrassed by my direct phrasing, by that phrase "make love," but then he did nod. And even braver, he ventured to say, "I begin to find it tiresome to... er, frolic in the great out-of-doors with you and return home with soiled garments."

Ah, genteel to the last. But I couldn't resist a gentle jest, I just couldn't.

"You were finding it tiresome, were you?" I prodded him. "Boring, was it?"

Louis smiled, and I thought he looked more at ease with his own desires than I'd seen him yet. But of course he would have to be, wouldn't he, with what he had just asked of me? And I'm not saying he was entirely comfortable, either. He was just... well, he was Louis. Charmingly shy, but ready to reach out towards me now.

"Oh, perhaps it wasn't precisely tiresome," he admitted, still smiling. "But I begin to suspect that there are better ways to spend our evenings together. And..."

"And?" I prompted.

Louis looked away, discomfited. "And you said to bring my need to you. A thousand times you said it, I must think. But I never have. I've been a coward, so passive it almost makes me ill to contemplate it... The same way I tried to let death take me, I've let the need just carry me along... undo me in your embrace, but never once have I been valiant enough to be honest about it. Honest with myself, and with you."

"Not so," I disagreed. "You told me you were trying. That's not passive, Louis. And then you've been blazingly honest this very night."

"Tomorrow, then?" he asked.

"Yes," I returned, smiling. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!" I almost told him to meet me outside the cathedral in New Orleans, but then it occurred to me that I had to be at Pointe du Lac when evening first fell.

Because I had to talk to my father, didn't I?

Well, actually I suppose that I didn't.

But I .... well, I can't claim that I wanted to. I did sense, however, some need to do so. It wasn't something I could explain. I just knew that refusing to speak to my father, as I'd done for so long, had only led to disaster. I didn't want him to take it into his fool head to go hunting out Louis' pistols again.

Which reminded me.

"I'd like you to do as your mother asked, and lock up your firearms," I told him. "Can you do that?"

Louis looked at me doubtfully. "I prefer them within easy reach if the slaves should revolt, Lestat. We hear stories sometimes..."

"If the slaves revolt and your guns are so accessible, what makes you think you'll be the one reaching for them first?" I asked.

"Oh, the slaves can be a menace," Louis disclaimed, "but at heart they're childlike savages, barely civilized. They couldn't handle a pistol properly without instruction!"

I was about to tell him that he was wrong about that, that it was only his biased --oh hell, racist-- mortal perspective imposing barriers and limits on his fellow humans, that they were every bit as intelligent and cultured as was he, just in ways he didn't recognize. But I didn't have to say any of this, for all at once Louis was conceding, "All right, for you, I'll do it. I know why you want them locked up, of course. We don't want another near-tragedy such as enveloped the house tonight."

I smiled, and thanked him, and Louis shrugged as though he had realized the matter held little import, after all. "Well," he said, explaining that shrug, "if there is a slave revolt I dare say you could just play your tricks on them all and make them go back to work, forget all about it."

He wriggled out of my grasp then -- I had been holding him ever since I'd finished my little drink -- and stared at me as he asked, "Have you done that to me then, Lestat? Made me think things?"

"No," I told him sincerely. "Never."

Louis frowned. "But if you had, I wouldn't remember it, would I?"

"No," I had to admit.

"So how can I know for sure?" Louis asked.

"You can't," I told him bluntly. "You have to trust my word. Or if you can't do that, think of how I've treated you all along and ask yourself if you really believe I could want you for a slave and not an equal?"

"I trust you," Louis said. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have challenged your word. The idea is just so unsettling, that is all. I saw how Sophie looked.." He shuddered. "Later, if I become as you are, will I be able to do things such as that? Bend thoughts to my will? Read all the minds around me?"

Ah God, more truth.

"I don't think so," I said. "Or at least, not the way I can. You see, Louis, a vampire's strength is founded mainly in the age of his blood. Now, as you know, I am not so very old, but Magnus was, and he had never shared his power before. Thus he made me strong. But you..." I sighed. "I've nothing near to Magnus' years, and I've already made two. So I fear you will cross over and be..."

"Weak," Louis finished for me, looking positively horrified. "You think that I will be weak!"

"Not so strong as me, that's what I think," I amended his choice of words. "But you'll not be weak, not the way you are contemplating the word. You won't be weak as a mortal can be. No, no, not at all."

"Weak," Louis only said again, and I could tell that the word bothered him. But what could I do about that? The facts were the facts. I'd made too many fledglings, too fast, for Louis to emerge with anything approaching my powers. And sure, I'd drunk from Akasha --marvelous experience, that, but even so it didn't compare to the taste of Louis I'd had tonight-- but Marius himself had told me that even so, there were only so many young ones a vampire could make in the course of a century.

"We all get stronger with age," I told Louis, hoping to help him see that however he began, things would just improve with time.

"Stronger..." he mused. "Will there come a day when you can withstand the sunlight?" he asked.

I frowned. "No, I don't think so..."

And then the word flashed across my mind, potent to the point of unraveling me... Gobi...

Gobi, Gobi, Gobi...

But what the hell did Gobi mean? Damned if I knew. The only thing I was sure of was that it wasn't a French word.

Louis swallowed then, and said something he'd been meaning to say ever since the fire had died out. He'd put it off and off and off, for fear of hurting me, but now it was nearly dawn so he had to get it said.

"Your father, Lestat," he began. "What shall I say to him come morning? What shall I do with him?"

And so I explained to Louis that my father didn't know any longer that he had gone looking for pistols, and that no one was likely to tell him about the incident.

"Just treat him as you normally do," I finished. "With that cool courtesy I wish I could emulate."

Louis stared. "But you do emulate it. Except for tonight, when he said such unforgivable things in company, and you were understandably outraged, you've been nothing but polite towards him."

Polite, yes. Well, I did try, at any rate.

But what I whispered in the waning darkness was, "I think you were right before, Louis. I think I have to forgive him. Except, I still don't really want to. And I still don't know how. But now, after what he did... " I shrugged.

Louis smiled. "The only thing I've been right about is my belated realization that I can't possibly put myself in your shoes, Lestat. I can't presume to advise you, I don't think. And you must believe me, I certainly do not judge you. Not for what you say, or feel, or do. The whole matter is your concern, not mine."

"You're my most important concern," I told him, glancing again at the sky. "I think I must leave you soon, my Louis."

He nodded, but asked, "Where do you go? What are the days for you?"

"Dreamland," I said. "Wasteland. I wish I could hold you in my arms through the day." My voice caught. "I... I do not like to be alone, Louis."

"I know," he said. "Give me time, Lestat. I think about your offer... but I have..."

"Mortal concerns, I know," I sighed. "Bonne nuit then, my Louis."

"Sleep well," he bid me, and I laughed.

"It's not quite sleep," I explained. "Something deeper. Well, someday you'll know."

And deep inside his mind, he thought, Yes, someday I will know. Someday soon.

Part the Thirty-Fourth


"Lestat," my father greeted me, the two syllables of my name emerging slowly from his wizened mouth. Almost reluctantly, and his expression was likewise somewhat off-putting. Almost as though he were unwilling to have me there in his bedroom with him.

Once upon a time... as recently as the previous night, in fact, I would have taken his tone and facial expression to be sure signs of disdain for me. Scorn. Contempt. Slight regard... but now... well, I didn't know. I just didn't know. Maybe it was more a product of my father's feeling tentative with me. I hadn't exactly welcomed his company or his confidences since I'd come to join him in the New World. Not that I ever had, of course... I was simply polite to him. Coolly polite, as was Louis... but in my case I had to think it was more like cold courtesy.

And now I wondered if I'd got it all wrong... if he really was sorry for things he'd done, the things he'd said, the litany of cruelty and disregard that was my childhood.

I wondered.

Because a couple of days before, I would have told you that the old man would never, ever have put a gun to his head. He simply didn't care to that degree.... or so I had believed.

But now...

Well, I didn't know what to believe. Was it true remorse that had driven him to search out a gun in Louis' house --no mean feat for a blind man? Was my father truly trying to make amends as he had said that night when he had moaned that he should probably kill himself since his death was the only solace I would accept from him?

Or had he done it just to make me feel even more wretched about myself than I habitually did?

I didn't know, anymore; I simply didn't know.

And that was a new feeling. Unsettling. For years I'd been so sure I understood all there was to know of the dynamic between my father and myself. But now I felt cut adrift, unanchored.

I didn't know what to say to him, how to even start. And of course things weren't made simpler by my mind-meddling the night before. What a relief it would be to simply discuss his suicide attempt... But that wasn't an option.

"How are you feeling tonight, sir?" I finally settled for asking.

"When have you ever cared how I feel?" was his gruff reply. A scowl twisted his thin, blue lips as he said it.

"When have I not?" I challenged back, my blood heating. "Don't I provide the finest French and Spanish wines for your dinner? Aren't your bed hangings made of the most expensive imported silks and velvets--"

I stopped, because my father was looking straight at me as if he could see me. Eerie thought. The mere prospect brought me up short. And then it came to me that I was falling into old habits, old patterns of thought. It was easy to deflect all emotional issues into material ones. I'd done it my whole life. Bemoaning the pitiful condition of my wardrobe in the Auvergne --my lace cuffs mended seventeen times-- in order not to dwell on the vacuum of affection in my life that was my greater problem. And then, after I became a vampire, sending gifts to Nicolas, largess from Magnus' treasures, instead of going to him to talk...

And I did this same thing with my father, all the time. The minute any discussion became the least bit taxing on my fragile emotions, I would start to think I would shatter, and I would divert the conversation into a discussion of the wealth I was treating him to.

Louis had even noticed this, and remarked on it, on how I felt a need to "constantly" tell the old man how well I cared for him. Which only goes to show you how often my father put me on edge. Quite simply, if I was in his presence, I was on edge.

Usually, when I spoke this way, he would begin to disparage everything I provided. And then I would walk out before we had a true row, which I felt would be unforgivable since we were both, of course, guests of Louis. It just wasn't done that you would descend to a screaming match under another's roof. Besides, I did so want for Louis to like me.

Perhaps the suicide attempt, though, for all it was "forgotten," had nonetheless brought my father to some state of lucidity he'd lacked before. For now, instead of insulting the wines served him and telling me that my best efforts were paltry and I was utterly worthless, he merely sighed, and looked away --although he could not see anything--, and quietly asserted, "You've quite obviously done well for yourself, Lestat."

I truly didn't know what to say to that. "Yes, I have," I told him, chagrined that it came out sounding so very conceited.

But my father didn't follow up on this opportunity to belittle me. He sighed again.

"So how are you feeling?" I asked once more.

"Rather tired, actually," his answer came slowly. "I assume you know I didn't go down for dinner this evening."

"I was told," I answered, and braced myself for the scathing commentary sure to come. Something along the lines of how rude I was never to join the Pointe du Lacs around their table come evening....

"Your Louis brought me a tray," my father whispered instead. "Roasted pheasant, it was. I thanked him but I'm afraid I didn't do justice to the meal."

Well, Louis' kindness didn't surprise me, but the way my father spoke of him certainly did.

"What do you mean?" I asked, and he was perceptive enough to know I wasn't discussing the pheasant. What is more, he didn't attempt to play dumb, as I knew he'd done in the past.

"He is your Louis, isn't he?" my father asked. "I can't see the way you look at him, but your tone of voice speaks volumes. My hearing's very acute, you know."

"I know," I murmured, lost in thought because he said all this without a hint of censure. And certainly without the ridicule I would expect from one such as him. True, he'd never been the type to bewail my failure to marry --I think having his grandchildren put to the sword back in France had rather soured him on the notion of continuing the line, in any case-- but still, for him to calmly lie there in his bed and allude to the fact that his son was passionately in love with another man?

And he knew just what his words implied, that was clear enough when he continued, his voice low but somehow also urgent, "You call him Beautiful One, Lestat. Far off in the fields as you are walking away from the house, you call him Beautiful One. And I've no doubt he is. But Lestat, if I can hear you say these things, you must realize that you've been indiscreet. Someone else may hear as well, and make your position here... difficult."

Such care in his voice! I might almost believe he cared. Actually, I did believe that he cared, and that was what made me so sharp with him. Discomfort all but consumed me. It was easier to deal with him when I was convinced that he held me in scorn.

I couldn't stop the words from rising to my lips. "What makes you think I can't cope with difficulties, eh?"

He sort of shuddered, but not with silent laughter. More like pain. "Oh, Lestat..." he moaned then. "You were Joseph among your brothers, the best of them all, do you think I don't know that? I'm sure you can deal with whatever lies in your path. I think often, you know, of the wolves--"

"The wolves you didn't believe I'd slain?" I put in.

"That was Augustin," my father reminded me. "I knew you'd done it. I was proud of you, Lestat."

"You had a fine way of showing it!" I retorted.

"How could I show it? After what I'd done--" His voice broke.

"Going to tell me again that you're sorry?" I mocked.

He shook his head, tears flowing from his eyes.

And just the sight unnerved me, reminded me of his despair the night before.

"Let's not discuss that, Father," I conceded.

His pale, aged eyes snapped open in surprise. Reflex, only. "You called me Father," he gasped.

"Yes," I merely said. And then, "Is there aught you need?"

He gulped, his voice breaking even before he spoke. "Lestat... you must believe one thing, you must, you simply must--"

"Don't mention what you did to me in the Auvergne," I stiffly interrupted.

"Not that," he said, bowing beneath my dictate. "No, it's about here, about what I need. The lace hangings you speak of, the fine wines at dinner. I don't need them, Lestat. I don't need any of that."

"I know," I sighed. "You want to go to Mass and to see your old friends--"

"No, I want to get to know you before I die," he whispered. "Just that. Nothing else. Don't ask me how I know, but I sense that you're a remarkable man, Lestat. Quite unlike anyone here, or anyone I've ever known."

"I have to go now, Father," I said. Not coldly, just with a discomfort that could not be denied. And then, because he said he wished to know me and I suppose I wished to test that, to see if he could be sincere, I added, "Louis is waiting. For me."

"I see," he murmured, as though lost in thought. "Lestat? I... tell him that I thank him for his hospitality, and for..."

"For?" I prompted.

My father's lips quivered. "For softening you, somehow. You're not as harsh with me... I must think that your Louis is good for you."

"He is," I said. "And I will tell him so. Good-night... Father."

"Good-night," he said, and it was only after I'd stepped out of his room that I heard him finish the sentence: "Son."

Part the Thirty-Fifth



Louis was downstairs listening to Sophie play the piano, but the minute I walked into the parlor, he politely rose to his feet to greet me. Ah, but he did look handsome this evening. Devilishly so, even though I'm supposed to be the one who throws caution to the winds. But for all the clothes were suitable for riding --a concession to our planned trip into New Orleans-- he had a beautiful emerald green silk cravat knotted at his throat. I saw that, and I knew at once that he had dressed for me.

He knew by then, you see, what I thought of his eyes, his fabulous eyes. I swear, no vampiric powers at all and he could already mesmerize with those eyes. He did it to me, regularly. And without doubt he had done it to every one of the slave maids he had called up to his bed.

You know what? I waited for the familiar rush of jealousy to sweep over me. It always did, when I thought of Louis and Colette.

Except now, it simply didn't. Now, why that should be I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it was the fact that he'd been with me and only me for weeks and weeks now? Maybe it was because I knew that he no longer even thought of calling them? Colette came into his mind from time to time, of course --he did care for her in his own way-- but he didn't think of her with longing. Rather, he thought it such a waste that she should have fallen so deeply in love with him when, did he but know it, he was only turning to her because he did not yet understand himself, did not know that he was destined for something else.

For me.

Or maybe my jealousy had at last wafted away because this was it, this was the night, and I had been rather afraid that Louis would back away, that he would change his mind... and instead, I come to the plantation house that evening to find him dolled up and eager to be off...

Of course, he'd been dressed this way when I had first arrived, but beset with nerves because I had to talk to my father, I hadn't noticed. Louis had understood, I saw that now. Sweet Louis.

And to make him realize that now I did notice and I did appreciate him, I sent him a little warming message with my thoughts. I love you, Louis. Ah, I do so dearly love you, and might I say that you are looking particularly dashing tonight of all nights?

He caught the reference to why tonight was something special, but in the presence of the ladies, he managed not to blush. I had a feeling that I could change that later, that I could make him blush most delightfully... I almost sent him a few potent images of the two of us in various states of undress, just to tease him into blushing now, but I rather doubted he would appreciate being embarrassed before Sophie and his maman.

So I dismissed thoughts of myself and instead looked to him, to see what he was thinking, to take my cue from him as to how and when we were going to leave to accomplish our rendez-vous with his mortal passions...

He wasn't thinking about the frolic to come, though. He was thinking of me, concerned about me, caring about me. Oh, Louis...

How is your father, Lestat? That question was in his mind, but he didn't ask it, because he was holding firm to his vow not to interfere again in how I chose to deal with my family. With what remained of it, I mean. Or no, that isn't right, either. Because Louis was family, too, to me. My brother already, and the blood would only make him all the more so. My brother, my child, my fledgling, my equal, my everlasting love. It was as if I could taste him already.

And because Louis had this fine quality of caring inside him, he held his peace about what might have transpired upstairs when I'd gone to see the Marquis. None of his business, he thought it. When of course it was his business as well as mine, love being what it is, an ocean to connect two souls and all their triumphs, all their troubles...

Louis' mother, as might be expected, had no such qualms about sticking her nose into my private business. "How fares your father, Monsieur Lioncourt?" she asked me, when I had heard her lecture Sophie no end of times how impolite it was to question people about matters such as an illness! Then again, her true interest lay not in my father's health but in the prospect of me inheriting the title. (And all the supposed de Lioncourt money, of course.) She no longer truly thought she could sway me to marry Sophie, but she hadn't finished looking at this angle and that angle and seeing if a friendship with an exiled French nobleman might be put to some worthwhile use.

"Well enough," I answered her. And then thinking that I might as well let it be known that my father was going through a rough patch... for I suspected he and I were not yet finished with our talking, and it might get ugly before we truly did finish, I added, "He's a bit depressed, as you can well imagine. The Revolution... so much carnage... his whole way of life rent asunder..."

"Yes, things are reaching a horrid climax," Sophie put in. She was quite well-read for a young lady. Kept abreast of current events, all that... in that, she was like Louis. An active mind.

"And I must return to New Orleans this evening to meet a ship," I informed them, launching the scheme that would ease Louis' mind of just how to make his getaway with me, so to speak? "Louis?"

"Ah yes, of course," he murmured, and walked to join me. Playing right into the mental suggestion I tossed his way --and it was just a suggestion, something to make his life easier; it wasn't mind control in any form-- he announced, "Thank you for inviting me along, Lestat. I fancy these men may well conclude that indigo manufacturing is a safe enough haven for the fortunes they've barely managed to slip past the Paris mobs."

"Invited you along, did he?" Louis mother asked, her eagle-eyes darting from Louis to me, then back and forth as she ascertained just what truth there might be in the statement Louis had made. She was sure something was up. I guess all my late-night strolls with Louis hadn't escaped her attention. And now that she'd all but given up any notion that I might become interested in Sophie, she was beginning to revert back to her protective-mother-hen routine. In this context, I of course was the wolf.

If not for the fracas the night before, I'd have mesmerized her then and there. But I didn't need any conflict with Louis, not tonight, and something told me --heh, heh, most likely his clear and emphatic thoughts on the subject-- that he preferred to manage his family matters himself. Fair enough, especially considering that he was now according me the same courtesy.

And just how did he manage her? He lied. And my, oh my, was that a revelation. Louis could lie with an absolutely straight face and the conviction of a saint, when he chose. I told myself that I would be wise to remember that. And then all at once I saw in my mind's eye Louis with the violet-eyed man, Louis in strange clothes, and he was telling this man lie after lie after lie. And all about me! Except, he only knew that about ten percent of what he said was a lie. The rest he thought was truth, but it wasn't, it wasn't...

I chased that horrid image from my mind, then --where were all these insane notions coming from, anyway? I didn't even know anyone with purple eyes; it was utterly absurd-- and focused on watching Louis. On loving him, understanding him as he turned then, to smile at his mother and spout those lies. "Imagine the dowry we can manage for Sophie if we were to get enough infusion of capital to double our output of dye, Maman," he invented, going along with the fiction I had established for us both. Going along with it, yes, but embellishing it, too. For when had I ever mentioned Sophie's dowry?

"Louis!" Sophie exclaimed, deeply shocked and disturbed by what her brother had just said. I don't think he was expecting that. He knew Sophie well, but he couldn't read her mind as I was doing. "I don't care to marry any man that would wed me for money!" she staunchly insisted, horrified by the very prospect.

"Hush, Sophie," Louis' mother said. Typical reaction. She almost never even listened to her daughter, who had an amazing mind and some very sound concerns bouncing around in it. Reminded me of how my father had always treated me... of course tonight he'd been more amenable than ever before. Perhaps almost dying had truly changed him inside? Perhaps some part of him even knew that I had saved his life?

Perhaps... or maybe it was just a case of emotions long repressed being brought to the surface by the trauma.

Louis laughed, although he took his sister seriously enough. "For shame, Sophie," he chided her. "I know you've set your heart of late on young Freniere, but you know how's he's situated, the place perpetually mortgaged. Surely you don't wish to ruin his family by insisting he reject a handsome purse of a dowry?"

"I shall marry for love or not at all," Sophie stiffly insisted.

"I know," Louis acknowledged. He slid me a glance, then. "As shall I. But why not ease your husband's problems too, eh?"

Sophie raised a startled eyebrow. "Has Jean-Pierre spoken with you, then?" she asked, and she seemed more than a trifle eager to hear the answer.

Louis shook his head. "You've discouraged him with too much talk of how you despise the very idea of a dowry. Now the poor man is terrified that if he asks for your hand, you'll misunderstand and despise him forever. Perhaps you should be... a bit less strident in the way you express your concerns, ma chère. To him, at least. I understand you perfectly, of course."

"Perhaps..." Sophie mused. And then she smiled. "And perhaps you should be on your way to meet this ship and see to getting these funds invested in Pointe du Lac where they belong."

Smiling then, Louis bent and kissed the top of her head.

Ah, I just loved watching Louis with his sister. They talked, they really talked. It was an image... or an object lesson, rather... for me, of what a family could be, what a family should be. And I felt that I learned more all the time. Of course Louis didn't have this same level of tender affection toward his mother, but even towards her he was warm-hearted.

Warm-hearted, yes. And tolerant of her flaws, her failures.

And what meant the world to me was that he was the same way with me, which meant that he regarded me as family, as kin, as someone with whom he had a bond that would transcend all difficulties...

"Bonne nuit, then," Louis bid his family as he walked to join me where I was waiting for him at the double doors to the parlor. "I will return in two days, possibly three."

"So long?" asked the mother. She had brightened quite a bit during the discussion of Sophie's dowry and the likelihood of her marrying soon, but now she was suspicious again. Of me. Since my marrying Sophie was simply not in the realm of possibility, she was brought back to a concern that I would turn Louis away from the lovely ladies who graced New Orleans. I repressed a desire to flash her an evil grin as she thought this. For of course I would turn his head, had turned his head, and would damned well keep it turned for all time. Towards me.

Quite perceptive of her, really, to recognize the potent danger I posed to Louis leading the sort of life she had in mind for him. Shrewd. But then again, I was never more devastatingly handsome than I was back then, when I was wooing my Louis. Courting him, hanging on his every word, every glance.... Small wonder that the mother would realize what was really going on.

"Yes, maman," Louis answered her query. " A few days at least. Gentlemen of quality do not conclude financial arrangements such as these in a matter of moments, you understand. There are contracts to be drawn up, letters of credit to be verified..."

Well, that quieted her. For of course she didn't understand. Louis was entirely in charge of all the family finances, as was only considered proper in those days, and his mother had not the slightest idea of how such matters were handled. But her quiet didn't last long. She was too worried about her precious son at large in New Orleans with the likes of me.

"Who will see to the slaves?" she protested after a moment.

"The overseer, who else?" Louis returned, frowning. I sensed then that he did not like his overseer, and that the feeling had been growing in him of late. But he'd had no time to see to the matter.

"The plantation needs its master," Louis' mother continued. "And you've spent long enough away, I think. I hope you're not turning to drink again, Louis?"

Outraged, I was about to say something in Louis' defense, but Sophie beat me to it.

"Really!" she rebuked her mother. "Louis' dealt with everything quite well. You know how difficult it all was. Paul, that awful talk, the priest gossiping, a man of God, mind you! And now if Louis needs a few days in town to unwind and even drink if he chooses, we shall be glad he has a good friend to look after him, Maman!"

So Sophie saw me as Louis' good friend. Sweet, that. You know, I really did like Sophie. For you see, she was Louis' good friend, too.

"Good-night," Louis bid both his mother and his sister, and then we were outside, Louis gracefully mounting the horse that a young black stablehand had at the ready. I swung atop my own mount and patted the white stallion's neck with appreciation. Really, it had been too long since I'd had a good ride.

And the moment I thought that, my overactive brain naturally made a double entrendre out of the comment, and all I could think about was Louis riding *me*...

Good thing he couldn't read my mind! He'd be shocked, now wouldn't he? Or... maybe not. He had, after all, been bold enough to finally bring his need to me... openly... to ask for this assignation...

"Thank you," Louis was saying as we began to canter down the oak-lined path that led away from his mansion. "Your little inspiration was a brainstorm. I had been wondering all day how I was going to explain our going to town tonight."

"Mmm," I murmured, admiring the play of wind against his hair, the black tendrils slipping free from the thin silk ribbon he'd used to tie his long hair back. Emerald green as well, that ribbon. Oh yes, the man had dressed for me. I think I loved him in that instant more than at any time before.

"But two or three nights, Louis?" I asked. "What was that about?"

He blushed. "Ah, nothing. I just thought..."

"Yes?" I prompted him. "Tell me, Beautiful One, tell me your thoughts, these thoughts that make your marvelous green eyes sparkle with exhilaration..."

"Well, I merely thought that I might need more than part of one night to... get to know you as I wish, Lestat. Love... it can't be rushed, can it?"

"No, it can't," I agreed, realizing the truth of that in my own life. My God, what if I had rushed him, had ushered him into the night on the second evening I'd spend with him.

Disaster, my son...

"Nor lovemaking," Louis added, slanting me a glance.

A glance which astonished me, I must say, for it was rife with desire and not in the least shy. But going into his mind, I sensed that he was making a tremendous effort to be this way with me, to be carefree, devil-may-care. He thought that was what I preferred.

And I did, of course, but only if that was how he was, how he truly felt inclined.

Doubtless he would turn shy on me a bit later. But that was all right, too. I loved him, you see. All of him. And I particularly loved his innocence... the notion that he would be this way with me and none other, ever... that I was special to him.

That he had waited.

I wished then that I had waited, too. For all the others in my past, even Nicolas... they were nothing to me now. I wished that I could be pure for Louis. For he deserved that, too, didn't he... and I had cheated him.

Louis suddenly reached over and grabbed my reins and yanked my horse to a halt there on the dusty track. I don't know; I would think we were halfway to New Orleans by then.

My first assumption was that he must be having second thoughts. But when I looked into his mind I saw only determination, resolve, and a fainting eagerness to be there in town with me, private with me, to begin.

"Oui?" I asked then, curious as to why we had halted.

Louis gave me what I could only regard as a stern, no-nonsense look, his eyelashes sweeping dangerously low over a pair of eyes that held an expression not too far removed from a glare.

"What is wrong with you?" he asked. "For the past ten miles you've looked as though you were going to a wake, Lestat!"

Oh, had my melancholy been so very evident?

"No," I murmured. "Just thinking."

"About?" Louis challenged, and then I was the one who inexplicably blushed. I didn't want to appear stupid before him, you see. Not stupid, and not lacking in confidence, either.

"Tell me, cher," he urged when I remained silent. "Please, Lestat. Trust me. Trust me enough to be honest."

Trust me enough to be honest...

Well, that brought me up short, that reference to honesty. I sensed quite clearly that I'd gotten as far as I had with him, that I was on the road to New Orleans with him, only because I'd been honest all along. Because I hadn't stinted, even when it hurt.

And I also sensed that he needed that. More honesty. Only this... well, it wouldn't hurt. Humiliation doesn't actually hurt, does it?

"I... I was just thinking," I told him, "how nice it is for me to think that I'm your first, Louis. And then it seemed so tragic that I...."

"Ah," he said, following my meaning even when my voice drifted off. "You've had other lovers, you mean. But I knew that already, Lestat."

"I know," I moaned, somehow more miserable rather than less. But then Louis made it all better.

He leaned over further, and caught my lips in a soft, sweet kiss, nothing but love in that kiss, and when it was over, he told me sincerely, "But I'm happy that you have, Lestat. It's a vast relief to me that at least one of us will know... what to do."

"Oh, Louis," I groaned, my thirst rising just to hear such a sentiment from him.

He kissed me again, and as if he thought he hadn't said enough, he told me, "I'm not jealous, Lestat. I won't be jealous, ever, not so long as you are faithful to me and me alone from this moment onward."

"Exactly how I feel about your women, Louis," I vowed, and he laughed.

"See there? Now what made you think I'm purity enthroned? You know I'm not. You saw. You saw in spades."

"I saw foreshadowing only," I told him. "Because tonight, you discover the difference between... a single grain of sand and all the shores of all the beaches in all the world."

"No," he disagreed. "Something even better, Lestat. Tonight... tonight, I discover you."

Part the Thirty-Sixth



"Nice," Louis commented as I ushered him into the luxurious hotel suite I'd decided on. The best in New Orleans, bar none, that was what my Louis was entitled to. "Very nice," he added.

Something came over me then, something warm and soft and sweet, and I wanted more than anything else in the whole wide world to let him know that he was the nice one here. But, strangely enough, when I opened my mouth to tell him so, the words I heard emerging were, "My father says that you're good for me, Louis."

He smiled quite mildly as he walked further into the suite, through the sitting room, and toward the bed with its gold-embroidered brocade covers. I read determination in him, determination not to let talk of my father spoil our first evening together as true companions, true partners. And Louis was wise; he sensed quite clearly that discussing my father, even though I was somewhat amenable to it now, was an undertaking fraught with peril, that I might be mired in hurt and anger if it went on too long. And he didn't want that.

So he said nothing, really, in response to my statement. Nothing that related to the fact I'd spoken --really spoken, not just said words, but really conversed-- with my father. Nor anything to react to the surprising implication that my father knew about us. That did surprise Louis, certainly.

No, when he replied, he brought the conversation back to what mattered most tonight. To us.

"Good for you," he mused, and then turning to face me, the backs of his legs against the bed, he smiled more broadly, and crooked a finger in invitation. "Well, I am good for you," he decided aloud. "You've wandered the world, hungering for companionship, for someone of your own."

I came to him as he had requested, and stood facing him, so close we touched. Knee to knee, hip to hip, heart to heart.

"And you've done strange things," Louis continued. "No doubt you've yet to confess to all of them, but you've said enough that I have an idea, Lestat. You've acted out because you've been so desperately alone, and so unhappy. But yes, I'm good for you. Because now you have me for an anchor, someone to steady you. You'll be... more stable."

"Ah," I softly responded, leaning in for a kiss, a kiss he willingly gave, his mouth opening eagerly beneath mine, "But I'll still do strange things, as you put it, Louis. There's something inside me, some driving force. Sometimes, I just have to throw up the pieces and see how they fall."

"But not with utter reckless disregard, not any more," Louis whispered. "Not now that you have someone of your own to love."

I drew back, slightly startled, because it sounded to me as though he were talking eternity, it really did. And yet I didn't think he'd made that particular decision as of yet. But he talked as though he had, and it was hard for me to bear it, to listen, to know and not know.

"You wouldn't be leading me on, would you, Louis?" I suddenly asked, my lips tightening until my fangs showed ever so slightly.

He saw them, but he didn't flinch. Indeed, he reached a trembling hand upward to feel them, to trace their smooth contours and lightly touch their razor cutting edges, while I held perfectly still lest the slightest motion flayed his finger open. But once he moved his finger away from my killing teeth, I pulled it fiercely into my mouth and sucked on it, my eyes dancing with the knowledge of what this was doing to other parts of him. Erotic, that sucking. He felt it elsewhere, wanted it elsewhere.

Patience, Louis.

Gasping, he echoed, "Leading you on?" which reminded me of why I'd bared my fangs in the first place. I'd forgotten, you see. In the potent experience of Louis admiring my fangs, touching them -- admittedly an erogenous zone for vampires and I fancy far more so for a vampire such as me, being as highly sexed as I am -- well, I had completely forgotten my brief irritation.

But now I remembered, although I no longer felt quite as edgy about it.

"Are you going to ask for it, Louis?" I pressed. "The Dark Gift? You say these things, you make me think I'll have you for all time. But will I?"

Part the Thirty-Seventh


"I'm sorry," Louis said, frowning. "I... I thought you knew. You read my mind, I feel you in there, the sensation like bathing in light although it comes only during the darkness. But... well, yes, Lestat. You will have me, I promise. But you yourself said it last night, that I have--"

"Mortal concerns," I finished for him again. "I understand. So when, then? If not now, when?"

"When I feel ready," Louis answered steadily. "That's what you want, isn't it? You want me to cross over full of confidence, without doubts? You... you don't want a hasty decision and then centuries of reluctance or regret, do you?"

"God, no," I breathed, and then the visions I'd had all along assaulted me with such force that I had to ask, "You don't know anyone with purple eyes, do you?"

"Purple eyes?" Louis murmured. "No."

Moving from him then, I sat on the bed and shaded my eyes with a trembling arm.

"What is it?" Louis pressed, coming to sit right alongside me, the length of his long thigh nestled up to mine.

"I see you sometimes with a man with gorgeous purple eyes," I groaned. "And you're telling him how unhappy you are with me."

"Lestat!" Louis chided me. "I'm not unhappy with you, mon cher. Nor shall I be. You love me too well for that, and I know it. And I swear, mon ange, I will never, ever cheat on you, not with anyone, purple eyes or no!"

I started laughing at his vehemence, at the misunderstanding he'd so easily fallen into. Of course I'd never meant for an instant that he would have a romantic attachment to the violet-eyed man. That formed no part of my visions. There wasn't even any tension between them. Not that kind of tension. It was more like the purple-eyed man was just content to listen. And Louis, he was talking, talking, talking. Strange, that. I mean, he seemed quiet and reflective to me, not one to go on and on talking quite literally all night long without ceasing...

I pushed, nay shoved those nonsensical visions from my mind. There was no violet-eyed man, I told myself. It's all an illusion, a trick of the night, or of my nerves...

But why should I be nervous? Louis loved me, he'd told me so. And now he'd sworn to be mine for all time, too. He just wasn't quite ready to step across the line that divides day from night. Small wonder, that. For once across, there is no going back, never ever ever...

Unless you switch bodies like all those stories suggest can be done....

What? What on *earth* was the matter with me? Switching bodies! I'd never heard such idiocy. And what stories? I'd never in my life seen a story about body-switching! Although... it came to me then that I bet I could write a rousing good tale about the subject, if I sat down and put my mind to it...

But why would I bother? I had Louis to occupy my nights! Why would anyone who had Pointe du Lac at their side waste their time writing novels?

This was worse than absurd, it was just plain foolishness. I had to get my mind back onto what mattered: the here and now, not some phantom existence that kept taunting me with might-have-beens or going-to-bes or whatever the devil these visions were.

All right, so focus, Lestat. Louis is here with you and he's just practically taken vows. Not those of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but vows of love and tenderness and respect. Say something nice in return, Lestat!

"Ah, so you're planning to be my loyal love forever," I chuckled, gratified when Louis nodded.

"You need that, I think," he told me. "Loyalty. And you're what I need, too."

"How do you need me?" I teased him, laying back and pulling him onto the bed with me, and then with my vast strength easily moving both of us backwards until we lay full length against each other on the covers.

He drew in a startled gasp. It was the context, of course. We'd lain like this many, many times... out in the swamps, in the fields, in the only places where we could seek privacy near Pointe du Lac. But now, of course, we were on a bed. In a hotel, and for the express purpose of dallying with each other.

So now, this closeness between our clothed bodies enervated him as never before.

"I don't know," he answered me, the words thick. "I only know... that when I'm with you..." He closed his eyes, yet continued, "When I'm with you, I feel myself wanting you, the feeling fierce. Hard, pulsing."

"I know," I said, and kissed his hard, as though branding him mine. "Vampire senses, Louis. I can hear your very heartbeat. I can smell your arousal, the musk rising from your skin as you grow hard with need of me. I know without a doubt your exact state of sexual awareness for me. And imagine, all this before I even begin to read your thoughts."

He blushed. "Then you've known all along," he murmured. "I... every time I saw you... well, not the time I was sick in bed, I will admit, but every other time I have only to look at you to feel flooded with... need."

"Mmm, I've known all along," I admitted.

"And you didn't tease me, didn't use the knowledge?" Louis gasped. "To... convince me of what we must be to one another?"

"Tease you?" I asked him, my hand stroking his hip, massaging his muscled thigh. He liked that. The long, hard length of him rose higher at the touch, and he looked into my eyes, and for the first time, he knew that I knew, that I knew everything. And he didn't mind my knowing. He trusted me.

"Why would I tease you, Louis?" I asked him, while my hand on his leg continued, of course, to do precisely that. But that wasn't the type of teasing he had meant, certainly. "You're my other half. And your desire is delightful, not something I would use against you. And as for convincing you... well, there's just no use in it. You had to come to discover on your own why I had merely to enter a room for you to feel the most potent, blatantly sexual response."

He grinned, wryly, and taking his cue from me, placed his own hand on my hip and began to rub me. A bit awkward, he was. For he'd never touched me before. Well, never in an attempt to elicit passion, which was what this was. And now he was finding out that caressing me was not quite the same as caressing a softly molded slave girl. I was male. Muscled. With a physical presence that suggested aggression, actually. Wolfkiller... But Louis liked all that, liked the notion that he could tussle with me, play rough, pit strength against strength instead of always holding back. For with a lady --and he treated his slave maids and even his whores as ladies, every time-- he had to be a gentleman. But with me, he could let loose and be whatever self he cared to indulge.

He knew this. He thrilled to it. Yet still, his touch was awkward as he learned the contours of my leg, my hip.

"It took me long enough to figure it out," he whispered. His hand then, bolder than mine --imagine that!-- dove beneath my jacket and began to lightly tug my silk shirt from my trousers. I wasn't sure what he had in mind --because he wasn't sure, you see-- but whatever it was, I was all for it. I gasped aloud, and angled my body to give him better access.

He laughed, low in his throat, and then his hand was beneath my shirt, feeling my cool flesh, his fingers tracing the contours of my ribs. And I shivered all over, sort of shuddering with the need that swept me.

Need, synonymous with thirst.

"You like that?" Louis asked me, and he sounded ever so slightly surprised. "I... I wasn't sure you would. I don't think I understand, Lestat. Your passion isn't like mine, you told me?"

I wanted him to understand.

"Not like yours," I moaned. "No. No, I remember yours, Louis. Potent, devastating, but all the sensation is localized, focused in the part of you that needs me most."

"That's not true," Louis disagreed. "It's not just lust between us! I love you! I feel that love in every fibre of my being, every last ounce of my soul!"

"Oh, true, true," I rushed to say, and then I almost lost my train of thought because Louis' nimble fingers had reached my chest, and he was playing with one of my male nipples, rolling the nubbin of flesh between his thumb and forefinger. Ahhh....

"But the physical sensation is strongest here, strongest here by far," I managed to get out, and then I moved boldly too, sliding my hand down his hip until it rested atop the opening to his trousers. I massaged him briefly, through the cloth. But then I had to move my hand, for he was about to spend again as he had done so many times before -- in the tight confines of his own garments -- and I sensed that this time, the act would shame him as never before.

"And for you?" he inquired, his hips shifting forward to touch mine the moment I moved my hand. Thrusting against me subtly, he sought to satisfy his craving for me.

"Nothing is localized," I gasped. "It all feels just the same as when I was mortal, Louis. Except that pleasure and passion and even the sweet pain of culmination consumes my whole body. That part, yes. But just as intense everywhere else... For it's all in the blood, you see. And I have blood everywhere."

My last couple of comments meant that Louis stayed his hand as he considered for the first time tonight that he'd been thinking only of his own needs, but that I had needs too.

"Are you thirsty?" he shyly asked.

And because I had to be honest, I told him, "Around you, mon cher Louis, I am always thirsting. I want you, you see. It's just the same as for you. You've only to enter a room and my passion rises."

"Yes," Louis murmured, looking highly pleased. Almost cheeky with it, in fact! Then he sobered. "But I meant... er, earlier this evening, did you dine at all?"

So genteel he was! Such a way of speaking! I envied him that, his smoothness, his couth.

"Indeed," I said.

He was disappointed, he was actually disappointed!

"Louis," I said to him, my voice low and slow and urgent, "I want you, too. That way."

He smiled again and stretched out his neck.

Part the Thirty-Eighth



He smiled again and stretched out his neck.

And because he needed it, I bit him then. Softly, but not so softly that he didn't feel it. But I didn't really drink. I wanted to save that for later.

"Tease," Louis accused me when I drew back.

"Lover," I corrected. "And we have all night."

Louis nodded, and sat up, and although he'd been actually randy with me the moment before, a creeping unease began to invade him. It was the sweet talk, I think. We'd almost exhausted it. And now he was back to wondering just how he was supposed to proceed. And of course in a very real sense, he was the one who had to proceed. He was the mortal partner in this pairing. I'd give almost anything to take him that way, but of course I couldn't. I could only take him my way.

Mmmm, and be taken...

"Louis," I asked him as I sat up, too. He liked that, he felt like we were in this together... "What do you think of doing when you contemplate making love to me?"

Ah, well now I had my blushes, didn't I? Red like a cherry, my Louis. And I knew what he thought of, too. It flooded into his mind as the blood filled his cheeks. The blood, the sweet fragrant blood. Hot and smoky and salty blood, pure Louis.

"Our bodies sliding together," he whispered. "Slick with sweat."

I almost lunged for him then and there, but forced myself to go slow. Still, I couldn't resist clarifying matters. "Our naked bodies, Louis?"

"Yes," he groaned. "I need more than just... release, release that's somehow distanced from you, from your body. I have this need burning in me, but it's no longer enough just to... spend in any fashion. I want it to be with you!"

"Against me?" I asked, "Against my skin, my naked hip? Or... something more, Louis?"

He gave me a startled glance. "What more is there?"

Ah, my God, he was an innocent! Even in thought. Because I was in his mind, so I knew what he contemplated. And really, what he had described, that was the limit of his conception. It hadn't dawned on him that we could be truly intimate and join our bodies together.

Oh, actually it had dawned on him to some degree... just not the way I was thinking. For he wasn't stupid, my Louis. Colette had regularly pleasured him with her mouth --quite good at it she was-- and he knew that I had a mouth. And he had thought of me doing that to him, had thought of it with desperate longing unlike anything he'd ever felt for Colette. But a number of things also clouded his thinking on this point. First there were my fangs. He'd wondered about them for some time, had fleetingly envisioned me taking him in my mouth, but the idea of those fangs so close to an intimate part of him had unnerved him terribly. And then there was the more obvious problem that I was a man. He didn't think I would want to do that to him. Strange, really... for I knew he wished to do that to me, you see. So really, my being as much a man as him should have posed him no concern.

I delved deeper into his thoughts, and then I saw it, then I understood. It wasn't that I was a man, so much, after all... Louis didn't think I would wish to do that to him because he didn't even believe that Colette or the others had wished to do it. He saw them as under his mastery, under his control, unable to refuse any command he issued. He saw them as having been compelled to suckle him sweetly and for hours on end, at times, until he would frequently spend directly into their rosebud mouths. And he saw me as utterly incapable of being compelled to do the same, which to him meant we'd never engage in such an activity.

He didn't know, didn't have the slightest notion, of how desirable he was!

And then of course there was the other matter... that even if he could believe I would desire that, he didn't know how to ask for it.

"What more is there?" I repeated his question. "Oh, there's more, Louis. There's a great deal more. But let's start where your fantasies begin, shall we? We have all night, and the next, and the next to explore what more we may enjoy."

He didn't really know quite what I meant by that --how could he? But that was all for the good, in my mind. Sometimes, talk is actually counterproductive. He'd learn more of me and what I wanted, and what he wanted, through the doing than through words.

Still shy, but trying not to be, his hand moved then, left my bare chest to settle on the buttons that held my shirt closed. And one by one he flicked them free, although in his nervousness and haste he did tear one loose from its moorings. Tore it loose, and he never even noticed. He bit his own lip as he concentrated on his task, his eyes intense.

And I lay there on my side and let him. Delighted to have him take the initiative. You know, I had almost thought I'd have to drag him along with me into deeper intimacy, even though he was willing, I'd thought I'd have to force the issue. But I'd been wrong. Louis was too much the man to just like passive while I had my wicked way with him. Good thing, too.

For I could pleasure him, certainly, but he couldn't take me if he were to be so passive. And I did want that. I longed to be taken by Louis. To be his, utterly his. To feel him fill me to bursting, to revel in the sweet release of his body within mine.

He helped me sit up, helped me shrug off my jacket and unbuttoned shirt, and then he laughed at the sight of me.

I raised a golden eyebrow.

"Your gloves," he said. "Riding gloves tonight, but you're always wearing gloves of some kind. It looks a bit silly when you've doffed your shirt."

"You doffed my shirt," I asserted, grinning.

"But why the gloves?" Louis asked, and gestured toward the other room, where he of course had removed his gloves immediately upon entering. A gentleman to the core, that was Louis. Yet he didn't mean that I wasn't the same --he had an astounding respect for me, and it wasn't founded in my title, thank God-- he merely meant that he had noticed my penchant for gloves.

"It started because I was afraid my cold touch would disturb you," I explained.

Louis stared at me. "But it's been weeks since I told you that I love the contrast of coolness and warmth between us," he protested.

"Ah," I answered. "And you're the only one who can be tentative, is that it, Louis?"

"I think tentative may be overrated," he replied, his eyes sparkling. Then without a word, he was leaning over my hands and tugging those gloves off with his teeth. His teeth, nipping at the leather fingers!

When he had the gloves in hand, he tossed them carelessly aside. "Now, you're not to wear them again with me, do you understand?" he chided. "Or only in company if you feel you must."

"Quite the taskmaster, aren't you?" I quipped, and he looked at me with something severe deep in his gaze.

"Get used to it," he said. "Once you bring me over, I'll need your guidance, I'm sure, and your experience. But I'll never be your lackey, Lestat. We'll have to be equal partners if we're to be anything at all."

"Perfect," I breathed. Because what he said sounded like a recipe for eternal bliss. Why would I want a lackey, when I had money enough to hire all the mortal servants I could desire? Besides, Louis would never truly be happy as a subordinate, I knew that. It would grate on him, the idea that he was little but my slave, he who had once been master of a large plantation.

I heard myself saying that then, inside my own head, heard myself saying awful words, telling Louis that he was my slave, that that was how vampires increased. Through slavery.

And the words were horrifying, bitter bile, rife with scorn and discord. Surely I'd never say such a vile thing to Louis, my Louis! Vampires increase through slavery! What nonsense, what utter trash! Almost blasphemy, it was. I knew how vampires increased. When it was done properly, that was. I was going to make him in love.

But first, we were going to make love...

Part the Thirty-Ninth


My hands tangled in his soft hair, my bare hands this time, my fingers pulling strands free of the hair ribbon and then pulling the ribbon out and dropping in unnoticed to the side. And Louis' hand on me again, his fingers learning the shape of my muscles, his hands so warm on me as to be blazing.

Yet to him, I didn't feel cold and dead as I had feared. He thought I was deliciously chill, that was what he thought.

And then he could resist no longer, and he lunged forward and clamped his mouth to my skin, to taste me.

It was an instinct for him. A good instinct, an indication that he wanted me not just with that fiercely rigid part of him with which he associated sexual congress, but that he wanted me with all of him. Holistically. Unlocalized, his desire too. As much as it could be, for a mortal. And I could not have been more delighted that he wanted me this way, and also that he felt free to do this with me, to simply take, to help himself...

His teeth scraped against me, leaving a slight furrow of raised skin that quickly healed. The sensation was extraordinary, wrapping me in desire. No pain to it -- well, of course not; he couldn't possibly injure my tough skin with his weak mortal teeth -- but he surely could make me feel the rough edge of his desire that way.

I moaned, and pressed his head more tightly to my taut belly, where he had stopped, and sucked in a harsh breath when he suddenly gathered a fold of skin between his teeth and bit down with all his strength.

All his strength, every last bit, which meant that I did yelp.

And then I took his head between my hands, and moved to look him in the eyes, and confronted the thing that was in his mind, the thing that he had yet to even put to words inside the private confines of his own thoughts.

But this could not remain there in those private confines. No, no this. This was something between us, something I could not ignore.

"Louis," I told him, love and acceptance in every word, "if you want to taste my blood, you've only to ask for it."

Part the Fortieth


Louis swallowed, pure lust in his eyes, but then his fabulous clear green gaze clouded over as practical matters came roaring into his mind.

"What... what will that do to me, Lestat?" he asked, and I hugged the question to myself like a warm blanket. Because, you see, it was rife with absolute and total trust in me. There was no doubt at all in his thoughts; he knew I would be up-front and honest and forthright and all those good things with him.

And to be trusted like that... well, I don't think I'd ever experienced the feeling before. Not with my family, not with Nicki... no, never.

But now I had Louis. Mine own.

I sat up a bit and eased him up, too, and kissed him lingeringly on the lips. "I don't fully know," I admitted when I pulled back from his warm, inviting, responsive mouth. "It's not really something I've done before. Except when I was making a fledgling, I mean."

Louis lapsed into thought. "Will it change me, bring me over? I mean, just a taste, would that be enough?"

I laughed softly. "Oh, no. Absolutely not. That much I'm sure of. You have to be hovering on the fine line between life and death before the dark blood can take hold of you, Louis. But for you to drink a little bit now... well, I don't really know what it might do, except that I'm certain you wouldn't be harmed. Not physically, at any rate."

"If not physically, then how?"

I laughed again, but that time it was sheer nerves. Ye gods, what to say? He'd think me insane. "All this is guesswork, Louis," I started. "But remember the man with purple eyes?"

"I told you I don't know him," Louis insisted, a trifle impatient.

"Oh, of course," I said. "But the thing is... he shows up in my head, Louis. In visions. Or, I don't know. They're like memories of another life. Very spooky, actually. I don't know what to make of them. But what I do know is that this man with the violet eyes is mortal, yet has drunk vampire blood. The only human I know of who has, although I don't really know of him either, if you follow my meaning."

"And the blood?" Louis asked. "In your visions, what has it done to him?"

Ah, his faith and trust were remarkable, truly. Not for an instant did Louis doubt my visions or think me gone insane. And since he had done all this with his own brother --Louis was somewhat a skeptic, you see-- it showed me all the more fully the depth of his bond to me.

"Hmm," I pondered. "He seems.... addicted to it. But truly, Louis, I think that's because this blood has been given him as some means of control. The vampire who has done it... well, I know him, and he's quite a manipulative personality--"

"The power hungry demon?" Louis asked, and I nodded.

"That's him, exactly. And so he's done this thing to control the violet-eyed one. To make of him a slave."

"There's no love there?" Louis questioned, raising an eyebrow. I marveled at that, at how he accepted so easily now that there should be love. That it was a natural emotion to flow between vampire and mortal...

"There's love," I acknowledged. "At least, I think there is. But it's warped, somehow. I mean, the purple-eyed man longs to be brought across, but has very little belief that he ever will be. He thinks that his vampire lover will let him die. And the vampire lets him think this. Whether it's true or not, I don't know... And you must understand that all of this is fragmentary and fleeting in my mind. Impressions, only. And impressions of a reality that I don't even know to exist anywhere at any time. Yet these visions persist as if they have some force of existence somewhere, Louis."

Louis smiled. "Well, I've no need to worry about whether you'll grant me your gift. I know it's mine for the taking when I'm ready."

I nodded. "And that's the source of the addiction and the torment, I think. That's what's making such an abject misery of this man. It's hell for him, having the blood doled out to him, having it denied him sometimes. But if you want to taste of me, I think it would be different, Louis. I would never abuse you, you know. Never torture you with cruel games of making you want it, making you beg and moan, and telling you no after all that."

"Oh, I know you wouldn't," Louis breathed, full of confidence in me. "And I feel..." His voice drifted off.

"Oui?" I prompted him.

"I don't know," he murmured. "It's strange, how I feel. I seem to think that your drinking from me was like a bond of silken steel to tie us one to another. Like vows, only physical. Beautiful, really. And I wanted the bond to flow both ways. So I had this intense shivery need to at least break your skin and latch on for a moment. To complete some sort of cycle, circle, I don't know. And all of this was so deeply emotional that I could hardly endure it. Yet at the same time it was also something else. Pure bodily desire. A sort of burning fire deep in my belly, a thirst singeing the lining of my throat, and it seemed that only your blood could quench it." He blushed. "Stupid, I know."

"No, no, not stupid at all," I earnestly assured him. "It's a perfect description of my thirst, Louis. My bloodthirst. Of course what you describe is just the leading edge of how severe my thirst can get. But..." I paused, wondering if I should say it. But then I thought, oh hell, why not? Louis seems to be taking everything in stride, so I shouldn't hold back a thing. "You're mortal yet but you're starting to think like a vampire," I told him. "Or maybe react like a vampire would be more to the point."

Louis opened his mouth in a fascinated O that made me want to stick something between his lips. Two guesses what... "Do you think so, Lestat?" he whispered, fearful and amazed all at once. "Do you truly think so?"

"Yes. But what do you think?" I asked.

He paused, traced his lips with his index finger, and then reached out to stroke my fangs once more. I parted my mouth and let him just explore.

"I think torment will never be an issue," he said, "not between us. I think you'll give me the full measure of your love in the blood when I'm ready, so I need never fear as this other man must do. And I think..." he swallowed, looking away, his green eyes hidden now behind long lashes. "I think I might like to be addicted to you, Lestat."

And then he laughed, a low rumble of amusement and desire all at once.

But I was rather taken aback. "How can you jest about a thing like that, Louis?"

He smiled at me, all soft and sweet and tender, his lips flush with his warm, honeyed mortal blood. "Because," he explained, "I do want you, you know. To be yours. That way. But I worry sometimes that I'll lack the requisite nerve when the time comes. To be acquainted already with your blood, to feel I need it..." He looked me full in the face then. "It might make things easier."

"I don't know," I said, thinking about that.

Louis narrowed his green gaze. "You said it was mine for the asking, if I recall correctly, which I'm sure I do!"

"That was before I had remembered about the visions, about wondering what the dark blood was doing to the man in the visions, Louis!"

Louis stared at me. "Our first real argument," he pointed out.

"I don't want to argue," I said.

"All right," Louis agreed, and sidled up to me again and laid his teeth against my neck. But he didn't bite. "All right?" he asked instead.

And I knew what he meant. Even though I had told him I would deny him nothing, he would allow me to deny him this if my concerns weighed so very heavy on my soul. But if I would permit him, he did want the blood.

And his trust in me was so well-founded and unshakeable that he had no worries of his own.

"All right," I agreed, even as I pulled back. "But not like that."

I took my own finger and licked it, then looking at Louis, I said, "One drop only. And then more if you want it. Later, I mean. Or, I mean, take your time and see what one drop does to you and then decide if you want more--"

"Lestat," Louis interrupted me. "You're babbling."

I was, I truly was.

"I just love you so," I whispered. "And I've never done this before. Never brought the blood into play with any mortal."

"You're innocent," Louis said, and I laughed.

"Of all the things in the world to be, I'm not that," I protested, and then Louis was smiling patiently.

"But I like it," he divulged. "I suppose I know now what you felt, when you said you were glad you would be your first. Because I'm your first, too, only in a different way."

Hmmm. I suppose I could have told him then and there that I'd shared blood with Gabrielle, but there's a sight of difference between being honest and being just plain stupid! I knew Louis wouldn't understand what I meant, why I had done it. He was still wrapped up in mortal notions of family. And to do these intimate things with one's own mother? Well, I bet the mere idea would make Louis faint, I just bet it would.

Besides, he was my first in the way he meant it. He was talking about his being the first mortal I'd played these bloodlove games with. Gabrielle had been a vampire already when I'd shared the blood with her. But I still didn't think Louis would understand the distinction.

"I love you," I said, and then I bit my finger and watched a crimson drop well forth, watched the tiny wound heal to leave the blood pooled on the surface of my skin.

And then I extended my finger to Louis.

He gave a sigh of pure anticipation, and then leaned forward, his tongue delicately lapping at my the droplet, as a moan of pure delight resounded in his lungs and then scaled his throat. And then he drew my finger into his mouth and drew on it hard, as though he thought he could coax more blood from it, somehow.

"Like the moonlight on the flagstones," he sighed as he gave up suckling and fell to his back on the brocade coverlet. His eyes closed, he murmured, "The room is spinning all around me, but I am still. And yet I feel in motion, too..."

I lay beside him and took him in my arms. He was shivering slightly, and I didn't know what that might mean. But then he turned in my embrace and laid his cheek against my bare chest, his face nuzzling me, and just rested with me, recovering.

"Potent stuff, eh?" I finally asked.

"Mmmm, I suppose you would know," Louis agreed, his voice dreaming, and I frowned.

"No, I don't know," I reminded him. "I never tasted of it until Magnus all but killed me and then gave me of him to drink, remember? Against my will, at that."

"Yes," Louis agreed again, his tones still drifting. "Oh, how awful for you Lestat," were the words that slowly emerged from his throat. "I... I don't think I understood before. I mean, I did, but after that one drop it seems like I can see whole worlds of possibilities and meaning and emotion and change, things that never occurred to me before, not once, not once."

"Louis," I softly informed him, "you're babbling."

"I want some more," he suddenly announced.

"Not tonight," I answered at once. "You... well, let it settle, Louis. I'd die rather than bring you harm, you understand."

"Your blood won't bring me harm," he countered, his arms coming around me to wrap me more tightly. "It makes the world I live in pale somehow, though. It makes me long to join you fully. Yes, that's it. Strange, really. For it also makes the colors brighter, sounds more vibrant... But it all also seems a shadow of the possibility that must exist for you."

Ah, talk about temptation. I mean, listen to the man! If I wanted him to join me in the night --tonight-- and believe me I most assuredly did, then all I'd have to do is just let him glut himself on more blood, and I would have him!

"Louis," I groaned. "No more tonight. Please. You'll weaken my resolve and I have to do what's best for you, truly best."

He shifted then in my embrace, and moving up slightly on the bed, placed his lips to mine and kissed me long and soft and lovingly. Telling me that it was all right, that he understood. But in his mind the minutes, hours, were clicking away and he was thinking about tomorrow, about asking me for another taste tomorrow...

"I want you," I said to him when he broke the kiss. "You're everything I want, Louis. And so much of everything I want."

He blushed. So charming, his gentlemanly decorum. But obliging as he'd been of late, he realized at once that I meant I wanted blood, too.

Then impishly, he placed his own finger in his mouth and licked it, much as I had done a few moments before, and even bit down as I had, although of course he didn't draw blood on himself. No fangs. But that would change....

Then with a casual shrug, he was offering his finger to me, and I drew it gently into my mouth, all the way to the back of my throat, my lips closing around it in a cool caress, my tongue teasing the length of his finger, tracing the contours of the nail and knuckle. And then softly, ever so softly, I suckled him, my eyes dancing mischief.

For of course he moaned, low, deep in his throat, and his mortal passion rose like a great tide to carry him along into my embrace. Hard now, pulsing and hard, that part of him where sensation and need were localized. He gasped, at once excited and shocked by this turn of events, for my meaning was unmistakable, the actions of my lips and teeth and tongue telling a story he could not fail to recognize.

That I wanted him.

And yes, that way. That particular way.

And I wasn't a slave, I wasn't a body he had hired; I was under no compulsion whatsoever to tease him and torment him and make him mine. And yet I wanted him. Fully. Erotically.

Because he was beautiful.

Because he was mine.

And Louis gasped again, the truth crashing across his mind like that tide breaking on the shore, and he knew then, truly knew, for the first time in his life, that he was beautiful. That he was desirable. That he was, indeed, truly loved. All of him.

"Lestat," he gasped, courage coming out his pores now that he sensed that great dawning truth he'd never before accepted. "Lestat, would you..."

Ah, well courage was one thing, wasn't it? Blatant proposition was quite another, even between lovers. For we were newlyweds, weren't we? A bit awkward, even in our great love. A bit shy. Tentative.

But the need was stronger than the reluctance.

"Oui, mon cher Louis?" I asked, my voice rough as I pulled back from his finger to speak. Just those four words, and then I was back on him again, devouring that digit --his index finger, it was-- and this time I did more than tease the man. I took his finger into my mouth to the hilt, and pierced the base of it with my fangs, sinking them deep and sucking hard, rolling onto my back with the ecstasy that flooded me as his hot salty blood burst through the tight confine of his skin to scald me from the inside out.

And his thoughts, a cascade of thoughts pouring with the blood as I drank. Nothing but love, those thoughts. Love and lust and need and trust and hope and desire. No fear. Not of me, not of the fangs he'd worried over before, not of the night into which he was increasingly being drawn. No fear to share his body as well as his blood with me, although in his charming innocence he was still a bit vague as to the mechanics. But he wanted to learn! And he trusted me to guide him, lead him, let him love me.

Ah, Louis...

Then I had more to listen to than thoughts, for he was screaming, passion bubbling up in his throat to ricochet across his teeth, screaming. Incoherent French, my name in the mix several times.

And it wasn't pain making him call out. Well, actually it was, but not pain in his finger, even though I was being quite violent by then. Carried away in my own lust. I'd chosen his finger just so that I could not get *too* carried away, you understand. No one gets drained dry through a wound in the finger! But I wanted him and needed him and realized that I was trying to do just that, my own sensuous nature expressing itself in natural form with the mortal man whom I loved with my whole vampire self....

But Louis' screams had nothing to do with my gnawing on his finger. He was twisting in another sort of pain, the kind born of desire too long unfulfilled. That potent need that bends you backwards, bends you in two until you think you must surely find release, or snap like a twig. He ached. His whole body ached. Particularly *that* part, but the rest of him as well. Ah, I could remember that pain, that sweet pain of needing so much, needing it at once.

I drew my fangs from his flesh and slashed my tongue to lick him whole again, healing every last little nick and cut I'd inflicted, and as I did I sent calming thoughts into his mind.

It's all wonderful, Louis, I told him, and you shall have me. You shall have me soon.

It worked. He calmed enough to think past the ache in his body, and managed to speak, to ask me the question he'd never finished before. The question that had lingered on his mind tonight. And not just tonight; he'd wanted this before.

But never before had he ever, ever believed he might get it.

But now he knew I loved him, and he understood far more about what that meant. That my love was whole, encompassing body as well as mind and blood and soul. Well, especially encompassing body. We were talking Louis. Gor-GEOUS.

"Would you do that to me here?" he asked, blushing, his hand moving away from my mouth to gesture vaguely at his thighs.

"Do what?" I teased him. Cruel, I know. But his blushes were so delightful. I could smell the blood...

"Love me?" he moaned, as genteel and discreet as ever, my precious Louis.

"I will," I said, smiling, my hand moving now to unfasten the buttons that held his trousers closed. My hand diving within to catch him, to fondle and pull and tease him, I leaned close against his mouth and spoke against his lips. "But I won't let you spend, Louis. Not that way, not this time. I'll drive you to distraction, I promise. And then..." I smiled again. "Then it will be your turn to pleasure me."

His head rolled back, a moan cresting on his lungs as I worked him skillfully, the hard warmth of his flesh a positive delight in my cool hand.

"Pleasure you the same way?" he groaned. "Oh, yes. Yes, I would like that..."

"That way and others besides, " I hinted, and Louis there didn't have a clue.

But then again, he didn't need one.

"Anything you want," he panted. "I love you, love you..."

"I love you, too," I told him. "Remember that always."

And then I scooted down the bed and began to have my wicked way with my beautiful Louis.

Part the Forty-First



"Lestat..." he groaned, his fingers wrapped in my hair. And then, more urgently, the syllables coming wildly past his teeth as I worked him, loving him with a vampire's intensity wrapped inside a mortal's method, "Stat! Stat! Stat!"

Hmmm, Stat? Nobody had ever called me that, you know. But I quite liked it. Every time he called me Stat again, from now to the end of time, I would think of how the name had been born, that it was the product of his desire, his rich desire I was fulfilling.

He was hot in my mouth, hot and filling. Almost like the sensation of eating, almost like that, a sensation of course that was gone forever from my life. But this was even better. Longer lasting. More fulfilling.

And definitely, more filling.

Mmmm, Louis. Never had I had a man so overwhelmingly attractive, so potently and proudly male. And of course I'd never ever done this with anyone since I'd become capable of reading thoughts. And that added a whole other dimension to what is already a multisensory experience of taste and feel and sound.

Perfection, he was thinking. Ah, Lestat's my perfect mate... Why didn't I realize this sooner? Why didn't I demand my full due as a lover? Yes, that's right, he's my lover, now.

And I was, mmmm, I certainly was. I drove him to a height of frenzy far past any of Colette's paltry efforts. So much so, that Louis didn't even bother to make comparisons. There was simply no way he could relate what he had with me to any previous experience.

I was that good.

He began gasping out my name, both my name and that charming shortened version, and begging most abjectly for release.

For I teased him, you see.

Back and forth I slid my mouth, my tongue, my careful teeth. Back and forth while he madly tossed on his back and thrust his hips up, driving himself deeper into my throat. And when he was near to bursting, right on the thin edge of utter culmination, I would still, and just lave him lovingly but gently, denying him the essential friction he would need to find the ultimate pleasure.

"Please, Stat," he pleaded, so very desperately.

I took my mouth from him to state, "Ah, Louis.... I know. I remember. But just be patient. Enjoy the fine line that divides before from after, Louis."

And in response he grabbed me by the hair and forced my head back down to where it belonged!

Well, I let him. What was I going to do, prove that I was stronger? No, better for him to feel in control for the space of a few minutes. So I let him and he thrust himself right up to the hilt, his hands on my neck to keep himself buried deep in me.

And I learned something I'd never had cause to learn before.

Vampires don't have a gag reflex.

Good thing, too, considering.

And I suppose I could have let this go on indefinitely, since I didn't technically need to breathe, either, but Louis was beginning to moan so very much that I thought I'd better take control.

Because this night I wanted to break all barriers.

And he was just passionate enough to do it, I thought. To not worry and fuss and start thinking of things that had no place or time for creatures such as us.

Yes, us. I thought of him as made already, you see.

Gently --for I'd no wish to hurt him, oh certainly not-- I disengaged my head from his grasping hands and pulled back, then sat back on my heels on the bed and watched him surface from some lust-glazed state that had held him rapt.

He sat up too, then, his clothes all in disarray. I'd never undressed him, you see. Not properly. His eyes wild, confused, he looked at me, and his beautiful voice was cracking with strain, close to pitiful, when he croaked, "What? No, wait, I wasn't done. Come back here!"

Oooh, a tone of command. I loved it, I just absolutely loved it. I could well imagine nights of frolicking like this, Louis and I together, and his pleasure would be my command, literally.

But for tonight, he did need some guidance.

"I know you're not done," I soothed, looking pointedly at the proof thereof.

Louis glanced down too, at his hardness thrusting forward proudly, so huge and so erect, slick.... and he didn't blush. He was beyond blushes, by then.

He lunged towards me, but I scooted off the bed and shook a finger back and forth between his fierce eyes. "Oh no, not like that. Don't you remember, Louis? I told you. Tonight you'll have me."

"I want you," he stated thickly.

"Mmmm, good," I approved. Then my hands were on him and I was peeling his sodden garments off. What remained of them, I mean. Hmmm. We hadn't planned this so very well. Disarray was a rather mild term for what had happened to his clothes. I guess my hands hadn't been idle while I'd pleasured him. I guess the fabric wasn't proof against a vampire in the grip of passion.

I guess it didn't matter. He wasn't going to need clothes, not for a while...

All too willing, Louis rushed to divest me of my trousers, and then laughingly took care of my shoes and socks. And then he was staring at me, his eyes lighting up, and moving with a volition not truly his own, he all at once dropped to his knees before me and took my full length deep in his mouth and moaned as he suckled me.

Ah, Louis....

I could hardly stand it, so pleasurable was this. It was marvelous enough when I had been mortal. Now, with my enhanced senses, with this vampire skin that could feel every nuance of heat and motion magnified a thousand times a thousands times over, it was more than magical, it was divine enchantment itself.

"Ah, Louis," I called out, the words coming from the very center of my being. My heart. My soul.

And he just loved me with an ever greater frenzy, his head bobbing before me, his black hair swaying with the motion, and I could hear his pulse pounding, his heart racing, as it went on and on and sweat broke across his brow, across his whole body.

Abandon, he was utterly in abandon, and his maleness there was hard and pulsing as ever, actually jumping with it, and his mind was filled with potent images of he and I, he and I, he and I.

Twisting on silken sheets in a room with no walls, no roof above, the pure starlight from Heaven glittering down to rain dazzle upon us as we slid against each other, slick with sweat.

Or in a room all enclosed, no windows and no doors, no way to escape, we were trapped together for all eternity and loving that it should be this way, that we were all and all to each other and needed naught else...

In all these visions, he and I were the same. Vampires. Blood-drinkers. United by bonds of maker and fledgling, bonds more sure and strong than any mortal tie. He was my child, and he knew it, and he thrilled to it and it gave him a sense of belonging, of perfect love, to know that I had chosen him and would protect him and support him always, that he would never be alone in this world...

He suddenly drew back from me, his body slumping rather limply to the floor where he lay in what actually resembled a puddle, it was so formless. Formless and still. His mind a sudden blank, as if all effort and energy in the world had been expended and he was simply drained, now. Drained in mind as well as body.

Concerned, I stretched out on the floor behind him and cuddled him into my arms, and whispered against his ear, "Oh, don't be like this, Louis. It's all right, truly it's all right. I told you that my passion wasn't quite like yours. It wouldn't have mattered how long you pleasured me, Louis. I can't climax, not even for you. I'm sorry, Louis--"

I stopped my crooning because he had begun to giggle.

"Hmmm?" I prompted him, and he cleared his voice to speak.

"You may not be able to climax," he dryly stated, "but I do believe I've no difficulties whatsover in that regard."

And then I understood.

He had loved suckling me so very intensely that it had brought about his own pleasure. Remarkable, really. I mean, I remembered being mortal. No matter how lovely my partner, no matter how luscious and long and tasty his member, I'd still needed some physical stimulation of my own to reach my own release. But Louis? He hadn't had any, I knew that. He certainly hadn't been fondling himself; his hands had been all over me.

I touched his mind and experienced what he had experienced. His hardness pulsing in the air, aloft of its own demand, but not even brushing against his own thighs. And then... explosion, climax, release. Blessed relief as his mouth on snapped taut for a moment and then went slack, his muscles utterly loose as all his nerve endings centered themselves on the act and delight of coming.

All over his naked thighs, the fluid. I saw it, now.

"May I?" I asked, my hand reaching over him to hover over his thighs.

He jerked slightly as though he thought the question odd. And then, "What? Oh... yes, Lestat."

Ah, Louis...

I dipped a finger into the pooling, dripping fluid and swirled it over his skin, then lifted my finger to my nose to inhale.

"Nice," I said, and Louis shook with silent laughter. Then he silenced himself as if he was embarrassed to have shared even that much of what he was feeling.

"Don't be shy with me," I told him.

"I didn't want it to be like that," he admitted then, his tones very close to self-loathing. "On my legs! Well, at least it wasn't in my clothes this time, but still!"

"Ah, Louis, you're perfect, don't you know that?" I asked him. "Any way we start is just as lovely as any other. And if you want something else to pass between us, we have the rest of tonight, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow!"

"And tomorrow," Louis added, getting into the spirit of the discussion. "You're right. It was marvelous."

"And it will only get all the more so as we learn each other more and more," I said, my hands soothing him.

"I'm cold," Louis said.

No wonder. His sweat had broken and now he was lying naked on the floor. And he was still mortal, of course.

"Let's go to bed," I murmured. "Hmmm? The two of us, beneath the sheets. And then we can--"

"You can tell me stories," Louis interrupted. "I'm worn thin by the way you played me for so long. I need to recover."

"Of course," I agreed. "I'll tell you stories."

I guess I sounded disappointed, for Louis at once amended that to, "Ah well, but first you'll drink, yes? Because you didn't earlier, not really. My finger, Lestat? Exotic, but you want a full cup, don't you?"

"All I want is you," I told him.

And I had him, then. In the bed, under the sheets, our bodies sliding one on one, my hands loving every inch of him, I drank.

A little.

But enough so that he felt it and felt loved and secure.

And then I told him stories about the monastery school where I'd been so very happy... and the crushing blow it was when I was brought home in such utter disgrace.

Part the Forty-First



"I'm sorry, my sweet," I confessed just before dawn. "I must leave you, now."

"I know," Louis murmured, nuzzled against me. He was half-asleep now, drowsily awakening with my words, his body attuned to the sound of my voice. Lovely. He'd been dozing in my arms for some hours now, exhausted and replete with the force of the pleasure he'd had with me. And I'd been content to hold him near and listen to his dreams.

Not dreams of me, alas. But interesting. How could they not be? They instructed me more and more as to the intricacies of my Louis. Paul... he'd been dreaming of Paul. Wishing that he had known then what he knew now. Wishing that he could have counseled his rash younger brother better. Wishing even that Paul could have been brought over into the night rather than die on those stairs.

Wishing that all those he loved could be made like me.

Vampires.

Well, these were just dreams, so I didn't pay them too much mind. Idle thoughts. Fancies. Yet when I woke my Louis, the second thing he said to me that morning, was a word rife with need, with import.

"Sophie," he said.

Uh-oh....

"What of her?" I asked, although of course I knew. Knew where this was headed. Dangerous waters...

To stave them off, I affected a laugh and rushed to say, "Oh, is it the dowry bothering you, Louis? I know you can afford scads, of course, but I've been thinking that if young Freniere is so very destitute, his plantation so eternally mortgaged, I should like to offer you some funds for Sophie's dowry. I want to see her happy, of course I do. And a husband in the poorhouse will not make for such a happy marriage no matter if love is overflowing their ears."

It worked. Sort of. I mean, it distracted him a bit, and he commented, "Oh, this is just the point I've tried to make Sophie see. But I can supply my sister's dowry myself. You realize this, I'm sure. I showed you the accounts, remember?"

Did I ever remember! Louis had practically forced me to go over his profits and losses. He seemed to believe that I thought less of him on account of him being so very much poorer than myself. It had all started that night when I claimed I could buy Louisiana if it came up for sale. Louis felt afterwards that he needed to impress me with his own wealth. Which was considerable, yes. But nothing compared to mine.

"Oh, you can afford it," I agreed at once. "But you'd cripple Pointe du Lac for some years in the doing, I suspect. No, Louis, I would love to help with this. Sophie... she's as a sister to me, too, you see. Because you're my brother, here where it counts." I rapped my own chest with a fist as I said it.

And then, marking the light outside the window, I jumped up from the bed and began tossing on clothes. Louis' thoughts were still distracting me, his realization that he wanted Sophie with us in the night. And I found this so distressing, really, that I didn't watch what I was doing. I ended up wearing my trousers but Louis' shirt. Mmmm, nice, actually. It smelled of him, his mortal scent.

I found my gloves and yanked them on.

And then he said it. "Lestat," he began, a frown forming between his dark eyebrows. "I should like to talk to you about Sophie--"

"Oh, enough said, I'll arrange a bank draft tonight. For the dowry," I cut across his words. And then a brainstorm came to me, and I rushed to suggest, "Let's get your mother to arrange the wedding with all due speed, Louis, don't you think? Sophie should be married at once!"

Because I had a strong sense that Sophie married would put an end to Louis' schemes to want her granted immortality as well. I didn't think he'd want Freniere with us, you see. Nice chap, Freniere, but rather staid and boring, all things told.

"But no," Louis began, beginning to really formulate a way to tell me what he wanted.

And I panicked.

"But yes, mais oui!" I insisted, making things up as I went. "Mon Dieu, Louis, don't you see the way she and the boy look at each other? She's inches away from being, er, compromised, and I'm sure you don't want any nephews or nieces born on the wrong side of the---"

I stopped then, because Louis was sitting up and glaring at me in earnest, and I realized what I'd said, what I'd allowed my fool tongue to run on with. Ooops.

"Lestat," he scolded me, his voice harsh. "You are never to talk that way of Sophie again, do you understand? It's unseemly! And Sophie's a lady!"

I probably should have shut up. Oh, I definitely should have shut up. But Louis had me spooked, and I wasn't thinking straight, and I was also in some sort of shock that he could have frolicked with me with such abandon and still have missed the ultimate point!

"Louis," I said, "Sophie is a woman."

He took that wrong, and hissed at me through clenched teeth, "My sister is a lady, a godly churchgoing woman who would never, ever do as you have suggested, you libertine!"

I didn't take offense. Why would I? I was a libertine. And happy as one.

"Yes, she is," I mollified him. "She's all that. But she's got all the same drives and impulses that we two have, Louis."

And then he stared at me, his anger breaking, and said, "Oh no. I see now, see what you're thinking. You never had a sister, so I suppose you wouldn't know. But women aren't like that, Lestat. They don't have the carnal nature that men do. They're... just compliant, that's all."

I couldn't help it; I laughed. But dawn was breaking and I had no more time to chit-chat, I really didn't. "Tell me how much you want for the dowry," I said as I went out the window.

And inside, I heard Louis say, "Wait--" And then as though to himself, he added, "Mon Dieu, what's wrong with you, he can't wait. It's daylight coming for him, and he must be safe." His voice broke then. "Oui, he must be safe. Ah, what should I do if anything should happen to my Lestat?"

Deep in his mind, though, he was thinking as much about Sophie as about himself.

Merde!

Part the Forty-Third




It wasn't that I didn't like Sophie. She was quite a catch for Freniere, if you asked me. Sweet and lovable and loyal, and so much like Louis that if there were no Louis, she just might have caught my eye.

But I wanted Louis to myself.

And quite frankly, with all the family complications I'd had, I didn't want to make a family affair out of the Pointe du Lacs. I just wanted Louis. And I wanted him to be happy. Sophie wasn't ultimately cut out to be a blood-drinker. I could tell.

But Louis... he had real potential.

I settled down in my city lair, a place so secluded and private I won't reveal even here where it was, and let the day-sleep take me away. But my last thought was that I had to cure Louis of this notion that he wanted Sophie made immortal...

That evening, I found him still at the hotel. Waiting for me. He had slept late in the day, he told me, and then had gone out to buy some clothes and things he needed. He'd been a bit embarrassed at having to present himself disheveled to shopkeepers. Like they cared! But Louis seemed to think that anyone could just look at his rumpled trousers and know what he'd been up to with me.

I suppose it didn't help his state of mind that he'd had to wear my shirt, and it wasn't the cut or style he was accustomed to. But for all that he'd sort of hugged himself in the shirt all day, and loved the feel of me that lingered on the cloth.

Mmmm, Louis....

"About Sophie," he began.

"Ah yes, the dowry," I interrupted. "You have a figure for me? We can get gold tonight if a bank draft won't suffice--"

"Lestat, I don't want your money!" Louis shouted, impatient. "I want you to make Sophie when you make me!"

Ah God, the crux.

And what could I say to that? Actually, it wasn't too hard to decide.

"No," I said, and Louis bared his teeth.

"No, what do you mean, no?" he demanded. "I thought you loved me!"

"I love you," I stated with calm. "Don't you bring love into this. It's nothing to do with love."

"Yes, it is," Louis cried out. "I love Sophie. I've thought on this, and I can't watch her die while I live on! I love her too well to visit such a fate on her. And now that I know there's another way to be--"

"There isn't," I bluntly told him. "Not for her. She's destined to stay mortal."

"No!" Louis objected. "I... Losing Paul nearly killed me, Lestat. Sophie's all I have left!"

That probably shouldn't have enraged me, but I couldn't help but take it personally. "You have me!" I told him.

"Then help me," he begged, "Give me what I need to live!"

Calm down, regroup, and think, I told myself. All right, all right. Louis is a logical man. He can think this through and come to the right conclusion if you just make him see what he is really suggesting.

"Does Sophie not want children, Louis?" I asked. "A family of her own? You would deny her this? And she loves Freniere, you know this. Shall she never marry, then?"

All this paused Louis, but unfortunately not for long. "She can have her marriage and her children," he said. "Yes, that's a sound idea. Later on you'll bring her over. Yes. Freniere's always in one duel or another. He's bound to get killed before too many more years pass. When Sophie's a widow, then we'll do it."

"We'll do nothing," I disputed. "Because I won't do it, not to her."

"Then I will!" Louis declared. "You've explained the mechanics often enough. There's nothing to say that I won't have this same power once I'm as you are. And I shall make her, Lestat. By force if necessary, because I know Sophie well enough to know that she will thank me in the long run."

I gasped, absolutely horrified, and harshly demanded, "She'll thank you for turning her into a remorseless killer that feeds on human blood, Louis? You know your sister! Do you really believe she can survive in that guise? That she can take other's lives in order to sustain her own?"

I stopped then, because Louis looked positively ill. I mean green. Well, good. Apparently I'd driven the point home with enough force that it would stick.

But then he spoke, and I knew I'd had it all wrong, all along.

I knew why Louis had never seemed to pay much attention to my nightly kills, why the moral landscape of what I was had not much bothered him.

Quite simply, he hadn't understood what I was.

Not really.

"Killer?" he gasped, one hand covering his mouth. "Take other's lives? No, no... you don't mean that... Lestat? Surely you jest?"

And he was serious, dead serious, I saw it all in his thoughts.

"I drank from you, Louis!" I reminded him. "Attacked you on the streets! How could you not have known from the first how it was with me?"

He paled, but the green tinge to his skin remained to make him look rather like a victim of plague. Or something even worse.

"Because you didn't kill me!" he cried out. "I thought you didn't kill anyone! You've drunk of me time and again, just enough to make me swoon. Why should you have to kill when just a little blood will feed your needs?"

"Because it doesn't!" I explained, throwing my hands in the air. My God, I could not believe this, could absolutely *not* believe this! All this time, and he hadn't known! All this time, and it was wasted! Because he was looking so sickened, now. Disgusted. Revolted.

By me, by what I was, by what I couldn't help but be.

Mon Dieu, I was going to lose him, I knew it, I just knew it!

Part the Forty-Fourth


I bared my teeth, fangs and all, as if by putting them on full display I could get through to him. But what use was that? He'd seen my fangs before! He'd touched them; admired them. Now he was staring at them, however, with undisguised horror.

Words, I thought. Talk. That's what you have to to. Tell him what it's all about, tell him how it is. You told him before, but you weren't blunt enough, and his essential gentility and civility filled in the gaps with something rather more benign than was appropriate, in the circumstances. So this time, don't hide the truth behind euphemisms to spare his feelings. Lay it all out before him, no matter than he looks so very distressed already...

"I need more blood, far more blood, than you have supposed, Louis," I explained, the words most likely harsh but my tone as gentle as it could possibly be. And then, yet more truth, I disclosed: "Every evening I rise and take a life. Sometimes two. And then, largely replete, I come to you."

He yanked his hands to cover his ears. "No! Go! I don't want to hear this, don't want to hear any more, don't want to know such things of you!"

"You must know it," I grated, my voice preternaturally loud, and wrapping my fingers around his wrists, I forced his hands back down to his sides. I'd let him hide from the truth before. Unknowingly, I'd let him. But no more. As much as he might wish to avoid the reality that was my nightly kills, I had to insist now that he face it.

"Of course I must kill, mon Louis," I said then, my voice far lower as I tried to reach deep inside him, to where his heart and soul joined. For he loved me, I knew he did. If only I could access that love, we could get past this terrible despair, I knew we could. "It's what I do. It's what all vampires must do, Louis. We live by bringing death, it's as simple as that."

"No!" he objected. "No, no, that's not so! Your stories, Lestat. Nicolas! They captured him, these other vampires in Paris, and they fed off him. Dozens of them, it sounded, all feeding from him and yet he lived!"

"Only so they might lure me to them," I explained, sighing. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, this was intolerable! "What they did to Nicolas was bizarre, Louis. Not normal behavior. Forget Nicolas. What you must learn now, what I thought you knew before, is that vampires are killers!"

"No," he moaned, tears pouring from his eyes. "You... you can't be, Lestat. I know you. I love you. You're good and sweet and kind and gentle. Tell me this is all a bad dream. Tell me that you don't go out there nightly and actually kill people. I can't believe that of you!"

He was breaking my heart, cleaving it into two raw bleeding halves.

"Louis," I said, "I do. I do kill. I have to. But more than that, I want to. I've told you what it's like, the kill. And what makes it all the more rich and good to kill them is the fact that they are evildoers, Louis, all of them. All of them for a very long while. I clear the city and the countryside of those who bring harm and pain to others."

Louis yanked his hands from my grasp the moment it slackened. "That's pitiful!" he rebuked me. "Worse than that, it's blasphemous! Do you think yourself God, to pick and choose who should live and who should die?" His breathing stopped. "My God, it's true, you are a killer, you really are. And you revel in it! So why am I alive, monsieur le vampire? I'm an evildoer too, am I not? I drove my own brother into an early grave, did I not? Why allow this poor drunken sod of a mortal to go stumbling on with his life, in that case?"

"You aren't an evildoer the way I mean," I gasped, terribly distressed by such a charge. "You're good and strong and pure, Louis. And while you aren't perfect, you aren't in league with those I strike down, not at all."

"Why did you let my live?" Louis yelled, thoroughly incensed. The idea that he was better than his fellow humans truly upset him. He found it almost intolerable because he saw his own flaws with so much clarity that he magnified him.

The sum of his flaws, the sum of his flaws...

"Because I loved you," I said miserably. I could tell by then how little it would mean that I had loved him. And yet I had to continue speaking, had to try to get him to understand how it had been, and how it still was. "I wanted you, Louis, wanted you not just once but for all time. The same way I want you, now."

My misery infected him, and he sat straight down on the floor in front of me, and hunched his body over his knees, doubling over as if with a pain he could not abide, his breath coming in short agitated gasps.

"I love you, too," he said as he struggled for breath. It hurt him to say it, and not just because his lungs were burning. It hurt him deep inside to admit the truth. And yet he went on. "I want you, too. And still do. But this..."

His green gaze met mine. "I can't do this, Lestat. I... no, I didn't know. I didn't understand. This is too much to bear, too awful, too depraved. Killers, vampires are killers? I can't do it, can't be that. How could you have believed I could accept such a fate for myself? I can't, won't. Ever. If I had known earlier... well, I'm sorry, that's what I mean. Sorry you've spent all this time on me, and I'm just no good for you. I can't be with you for all time, not at a price such as that. You... you should go now, and find yourself another companion. Someone more like you, less like me."

I dropped to my knees too, and clasped him to me. He fought, but feebly. He didn't really want to be free of my touch. He did love me utterly...

"Louis," I pleaded, "Listen to me. We'll start over, all right? We'll start again without this terrible misunderstanding blocking true knowledge of each other. And I'll tell you everything, and this time I'll make sure you realize what my words really mean. And you'll learn it's not that bad, what I am, Louis---"

"No, Lestat," he interrupted me. "It is that bad. How could you believe I could kill a single person, let alone commit murders every night for time without end? It's unthinkable. Beyond belief. Beyond me, do you understand that? I can't, I won't. Ever." He sighed. "You should go, now."

"No, no, they're evildoers," I said again, sure he was missing that point, that most vital point. It was to be my saving grace, that point. I brought goodness to the face of the earth, not evil! How could my Louis not see this, not understand?

"Doesn't matter," Louis muttered. "They're human. Human life is sacred, Lestat, a gift from God. A gift you've no right to snatch away, no matter their crimes. You see, whatever they've done, whatever evil, can all be redeemed so long as they live to confess their sins and repent, and turn away from the viciousness they've indulged. And you steal that when you steal their lives! You steal their only hope of redemption and salvation! You condemn them to go unconfessed into the bowels of darkest Hell!" His voice broke, a strangled sob tearing loose from its moorings to erupt into the room, and then, tears pouring from his eyes, he finished, "I cannot kill a human, Lestat."

Such certainty, and I knew it was misplaced. I knew him better than he knew himself! He preferred to think himself incapable, to think himself above it. But I knew the truth. "Oh yes, you can, Louis," I quietly avowed. "You can. When you understand more, when you realize how it is--"

"No," he denied, and then another thought occurred to him. A thought he found so very uplifting, although *I* found it all the more depressing, even as hope glimmered for a fleeting instant in his eyes. "Can I live from animals, though? Is that possible?" he asked me urgently. "I know I said the idea revolted me, before, and in truth it does. But I love you, Lestat, and I want with all my heart to be with you. Animal blood... I could bear it, I think, if it meant that I could be your Louis as you always call me..."

Ah, such hope, such potent hope. This was a solution to our dilemma, was it not? This was a way to have him!

Part the Forty-Fifth


A thought he found profoundly uplifting, although *I* found it all the more depressing, even as hope glimmered for a fleeting instant in his eyes. "Can I live from animals, though? Is that possible?" he asked me urgently. "I know I said the idea revolted me, before, and in truth it does. But I love you, Lestat, and I want with all my heart to be with you. Animal blood... I could bear it, I think, if it meant that I could be your Louis as you always call me..."

Ah, such hope, such potent hope. This was a solution to our dilemma, was it not? This was a way to have him!

I almost indulged it. Almost lied.

But something stopped me. A vision of Louis gaunt, half-crazed, chasing rabbits in a field, a Louis who hated me because he needed human blood and would not take it. A Louis in torment for years, a hatred that lasted for centuries.

I couldn't do it, couldn't condemn him to such an existence.

"You can't live from animals forever," I said. "You'll need real sustenance. And you'll need enough of it, Louis, that you won't be able to stop from taking a life once you've begun a kill..."

He slumped still further. Defeated. "That's it, then," he said. "That's all there is. I.... Needless to say, I won't be pestering you to bring Sophie into this. Good God, of course not! And as for myself... no, Lestat. Now and forevermore, no. I can't. I won't. I shan't."

"You make it sound so very final," I cried, blood tears rushing down my face.

"It is final," Louis said.

"No, it can't be," I shouted, pain lacing my throat to make the words rough and torn. "It can't be, Louis. You're mine! You promised! You promised me forever! You took vows!"

He sat up straight, then stood, then dusted himself off in gentlemanly fashion. "I regret that I shall have to take them back," he stiffly said, resenting that I'd dared to throw his words back in his face. His anger growing, he added, "And if that is insufficient I shall be only too glad to meet you before dawn to settle the matter."

"Louis!"

His composure broke, then.

"Enough, Lestat. I can't bear it. For I do love you, you know. But this? No. Never. Never ever ever. And so you must go as I have now thrice requested."

"Go?" I echoed. "Where am I supposed to go? My life is here!"

"Go away from me," Louis said, breaking my heart. "Leave Louisiana, Lestat. I can't have you near, not now. To know that all this time you've come to me in the evening having just murdered a fellow human soul--"

"Not a human soul, an evildoer!" I stressed.

Louis went right on. "To know that fills me with the deepest despair, Lestat. For I never knew you at all, not if you are capable of this depravity. And I cannot have it. A murderer in my house, in my home, socializing with my sister, my mother? A murderer! No, I won't have it, do you understand? You must leave me and never come back."

I felt like I would disgrace myself by throwing up right on his beautifully polished boots.

"Your father may stay on or not as you wish," Louis said, courteous as always. "I shall send him to wherever you direct. Just let me know by missive. But please don't write except in his regard."

"Listen, Louis," I began. "You're overwrought and practically having a fit of the vapors, here--"

Oops, wrong thing to say. His thoughts all over the surface of my mind, I knew just how he had taken that. Offended now, he thought that I'd just called him a woman. And I suppose I had, but I hadn't meant it that way! I'd only meant that he was reacting badly. And he was!

"I am not some lackey you can shove around," Louis countered, in high dudgeon by then. "I do believe I made this clear enough. Pointe du Lac is my home and I alone am master there. I shall say who stays and who goes, and you, monsieur, shall go at once! Don't set foot in my home again, de Lioncourt! I'll send your things on once you've settled elsewhere!"

"You ungrateful cur," I snarled, rage cresting in me now that I sensed, truly sensed, that this was hopeless. Louis wasn't going to change his mind! The bit about evildoers wasn't going to make everything all right! "How dare you order me about! I saved your sorry self-pitying hide! I gave your life back! You'd be long since dead now if I hadn't taken an interest in you!"

He took that wrong, too. Sacre merde!

"Oh, so I'm to thank your lordship for failing to drain me completely dry as you apparently do to all your other hapless victims!" he scathed. "You expect me to bow down and worship you just because you didn't kill me as you might have? What, do you think you own me now, something like that? Am I one of your serfs, is that what you think?"

"I didn't mean any of that!" I yelled, incensed. How dare he speak to me like this, when I'd only ever shown him love and patience and understanding? "I meant the drink, Louis, the boozing, the brawls, the alleyways you prowled as you wandered hoping death would find you--"

"Death did find me!" he snarled. "A murderer, in my own house! A demon straight from the pit, that's what you are! Oh, I thought you were some sort of dark angel. A gift from God, I thought you! And then to learn this, what you really are. Filthy, your hands stained, a Cain bringing evil into my world! I wish with all my heart that I'd never met you!"

Not the smartest thing to say to me.

I loved him, sure. But I never have claimed to be perfect, and at that moment, his words --and his thoughts too, backing every ugly sentiment up-- were my undoing. My horrible temper came rushing into my mind with a great roar, and before I knew it, my body was in motion.

I pounced on him like a great cat, and knocked him to his back to the floor, stretching out full length atop him and holding him down by sheer force of muscle and will, my fingers pinning his wrists to the rug. I bent my head in one sharp motion and sank my teeth deep and harsh into his jugular, the blood bubbling over my lips, spraying me in my haste, and I drank.

I drank deep.

Part the Forty-Sixth



I didn't drain him, although the temptation was vibrant and powerful in me. And Louis wasn't helping matters, for with all the stubbornness of which he was capable, he resisted me. Fought, his fists pounding at me. And he refused to go into a swoon. Stubborn, stubborn Louis! If only he would start to swoon, he'd be able to feel my love! But no, he was too determined to feel only anger.

And reluctantly, it came to me that my sudden attack on him --unpremeditated as it was-- was not going to help matters in that regard. Mon Dieu, what was wrong with me? This was Louis flailing beneath me, Louis! He deserved better than this from me!

I pulled back and licked my lips, my eyes somewhat glazed with the pleasure in his blood, pleasure I felt even if he'd not wanted to yield to me. Louis just stared, his thoughts whirling with fury. He was too intelligent, though, to say a thing while I held him pinned. He was too conscious of the threat I posed.

Now that broke my heart, it truly did. Because I wasn't a threat to him, not really. Didn't he know that? Alors, I suppose he did not.

A deep sigh quivering on my lips, I let go of his wrists and eased myself off of him. And I said nothing to upset him further, although I could not help but note his involuntary response to me. He was hard down there in his nether regions. As hard as ever, and he'd almost climaxed the moment I'd sunk my fangs. He'd found the force of that, the dominance I could exert, rather thrilling.

But he thought his own reaction sordid and tawdry and wrong.

He didn't want to be aroused by me, not any more.

And yet he was, he most definitely was...

And he realized it himself, and it made him so extremely uncomfortable that he largely lost his awareness of me as a threat. Or maybe he just felt braver now that he was standing at some distance from me. Laughable, really; I could have closed the gap in quite literally no time at all. But Louis didn't truly understand that any more than he had really known what I'd meant all those times I had said that the thirst compelled me to hunt.

Indignant over his own pulsing erection --and most likely edgy over it as well; he did need release-- he suddenly hissed, "Unforgivable! That was unforgivable, Lestat! You... you... you took! Without my consent!"

Ye gods, such naiveté. Probably I should have been more patient and loving in my response, but at that moment I was irritated that he still didn't seem to understand my very nature. "I'm a vampire," I pointed out. A rather ridiculous thing to have to say, in truth, and likely that was what made my next words so harsh. "That's what I do, Louis! I take blood. As much as I want. And I usually want it all! Be glad I've too much regard for you to kill you."

"You have killed me," he said coldly, reacting to my words, not to the wish underlying them, my wish that he should understand essential truths about me. "You've killed every last feeling I had for you. Get out, Lestat!"

"Don't you talk to me that way!" I shot back, my own fury cresting.

"If you don't like the way I talk, kill me after all!" Louis countered that.

And all my anger died in that instant to be replaced with something so raw and painful that I can't even give it a name. "How can you say such things to me?" I softly asked, wounded.

"Because I can't stand the sight of you!" Louis cried. It was quite true; he couldn't. "Go! Now! Get out of here and don't come back! Address your correspondence to my man of affairs; you know who he is. I'll care for your father until I hear otherwise, but I never want to hear a single thing from you ever again, is that perfectly clear? Now get yourself from my sight and never come back!"

How had it all gone so wrong so quickly?

"Louis," I pleaded, and he shook as he leaned against a wall, as far as he could get from me, his thoughts racing toward what he could do to make me leave. Of course there was nothing. I wasn't going anywhere. Louis was mine and he was going to stay mine.

But then I found out that I was wrong.

There was one thing he could do, one way to make me leave, after all.

I learned of it when I walked over to him, placed my hands on the wall, one on each side of his head, and leaned in to kiss him. All I wanted was to start over, to heal the widening breach, to something, I don't know. Maybe I just needed to feel his lips on mine.

But Louis grated harshly, every word ugly, "Don't, Lestat. I'll hate it. That mouth, that mouth you kill with! You murder with it, and you want to put it atop mine! I swear I shall spew forth vomit if you so much as touch me!"

And inside his mind, the words I hate you, I hate you, you hurt me, you lied to me, you never told me I would have to kill, you made me think I could have you forever and I can't, I can't, you tricked me, you lied to me, I hate you now, I hate you now...

On and on and on those same words.

And they filled me with hopelessness as I'd never felt before. For I'd been so careful with him, so loving. And so honest! And what had it gotten me? And the path, that path laid out before me, that pure straight path that led into his heart? A travesty. Worthless.

My vision shattered, my purpose and my goals rent asunder. There was no real point to being so careful with him, was there? He wasn't going to love me no matter what, that was clear as glass to me, now. And such a fool I had been, such a fool in love!

And the worst part was that I loved him still! That if I had it all to do over again, I'd do it all the same! As angry and hateful as he was being, I could no more retaliate than I could willfully go into the sun!

Gobi, Gobi, Gobi....

I shoved the vision of myself away, the vision of me doing just that, going willfully into the sun. Quite literally, going. Up in the air, carried aloft on the winds, sailing into the very face of the sun itself...

No, no! I wouldn't do such a thing! And neither would I harm one hair on Louis' head. Didn't matter what he said, what he thought. Didn't even matter what he did.

I had my decisions already marked out before me. To love him, that was all. To truly love him.

It might be worse than useless; I might never have Louis' love and care again. But all I knew was that I had to follow through with what I had begun. That I loved him and I had to love him.

"I'll go as you ask," I said, hoping that he just needed some breathing space in which to consider what he'd learned this night. My true nature had been a shock for him. But perhaps it was a shock he could recover from? "Pointe du Lac is yours, as you say," I acknowledged. "You are master there. And you're not my lackey. A great deal of what you say is right," I sighed.

Louis seemed to descend into some state of terrible, chilling calm. When he spoke, it was without inflection. And his eyes were hard emerald chips. No emotion shimmering there, none save tight control. Yes, that was it. He had himself in tight control, and his thoughts were all wrapped up in the sole idea that he could not bear this, could not bear my company any longer, not now that he knew what I truly was.

"Where will you go?" he stiffly asked.

I didn't know. I only knew one thing, and that much I told him. "Not far, Louis."

"What do you mean?" he demanded, his eyes still just as hard.

What did I mean? Simple. I couldn't leave him alone as he had asked. And yet he wanted nothing to do with me, so where did that leave us? I had no idea.

Part the Forty-Seventh



I backed up then and let him have the space he seemed to need. "I'll be nearby, Louis," I said, shrugging.

"Why?" he cried. "It's hopeless Lestat, you and I, don't you know enough to know that much?"

"Perhaps you'll change your mind."

"Never!" Louis railed, sparks glittering in his eyes.

I drew in a deep breath. "Perhaps you'll want to see me again. Just to talk, perhaps. I've deeply shocked you, and for that I apologize. But in time you may decide there's more we need to discuss about these matters."

Louis twisted a disdainful lip.

"Fine, maybe not," I acknowledged. "But mortal life is fraught with ills and ailments, Louis. You may need help, someday. I love you. I could not bear it if you came to harm someday simply because I had left you to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I'll stay nearby, and watch and listen, if for no other reason than because I wish to safeguard and protect you as best I can."

"No!" Louis objected. "I've told you, you must leave Louisiana entirely!"

"Ah, but I'm not your lackey, either," I softly reminded him. "I can live where I choose. And why would I ever choose to leave you? No, Louis. Never."

"You're just hopeful that I'll change my mind!" Louis cried, quite obviously feeling threatened by my plans. Now that was interesting. Hmmm, could it be that Louis wanted me to go because my continued presence would pose him a potent temptation?

"I don't know that hopeful is the right word," I told him. "But it is certainly possible that you might change your mind."

"No!" Louis insisted. "Don't do this, Lestat. You'll spend your life waiting for me, and I will never come to you!"

I smiled, but sadly. "I won't spend my life doing it," I said. "I'll spend yours, Louis. All of yours. Until your dying day, I'll be near you. Waiting. Hoping. Ready to give you my gift if only you'll accept."

"Don't," Louis begged, and I shook my head.

"I have to, dearest," I sighed. "You may not want to be there, but you're in my heart forever, now. And in there, you are my Louis, mine. I can't walk away. Ever. I have to stay for whatever opportunity may arise."

"What opportunity?" Louis cried, desperately afraid now. Afraid that he would weaken...

"Any opportunity that appeals," I confessed, just as desperate, just as afraid that he might never weaken at all. "Perhaps I'll come to you by night for blood. Oh, don't look like that; I won't force the issue as I did tonight. I'll only drink from you if you wish it. But you do wish it, Louis, that's the rub. As much as you wish you didn't, you do want me."

Louis gasped, looking ill with fear, for he recognized the truth in all my words. "Why can't you just leave me in peace?"

"Because I fear that if I do, you shall rest in peace," I retorted. "And I want better things for the one I love with all my heart."

"Better!" Louis mocked. And then he snatched up a candlestick and threw it at me, flame and all.

Well, as much as I loved him, I didn't particularly want him to think he could get away with nonsense like that, so I deftly caught it and threw it back, the heavy silver stick missing his head by mere inches. He recoiled and stared at me in shock. He actually thought I had meant to hit him! But no, no, he only thought that for a second. And then he realized I'd just been making a point. And then he began to worry that the room would catch afire, and he stamped on the tiny flame with his boot.

Time to make a graceful retreat, I thought. "À revoir," I said, stepping out onto the ledge. "I'll see you soon, mon cher."

"Don't," he pleaded. "Please. Just go as I asked."

"No," I refused, most gently. "You can't conceive of it now, but you may need me, Louis. Even if you don't change your mind, you may need something I can offer. Help. Healing blood. Funds if the market for indigo should collapse. Or just a shoulder to cry on, a friend to talk to. How should I know what you might need? But I'm determined to be there for you in any of those situations, or any others that might arise. I'm your brother, Louis. Whether you want me to be that or not, that's what I am, now. We're bonded, you and I."

"Don't you care that your being near will only be pure torment for me?" Louis cried.

"And why should that be?" I softly demanded to know. "Because you still love me, because you know there's really no barrier to keep us apart? Could that be it?"

"There's every barrier!" Louis insisted, gritting his teeth.

No point in arguing, not now. "Please care for my father, eh?" I bid Louis. "Tell him I've been called away on business but that I will come to see him when I can. And Louis? I will come to see him."

"You will not," Louis grated. "I won't admit you to the house."

"You will," I calmly disagreed. "Because you're above all civilized. You would no more refuse to let a man see his own father than you would slap a guest's face for no reason."

"But my family, my servants, my slaves--" Louis protested.

Seeing where he was headed, I cut him off. "I pose them no danger whatsoever," I promised. "Pointe du Lac is off limits to my thirst, do you think I don't know that? I'll not attack anyone in your care, Louis, or anyone on your lands."

At that point, I was deeply ashamed that I'd frightened Colette that once... Really, that was ill-done of me. She was under Louis' protection just as he was under mine...

"Come to see your father only after the household is asleep, regardless," Louis coldly dictated. "I don't want Sophie laying eyes on you again. She's not going to associate with a murderer, and neither am I."

"Enough with the sweet-talk," I mocked, and then, tossing my hands skyward, agreed, "Sophie won't see me, all right? But you will. I guarantee it."

"It would be simpler if you were to move your father elsewhere," Louis groused.

"Not for me, as I would stay near your plantation in any case," I smoothly countered.

Louis glared, and bared his teeth, and then with a cunning light in his eyes, found a way to turn the situation to his advantage. Well, as much as he could, at any rate.

"Your father may stay and you may visit him on one further condition," he allowed. "You stay clear of my thoughts, monsieur!"

"I don't know that I can do that," I admitted honestly.

"Oh, you can," Louis harshly told me, his voice grating. "And you will. Because I can feel it now, when you're probing, when you're picking apart my mind. I can feel it and it's not welcome, is that clear? It's a violation akin to what you did to me earlier. My thoughts are mine, as is my blood! And I shall offer neither willingly to you! You steal from me again, and you'll only increase the divide that's begun tonight!"

"Fine," I sighed, weary of the whole matter. If it meant so much to him, I could deny myself his precious thoughts. Actually, they were so very ugly just now that it wouldn't be that great of a sacrifice. And too, I knew him quite well by now. The way he thought was no great mystery. I bet I could find out everything I wished to know simply by watching him, and listening to him speak aloud, and applying my intelligence to his motives and designs.

"When you've had a chance to calm down, we'll talk again," I promised. And kiss, I thought. And share blood. And make love. Fantasies only, as Louis made only too clear with his next words.

"Don't bother," Louis whispered, turning his back.

"Don't bother?" I echoed. "You're my world, my whole world. It's hardly a bother to be near my own dear love, even if he's upset and hurting and striking back right now."

"You pompous arrogant bastard," Louis grated, but his shoulders were shaking. He knew it was true, what I'd said. He was saying these things because he was hurting so. He didn't want to hurt like this. And yet he saw no way to ever stop hurting, either.

Because he was convinced that he could never, ever kill... and nothing I could say would dissuade him of this conviction.

I left him there, left him because I needed to hunt. To kill. And I left him because I felt lost. Because I'd followed a path all this while, and now that path was gone. I was foundering, stumbling, and I needed to think.

Because there was no more path for me to follow. At least, not one that led straight and true and blameless into Louis' heart.

But all I could do was to blindly continue forward and take each night as it came. And how long would it be before Louis came to realize that he'd overreacted this night? How long before he could look at me again with something other than fear and anger and disdain on his face?

How long?

It might well be an eternity.

But I had eternity, didn't I? I would stay near him, and I would wait. And I would do what I could to help him recover from his mortal coil, from the disaster that our relationship had become.

Yes, for Louis, I would do anything.

Even wait.


The End.................


but the saga continues in Missing Path