Missing Path

Sequel to Mended Path


by Aspen in the Sunlight


Part One


A week had passed, a week without my Louis. Without even his thoughts. He'd told me to stay clear of them, and so I had. No point in ignoring his request, not when he was already upset enough with me to tell me to go away and never come back.

Of course, that last request was one I'd decided not to respect. I couldn't leave him, I simply couldn't. I had to be near in case he needed me. In case he changed his mind. In case he simply wanted to talk.

Louis de Pointe du Lac showed no inclination whatsoever toward any of those circumstances.

He picked up the reins of his life just as though I'd never entered it. True, I didn't know what he might do with his days --and I couldn't know, not now that his thoughts were forbidden me-- but in the evenings he ate dinner with his family, savoring the fine wines his cellar offered, and making casual conversation as though nothing particularly heavy weighed on his mind.

He didn't mention me of his own volition; it was left to Sophie or his mother to do that. Mostly Sophie, actually, but that was understandable. Louis had gone off to town with me ostensibly so that we could see some expatriate wealthy French lords about investing in the plantation, investments that would enrich her dowry to marry young Freniere. And Louis had come back from town, alone, and said not one word of me or the mythical investors.

"Did Monsieur de Lioncourt have further business in town?" she questioned, after a good deal of wondering why Louis hadn't yet mentioned his friend. What can I say? Sophie's thoughts weren't off-limits, and so I was in her mind a good deal as I tried to discern what I could of Louis' feelings or behavior.

"Mmmm," Louis murmured non-committally, and then changed the subject to, "Colette, more coq au vin, if you please."

That was when I first noticed that the slave girl named Colette was serving at table. Almost at once, a rush of jealousy burned through all my veins. Colette, Louis' favorite! Before he'd come to me, how many many times had he frolicked in bed with the buxom wench? And now Louis had left me, so to whom would he turn the considerable force of his passions, his needs?

Anger so fierce I could feel it heating me consumed my entire body.

And Louis looked up at once, as though by instinct, his green gaze piercing even through the French glass and filmy lace curtains that separated us. I was hidden in the dark, of course. Spying. He could not possibly see me, absolutely not. Yet he knew I was out there. Attuned to me, he had felt my anger as it had erupted forth.

Colette had moved forward, her arm brushing his quite indiscreetly as she made to serve her master the dish. And I read in her thoughts that she was eager, that the master had been distant for a long time, that she had missed him. Oh, how she longed to be summoned to his bed once more!

And Louis, conscious of my presence out there, feared for her; that much was obvious even without reading his thoughts. "Enough, Colette," he quickly announced, his tone of voice a verbal shove that caused her to step back in confusion. "Return to the slave quarters," he said, and then, just as though he'd realized he did not want to send her into the dark where I lurked, he hastily changed that to, "The kitchen, rather! Yes, retire to the kitchen and stay there."

"Louis, are you all right?" Sophie asked.

The mother, meanwhile, was glaring after Colette. That mother was sharp. She knew full well that Louis had frequently availed himself of Colette's all-too-willing lush feminine body. She despaired of this, although she accepted it. But pragmatic, she knew that Louis would be far more likely to marry if he did not have such ready access to gratification from the population of slave girls vying for his attentions. Well, I must confess that I resented Colette as well, so in this one instance I could actually sympathize with Louis' old crone of a mother.

That probably should have frightened me, actually.

"I'm fine," Louis answered Sophie. "Just tired. Those negotiations with the French lords went on all night, and came to nothing."

Sophie sighed with disappointment. "And your friend, the marquis' son? When will he be returning?"

"Ah, I've no idea," Louis answered. "He's been away from his business rather too long. Quite likely he should spend more time in town and far less here."

Well, what could he say? The fact that my father was still in residence would make it hard for Louis to claim I would never return, much as he might wish that.

"I see," Sophie murmured, and then, sensing quite clearly that speaking of me somehow distressed Louis, she politely began to detail the new fashions her friend Marie had been telling her about that afternoon. Wedding gowns, that was what was on Sophie's agile mind...

And now a week had passed, and still Louis was behaving the same. Never speaking of me if he could avoid it. And he could easily avoid it with Sophie and his mother. The former, sensitive, deferred to his clear wish, and the latter had never much liked me anyway and counted it a mercy if Louis' "unnatural" attraction to me was finally done with.

But Louis could not avoid speaking of me in one context, and that was with my father. The man was a guest in his home, and Louis, ever the gentleman, could not possibly ignore the old man.

No matter that after what my father had done to me, Louis could not help but sympathize with me, as much as he didn't want to...

So he sat with the old man a couple of evenings each week, and played chess. And my father wanted to know of me, of my doings, my whereabouts, and so Louis was forced to do the one thing he tried never to do with Sophie: speak my name.

"Will his business take him much longer?" the Marquis pleaded one night.

"Oh, well, you know Lestat," Louis had vaguely answered, since of course he had no idea when I might make an appearance.

"No, I don't," my father had pitifully admitted. "My fault, all, monsieur. I would like to know him now, I truly would. But of course now he is a man grown, with responsibilities. Busy, I sense he is so busy. And I've no right to complain, for when did I ever have time for him when he was a boy?"

Louis got a strange look on his face, and I knew he was remembering that my father had had time for me.... time at night, when all the household was asleep, time to do unspeakable things to a boy too young to fight back, too intimidated to even try....

"I am certain that Lestat will come when time shall serve," Louis attempted to mollify the old man after a moment.

"But..." here my father faltered. "I don't mean to pry, monsieur. But you and he seemed so close for a time, and now, your voice sounds so distant. Have you had a falling out with my son?"

Before Louis could stop himself, he laughed quite harshly.

"Monsieur?" pressed my father.

"Nothing. A drop of wine went down wrong," Louis excused himself.

"Ah, that can be quite an irritant," my father politely agreed, although he did not believe the transparent lie for even one second.

"Did Lestat not give you any message for me, then?" my father continued.

"Just that I should care for you and he would see you soon," Louis divulged.

My father sighed and leaned back on his pillows, not even noticing that the chess game tilted precariously on his lap, the pieces shifting off their proper places. "Ah, well then he does care in some measure," he sighed.

"He does," Louis agreed, his voice breaking over it. For he, of course, had cause to know just how much reason I had to not care at all. "He's a good man," he murmured then, as if to himself.

And suddenly uncomfortable, he yanked himself to his feet and announced, "Good night, monsieur."

And Louis walked out. I turned on the balcony as I saw him exit the house, his footsteps taking him straight and sure down toward the slave cabins. Toward Colette.

Part 2


But Louis turned around before he ever saw Colette than night, turned around and came back to Pointe du Lac to sleep in his solitary bed.

Well, I gave him a week, as I said. A week to think and reflect and come to realize that my nature was simply my nature, and the kill part of it. Not something to condemn.

And after that week was up, I had to see him up close again, I simply had to. To never really be near him was killing me. So I waited until the whole household was asleep, and I stole into his bedroom and sat in a chair and watched him as he slept curled up on one side, alone.

He was dreaming of me, dreaming that things might have been different. And yes, I suppose I was reading his thoughts to have known that much, but then again, dreams weren't really his conscious thoughts. I had to have something, some connection to him!

I thought of slipping into the bed with him, of drawing him lovingly into my arms, of sipping from his blood which was such fine wine to me. I thought of offering my body to his, for his pleasure, his beautiful mortal pleasure...

But the moment he awakened, he would be angry to see me in his room, I just knew it. He had to want to see me again before there would be any point at all to my coming to him.

So I simply sat there, and admired him, the smooth line of his high cheekbones, the beautiful way his ebony hair fell back from his profile, the dark color only serving to highlight the cream hues of his skin. Ah, if only I could see his eyes as well. That green, that sparkling green! I'd not seen it, not properly, in what seemed forever and a day. Of course my vampire vision was keen enough; I could perceive details at great distances. Yet there was something alluring about Louis' eyes, something that drew you in closer, that made you long to see ever deeper into his soul.

And now his eyes were closed against me, much like his soul.

I stared at them anyway, at the sweep of his black eyelashes, and then I saw something that gave me both sorrow and hope all at once. Those lashes lay against skin tinged slightly blue with fatigue. Ah, my Louis was suffering. I could never, ever rejoice in such, could I? And yet there was a part of me that felt somehow satisfied to know he wasn't sleeping well!

Intrigued by that, I opened up all my vampire senses fully, letting even his dreams wash over me in greater measure --I'd only just scratched the surface of them when I had entered-- and then I learned that my sweet, tormented Louis was indeed hardly sleeping at all. Well, my satisfaction died a quick death at that; I did not want him to suffer that much. I well remembered mortal exhaustion...

He was sleeping now, though, his body finally worn completely out by what had to be night after night of sleeplessness. I saw all this exhaustion in his dreams. And oh, how I wanted to enter those dreams! How I longed to comfort him and hold him in my arms and let him know he wasn't alone. I sensed, you see, that he felt alone.

And all this without truly reading his thoughts. Honest! I just knew him so well, you see. Oh, and I did get some hints from his dreams.

Dreams that drifted on and on, full of might-have-beens. Full of never-to-bes. Or so they seemed inside the dream. I couldn't help but have my own hopes.

But it was too soon for those hopes, and too soon to intrude on Louis any more than I already was.

And so I left, my footsteps dragging with reluctance, and then taking me a few doors down the hall and then around the corner to my father's lovely suite.

I let myself in silently, and went straight to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder, and shook him awake. I had no desire at all to see his dreams, of course. But strangely enough, I did have some vague longing to talk to him.

"Sir," I said when at last his eyelids fluttered open. And then retreating a few steps back, I seated my long body in a chair and regarded him through hooded eyes.

He recognized my voice at once. "Lestat," he moaned, the syllable still thick with sleep. "Lestat. It's good to have you close again. And your business, did it go well?"

I pulled the chair closer to the side of the bed, and because I felt no need to indulge in the lies that Louis had thought necessary, I merely shrugged and said, "Oh, there was no business, Father. Not in the sense you mean. I've stayed away for other reasons."

"Me?" he gasped, the word choked with regret. "Oh, I was afraid of this! I've... it's me, my being here. I've come between you and your Louis. Because you're so full of rancor towards me, and he's so loyal to family, and this causes division--"

"No," I interrupted him. "That's not it."

"Oh," my father said. "He... he doesn't know?"

"I should keep secrets like that from the man I love?" I mocked, and my father went white about the mouth.

"No," he acknowledged.

And then I sighed, so tired of it all. I'd fought enough with Louis that night in the hotel that fighting really held no further appeal at all. "I didn't come here to discuss the Auvergne, Father."

"Then why have you come?" he moaned, almost pitiful in his regret. He did have regrets, I sensed that now. And yet he felt helpless in some regard that seemed to elude me. But I suppose I could make sense of it if I tried. True, he had done heinous things to me in that castle. And he was helpless to change any of it. The past could not be undone.

And suddenly I sensed what Louis had meant about redemption... that if a man could just continue living, there was always a hope of redemption from whatever evil. I began to see that my father wanted that. Needed that. But he had no interest in redemption from God's hand; he'd never even believed in God. No, I was the only one who could redeem him.

And yet I still didn't know how... or even if I truly wished to.

"I came to see you," I said simply.

"Not Louis?" he asked.

"I think you're astute enough to have picked up that Louis and I are estranged," I answered. "He's angry at me."

"He loves you still, I'm sure of that much," the old man earnestly said, his eyes wide and sincere, though blind. "He loves you so much he cannot speak your name without tripping over it."

"I know," I said. "It may not matter."

"How can love like that not matter?" my father wondered aloud.

I leaned back in my chair, and raised my eyebrows. "You should ask such a thing? Did you ever love Mother for even an instant, Father? Or was it her money all along, her Italian grandmother's riches the lure?"

"Could Gabrielle tolerate love for even an instant, that's what you should be asking," my father slowly said. "To answer you, though... yes, yes I did. Hard for you to imagine, I'm sure. But think of when you went to Paris with that Nicolas, Lestat--"

"When you disowned me and refused to allow my name to be spoken in your august presence, you mean?" I sniped.

Ill-done of me, I knew that. It was past. And a minor detail in all that I'd suffered. Hardly worth mentioning. And yet, incredibly, amazingly, it still hurt! I had hated my father; I had not wanted his regard. And yet when I'd heard how much he hated me in return, it had flayed me!

Perhaps sons always long for their father's love, no matter what.

"I'm sorry," I said before my father had a chance to so much as respond to my bitterness. "What were you saying? Something about Paris?"

He stared at me as if unsure of my unexpected clemency. For when had I ever apologized to him for anything I'd said? He deserved the very harshest words I could devise! Yes, he did! And yet I didn't wish to throw such words at him. Not just then, at least.

"Oh, Paris," he said again, his eyes going unfocused and murky as he tried to pick up the thread of his lost thought. "Oh yes. Well all I meant was that if you can remember the excitement you felt in those shabby rooms you rented with Nicolas, how it didn't matter that you had to lock your window at night lest someone come across the roof and enter to rob you of what little you had... if you can remember how the love you felt made it all seem somehow magical, well, that's the way I felt at first with Gabrielle, may she rest in peace. But the magic didn't last. You know it didn't; you know why. And the castle became a bitter place, sterile for all its filth."

I hardly knew how to reply, there was so much revelation in all he'd said. Of course we didn't need to discuss Gabrielle any longer. I knew how she was; I knew what he meant. And now I knew that he had loved her once. Gabrielle didn't return love for love, it was as simple as that. But enough of that. Too much talk of Gabrielle and I would let something slip that was best left unsaid. He didn't know, of course, that she lived still. Just as he didn't know how I truly lived.

What startled me more was the details he knew of my Paris sojourn. I'd never spoken to him about it, not a word. Let him wonder, I had thought, not that I believed he cared enough to give it a second thought. But why should I speak to him of the times I'd had with Nicolas, Nicolas whom he had hated, despised?

"How could you know about the rooftop window?" I asked.

"I made your mother read your letters," he stated simply. "I made her translate them into French."

"But no-one was allowed to speak my name!" I exclaimed, stunned.

"Oh, that lasted but a few weeks," my father said, waving a rather careless hand about. He actually toppled the water pitcher with the gesture. Quick as always, I jumped up and caught it before it shattered, and then put it back where it belonged.

"A few weeks," I murmured, sitting down again, this time by my father's side.

"If that," he yawned, beginning to tire. I don't think he wanted our conversation cut short, but he was an old man, and ill, and subject to all the mortal exhaustion that such typically produces. "It was anger, Lestat. Just blind stupid anger that you had defied me. And even then I knew deep down that I'd given you precious little reason to do otherwise. Why, when you killed the wolves I never said a word of approval, did I? Or told you that I was so glad you hadn't died in the effort... Well, I was angry then too, if you must know. That you had risked yourself like that! Let the peasants suffer the wolves, I didn't care! That my son might have met his end, slaughtered by worthless animals..." he shuddered.

"You never told me you felt such things," I whispered, shocked, taking his hand and holding it loosely between both my gloved ones.

"You hated me," he moaned. "With reason. Do... do you hate me still, Lestat? Sometimes I think not, and then I realize that you simply must, after what I did. But then sometimes you sit with me like this and speak so calmly and you are so kind. The best of them, you were always that. But is it only duty, Lestat? Duty, or something else, something that might send me to my grave with some measure of peace, after all?"

Part 3



"You hated me," my father moaned. "With reason. Do... do you hate me still, Lestat? Sometimes I think not, and then I realize that you simply must, after what I did. But then sometimes you sit with me like this and speak so calmly and you are so kind. The best of them, you were always that. But is it only duty, Lestat? Duty, or something else, something that might send me to my grave with some measure of peace, after all?"

"I..." Blood tears slipped from my eyes, and though my father couldn't see them, he must have sensed something, for he slipped his hand from my grasp and reached it up to trace the outline of my eyes. At one time, such a gesture would have had me flinching back. For him to touch me... it usually sent me spinning back into the past, into horrid times in the past. But not now. Now, I could take it as I think it was offered, as it was intended to be.

Caring.

Even from him.

His fingers came away stained with blood; thank God he couldn't see it. And then I was dipping a handkerchief into the water pitcher and carefully cleaning his fingers. He didn't understand, of course. He couldn't know that the mark of my tears would stay on his fingers until morning and then ignite with the first rays of the sun.

"Lestat?" he asked.

"Louis should have the maids take better care of you," I explained, my voice gruff with something I didn't care to ponder, let alone name. "Your nails are caked with bits of grime."

"Oh," he said, and then, "Thank you, Lestat. And thank you for visiting. I had begun to despair of ever seeing you again."

"Because I stayed away a week?"

"I'm an old man prone to fretfulness, I fear."

"You're playing on my sympathies, that's what you're doing," I accused, but lightly. His theatrics had many times annoyed me, but not now. For some reason, I could tolerate them now. Of course maybe that was because now, there was no question but that they were done for my benefit. He had no other audience present.

I wondered then, how many times my father might have spoken in company, only seeking some connection to me, and I had assumed it was a show put on for others...?

"Have you any sympathies to play upon, though?" my father whispered, the question clearly consuming him.

"Oh, I might have," I allowed, relaxing as I sat beside him on the bed. He was a tragic figure, really. I hadn't forgiven him, but neither was my hatred so alive and fresh and choking me, just now. It just all seemed so pointless, all the anger, all the hate.

"So this is interesting," I went back to thinking about my long-ago letters to Gabrielle. Mortal letters, full of the joy I'd had at that time in my life. "You, you said something else about Nicolas, something about love?"

"I'm blind, not stupid," my father retorted. "Oh, I remember perfectly the way you spoke about him. The way you spoke to him, those few times you both were in my presence. And then there were those letters. Most discreet, actually; I think you didn't wish to shock your mother. But I saw through all the flowery prose to know what must have prompted it. You and Nicolas... once you got to Paris and were free of all concern, all restraint... I think you let your love blossom into full life."

"You don't sound as though you approve," I said, although why I made the comment, I couldn't have said. What did I care what he thought of me?

"I'm remembering what I used to think," my father remarked. "I didn't approve, Lestat. Not then. But that was likely more my own guilt talking than any sense of true moral revulsion. I thought I'd done that to you, you see. Made you want a love, want things that were... unnatural."

"Ha!" I laughed aloud, thinking that funny. And to my recollection, that was the first time ever that I'd thought of nights in the Auvergne and had cause for humor. "Oh, that's rich! You thought you'd done that to me! Don't you know that if I were to structure my love affairs on what you did, sir, I'd go screaming straight away from anything remotely male?"

By the end I had raised my voice, so truly, I wasn't all that amused, I do suppose.

"I didn't think it would work that way, no," my father whispered, turning his face away.

"Oh, don't, Father," I chided him, and setting the handkerchief aside, I placed my fingers beneath his chin and turned his blind eyes back toward mine. "Go on, please," I bid him.

"Go on with what?" he moaned, his own mortal tears flowing.

"Whatever you wish," I said, and suddenly I felt strong. Strong, able to withstand anything he had to say. Even talk of winter nights and a boy who chose to flee the castle in the snow rather than wait for him... a boy who had been dragged back and beaten for defiance, a boy who had been raped while his neck and back and buttocks were raw and bleeding from the whip.

The memories still hurt, but I felt stronger than them, now.

But those things weren't what he wished to say, not then. Perhaps he sensed that even speaking of them would wound me deeply for all my strength.

"Nicolas," he went on when his tears had died. "You never speak of him, and he is not with you now. I've wondered, time to time... you left him behind in Paris?"

"Oui," I said. "In the end he turned out to be... not the one for me. And then later I heard that he had died."

"Oh Lestat, I am so sorry," my father murmured.

"Are you?" I asked. "I thought you didn't approve."

"I didn't, then," he said. "I thought it was my fault. But then the Revolution swept both your brothers away, children and all, and then I realized how short life was, and how precious, and how very wrong it was to resent your happiness simply because it wasn't what I had expected for you. And then, I hoped that you and Nicolas were well together, and happy. But you came to the New World alone, and never mentioned him. And all this time I've wondered, but been afraid to ask what happened. For I knew I had no right, you see, to be so much as told."

"And so now you know," I murmured, moving past that into all that mattered, now. "What do you think of Louis, Father? We've had a disagreement, as I mentioned, but despite that, I can't imagine loving anyone else, I simply can't. It's like... Nicolas was infatuation, and Louis is true love."

My father smiled. "Ah, you don't need my approval, Lestat. You never have. And yet you must know already that you have it. That I think your Louis a fine, good man. And good for you, as I said. And ever since the Revolution, I've thought that happiness is what matters most, not rules that bring one only grief and shame."

He yawned again, and I knew that as illuminating as this whole conversation had been, I really should let him rest. He had no idea of the time, being blind. He only knew that I'd come in and woken him up. But the truth was that it was only about an hour until dawn.

"I must go, Father," I told him then.

"Have you seen Louis?" he suddenly asked.

"He does not wish to see me," I admitted.

"I'll put a good word in for you," the marquis suggested, and the idea was so ludicrous that it made me smile. It could make no possible difference to Louis, whatever my father had to say. But if it would make my father feel he'd been of some service to me, so be it.

"You do that," I agreed, my teeth glinting in amusement. "Yes, you do that. Bonne nuit, Father."

"Bonne nuit, Lestat," he said back, his hand finding mine in the dark and stroking my gloved fingers. Like he wished to say more. "Come again when you can."

"I will," I promised, and then, closing my eyes against the pain that flashed through them at the idea, I took my leave of him as a son ought. I dropped a filial kiss on his forehead, just brief enough that he would not mark the temperature of my lips. "À revoir, papa."

Part Four



Another week passed, another week of missing Louis and being diligent to see and learn all I could of him even while I stayed well clear of his thoughts. I was more careful, though, that he not sense me as he had that once, and I certainly didn't allow him to see me.

Yet he knew I was nearby, for I visited my father twice more and spoke of pleasantries, nothing too emotional nor about our horrid past. And my father mentioned these visits to Louis.

Yet according to my father, Louis barely even replied. In fact, he would rapidly make some excuse to leave the room whenever the conversation would drift towards me.

Alas...

I followed my Louis relentlessly, although always at such a distance that he could not have known. And what did he do by night, my Louis, after the family was all asleep? What was causing those circles beneath his eyes, night after night of restless exhaustion?

He wandered the swamps and bayous where once he and I had strolled and talked and kissed. He lay down in the groves where he'd had such pleasure from me, and sometimes he even looked furtively about and then touched himself, and moaned my name. Fascinated, drawn to watch, I found myself absurdly turning away to give him privacy.

And afterwards, Louis would sit by the banks of the Mississippi and watched the barges and the riverboats slowly cruise past, his eyes were dark with thoughts.

Thoughts I didn't read, lest he sense the intrusion and it merely become one more thing that kept us apart.

But sometimes, he would wander toward the slave cabins and Colette. She no longer lingered in the main house after her duties were done; Louis' mother had put a stop to her mooning about, her transparent hope that Louis might summon her to his bed. Louis' mother had strictly demanded that Colette leave the mansion the moment her work was done each evening. And Louis, wrapped up in me by that time, had not thought to countermand the order, if he even noticed it.

But now he did notice her absence of an evening, and he often began to meander down toward the slave quarters. I didn't steal into his mind, so I don't know for certain what he meant to do. But if it was his intention to find her and offer her again his bed, he did not carry through on this. Was he simply afraid for her? Afraid I would retaliate as I had long ago threatened? Or was it something deeper, more profound, an awareness that although he needed bodily release, sexual release, he did not truly wish it with her?

Again, I could not know.

Until one night, when Louis suddenly stopped in the middle of a field and announced, "I know you're out there, Lestat, I know. We have to talk. Show yourself."

Part 5


"I know you're out there, Lestat, I know. We have to talk. Show yourself," Louis demanded.

Hard, that voice. Hard, and resentful.

And when I stepped forward from the shelter of the trees, into the patch of moonlight in which he stood, he looked angry as well as resentful.

"I have to know one thing," he announced with a suddenness that startled me. "Are you going to keep me from leading a normal life, is that your game?"

"Of course not," I denied. "How you choose to live is up to you. I believe you were quite clear on that point. Not my lackey, remember?"

Louis raised his eyes to mine, then. "Ah, but neither are you mine. And now that it's well established what you do for a living, so to speak, I can't help but worry that I shall find dead bodies on Pointe du Lac itself if I should anger you sufficiently. You do know well how much the murders would horrify me, I do believe. You know how much control you have if you wish to exert it!"

If I had been ignoring his wishes and reading his mind, I'd have known what he meant by all that. But I was being good, and my very virtue was my downfall.

"I've told you already that your plantation is off-limits to my thirst!" I bit out, offended that he didn't even remember.

"Have I your word on that?" he pressed.

"Yes!" I shouted.

"And is your word worth anything?" he insisted.

"You thought it was, once," I snarled, more and more offended as the conversation wore on. I thrust my hands deep into my pockets to keep them from reaching for him. "Shall we speak of broken vows, Louis? For if one of us has deceived the other, it was not me!"

"I shall soon know if your word as a gentleman is good or not," he coldly announced, ignoring my own charge. Well, at least he hadn't taken it as an invitation to duel, again. "I've thought on this night after night."

"Thought on what?" I demanded.

"You don't know? Well, at least you've kept to that promise, if nothing else."

"Thought on what!" I shouted again, stamping my foot, but I should have known by then, I really should have.

"I grow weary of celibacy," he admitted. "It never did become me, as I believe I've mentioned."

"Yes, you have needs," I said, my voice soothing really. It was all I could do not to tell him to bring his needs to me. But I sensed that such a comment would only enrage him further.

He seemed to know that that would be on my mind. "Yes, I do," he shortly announced. "The normal needs of a man in his twenties. But contrary to what I've led you to believe, I've no true wish to indulge them with a man I know has just returned from foul deeds with murderous breath--"

"Colette," I spat, my fury reigning supreme. I should have guessed! He wandered past her little house often enough! But without access to his thoughts, I suppose I had been hoping that he was still comparing me to her and finding her wanting. Stupid hope. I should have known that all that kept him from her was his awareness that I had once threatened anyone I had to share him with!

"Colette," Louis agreed.

"Louis," I began. Don't ask me what I meant to say; I've truly no idea. I just knew I had to say something. Beg for his love, perhaps. Beg him not to do this to me.

Louis didn't let me finish. Just as well. It would have done no good, whatever I had said. I'd just have humiliated myself.

"Tell me now, Lestat," he urged me, "the truth, the whole truth, as awful as it may be. Should I dally with her again as I used to, will you kill her for it? I have to know."

"Yes," I answered, glaring. How dare he ask me this, how dare he!

"I feared as much," Louis admitted. "I thought your promises would not extend to her, or any like her."

"How can they, Louis?" I pleaded. "You shall kill me with such talk, I swear. Don't you remember how it was, you and I in the moonlight? In the hotel? Have you ever known such keen longing and such stunning relief?"

"That's all beside the point," Louis gently told me. Strange, how gentle his tone was all at once. Soft, and full of regrets. "It doesn't matter how sensual we were together, Lestat. You kill. You kill nightly. It's repugnant. I... I can't really even bear conversation with you, the disappointment is that powerful, that keen. And anything more?" He shook his head. "You shall kill *me* with such talk, that is the truth."

"But you have such strong needs, Louis," I reminded him. "You're a powerful man, in that way as well as all the others. Mon Dieu, if you knew how exceptional you were! And so what shall you do if you won't come to me?"

He sighed, still gentle, still sad. "Well, the power is yours to decide, and you have exercised it."

"What do you mean?" I asked, alarmed by his defeated tone.

"I won't touch her," he explained. "I won't so much as look at her. Indeed, I shall not touch anyone for the rest of my life, not if making love will lead to the death of someone I care for. Or even if it will mean one more whore lying bloodless in the street. I can't have murder on my conscience, Lestat. Not your murders any more than my own." He sighed, then, deeply distressed. "As much as I detest it, I shall remain celibate. Forever." He laughed harshly. "Or self-gratifying might be more accurate. I certainly won't be calling out to you. I think I'd rather cut if off, first!"

Oh, now that wounded me. Because I didn't deserve it. I could see how he felt, though. He was deeply troubled because of course I did have every bit of power he ascribed to me. I could easily kill any man or woman he laid hands on. I could make his every love-affair end in tragedy, if I wished.

But what would that accomplish? It wouldn't make him come to me in love. It would only make him unhappy. And wracked with guilt, as he had been after Paul's death. It might make him suicidal were I to be so callous.

And he most likely would be celibate forever rather than be a party to what he liked to term my murders.

That would be bad, I sensed. Not just bad for him, but bad for us. How could I come to him and ever hope to advance our conversation, our relationship, if every time he saw me he was wrapped in resentment that because of me, he could not have what he wanted? Or what he thought he wanted. Same difference.

So I supposed that if I ever wanted Louis' love again, I could not be so cruel as to force him into celibacy. I had to let him have the girl, it was as simple as that.

Simple, but why then so very difficult?

For I still did want to kill Colette, for no other reason than that Louis so much as contemplated taking his passions to her! Oh, this was maddening, maddening! And what was worst of all was that I was hurting my precious Louis!

"Well?" Louis asked. "Have I your final word on the matter? Shall I lay in a supply of towels in my room?"

Which, I suppose, was his not-so-genteel way of asking if I was going to make him masturbate for his only release!

I didn't read his thoughts, but it seemed clear enough that he felt trapped. Not what I wanted. I wanted him to come to me. Freely, with him knowing that did it freely. No compulsion between lovers. There couldn't be.

"No," I sighed. "I'm sorry. I spoke in haste. Colette... I don't like this, Louis, I don't like it at all. You're wounding me, and I think you know it. But if you must, if you simply must, if I am so very abhorrent to your fine gentleman's sensibilities, well, then go buy her some more hair ribbons or something."

He gasped. "You mean...?"

"Oui, c'est ça," I sighed again. "You want her, you take her. I won't interfere. I won't so much as touch her, I swear this to you. On my word, my word you doubt, but there it is. Yours."

He just stared at me, so long and somberly, his anger dying, that I wondered if I'd gotten it all wrong and he had been secretly hoping that I would fight for him! Yes, yes, that made sense. Who didn't like to be fought over? It was flattering. But I was sure that even though Louis felt a smidgen of this, the greater emotion he felt by far was a determination that I not be in control of any part of his life, and certainly not his love life.

"You won't watch again, either," he menaced. So much for my thinking that he might actually thank me! Didn't he know how generous I was being, how selfless? He must not, or why would he go on to insult me, "That was rather coarse and common, if you ask me. Of course, at that time I didn't know you killed humans nightly. So perhaps good manners aren't what I should have expected from you at any time."

I suppose I could have told him that I'd do as I liked, that he couldn't stop me from watching if I chose. His insults made me want to do that, to throw down a gauntlet. But there seemed no point. In truth, I had no desire to watch him with Colette. Once, it had been instructive. And too, he'd invited me to see... and of course back then, he wasn't choosing her over me, not really. He was just doing as he'd always done; he wasn't mine yet, not that way.

And now he was, but he was going back to her, choosing her indeed.

So no, I didn't care to watch, to have my heart even more shredded than these words tonight had made it.

"As you wish," I conceded. "Is there anything else you require of me?"

That last was sarcastic; I couldn't help it. Louis didn't seem to notice. He was too caught up in what had just passed between us.

"I... I..." His voice all at once lost the rancor that had characterized it throughout this exchange. "I didn't think you would let me have her, let me have anyone," he whispered, shocked. "I thought you would tell me to come to you or do without a lover."

"I love you," I told him then. "I truly love you, Louis. It's not just words with me. It's real and living. I wish you could know how much. Anyway, I wish your happiness, and I do understand how celibacy strains you..." I shrugged. "About the hairbows. Colette likes red best, by the way," I offered. "Did she never tell you?"

For if I could not be his lover, perhaps I could be his friend. A true friend, one who helped when he could....

"Lestat..." Louis said then, and I heard for myself about what my father had meant about him tripping over my name.

"Oui, Beautiful One?" I replied. He frowned at the endearment, but said nothing to rebuke it.

"Sophie is going to marry Freniere," he offered, and I suspected this was his way of returning friendship to me, his way of saying that he recognized I was trying to be a friend.

I thought better than to admit that I knew, that I'd been listening the night Freniere had awkwardly asked for Sophie's hand and then even more awkwardly approached Louis for consent to the match. Good God, I'd never heard such stammering!

"I wish her much happiness," I murmured, smiling slightly. They did love each other, that pair, although Sophie was the stronger and smarter partner by far. "May I give her a wedding present, Louis?"

He raised his eyebrows, and the mere gesture gave me hope. It meant he was relaxing, you see. No longer so worried for Colette or any other lovely he might chance upon... he trusted me. Somewhat, at least. And that was something.

"The ceremony will take place at noon," he said. "Although we haven't yet set a date. But in any case, you can't attend a daylight service."

Well, at least that was more polite than the rest of the truth, which was that I was not welcome in any case.

"I've told you I won't see her, and I won't," I levelly replied. "But I should like to give her something, all the same. I love you dearly and she's your sister. Besides, she is a very good sister, Louis. She has nothing but respect and admiration for you in her heart."

"All right," Louis slowly murmured, although he had grave reservations about letting me any further into his family circle. And then he reasoned, "I suppose it would look odd not to, your father living here and all."

"Oh, don't start thinking that I care a whit for appearances," I warned. "I don't. The whole world could know that we've made love, Louis, if it were up to me. Social conventions mean nothing to me."

"And you're proud of it," Louis accused. Well, what did I expect? The idea that our dalliances might become public knowledge was unnerving in the extreme for Louis. If I had loved him less, I would have blackmailed him straight back into my bed with the threat of exposure. But that just wasn't on.

"Some of us have standards!" he was raging. "Some of us balk at murder for personal gain, for example!"

"Some of them deserve no better than to be murdered!" I retorted right back.

Louis shook his head in disgust. "I don't know why I even talk to you! You'll not change your mind. Nor I mine. It's a stalemate."

"Thank you for playing chess with my father," I smoothly changed the subject. I didn't want to argue, either.

"He plays well," Louis said, and then he was glancing down to where a slight haze of smoke rose from the chimneys of the slave cabins.

"You want her," I sighed, miserable. "I thought you wouldn't, not again. I thought you'd know that we were perfectly in tune, you and I, that there's no greater pleasure to be had than you can have with me."

"You thought wrong," Louis coldly announced, angry again.

And thinking that that said it all, I slowly turned away and left him to seek for his Colette. Down toward the river I went, Louis' eyes on my back. I wanted to be far away, far far away. I didn't want to be within hearing range when Louis gasped out Colette's name and told her just how to pleasure him. I couldn't bear it.

And so, when a riverboat passed close to the bank, I boarded it with an almighty leap and rode it downstream, far downstream.

Away from Pointe du Lac and what would happen there that night.

Part 6



I hadn't left Louis before for more than a few hours at a time, but I was so distraught that night that I sailed down the Mississippi that I stayed away for three nights straight.

I tried to drown my sorrow in the blood of evildoers, but it was no use, the blood all but worthless. I wanted Louis! And yet I knew I couldn't have him, wouldn't have him, for he didn't want me in return! I revolted him, now!

And so I was without hope and without direction as I prowled the night and struck down all those whose thoughts proved they were as vicious as I felt.

When I returned to Pointe du Lac, it was to see my father, not Louis. I was afraid, you see, terribly afraid. Because I was hurt, and because I was angry, and because with my temper, you just never could tell. Better to wait, I thought. Better to wait until I calmed down.

I went in after everyone was asleep, deliberately entering so late that Colette, if she'd been in Louis' bed at all, would be long since gone. I didn't want to read her thoughts, didn't want to know what she might have done with Louis that night, or the night before, or the night before. But there was little chance that I would accidentally pick up such information if she was already back at the slave cabins by the time I returned to the plantation.

As I slipped through the French doors that flanked the balcony to my father's room, it came to me --quite unwillingly, I do assure you-- that as late as the hour was, my Louis was still awake.

My Louis! What a travesty of a phrase! My Louis, mine? Hah! He was Colette's if he was anyone's. And it wasn't supposed to be that way, it just wasn't. I knew it. What had I done wrong? Where had I gone astray? I'd been so careful with him, so careful to keep to that path.

That path that was no more.

Louis had destroyed it, destroyed it utterly with his cruel words and crueler acts.

I still felt lost, still felt like I was being helplessly swept forward by a tide not in my control, the motion random. Not a path at all, anymore... but there was nothing to do but press on and muddle through and manage the situation --and my temper-- as best I could.

So yes, I realized that Louis was awake; I heard him moving around in his room. But at least he was alone in there. That was something. If I'd heard him making love to Colette I'm not sure I could have withstood it.

I thought of going in to him, to talk, to try again, to mend our fences, something! But it was too much risk to take. What if he was still sweaty with the exertion of having poured his passion into his Colette? I had a vampire's senses. A curse at times; I would be able to smell the musk of his passion, and hers, in that bed --not to mention on his skin-- and then I would be confronted with the hard, cold evidence of his rejection, his betrayal.

Why do that to myself, I thought. It was bad enough to contemplate it. I didn't need to torment myself still worse; I simply didn't.

So I quietly closed the glass door I had slid open, and pulled up a chair again to my father's bedside, and watched him sleep.

And though I tried my best never to read his thoughts --never had read them, in fact-- that night I was so distraught, and so determined not to accidentally overhear any stray thoughts of Louis', that I found myself opening my mind to my father's dreams.

It wasn't deliberate. It wasn't even conscious. Rather, it was sheer desperation, a defensive move whereby I might guarantee that my mental attentions didn't drift toward Louis. I sensed most strongly that to do that would be disastrous in the extreme. My temper... well, let's just say that throughout the past three nights, I'd had the most dreadful visions.

Visions of myself, forcing the dark gift upon a man who begged and pleaded most piteously, but I had had no pity.

"I'm going to do it to you, David," I had said, and proceeded to do just that.

Oh, I'd been cruel to this man. And of course he wasn't Louis, didn't even look like Louis, but the visions were so lifelike, so rife with reality that they scared me anyway. Because if these visions were true, it meant that I was capable of utter cruelty, utter violence, of hot forcing violation. Of course I didn't know if they were true, these visions.

But they might be.

And it was a risk I couldn't take with Louis.

To do to him what Magnus had done to me? Ah God, I wanted to so very much, that was the real truth that underlay the visions. He was mine, and I wanted just to take him and make him know that he was mine! I wanted to settle matters, to have no more this uncertainty, this degree of pain that burned my brain, tempting me, tempting me, always tempting me to just say, "I'm going to do it to you, Louis," and follow through!

And I might do just that, I thought, if I should by chance catch a glimpse in Louis' mind of him with Colette, betraying me, callous of my feelings and my regard....

And so I let my father's dreams fill my mind. Better that than the smallest shard of Louis' thoughts.

And my father's dreams?

What dreams they were.

Part 7


And my father's dreams?

What dreams they were.

A forest in winter, in deepest snow. And a young boy trudging along in the snow. But this boy? He wasn't me, he wasn't either of my brothers, he wasn't anyone from my childhood village.

He wasn't anyone I had ever known at all, in fact.

Some boyhood friend of my father's, perhaps?

At any rate, the boy could not have been more than seven, perhaps eight. And he was walking in the snow, huddled in an old much-mended coat, his boots in tatters, snow creeping in between the cracks to soak through wool socks made rough by darning.

His toes were cold, freezing cold, the boots and socks no great proof against the snow. And yet the boy was not hurrying home to where he might get warmer, to where he might thrust his chilled feet up against a grate, against a welcome fire.

He was trudging, his steps slow, and growing slower all the while. And his face, the expression on his face, it was just horrible. He was struggling so desperately not to cry, and yet the tears were seeping out his eyes all the same. And still his steps were slowing, slowing. Was that because he had been walking up a slight incline, and the slope was becoming more severe the farther he walked?

Yes, it was a mountain. He was on a mountain. And his home was high up on the mountain, and he didn't care to go home, this boy.

And yet he had to.

The terrain began to seem strangely familiar, and yet not quite right. I couldn't place it. I almost might have thought it the Auvergne, except for the fact that not even the Auvergne had ever looked quite as desolate as this. The trees had no leaves! Well, I suppose that wasn't so very surprising in a winter scene, but what I mean is that not even the conifers, the evergreens, boasted any foliage.

In other words, the evergreens were not ever green; they were brown stale spindly skeletons of branches.

The earth itself seemed sterile in this dream, incapable of creating life, or beauty, or joy, or indeed anything at all that might be good or redemptive.

And the child, the boy child I didn't know, he fit into this scene perfectly. His thoughts a perfect blank of despair, his mind so numbed with unnamed dread and fear that he no longer even consciously contemplated these emotions. They were simply part of the landscape of his life. No more worth thinking about than was the bleak, gray sky above. No birds, not in that sky. Not in winter and not in summer either, at least not in this barren dreamworld.

The boy's every thought was transparent to me, of course. And once I had flung myself into the tableau of my father's dreams, I was not really able to shut those thoughts out. Not that I even wished to. And now, it wasn't just that I was trying to escape the temptation of reading Louis' mind down the hall.

No, there was something else here, something else transpiring which was of keen interest to me, of keen use. And yet I could not have said precisely what it was!

Maddening, truly.

Yet I sensed that I needed to stay, needed to delve deeper into the dream, needed to learn something about this boy, about this desolate land in which he lived, this land that was Auvergne and not Auvergne.

Who was he, this boy? And why was he so unhappy? Suicidal, really, that was what he was, although he did not seem to realize it himself. But really, why should he? He had not the means to kill himself, not really, nor the requisite courage.

And that was a feeling I knew only too well from my own childhood, from my own grief. To have but seven or eight years of life, and to already feel so weighed down with sentiments and emotion that one feels positively flattened... oh yes, I knew the sensation well. And looking back, I see now that I might easily have decided to kill myself and end my pain, had I had any awareness, any real awareness, of how such a thing might be accomplished. But at such a tender age, one's conception of the world is not yet fully formed...

It was a mercy, perhaps, that by the time I grew strong and brave enough to attempt suicide, I was old enough to begin fighting back, to begin resisting the old man's lechery. If not by outright rebellion --harshly punished-- then by running away. Of course, that was harshly punished as well. Alas.

My thoughts for a time had been drifting towards the past, towards myself, and all at once it came to me that my father's dream had changed while my attention had been distracted.

I saw him all at once in a crumbling castle, in the great hall of such a castle, a meager fire burning away behind a grate at the far end of the cavernous stone room.

And I recognized the castle as my very own in Auvergne.

And the young boy was talking to a man, an older man who screamed and railed and hit him straight across the face for coming home late. "You'll not have permission to go to visit the priest again," the old man declared as, with one final shove, he pushed the boy away as if he disgusted him. "Is that clear, René Pierre? No son of mine is going to flaunt such disrespect towards his own father!"

And with that, the older man was standing up from the table, his great huge meaty hands, swathed in grease, moving to his waist to yank off his belt.

And in a blinding flash that should have come before, long before, I realized who the boy was.

René Pierre... my father's name.

My father was dreaming of himself, himself with his father!

And his father was every bit as abusive as mine had always been.

Part 8


It was too much to take, too much to endure, this glimpse into my father's mind, into his own pain. I'd always thought him so hard and cold. Actually, I suppose I had always thought of him as a man grown. A man embittered and all too willing to take that bitterness out on me.

But now I saw that such notions were of course nonsensical. My father had been a defenseless child once, just as I had been. And as a child, he had suffered just as I had... I hadn't seen it all, of course, hadn't seen any scenes of what horrors his own bedtimes were... but I didn't need to. I knew.

Oh yes, I knew. It was all there on his face as he'd trudged through the snow. He hadn't wanted to go home. He dreaded home. And I knew why. I understood it perfectly; I'd been there myself.

But at least *I* had had Gabrielle. I mean, I had hated her at times because she didn't defend me against my father, and because she passed weeks and months and even years barely speaking to any of us. And yet, when my despair was blackest, she would come to me, and hold my hand. That was something. If not for that, I might have given up entirely and done myself in. Somehow. Although, maybe not. I always have been a scrapper, a fighter.

And when I thought on my childhood, and my mother who lived in the castle with us but for all that wasn't really there in any meaningful sense, I didn't hate her still. Not as I had back then. How could I? I was a man, now. Grown. Now, I saw things that had been transparent at the time. Now, I knew more about how the world worked, and I most certainly knew more about mortal thoughts and motivations and compulsions. And most importantly of all, now I could see the scope of what she'd done in its own context, instead of exclusively through the veil of my own excruciating pain.

Quite simply, she hadn't helped me because she couldn't.

The man she had unwillingly married beat her, too. I didn't use to realize that, although how I could have missed it, I really wonder. It seems so very obvious. Late at night sometimes, her cries... and they weren't cries of passion. And for whatever reason --I really had no idea-- after my father was done thrashing her, he would come to me, his thirst for violence spiked.

Well, maybe I did have an idea. Maybe Gabrielle refused him her bed even after the beatings, and so he sought me out. Anger in a man... well, I'd been a mortal man. Powerful emotions, even extremely negative ones, can provoke that most masculine part of the body. I'd experienced this many times with Nicky, although we didn't abuse each other. But he would irritate me at times, you know, and I'd just want to throttle him. Instead, I'd drag him to the lumpy straw mattress we shared and we'd fall together in a heated rush of unfastening breeches and licking and biting and moaning and thrusting. And sometimes we'd be fighting about some inconsequential matter, really, but it would end with Nicky dragging me to bed. Or just pouncing on me right there on the floor...

We attacked each other in love, though. And when our bodies joined, as violent as it sometimes was, we were making love. Because we both wanted it, we were both involved.

But I suppose that all that merely means that I had ways to channel the violence into something positive.

My father didn't, though, and I began to wonder if that was because, unlike me, he'd had no Gabrielle as a child. I mean, no matter how lousy a mother she was most of the time (although putting it all together I had to think she hid in her room to keep anyone from seeing the bruises her husband had given her), at least she was there for me when things were at their very worst. She didn't defend me, but she didn't let me sink all the way to suicide, either.

And my own father, when he was a child, he hadn't even had that much; hadn't had a mother at all. His mother had died giving him birth. So it was just him and his father, in that vast castle. And of course the servants, but none of them would dare offer him comfort or compassion.

Ever.

God, what a life, what a miserable existence.

The dream was continuing, the boy --I suppose I should call him what he was, my father-- being beaten in earnest now. Being beaten black and blue, but that's just an expression, of course. The bruises come later. During the dream, the dominant color was red, crimson red blood pouring over his shoulders and back, dripping down into his breeches. For his brute of a father had ripped the shirt from the son's back, the better to thrash that back.

Strange, that blood. I mean, I could see it but I couldn't smell it, not a whiff. And then it came to me that that was because I was inside my father's dreams. I was sharing his experiences, his impressions. So of course the blood didn't smell.

I was subjected to his life, not my own, and I could feel his pain. Blinding whipping pain that seared his back, my back, in unison as past and present blended and I was thrown back into memories of many scenes just like this. Augustin laughing when I was being flayed; the eldest and the heir was immune from such indignities. They were all immune save I. Gabrielle, quietly leaving the great hall rather than watch... oh, why mince words. I hated her most of all for that, didn't I? She knew, she knew... it wasn't all furtive, was it? At times my father's abuse of me was open. And openly vicious. And still she didn't help me.

Well, at least she didn't laugh like Augustin.

Nobody laughing in this dream, nobody talking. No noise at all except the steady hiss of the belt, the rush of air as the hulking beast called Father beat his son on and on and on. Then noise suddenly erupted. Screams, wails of pain as the boy lost his grip on his pride. But the beating went on, sickening blow after blow, the belt wet now with blood and spattering that blood each time it descended with such force that the boy wasn't just thrashed, he was violently knocked into the rough stone floor...

And I felt it, too, every blow. I felt it with a vampire's sense of pain, actually, my mind sharing in the dream but participating in some measure, too.

Too much to take, as I said, and I suppose I must have made some noise, some sound of distress, for all at once the dream shattered, the fragments of it flying through my mind, cutting across my thoughts and impressions and emotions, and I was reeling from the shock.

Not just the shock of things ending so abruptly, but the far greater shock of having learned what I'd learned in the first place!

It came to me only vaguely that my father had awakened due to whatever noise I'd made, and that now he was calling my name, his voice concerned. Mon Dieu, concerned! About me! One would think he'd be shaking from having had such a dream. But something told me that the dream was familiar to him, that he was used to waking up in a cold sweat, his heartbeat racing, blood pounding through his temples until they ached.

"Lestat," his voice came. Soft, but steady. "Where are you?"

Now how the devil could he even know I was in there with him? He was blind! And even if he wasn't, it was pitch black in there. I don't need light to see.

"Lestat?" he asked again, and somehow --don't ask me how-- I recovered enough to speak.

"Yes, it's me," I answered, leaning as I sat on the chair, leaning towards him. "How did you know, Father?"

And for some strange reason, I didn't even have to hesitate over calling him that, not this time. Even more odd, I didn't even realize I'd called him that until it came spilling past my teeth! All the times before, you see, I'd made an effort to call him Father. It only seemed just, since whatever his crimes in the past, he seemed to be making an effort now to be one. As much as he could, anyway. And ever since he'd tried to kill himself, I'd been highly conscious that he was fragile in ways I'd never suspected, never could have suspected.

Of course, now I knew far more. I knew where his hard, bitter shell had come from in the first place. Mon Dieu, now I knew better than ever where my own had come from, too! For in him I saw the lessons that instructed my own life, and personality, and habits...

I thought I was going to be ill, the full tableau before me was so very nauseating.

My father sighed and struggled to turn on his side in the bed. Weak, he was so weak. I helped him without thinking much about it, only to hear him murmur, "Cold, your hands are so very cold, Lestat. You must take better care of yourself. Call a maid to lay a fire..."

I had forgotten my gloves. No great mystery to that, seeing how upset I'd been for nights and nights over Louis. Over Colette. Over Louis and Colette! And I was still upset about that. Devastated, in fact. But at that moment, it was held in abeyance as I grappled with what I'd seen in my father's dreams.

"I'm fine," I glossed over the temperature of my hands, although as I spoke I plunged my hands into a jacket pocket and fetched forth my gloves, donning them as I repeated, "How did you know I was in here with you, Father?"

A deep breath filled his frail lungs to bursting, and then he let it out in a drawn-out sigh. "Oh, I don't think I did, not really. I was dreaming; you were in the dream. And then I woke up and I heard someone breathing and it just seemed natural to think of you, first."

"I was in your dream," I slowly repeated, wondering over that. Well, I was back to my usual habit with him, which was of course not to read his thoughts. I'd never even have shared his dream if not for my desperate need to keep strictly away from Louis' mind so very close. But what I mean is that I didn't really follow what my father had said. I in fact had not been in his dream. I should know. So what was this, lies so soon? "You were dreaming about me?" I asked, rather sharply, because if he said yes, then I would know that for all his attempts at amends, he wasn't above lying straight to my face.

"I... hard to say," he murmured. "No, I suppose. I.... Lestat, I was dreaming of times long since past. You could not have been there. I don't know why I said that. But when I first woke, I had the strong impression that you'd somehow been there all the same. Yet I can't remember seeing you in the dreams. Not once. And the impression is fading now..." He cleared his throat. "I suppose I don't know why I assumed it was you in here with me," he finally admitted.

"It's all right, Father," I soothed him, my hand taking his as it lay on the sheets. I stroked his fingers, and he either thought I'd warmed up, or he noticed the gloves. I couldn't be sure, since he said nothing of it.

Another breath, another sigh filled his chest, and then left it with a rattling sound. "Are we alone, mon fils?"

A strange question, or so I thought.

"Yes, we're alone," I answered, my voice still quiet with that shock I'd had of realizing that he had been like me, once.

"Oh," he said, his own voice sad. "I thought perhaps you might have come in to visit me with..."

"Louis?" I asked. "Why would you think that? When have I ever sat in here with Louis and visited you?"

"I just wanted to know if you'd worked things out, that's all," my father said all at once. "I've been hoping. Praying."

Once, I would have openly scoffed at that. Him, praying? What discourse could one such as he possibly have with God? Not that I believed in God; I didn't. I had always thought that he never had, either. But he must have, once. In the dream he'd been to visit the priest, I recalled.

So this time, I didn't scoff.

"Louis' very ill-disposed toward me now," I sighed. It was strange to talk about it, especially with him, but in another way, it was a vast relief as well. "I've done things he can't forgive. He thought he knew me, Father. But then he learned of these things and in one fell swoop, I think..." My voice broke slightly, which was amazing in itself. Not that it broke, of course. Oh, I'm an emotional creature and I can weep buckets on command, can't I? But not before him. Not ever before him. Except... well, my voice broke before him and I didn't try to hide it. Didn't feel like it had to be concealed.

"I think Louis fell out of love with me," I admitted.

"Oh no, that's not true," my father disagreed, and he said these words not in the manner of someone offering mere solace. He said them as if they had a force of their own and he truly believed every word. "Louis loves you most intensely, Lestat. Even after whatever it is that you've done."

He said this last with a hint of curiosity, and I knew he wanted me to open up to him, to let him know Lestat better. And if my "unforgivable" acts had been of any mortal nature, I just might have obliged him. But as much as he wanted to know me, I didn't believe he wanted to know I was a vampire. So, there it was.

"What makes you think he still loves me?" I said instead, and then a bitter laugh scaled my throat. A laugh of seeing in my mind's eye Louis with Colette. Louis, plunging into Colette. Louis, laying back on his bed, his ankles spread wide so that the girl could kneel between his thighs and lean over and take his lovely hard member between her lips. Louis, moaning as she suckled that mortal hardness, ah, I knew so well now how he tasted, how he felt, how he panted beneath my ministrations and begged so prettily for release, my Louis, I love you Louis, I need you!

God above, I was going stark raving mad, and the harsh laughter erupting from me became a scratching roar.

I got myself under control, though, when I saw my father wince, his ears ringing with pain.

Ooops.

Well, it jerked me back into the here and now, at least.

"Just because he trips over my name doesn't mean he loves me," I said, my voice acid, then. The idea that Louis loved me! If he loved me, would he shove me aside and demand to have his way with the lovelies that populated his plantation? You know, I was starting to get angry with Louis. Dangerously angry. I'd have to go hunt again, I suppose, and try to vent it, but I had a strong premonition that this was a rage that just couldn't be drained away as I drained an evildoer!

"Oh, but it's more than that," my father insisted.

Well, then I laughed again, in mockery. I wasn't trying to wound my father for once, but I could hardly stand the conversation, that was the truth. "So now does the master of Pointe du Lac visit with you and pour out all his deepest feelings?" I derided his claim. "For some reason, that does not much sound like the Louis I know, and much to my regret, love!"

"Lestat mon fils, you don't wish to talk of Louis, do you?"

In my opinion, it had taken him long enough to work that one out!

"No," I admitted, trying to calm. I couldn't see Louis again, could I, until I had this growing fury under control. Besides, if my emotions were all over the place just then, it wasn't entirely Louis' doing. There were undercurrents in this very room, after what I'd seen in those dreams. "Do you know what I want, father?"

He slowly blinked and shook his head.

"I want to talk about Grandfather," I told him, my voice hard. It had to be. Otherwise, I wouldn't get through this at all. And I had to get through it, didn't I? I knew the what, but I'd never really understood the why of all that abuse. Now, I was on the cusp of understanding, and as much as it might hurt, I had to know why.

But I wasn't the only one it was going to hurt.

My father, at the mere mention of the man he'd been dreaming of, had begun to cry.

Part 9


"I can't, Lestat," my father blubbered, overcome at the mere thought of discussing the man who had so abused him. Well, I knew that feeling, didn't I? Only with Louis had I felt able to articulate it in some measure. And even with him, I hadn't been explicit. Good God, of course not! I couldn't bear it.

I knew what Louis had thought, of course. His mind wasn't forbidden to me, not then. He'd reacted with all the outrage and horror one might expect, except that in his essential innocence, he hadn't really realized precisely what my father had done to me. I saw it all in his mind, what he thought. I'd alluded to the abuse, and he'd thought that my father had merely fondled me, or made me fondle him. And his imagination even stretched far enough to encompass the possibility that my father might have put his mouth on me, or forced me to fellate him... but more than that? No. Louis simply didn't know, had no idea.

Which was rather depressing, really. I mean, I would have thought he'd have worked out the possibilities by then. And he'd been so very shocked and distraught at what he thought he knew, that I hardly wanted to tell him that he didn't know the half of it.

Oh, what did it matter, anyway? Louis was busy chasing Colette these days, not that there was much chase to it. He was busy enjoying Colette, I should say. And I was here with my father and he was just absolutely flayed by what he'd dreamed, by what I had wanted to discuss.

And me?

I felt flayed, too. Raw. Aching, and I didn't even know for whom. My father, myself... God, there was no end to the pain, was there? And what had made his father such a sadistic brute, anyway? More of the same? How far back did it go?

I shuddered to think on that, I really did.

"Lestat, mon fils," my father was saying again. "You... you can't know, your grandfather... I feel ill, Lestat."

I was sure he did. I wasn't feeling any too well, myself.

"It's late," I said.

"Why do you always come to me so late?" my father whined. He was trying to change the subject, a familiar tactic, but not one I was in the mood to criticize, just then. I shouldn't have demanded he speak of his father, not right after that dream. That had been cruel. I think I'd been thinking only of myself, a longstanding habit.

But our discussion could wait until his heartbeat wasn't still racing, his blood still chill from that dream.

"I have to go, Father," I softly told him, then. "I'll come again. Tomorrow. And not so very late, all right? We'll talk. About... well, we'll talk about the Auvergne. Finally."

My father whimpered, and before I knew it, I was holding his hand.

"I can't..." he moaned.

"Yes, you can," I insisted. "I know you can because I can. Does that make sense?"

"If only you knew how much," my father sighed.

But I did know. I knew exactly how much.

"Sleep now," I bid him, and since it was so late, I silently left through the hallway rather than the balcony.

Mistake.

For the moment I stepped out onto the paisley runner in the hallway, my father's door closing with a soft click behind me, Louis' door opened, and he took two steps toward me and then stopped.

"Lestat," he said, and his tone wasn't one of Lestat-I-am-so-surprised-to-see-you-here. Rather, it was one of, Lestat-I-have-timed-this-meeting-because-I-need-to-see-you.

And then, as if to confirm my impression, he straight away said, "I've been waiting, hearing the murmur of your voice as you spoke with your father, waiting for you to finish because.... I need to talk to you."

So welcome those words might have been, once.

Before Colette.

Before I'd been ripped apart and gutted by his callous disregard of my love.

I leaned back on the wainscoting, and raised a mocking eyebrow, and looked him up and down and up and down as though he were really of no consequence whatsoever. Well, what else was I going to do? Fling myself into his arms like some lovesick fool, only to have him laugh at me, or worse, pity me?

"So, talk," I drawled, letting the words linger on my tongue, parting my mouth when I was done so that my fangs showed. Just the tips of them. Just enough to make me look mean.

"I... I..." Louis tried to begin.

Immediately the temptation to read his mind assailed me in full force. His mind... but I'd see Colette in there, wouldn't I? And for all I was angry and getting angrier, I didn't exactly want to lash out in a rage and kill my Louis. Not that he was my Louis, but you get the idea.

"Cat got your tongue?" I nastily inquired, and then extended my own tongue to lap rather languidly at my own lips. Louis' eyes followed the motion, and I thought, hell, if he's going to stare with glazed emeralds like that, why not give him something worth staring at? So fine.

I suddenly slashed my own tongue on one fang as he watched. Just a small cut. Nothing, really. But blood welled forth, and Louis swallowed, wanting it. Even without invading his thoughts I knew full well that he wanted it. That he wanted me.

But Colette stood between us like a bitter brew.

His voice dropped to a whisper. "I need you, Lestat," he admitted, the words emerging painfully. "I don't want to. I hate this, I hate myself! But I need you all the same."

Not exactly flattered, I snarled back, "So you want me now but you're ashamed of it, Louis? And what am I supposed to reply to this startling revelation? Shall I sound a trumpet of joy and dance upon the rooftop?"

"I'm sorry---" he started to say, but I cut him off.

"Sorry that you need me, or sorry that your every word tramples me underfoot? Do you suppose I don't have feelings, Louis? Do you really think that I will take anything from you, that you can abuse me and abuse me and abuse me and I'll just happily lay myself out to be stomped upon again?"

Tears rose to his eyes. Clear mortal tears, when by now they should be blood like mine! I think that enraged me more than anything. And what did he say?

"I'm sorry," he groaned again, and that was it. I mean, I'd had it.

"No, you're not," I coldly corrected, licking the blood off my own finger. Had things been different, I just might have offered it to him. But as they were? No, certainly not. "You're not sorry at all," I went on. "Do you know what you are, Louis? You're pathetic."

And with that, I turned my back on him and stalked straight out of his house without looking back, not even when he called my name.

Part 10


The next night, Louis was there waiting for me when I slipped inside my father's room. Waiting for me, his green eyes shadowed with sleeplessness, his cheeks sallow and sunken. He looked as though he hadn't eaten, actually. It filled me with a vicious sort of satisfaction.

I suppose I was still angry.

Oh, why make bones about it? I was blazing with fury that he not only dared to thrust me aside in favor of Colette, but that he would then proceed to feel sullied by the mere fact that he still wanted me!

And his little ploy --waiting for me in the one place he knew me likely to visit-- that wasn't helping matters.

"Louis," I said, my tone a severe one, a you-have-a-nerve-inflicting-yourself-on-me tone.

"Lestat," he answered, his voice so flat and without inflection that I couldn't quite mark his mood. Not accurately, anyway.

And then he went on, "Your father has been telling me about the Auvergne--"

At once, and I mean instantly, I saw red, a crimson tide deluging not just my vision but every one of my senses. How dared he! How dared they? Discussing the Auvergne, were they? My childhood, my private pain? Once it had been a relief to share that with Louis, but now it was just a violation.

"About the snow," Louis was going on. "I've never lived where one could roam through mountains and valleys filled with snow throughout the whole winter."

Ye gods, he didn't mean what I had thought. Louis didn't know that for me, "talking about the Auvergne" was a euphemism for things dark and sinister and wicked, things hardly fit to be a topic of conversation at all.

But the shock I'd had was too great for it to dissipate as though it had never been, misunderstanding or no. And too, I was still quite rightfully annoyed --oh hell, infuriated-- by Louis' every breath. And so I was rough with him. Can you blame me?

"Well, I should like to discuss with my father matters slightly more pressing than weather patterns on another continent," I coldly announced. The words themselves were frozen, my fangs icicles in my mouth. "If you'll be so kind...?"

It was the sort of thing one would say to a servant, that last query. What you would say to a lackey, actually. Not just a request to be left alone, but the clear implication that you were dealing with someone too stupid to have figured that out on his own. It was an insult, plain and simple.

And Louis colored just hearing it, his sickly-looking yellowish skin flushing the barest shade of pink. I could smell his blood. Of course, I could always smell it; he need only be in my presence. But when he would blush, the scent usually danced in the air, tempting me.

Now, it hung like a pall. Not burgundy, that blood, not now. He wasn't eating; his blood was anemic and half-nourished, his heartbeat slightly sluggish and irregular. He was in pain. Deep pain, and although I didn't understand, not completely --not unless I read his damned mind-- I was a part of it, a part of his suffering.

I no longer felt quite as vicious, or quite so satisfied that he hadn't taken a decent meal in days, that he obviously hadn't slept. In fact, I began to feel quite mean that I'd taken pleasure in his pain. Mean, and ashamed.

"Louis," I began, my voice far kinder, but he silenced me with a weary look, and an even wearier wave of his hand.

"You're quite right," he admitted. "I am intruding. I apologize. Lestat, when you do wish to speak to me, you can certainly find me."

And with that, he left, his back straight despite his weakness and exhaustion. A picture of wounded pride.

Ah, Louis.

My father had been silent through all this, content to merely listen and think, but once Louis was gone, the old marquis made no bones about what he thought.

"Are you trying to drive him away?" he demanded, his voice rasping with frustration and impatience. "Mon Dieu, Lestat, I have never heard you speak that way to anyone save I. And I at least deserve your scorn! But Louis?"

Well, taking criticism has never exactly been my strong suit. And taking criticism from my father? Most definitely not.

"It's none of your business what Louis' done to earn my scorn!" I shot at him, the words vile. I had declined to sit while Louis was there, had in fact stood before him, eyebrows lifted, like a Roman general in his triumph. Or rather, how I imagined a Roman general in his triumph would appear. How would I know? It wasn't the sort of thing I'd bothered to ask Marius during my extremely brief tenure with him.

And now I came to myself, to an awareness of myself, and realized that I was pacing the room, back and forth beside my father's bed, my footfall uncharacteristically heavy. I was wearing out the elegant area rug, quite literally, vampire strength and vampire fury being what they are.

And my father was only making it worse, with comments such as, "You never could tolerate imperfection, could you, my son? The best of them all, you were always that, but when we didn't measure up to your standards, you were merciless."

"Oh, and how high were your standards?" I snidely inquired. "What great lofty peaks of morality did you scale, Father?"

He sighed, and turned his face away, his whole body slowly shaking beneath the sheets that covered him.

"Oh, Father," I murmured, taken aback. I mean, everything I'd said was deserved and all that, but when I heard the words coming out of my mouth, they did have the ring of self-perfection. And I wasn't perfect; I wasn't even close, unless of course one counted my knack for being perfectly bad at times. I was quite good at being bad. Witness my treatment of Louis!

"Don't punish Louis any longer," my father urged me, ignoring his own pain in favor of helping to heal mine. "Whatever he's done to offend you, mon fils, find some compassion in your heart for him. He's a proud man, your Louis. I think that after such a rebuff, he means what he said. He won't come to you again. You'll have to go to him..."

He was right, of course. When had my father ever showed such insight into character, before? Of course, a better question might be, when had I ever spoken with him long enough to find out?

But yes, he was right. Louis had extended me an olive branch the night before, and again one tonight. And it didn't matter that last night's had been offensive in the extreme. What mattered was that he was hurting too, and confused, and yet still did care enough about me to try to reconcile in some manner, shape, or form. And I had scorned the effort, not once but twice.

So no, Louis wouldn't be coming to me again. It was ironic, in a sense. I mean, I'd told him in no uncertain terms that I wasn't a rug to be trampled, and yet what had I done to him? I'd stomped upon his every attempt to speak with me. And my excuse was Colette. But was I going to let some worthless mortal woman divide me from my Louis forever, or was I going to fight for what was rightfully mine, for what I wanted?

I began to see, then, that I was going to have to forgive Louis his little indiscretion. My first reaction to *that* was, "Forgive him? Ha! When pigs fly!"

But then I went on to wonder if I could really blame him all that much. He was mortal, after all, and full of mortal frailties. He didn't understand forever the way I did. And had I been any different in my lust-filled mortal days? Oh, I'd loved Nicky to distraction, but that hadn't kept me from hungrily bedding every handsome man and beautiful woman that saw me playing Lelio and sent me accolades and cleverly worded invitations! And it hadn't meant that I loved Nicky less; it had just meant that I was a man, and full of vim and vigor --loaded with vim and vigor, I do assure you-- and men will be men... And Nicky wasn't any different, really. He had his little flings with those musicians he played with upon corners. He played the violin, and then he played them.... He had his fun, and then he came home to me, elated, and had more fun.

But then again, I knew now that I'd just been infatuated with Nicky. It hadn't been the true and strong abiding love I now had for Louis. I knew that because even as angry as I was with Louis, I had no desire for another lover, none. He was it. He was mine. All I needed, all I wanted, perfection in an enticing black and green package not quite six feet tall.

So what did all this mean? If Louis still needed, wanted, the occasional fling, did that mean that he was only infatuated with me? Or maybe it meant that he had reasons to be skittish. I mean, I'd cheated on Nicky for no better reason than that I felt an itch and scratched it. Louis, on the other hand, had this whole morality dilemma going on. That wasn't faked, wasn't an excuse. I did genuinely horrify him just as much as I attracted him. He wasn't trying to hurt me with that fact, either.

In case of point, it hurt him just as much. Even I, in my gross inconsideration, still knew that.

"I'll go to him, Father," I sighed, and I would, although I did not know what good it would do me. Or him. But he had wanted to talk, that much was obvious. So yes, I would go to him, and I'd do my damnedest not to trample his pride yet again. No matter what he threw at me...

"I'll go to him," I said again.

"Au revoir," my father said, assuming at once that I was saying that by way of bidding him bonne nuit.

"Mais non," I disputed that. "Louis will still be there later. He will have to wait. Because tonight, maintenant, you and I must speak of secrets too long buried, papa."

Part 11


My father didn't know what I meant.

Well, he thought he knew, of course. "Secrets too long buried..."

He thought I spoke at last of him, and what he'd done. Well, no doubt we would come to that in good time, but what I referred to first and foremost was him, and what he'd suffered.

"Lestat," he entreated, reluctance dripping from the words.

I cut across his pain, only to give him a worse one. But I had to. We had to. This had festered for decades, for him and me both. And now the hour of reckoning was at hand.

"Tell me about Grandfather," I said.

My father shuddered, a nameless sort of dread wiping his features clean of expression, but he spoke with relative calm. Impressive, really, but then again, he was avoiding the point with every word, wasn't he?

"Oh, Lucien de Lioncourt was a big man," he said. "Big, with a booming voice--"

"Father," I interrupted, "Tell me the things that matter."

"I don't care to talk about him," my father spat, struggling to sit up in bed, his blind eyes searching the room for me. I stopped pacing and went to sit with him.

"He's dead!" my father continued. "Dead, dead, dead!"

Talk about vicious satisfaction....

"Nothing about him can matter any longer," my father finished.

"Oh, but it can," I said in my softest, most soothing voice. This would be hard enough as it was. Why make things any harder? "He matters because what he did still weighs heavy on your mind," I prodded.

"What he did," my father scoffed. "How should you know what he did!"

Now or never, Lestat...

"I know," I said, my voice only marginally harder. Now, that took some effort. But I did it. "I know, Father," I said with emphasis.

"You don't know anything," he scathed, but that was more reflex than a true comment. Because in the next instant, something in my tone penetrated --I almost would have thought it was something in my stare, save for the fact that he was blind-- and he stammered, "Know, how can you know, that's nonsensical, Lestat... you... you can't know..."

"Suffer the little children to come unto me," I whispered, which I know was taking the quote far far far out of context, but it served my purpose. It sent my father a perfect image of innocence, and made him ponder innocence destroyed. His.

"Mon Dieu, you do know," he whispered, horror-struck. And then, in tones so hushed that even my vampire ears strained to catch them, his agony muted in his shame, the words came, "I was six. Five. I don't remember. And every night, it seemed, he came. But maybe it wasn't every night. I don't remember. All I really remember well are his boots on the stairs, the thud of his boots on the stairs, coming for me, he had these enormous feet and he wore thick soled boots, and he was a big man, powerful, the wooden stairs creaked when he climbed them..."

My father shuddered.

And then he came to himself, more, and said, "You know. But how... how do you know... it's because of me, isn't it? Because the same foul sickness that thrived in him ate at me, too...?"

"Ah, you imbue me with a brilliance I doubt I possess," I answered, shrugging. "I put it all together, Grandfather then you, and I understood some things, then. But I put it all together later. I mean, I knew what he did to you because... well, in a sense you told me, Father."

He didn't understand, of course. And I wasn't going to tell him the truth, which was of course entirely unbelievable. I'd been in his nightmare... he wouldn't grasp that; he'd think I mocked him.

But I told him what I could, came as close to the truth as I could. Enough to serve.

"You dream," I said. "And I sit in here and watch you sleep, sometimes. And Father... at times you talk in your sleep."

"Oh," he merely said, but he was shamed. I could tell.

Of course he had no cause for shame, not in what he had dreamed. Later, what he'd done to me... well yes, he damned well should be ashamed!

But the other, his childhood secret, childhood shame... well, he shouldn't feel it, not that, I knew that. And yet I'd felt it, too. Still felt it, although having left the mortal world behind had helped that, some. And yet it still did persist in some measure. So of course I understood.

But there were things I didn't understand, and they all at once and without the slightest warning came roaring out of my mouth.

"How could you?" I erupted, my voice a festering boil. "You knew, you'd lived it. You knew! So how could you, could you?"

By the end I was weeping, but this time I yanked back in time to keep my father from touching the blood.

He thought I was flinching from him.

And so I was.

"Lestat," he moaned, his own tears flooding his eyes. I didn't want to see them, and I all at once blew out the tapers in the candelabra behind me on a three-legged table. Blew them out from far too far away. Vampire breath, you know. Thank God my father couldn't see.

But I still could see. Damned vampire eyes. Don't even know why I bothered with the candles. Maybe it was symbolic. This was dark stuff, black. Might as well have the right setting.

"The candles," my father gasped, smelling the tang of their last smoke.

"I like the dark," I excused the need for them. "You were saying?"

Cruel, because of course he hadn't been saying much. Just a plea, a plea for me to understand. Well, I didn't understand.

"How could I?" he echoed me, his face drenched with salty tears. "If you only knew how often I asked myself that very question. Oh, the sickness of it. I hated myself, and yet I couldn't stop. I... I would see you, Lestat, and it would just possess me, all the old anger, the rage, a vicious need to get even with him for all he'd done to me, but he was dead and gone, and you were there, reminding me of my weakness, of how I'd taken it from him. And then I hated you for reminding me, and I would decide that you deserved no better..."

And then it came, the cry from the very bottom of my soul, the question that had always flayed me from the very first. And it wasn't "Why?" Oh no, it went deeper, this question.

It went to the very root of the pain.

"Why me?" I cried out, the words a jagged knife edge in my throat. "It was never Augustin, was it? Or Raoul. Just me, only me! Why ME?"

And at the end the knife edge cut me, deep inside, and I could taste the blood welling up my throat to coat my tongue. I gagged on it, which only goes to show quite how desperate my state of mind was. Normally I love the taste of my own luscious blood.

"God forgive me!" my father cried out. "It was because you were the last, Lestat! Because your mother wanted no more children to bear and then watch die, and she refused me her bed. The feelings I had, the impulses, the wicked evil awful desires, I had them from the first. But I stayed them off by visiting her chambers and thrusting her on her belly and taking her from behind while I pretended she was... she was..."

"She was the woman you loved, you told me so!" I reminded him, indignant. I mean sure, I'd had my issues with Gabrielle, but I certainly didn't need to hear *this*. I felt the blood gagging me again, just listening. These were private things! Why was he telling me such?

But I'll tell you one thing: I suddenly had a much greater appreciation of why, years afterwards, my mother would tell me that she fantasized about going into town and taking all the men who wanted her into her bed, one after another after another.

"I loved her dearly!" my father retorted. "But she was cold from the first. Cold, and indifferent, and by the time Augustin grew old enough so that I... noticed him, she was worse than indifferent; she loathed me. So I took my pleasure of her as I liked!"

"How did she have so damned many brats, then?" I demanded, and then, absolutely sick with myself and my own question, I quickly snarled, "Never mind, I can figure it out, I don't need to know any more. You leave Gabrielle the hell out of this discussion!"

Nonplussed, my father echoed, "You call her Gabrielle?"

"It's better than what you called her at times," I harshly reminded him.

He acknowledged the truth of that with a shaky, brief nod.

"Well, then now you know," he heavily announced, going back to what we'd said before. "It wasn't just you, not in thought. And it was in deed only because you were there, young and helpless and vulnerable, at the very time your moth--- at the time I had nowhere else to go to indulge my rage."

"Are you stupid?" I cried. "Rage, you talk of rage! How was what you did going to reduce your rage one iota? Did you think you could divest yourself of it if you passed it on to me?"

"No," my father slowly answered. "I thought that I had deserved what I'd been made to suffer, and that if I had deserved it, I must be every bit the wicked evil creature my father had always claimed me to be. And that if I was so very worthless, it didn't matter what I did, what I tried to do to do right. And that if I was evil I might as well act on my desires because there was no hope for me in any case."

All at once my rage sucked out of me like a tide being hauled back out to see. Oh, there was still some anger; I don't mean that I was miraculously cured. But the worst of it had passed, like a storm that vented its fury and then moved on.

"You... you thought that all the time?" I questioned.

He shook his head. "It was like sowing the whirlwind, Lestat. Like being flung about in a basket some giant was spinning. I hear you snorting, scoffing at me," he said, but what he had heard was my choking sobs I was struggling to hold back, to quiet. "But it's true," he went on. "I would fight and fight and fight, you've no idea how much I struggled. And I would go to Gabrielle and beg her, and beat her when she refused. And then the horror of it all would be subsumed inside the hate and the hateful lust until the evil just consumed me, and I let myself be eaten alive by it because it didn't matter. And then afterwards..." he shuddered yet again. "Then I'd come back to myself and know I'd done it yet again, know I'd failed you, and I'd scream for salve and try to make it better, but you would lay there like a stone, deaf and blind and mute, locked away from what I'd done, and I'd know that I could stop if I were strong enough."

He curled up on his side, his feet tucked up close to his chest, his thin frail arms wrapped around them.

"But I was never strong enough," he muttered. "And what more proof did I need that my father was right, that I had deserved his every blow and every thrust, that I was a degenerate who should never have been born, than that I passed this wound on to my own son, and worst, the one I loved the most?"

I sighed, recognizing in his words all the things he'd screamed at me when he was in one of his rages, one of his rapes. The same words, echoing down through the generations to ring in my ears. And I'd believed it too, hadn't I? Children are impressionable precisely because they are so very innocent. Yes, I'd believed it. Believed I was evil, that I deserved nothing better, that a true and firm and strong and proud lasting love was not something I would ever have, because I was beyond redemption, beyond hope and help.

And then I'd gone and cheated on Nicky.

Maybe there was more to that than I'd realized at the time. Maybe I'd indulged my dark past, too. I believed I was worthless, that it didn't really matter what I did because Nicky would leave me soon, regardless. And then when he did, when he changed and hated me... well, I actually did wonder how much of it was really the dark blood and how much was just the inevitable disdain that all in my sphere of acquaintance must sooner or later feel towards me?

No wonder I had loved the monastery! Those monks... for the first time I became convinced that I wasn't worthless, that there could be a place where I belonged, a place even for me.

But it only lasted a month before the fantasy was ripped asunder, and I was graphically and painfully reminded that my place was in our wreck of a castle, at my father's beck and call.

"I tried, Lestat," he moaned, now, his hands blindly reaching out for me. I evaded them.

*Not hard enough,* that was what I longed to say. But I had the strangest and most strong impression just then --purely human intuition, I wasn't going to read his mind-- that if I were to be cruel just then, one unkind remark would drive him straight to Louis' pistols again. Of course Louis had locked up his pistols, but there were still ways. So I didn't say the words that scorched and bubbled, wrapped around my vocal cords.

"You tried," I said, because he had. And that was something. I mean, I had never known that he had struggled, before. I knew he salved my back when the whippings were through, while I lay in a stupor actually quite like the death-sleep, except that I was conscious for it. But I hadn't associated that with regret, because in his pride he didn't cry before me, not then, and didn't even admit his fault. No, I thought that if he called for salve and unguents to be brought, it was because the sooner I healed, the sooner he could wrest screams from me again. I thought the extent of his love was that he wouldn't kill me, wouldn't beat me when I was still flayed wide open, for fear of killing me.

That much, and no more.

But now I knew that there was more. Much more.

"You tried," I said again. "I know."

"You don't," he stated, and I wasn't sure what he meant. But then he went on, "Lestat, hate me if you will, but for the love of God, do take one thing to heart. This horror... I've given it to you. And you will say all the things I said, I know. That you could never do such things to a son of your own, that knowing the suffering it entails, you could never ever inflict this damage unto an innocent. But I said all those, Lestat. I said them, too. I chanted them, a ritual chant... and then I broke my every vow. You... remember this, if nothing else. The sickness in your soul demands release. And when you have a son...." He gulped. "Be careful, Lestat. Find a way to be the father you want to be, not the father you learned to be."

I drew in a breath. Insulting, all that, for of course I would *not* rape my son, or any child. But I knew he meant it sincerely, not as an insult. He saw a trap, one he'd fallen into, and he saw that same trap looming directly in front of me. And wasn't that odd, considering?

"I'll never have a child, Father," I told him.

"Louis," he murmured. "Ah, yes. But Lestat... well, you're not so very old, yet. In a few years you may get to thinking more on family, Louis too. And you know the streets just swarm with young ones in need of a home, a loving parent. Or two. It's a simple matter to get a child to love, I think. But raising one... just be careful, as I said."

"Taking in a child in need," I mused, for of course I'd never given that the slightest thought. But he was right, it would be a simple matter.

A hospital filled with orphans, narrow beds in neat rows. The Ursulines caring for the little ones. A doctor. I'm so glad you've come. Most of them have no one, you understand...

And a tiny golden-haired doll of a girl child, saying Mama, I want my mama, where is my mama?

Mama's died and gone to heaven, I said like a lullaby. We're going to take care of you, ma fille. You're our daughter now, mine and Louis'...

But Louis, horrified, angry, screaming the word fiend, laughing harshly when I told him we could be one happy family....

What, didn't he like children?

I shook the vision off --damned nuisances, these things; what good were they?-- and steeling myself, took my father's hand.

"I'll be careful," I said.

"I thought I would be, too," he whispered, miserable. "Do you... do you still hate me quite completely, mon fils?"

"Non, papa," I denied, and it was true. I didn't detest him with my every breath, not now. He'd caused me great suffering, of course, but now I knew it hadn't been malicious. He'd been caught in some great whirlpool, not one of his own making, either, and he hadn't been able to escape it and swim for shore. But at least I believed that he had wanted to.

That was something.

It wasn't forgiveness, not really, but it was something, something less than total rancor, something less than hate.

"I must go to Louis, je pense," I murmured. "Papa, you will be all right if I leave you?"

He barked a bitter laugh. "What could happen save that I dream, Lestat? And I dream that dream so often."

Torment, I heard in his voice naught but torment. Not even at night did his conscience really rest, I sensed that, now.

"Tonight, you'll sleep and dream of things pleasant," I assured him, and he harshly laughed again. Of course he thought I meant it as a mere consolation, but it was more than that.

It was a promise.

"Lie down, father," I bid him, for he had surged slightly upward, as though in fear to rest, in fear to dream. But he reclined when I suggested it, and I stroked my gloved fingers lightly over his brow, closing his eyes with my fingertips. So soft his skin, soft and old.

But his soul, that wasn't soft. It was hard with age, hard with regret.

"Shhh, papa," I soothed, my voice a lullaby, my powers beginning to pour forth. I touched his mind, lightly. Not to read it, just to make him feel my power. He didn't know it was my power, of course. He thought that mere mortal exhaustion had taken hold of him, that his yawns were natural extensions of that exhaustion.

But it was more than that, or perhaps less.

"Sleep well," I told him, my voice vibrating and reverberating with preternatural thrums that could not help but ease his mind. His conscience even. "Dream well, papa."

His body relaxing into the soft feather mattress, his breathing changed to the low, slow rhythm indicative of deep sleep.

I let myself out silently by the door to the corridor, and drawing in a deep breath of my own, headed down the hall.

Toward Louis.

Part 12


You know what, though? When I stood in front of the door to his suite, I realized that I'd promised to be there for him, to protect him, to help him when I could, in whatever way he needed. And now was my chance, really, the first real chance I'd had.

Because I knew what would do him some good just now, I really did.

Turning away from his door, my feet scraping against the carpet runner, I vaulted the railing of the landing and landed with a soft thud on the hardwood floor of the entryway. And from there, I headed toward a room I'd never entered before. But the scents informed me the way to go.

Bread, that was what I smelled. Ah, I did remember bread. The light aroma of baked yeast lingered in the air as the kitchen door opened under the force of my push. Fresh-baked... well, not quite. I found in a wicker basket on the great oak table the remnants the bread from dinner: thick, chewy French loaves, neatly wrapped in cloth napkins, chequered red and white. Charming, really. Fetching forth a partial loaf, I hummed a little as I located a long knife in a likely-looking drawer and began to cleave the bread into slices. Not too neat, really, but when had I ever sliced bread? Even when I'd been mortal, I'd used my knives to hunt, to skin my prey, not for the essentially feminine task of preparing bread for table.

And yet, doing it now, doing what I could for Louis, I felt content.

Perhaps after that conversation upstairs, I just felt the need for a distraction. Well, this would do admirably well, I thought.

I found a china plate, a rather thick and sturdy one, actually, not the fine bone-china dinnerware that I'd seen the family use at table. But it would serve.

Wanting the presentation to be at least attractive if not perfect, I shook the napkin free of crumbs and folded it diagonally in half, and laid it across the plate. And then... something else was needed, truly. Well, it had been so very long since I'd indulged in mortal food that I was out of the habit, I suppose, for how could I ever have contemplated bringing bare, unadorned bread up to my Louis? There had to be butter, didn't there? Fresh-churned sweet butter, and perhaps a small ceramic pot of jam. His kitchen would be well-stocked, I was sure; not like the bare larder in my castle. I was sure that Louis' pantry would stretch to these simple amenities.

I found them both on a shelf, deep in the cool dark of a deep closet, earthenware crocks filled with delicious flavors now denied me.

These I placed on the tray, and then I poured him also a tall glass of something from a pitcher. Something pastel pink and lemony. It smelled divine, and some whimsy made me snatch a sprig of mint off the pot which stood on the windowsill, and garnish the glass with it.

And then, I realized that I was just wasting time, delaying the inevitable, for the truth was that I was breathless with nervousness at the mere idea of going to see Louis. What would he say to me? What could I say to him, and would it conceivably make any difference at all in the rigid morality that laced him tight?

But there was no putting it off any longer, was there? If I didn't go to him tonight, after his twin overtures to me, the breach that separated us would only widen yet further.

He needed me.

And what was more, he needed a decent meal.

I picked up the tray I'd prepared and with a last approving glance at it, I headed back up the stairs and to his suite of rooms.

Part 13


Louis' door. And for some reason, I suddenly felt as jittery as I ever had with him, and that counted that first night when I'd come to him in his sickbed for the express purpose of overwhelming him.

Now... I didn't want to overwhelm him, to manipulate him. Actually, I wasn't sure quite what I wanted to do. I only knew that I had to henceforth be a part of his life.

Perhaps that was the way to begin, then. Perhaps, I'd not done well these past few weeks. I'd basically treated Louis like a stranger. And that wasn't what I wanted to be to him.

So perhaps, it was time to act with him as what I was, or what I would be if he would have me, truly have me, I mean... without the guilt and shame he'd told me of the night before. And perhaps my actions would offend him, but at least then I'd know how great the divide between us might be.

Taking a breath then, I didn't knock as I had thought to do. A stranger would knock. A lover would simply enter.

And so I did, the tray balanced on one palm as I turned the brass door knob and pushed the door in.

I didn't actually expect to see him in the first room; it was late enough that he should be in bed, by then. Besides, it was utterly quiet in his rooms, even if he'd left a candelabra burning on a small table by a plush, upholstered chair. Most unlike him, actually.

Or maybe not, for he was in the room after all, sitting slumped in that chair, his head to one side, his eyes staring sightlessly into the tiny flames that topped the six tapers in the candelabra. Such misery on his features. His eyes were dry now, as was his face, but he had been weeping. Hours of weeping; there was no other way to explain the myriad tracks of tears, the streaks on his face, all of them long since dried.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn't appear to notice me enter.

I set the tray down on a table by the door, and the clatter of wood on wood roused him from his reverie. He glanced up, startled by the noise, and then even more startled by my abrupt appearance.

"Lestat," he greeted me, his voice rough. Still choked with tears. They filled his eyes anew, those emeralds glistening like oiled jewels. "I... I... What are you doing here?"

He was sitting upright now, not slouched, his attention riveted on me.

"I rather thought I had been invited," I told him softly as I went to him and knelt before his chair and regarded him gravely.

"Oh, yes," he said, as though just only then remembering. "But then I heard you stop before my door, and you didn't knock." He gulped. "It sounded as though you were so eager to be far from me that you jumped over the gallery to be gone. And...I didn't think you'd be coming back... I thought I had done the unpardonable to you."

"And you cried, then, Louis?" I gently queried.

"Well, I didn't laugh," he sharply informed me, some glimmer of his wit and pride in that answer. But it was a glimmer, only. In the next moment his spine curved in defeat, and he leaned back against his chair, one shoulder denting the brocade cover as he turned slightly away from me. Hiding, shielding.

Vulnerable.

"I went to get you something to eat," I asserted, one hand waving backwards at the tray. "You don't look well, mon cher. It worries me."

Louis sighed. "Oh, you merely went down to the kitchen?" Relief flooded his face that what he had heard had such a simple explanation, instead of such a dire one. "Thank you," he said, most sincere. And yet he insisted, "I'm not hungry, Lestat, but I do thank you."

"You must eat," I explained, my eyes glittering.

"No," he moaned. "Of late I can't seem to eat at all. I try, Maman presses me to try, and Sophie too, but nothing much appeals."

An empty glass, the crystal slicked with red wine, was near to hand, next to the candelabra.

"Oh, Louis," I said. "You... you haven't taken up drinking, again?"

"What?" he asked, confused, and then, "Oh, no. I had a glass earlier, that's all. So I could sleep. But I don't sleep either, Lestat."

"Mon pauvre," I crooned, and then rising to my feet, I fetched the tray and laid it on the table beside him. "Come, you can't go on like this, mon cher. You simply must eat."

When he made no move toward the food, but merely shook his head, his eyes glazed, I sighed, and reached for the bread myself. I smeared a thin and admittedly uneven slice with butter, and added jam in a rather elegant swirl. What kind of jam, I didn't know. It was dark and rich and reddish-purple and sweet-smelling, that much I knew. But I didn't really recognize the variety.

''Here," I said, kneeling upright before him and thrusting the slice of bread up at him, holding it just beneath his nose, so the beautiful scent would waft up to him.

Ignoring it, he shook his head, and when I persisted, he disclaimed, "Truly, I fear I shall be ill if I take so much as a bite."

"No, you won't," I assured him, knowing it was true. Depression and I were no strangers. I'd gone days without food, many a time. And it always produced that queasy stomach, but the moment I began to eat, a raging hunger would invariably convulse my belly. Not sickness, either, just an all-too mortal need for food.

"Try," I urged him. And when he didn't, I softly added, "For me, Louis. Please. Do this for me."

And then he did; his delicate jaw stretching out, he nipped a tiny corner of the bread with his teeth, tearing it off with a slight motion. His cheek brushed my knuckles with the motion. His cheek, his lips.

My blood began to simmer, and not the least for the mere physical contact. It was even more that his mother had asked him to eat, and Sophie had begged him to eat, and he hadn't. But he would do it for me.

Ah, Louis...

A slight smile on his features, the flavor captivating him. "Loganberry," he murmured. "My favorite."

Louis, my favorite, I almost said, but I didn't want to push too hard or fast.

And then, "You know, I think I might be hungry after all," he decided, and taking the bread from my hand, he began to eat in earnest. He didn't act quite like a starving man, though. This was Louis; he did have standards; he was a gentleman, through and through. He even wiped his mouth with the napkin in between long draughts of what turned out to be pink lemonade. Bizarre. Pink lemonade? Well, it was a New World.

And when he was done, replete, his hands resting languidly in his lap, he smiled a true smile, the first I'd seen from him in weeks, and said quite simply, "Merci beaucoup, Lestat."

"Stat," I reminded him. "You used to call me Stat."

He blushed to think of when that was, and that was all it took for our problems to surge forth into his consciousness. I wasn't in his mind, of course, but it was written all over his face. Desire, unfulfilled. And conflict. And need and hope and want. And utter despair.

I thought that despair was for himself, but it turned out to be for me. "I've hurt you," he quietly admitted. "That wasn't my wish. I've been selfish, so selfish. And it was all for nothing."

Puzzled, I waited for him to go on, but he didn't. He sighed, and rested his forearm on the table by the tray, and leaned on it, heavily.

Which left me to draw my own conclusions.

"It was all for nothing?" I asked, hopeful. Lovesick with it, actually. "You... you changed your mind, you didn't..." I had to clear my throat to continue. "You didn't bed the wench?"

Part 14


"Bed the wench?" He groaned, and shook all over, and shook his head. "Oh, but I did. And it was awful, Lestat. Terrible."

Now, you must absolutely understand that Louis was not the type to kiss and tell. So if he was divulging details, I could only think that he had some reason for it. That he needed me to listen.

And I actually wanted to hush him, because why would I want to hear about his affair with Colette? Even if it had gone badly, I didn't wish to see the scene via his vivid words. But I was sworn to him. Promised. And if he needed me, I would be there for him.

Even if it meant I had to listen.

"Louis?" I prompted, my voice calm because I sensed that he had more to say, and that he wouldn't say it if I sulked.

"I had her twice," he roughly admitted. "Once, because I thought that she was what I wanted, what I needed. She wasn't, though, but I tried again the next night in hopes that the first debacle had only been a fluke. But it wasn't. That second time, I went for hours but I could not... find my satisfaction, not with her."

"Ah," I said, thinking about that. It surprised me, actually. A man doesn't generally have such problems. Well, not a young, virile man like Louis.

"I... I found her utterly revolting," he confessed, his lips turned down in disgust, his shoulders shuddering in memory. "Her shape, her form, her taste... everything was wrong. The feel of her, Lestat. I used to like her, you know I did. But now..." he frowned. "She is just so warm. Warm and cloying, the heat stifling me. Being with her, skin on skin... it was like standing near the cookstove in summer, Lestat. So hot, so very hot. I hated it; longed for your cool smooth body sliding against mine..."

I smiled at him, kindly, and reached a hand up toward his cheek, stroking the backs of my knuckles downward along the fine line of his bones, more prominent now than they'd been of late.

When I would have moved away, he grabbed my wrist and held my hand to his face, leaning into it, sighing with contentment. "Cool and smooth," he said again. "Ah, Lestat."

"And so?" I questioned.

Louis shrugged. "That first time, I managed to finish the... act, only by thinking of you, actually. Closing my eyes tight, and seeing you in my mind, feeling you beneath my hands. And then I thought that I was being maudlin, that it had only been like that because I love you so very much that it hurts. I thought... I don't know. It was stupid, I suppose. But I suppose I believed that if I tried again, things would improve." He frowned, his face etched with unhappiness. "But it didn't. I thought of you again, of course, but it was no use. She wasn't you, she was herself, and repugnant to me. And worse, the act was meaningless. I must be particularly dense," he sighed, "because it took me hours to understand. Hours I kept trying, until she went dry inside and was crying for me to stop."

His eyes filled again, then. "I didn't want her, but I didn't want to hurt her, either," he told me.

"I know," I said.

"Do you know, too," he asked, "that with you, with me and you... it isn't sex, Lestat? It's raw and primal and just as powerful as sex ever can be, but it's making love. Really, truly making love. And that's what I finally understood, in the end. That just sex, it used to be enough. But now that I've been with you..." He gulped. "It's love I need."

His eyes closed. "Does that still offend you?"

"Oh, Louis," I said, stroking his cheek again, and then his neck as well, his luscious neck. "That wasn't what offended me. It's love I need too, just as much, and I have it only with you. But what you said to me last night, that you hated yourself for wanting me? That hurt me, Louis. It hurt me worse even than the thought of you with Colette."

He grabbed my hand again, and this time he snatched it to his lips and kissed my fingers, one by one. "I'm sorry," he said again, and because this time I knew what he'd been through, I believed him. "I won't call for her again, never again. Not her, or anyone else. There's only you, Lestat. I know... I know I said all this before, and went back on my word, but truly..." His voice rife with frustration, he said, "Oh, how can I expect you to believe me this time? But it's true, Lestat. Stat. I am sorry. I won't hurt you like that again."

"Thank you, Louis," I said, believing him. "But it's the other hurt that worries me more, you know. That you should detest your own need of me?"

"I don't know what to do about that, Lestat," he slowly said. "I don't say this to wound you, I truly don't, but if I had chosen whom to love, I wouldn't have chosen...a killer."

"And you don't say that to wound me," I mocked. It was either that or weep, and I wasn't in the mood to show him the pain he was causing me.

"I..." Louis gulped. "So what are we to do, Lestat... Stat?"

"Lestat," I told him. "For now."

"You mean... we can't...?"

Mon Dieu, he looked so desperate, so very much in need.

"No, Louis," I said, full of regrets. And doubts, even. Was this the right thing to do for him, for us? Perhaps I was biting off my nose to spite my face, but I sensed somewhere, deep deep inside, that to take what he seemed to be offering would be to sully what we had. For what had he said but a few minutes past? That with us it wasn't just sex, it was love. And until he was willing to accept that love, to accept it and be comfortable with it, I mean... well, it would only be sex, you see. Doubtless it would be good sex. Hot, rollicking sex to make him moan, and make me thirst.

And no doubt, in the heat of all that lust, he'd let me drink. Hell, I knew him. He'd probably beg me.

But no, no, I didn't think we should go there, not without the love being open and good and pure and true.

And freely acknowledged, no more shame to taint it.

"We can't," I told him. "Don't misunderstand. I want you, too, want you still. But as long as you will wake up feeling filthy for having touched me, for having been touched by me... no, we'd better not. It would drive a wedge between us, don't you see? A wedge that would grow with every encounter."

He sighed, and looked away.

"Besides," I told him, standing to my full height and looking down onto the top of his bent, defeated head. "You're like to treat me here as you might Colette, you know. Someone for you to have at your convenience. And I can't be that for you. I'll be your friend, of course. And if you can struggle your way past this morose, embittered stage, I'll be your lover. But what I won't be is your hidden love, your secret shame, the demon familiar you consciously despise."

Part 15


"Besides," I told him, standing to my full height and looking down onto the top of his bent, defeated head. "You're like to treat me here as you might Colette, you know. Someone for you to have at your convenience. And I can't be that for you. I'll be your friend, of course. And if you can struggle your way past this morose, embittered stage, I'll be your lover. But what I won't be is your hidden love, your secret shame, the demon familiar you consciously despise."

"I understand," he said, his voice dull. Lifeless, even. "I... I do understand. In your own way, you have high standards."

"There are some depths to which I will not sink," I confirmed, my voice resolved. "And to play at being yours, that is one of them. If I'm yours, Louis, then you are mine. This isn't a game, not to me."

"You think it is to me?" he roused himself to say, looking up to challenge me with a hard, green stare.

My stance instantly softened. "No, I don't think so," I admitted. "I think you're weary beyond measure, and confused, and tired of being filled to overflowing with contradictory impulses and needs. I think you need to sleep."

A low laugh. "I can't sleep, don't you know that? You're there when I close my eyes, and I don't mean that I dream of you. How can I, when I don't sleep? No, I mean you're in my thoughts, a constant presence, and I can barely take a breath for wondering what you are doing, for thinking that I would like to see you."

You know what? He sure as hell sounded like a man in love, to me. But until he was willing to let the love triumph over his short-sighted human morality, there wasn't much I could do about his feelings, his needs, his utter desperation.

"I'll help you sleep if you would like," I told him, a small smile playing about my lips. What was this, my night to put my loved ones to bed? I suppose it was, although it was actually quite hard to think the words "father" and "loved one" in the same breath. Or the same hour, night... life.

"I... how can you..." And then it came to him, relief on his features, as he remembered. "Oh, you can touch your mind to mine, again," he said. "You can make me sleep, Lestat, truly?"

"As easily as I once sent you images," I confirmed. "And I can do it without your consent, but I will not. I love you too well. So you must tell me if you wish this, Louis."

"Oh, yes," he sighed, languidly standing and walking like a somnambulist toward his bedroom, Without a word to me, he peeled the covers back, and moved his fingers to the buttons on his shirt. Then he glanced at me, uncertain, and I nodded.

"Yes, undress," I said. "You'll sleep better, be far more comfortable."

"I... I usually wear a night-shirt," he answered, even more uncertain, for he had caught my implication.

"Not with me," I told him, and he gasped.

"With you?"

"You'll sleep better with me holding you, too," I said, but of course it was more than that. I might have refused his heartfelt if tortured suggestion that we should take up right where we'd left off, but I still needed him. Needed to be close to him, most of all. "I'll be there to quiet you if you stir," I said, when he looked as though he couldn't bear the thought of being in bed with me.

No insult in that, though, not after he confessed, "I want you to hold me, truly. But to be so close alongside your cool, strong body, and in the confines of a bed... Lestat, I'm a man, a man with strong needs denied, and you know I want you. So how shall I get to sleep when I'm stiff and hard and desperate for surcease?"

"You will sleep because I'm there," I said, and when I began to unbutton my own shirt, Louis knew I was in earnest. "Because I'll put a peace in your mind such as you've never known, my love. It won't last past the night, but while it does, you shall rest without a care in the world. And when you wake, you'll be sharp and clear, as you should be."

He hesitated. "I'm not so sure I want to be... what did you call that, some sort of enchantment?"

I paused, my fingers stilling on a thin, ivory button. For of course if he would not agree, I could not slip into bed with him. That would just be cruel, considering how he wanted me. "It's your choice," I softly confessed. "But I would like to help you, Louis. I told you that."

"I know," he remembered. "And it's not that I don't trust your intentions... after the way you've complied with my request that you stay out of my thoughts, I can't help but trust your restraint. It's just that... well, how sure are you that it will wear off by morning?"

I smiled, understanding his concern. "I know what I'm doing, Louis," I assured him, my hands still motionless.

He looked at me for one more moment, but then at last began to undress. "I suppose you do," he agreed, and shrugged his shirt completely off.

I caught my breath, and striving for an air of nonchalance equal to his own, resumed my own unbuttoning. But damned if my fingers didn't fumble so badly that Louis was slipping off his boots and socks and pants while I was still struggling with my slick silk shirt.

I watched through hooded eyes, staring while hoping it wasn't obvious that I did so, and for my trouble saw the unequaled treat of a flash of warm white flesh slipping between clean fresh sheets. No scent of Colette in here, not now. I suspected that Louis had been unable to tolerate the human smell of her any more than he could endure the human heat of her.

He wanted me.

I hugged that knowledge to myself like comfy blanket, and then I finished undressing and slipped in nude behind Louis so that I could hug him to me, too.

He melted in my arms, easily shifting backwards to press himself against me, and musk rose from his skin, his delicious earthy headed musk, desire wafting off his skin.

And as if I didn't already know how long and hard he was, how great and fervent his bodily need, he shyly whispered into the dark -- I'd extinguished the candles I'd brought in-- "Lestat, are you sure? I mean, we could..."

"I'm sure," I told him, soft and slow and full of regret.

"All right," he said. "Then... go ahead."

Trust.

Precious to me, truly.

I held him closer, his warm heart thudding through his skin to heat mine, and I spoke directly into his mind, sending him images of peace and love and flowers. And his mind, overstressed for days, accepted without question the suggestion that he should let go his troubles, his concerns, that he should simply sink into sleep and dream happy thoughts.

And it was bad of me, I know... but I simply couldn't resist one tiny thing more, just one thing. It wasn't so very bad, really. It was only an extension of what he was doing, anyway.

I dropped him one other suggestion, this one with a force that would outlast the day.

I told my Louis that he should seek after a way for us to be together.

Part 16


Late the next night, after all the household would be asleep, I found Louis sitting on a suspended bench on the back porch of Pointe du Lac. He was staring out over the fields and the bayou beyond, and in his hand he idly held a crystal tumbler half-filled with pink lemonade. To his side lay a plate of neatly sliced cheeses. Nibbled, some of those wedges.

Louis looked marvelous, I must say. He'd quite obviously been eating, today, and I took that to heart. I mean, he must be feeling better, in some measure. He must not be mired in quite the same depth of despair.

Of course, the mere fact that he'd finally gotten a decent night's sleep, that might have helped, too. I knew just how well he'd slept. I'd done as I had told him, and held him throughout the night, quieting him when he began to shift or stir, sending him a new barrage of peace and love and flowers every so often. That wasn't so much because it was needed, but because I liked to do it. It made me feel of use, to do this small service for him.

And I think my care had reached his consciousness, deep inside, for he smiled when he saw me ambling up the painted wooden steps toward him.

"Good evening," he greeted me, his voice fluid, and I paused in mid-step, weighing his words, his tone, his expression. I mean, he looked... pensive, but pleased to see me, all the same. As if the weight of his worries had not entirely lifted from his soul, but somehow, it was bearable just now. I didn't think he'd really come to peace with what I was, mind you, but it did almost look as though he'd found a way to push his troubles to one side. For the time being, at least.

And that was something.

"Good evening, cher," I answered, my voice easy, and then, without so much as missing a beat, I bent down and kissed him soft and slow upon the lips, my mouth parting his, my hands upon his shoulders to caress him through his shirt, love in every small motion I made.

He jerked back, startled, and cast a worried glance over his shoulder at the curtained window that was behind him and slightly to one side. His green gaze filled with relief that no one was about. But who would be? It was past midnight. Long past, I dare say.

And then, in hushed tones, he chided me, "Lestat, it's truly good we're... more at ease with one another, for a change, but you must realize, you simply must understand that there is such a thing as discretion."

"You're over-reacting a bit to a simple hello," I laughed off his criticism. Most gently, but I did laugh. "Why, in the city of love, it's nothing for friends to meet and exchange a kiss."

"We're not in Paris," Louis said, rather severely.

"Pity," I commented, and then less flippantly, "Didn't you notice last night, Louis, the decision I had undertaken?"

A puzzled green glance, that was the answer I got to my query. Ah, colonial sensibilities. No doubt, Paris would shock the man. I'd have to take him there, someday, I mused. Someday, after we'd worked out our problems. Oh, and of course after the revolutionary fervor had burned out. It wouldn't do to endanger my Louis.

"I'm done with acting as though I'm something I'm not," I told Louis. "I can't be around you, and not... be myself. All of myself, Louis, and that includes the affection I bear you."

"But this isn't Paris, Lestat," Louis told me quite sincerely, his forehead furrowing with concern. "People here... they just won't understand or tolerate a man dallying with... you must see my point of view, you simply must. Should others learn of... us, it will affect my business. Sophie's marriage will be called off. Good God, my mother will have the priest out here nightly to personally harangue me with highly personal, embarrassing sermons!"

"All true," I breezed. "Except for one thing."

He swiveled toward me, intrigued, waiting I dare say, with baited breath.

"I can make them accept it," I said, tapping my temple with a sculpted nail. I was always glad, you know, that as Lelio I went out on stage with a properly manicured set of nails. It meant that they were properly shaped and filed when Magnus took it into his head to make me. "Or I can make them disregard it, if you prefer," I finished. "So don't fear to talk openly with me, mon cher, not even in the confines of your home. I can hear when others are about, and I can make them not hear us, you understand. And if by chance someone should learn of us another way, it's a simple enough matter to solve that, too."

Louis shook his head, slightly bemused at the proposals under consideration. And then a wry look came into his eyes, a look quickly subsumed by shame, and he said, "Us, you say. But there is no 'us' to worry them, is there? You said there couldn't be."

"Oh, there could be," I assured him. "It all depends on you." Leaning closer, speaking against his lips --sweet and tangy with the lemonade, those lips, such a dimension it had given to our kiss-- I murmured, "You, Louis. You want me, I know. You love me, too. But you have to want and love me enough to accept what I am, what I do. You can't have me on any other terms."

He frowned. "That you should even still want *me*, Lestat, that is rather astonishing. That you should bear me any affection at all, after...?"

"Colette?" I asked, touched that tonight, at least, he had hesitated to bring her name before me. "Yes, even after her, Louis," I told him. "You said once that I did not know how to forgive. You were wrong, Louis. I have forgiven you. Completely. And yes, I still feel affection for you. Affection and love, just as much as before. You see? True forgiveness stints on nothing."

He frowned so suddenly that I itched to know what was in his mind.

"May I?" I asked, tentatively. Afraid of rejection, in fact. "May I have leave to read your thoughts again, Louis?"

He appeared to consider that. At length, in fact. Eventually I grew tired of waiting there on the step, and sat down alongside him on the swing, my booted foot kicking against the porch to set us to gently swaying. I looped an arm along the back of the swing, casually brushing the length of it against Louis' back, and when he leaned slightly into it rather than objecting, I grew a tad bolder and curled it around him.

"I don't know," he finally admitted. "Sometimes I think that would actually be nice, again, Lestat. There was a certain comfort in it, in knowing that when I expressed myself badly, you would know what I had meant."

I smiled slightly, and pulled him in more snugly against my side as we swung. "There is that," I agreed. "Just so long as you know that it's not infallible, my reading your thoughts. When you are confused, or embroiled in severe emotions, your thoughts aren't clear, you know."

"But that's the thing," Louis told me. "I'm not sure that having you in my mind is wise at all. Because... well, it didn't use to be like this, admittedly. But now that I know your true nature, and you know how it perturbs me... well, there are times when you won't much appreciate what I'm thinking, that's all."

Quite likely true.

"All right," I said. "Up to you. I'll keep my distance, for now."

"Thank you," Louis breathed, tucking his face in against my shoulder. "I... you baffle me, Lestat, do you know that? I... I can hardly reconcile what you told me you are with what you are towards me. I mean... oh, I get confused just thinking about it! This matter of your powers, of my thoughts... you've been such a perfect gentleman! When I think on that, I just can't possibly imagine you.... killing."

He said that last word in such a quiet, horrified tone that I knew the extent to which the idea still bothered him. And yet he was willing to sit here with me, talking, touching; he'd let me hold him all last night.

He was trying; I suppose that was the point. Trying to reconcile his moral revulsion for what I did with his powerful love for the man that I was. Because I was man as well as killer; human as well as vampire. I simply wasn't mortal.

But it seemed he was willing to talk about things, now... more than he had been, at any rate. You know, I'd told him when he first told me to go away that he was indulging the shock I'd unwittingly given him. Perhaps he was over the shock now, and ready to do more thinking about who and what and why I was what I was.

"It's hard for you to imagine, I think," I slowly said, "because you don't have a clear sense in mind of my true nature, my reality, mon Louis. I can be kind and gentle and good, of course I can. I have feelings, the same as you do. But I can also be ruthless, as can you. For I have needs, just as you do."

He sighed, and then to my very great surprise, confessed, "I've been pondering what you said, about evildoers. And I've been thinking about redemption..." Again he sighed, a deep heave of breath leaving his lungs. Fragrant, his breath so close to me, so close to my neck. He smelled of healthy blood, now. He smelled of love.

"And... and I..."

Painful. Whatever he had to say, he found it painful.

"Oui, Louis?" I softly encouraged him.

"And," he managed to continue, "I think of my own arguments, the ones I used with you. About God and love and redemption. And I realize that... well, even the French Catholic laws that take all that into account, still allowed execution for certain crimes. And the Spanish laws--" Here he scoffed and I was amused to realized that he believed one superior to another. "They're even worse. Far more brutal. And yet, the point is that I don't take issue with those laws. I've never even questioned the need for justice at times to be swift and final."

His laugh became self-derisory. "What should we do with those who kill and rape and plunder? Let them go on their way to commit yet more crimes? Lock them up in perpetuity at the expense of the state? I can't subscribe to either of those views, which makes my moral outrage with you rather.... hypocritical, I suppose."

"I see," I said, neither confirming nor denying a thing he'd said.

"So I try to see you as an executioner of sorts," he admitted. "Or I've been trying, I mean. I don't think I do so very well at it. I trust none of this offends you unduly?"

"Au contraire, I appreciate the thought you've devoted to this," I told him sincerely. "And executioner? There's a certain logic to that. I don't wish to mislead you, Louis," I found a need to say. "There were times when I was rather indiscriminate about my kills. I'm not that old in this life, you understand, and I largely had to learn things on my own. I've done things I wouldn't do again. But I've come to understand that it's best, really, to feed from the evildoer and him alone."

"But that's just the thing," Louis informed me. "How can you know with such certainty? How can you be sure?"

It frankly amazed me that he could ask, but that just went to show you that what I thought he knew and what he really knew were sometimes two totally disparate things.

"I read their thoughts," I told him.

"Of course," he agreed. "But as you yourself have said, there is some room for error in that endeavor. Suppose you latch upon some poor hapless woman who's been abused for too long and now fantasizes incessantly about ridding herself of her husband? Will you understand that what she thinks is just a wish she won't fulfill, not a true intention?"

"You assume that women are so weak they can't in fact fulfill such wishes for themselves?" I asked, smiling. He had indeed lived a sheltered life.

Startled, his eyes sought mine out in the dark. "Some do kill, I suppose," he reluctantly admitted, the image clearly clashing with his concept of womankind. "And so those are fair game to you?"

I sighed, wondering how on earth he could be this dense. "Louis," I pointed out, "I hunt murderers. Murderers, Louis. Those who kill in self-defense don't merit that title. My hunger leads me to the depraved killer, the one who cares nothing for his fellow humans, the one whose demise rids the world of some of the evil you believe that I personify.

My fingers moving to tease the hair on his nape, "Now, in the case you cite, I should be only too delighted to follow the woman home and wait until she sleeps and then enter like a ghost and drain her *husband* of his life. So she shall wake a widow, free of guilt and fear."

"Free of any source of support," Louis pointed out.

"So she's better off quailing before the man who beats her, than eking out a living on her own?" I asked, eyebrows arched.

"No, of course not!" Louis scathed. "I didn't mean that. I meant... that what you undertake has repercussions beyond the death itself."

"True," I admitted, and told him, "Louis, there have been times when I have left a calling card of gold or jewels in some household my thirst has had me visit."

"Gold or jewels?" Louis gasped. He was rich, of course, but not like me.

"What do I care if I strew a few coins or gems about?" I asked. "Magnus left me with an eternity's worth, and it's a simple matter to acquire more."

Louis was shaking his head in consternation. "Acquiring riches is one thing, but it's investment afterwards that matters. You should put your money into enterprises that will yield you a better return than a bank," he cast me an arch look, then. "Or a mattress."

Now, that was an interesting comment. I didn't have the savoir-faire about money that Louis had, of course; I hadn't been raised to manage it, for one. But I certainly wasn't such a harecatcher of a country lord that when I did come into funds, I stored them beneath my mattress! Or coffin, as the case may be. The very idea! I almost went into an insane laughing fit, the kind that lasts until dawn no matter what anybody says or does to rid me of it. But just before I succumbed entirely, a thought occurred to me. A thought so useful and provocative that it stilled my humor at once.

"Pointe du Lac, you mean?" I asked, and when Louis stared at me blankly, I amplified that to, "You mean I should invest in a going concern such as your beautiful plantation?"

With one elegant gesture I waved at all his holdings. Magnificent, truly. I mean they were rustic, how could they not be, a house not being a castle and the wilderness of New Orleans hardly being Paris. But for all that, the place was alive and charming and imbued with love. Much preferable to the Auvergne.

Louis blushed a deep, dark red, and averted his eyes. "I didn't mean that," he decried at once. "I didn't. I wasn't hinting. I don't want your money, Lestat, that's not what draws me--"

So very concerned he was, that I might have mistaken his words. Which wasn't the case, but how was he to know that?

I suppose I had to tell him.

"Mon cher," I assured him, "I know you didn't mean that. I think you meant perhaps to treat me to a few lessons about the management of funds, hmm? And that is well and good. But think, Louis! What if I were to become a financial partner in your interests here? I have sufficient capital that you could dower Sophie much more generously than you had intended, and Pointe du Lac should not suffer for it."

"I can handle my own finances and support Sophie and all the others perfectly well without assistance, thank you," Louis bit out, offended. Damn.

"But can you offer the sensibilities of your family any better excuse to spend time with me, than that we are embroiled together in the running of the estate?" I asked him, beaming more and more as I thought on it. And my smile is beguiling. Louis could hardly resist me, could he? "Who could complain, then?" I pressed. "Who could complain no matter how much time we spent one with the other?"

"You presuppose that I wish to spend time with you," he said, but that was just his pride still talking.

"Oh, you want it," I announced, entirely confident. "Why else have you been pondering the ethics of what I do, and arguing with yourself about the contradictory attitudes you've always had about justice versus redemption? Don't you know what all that is? You seek after a way for us to be together."

All at once I was reminded of my suggestion to him that he should to just that. A suggestion that had apparently borne fruit.

"A way for us to be together," he murmured, his beautiful voice smooth and full of contemplation. "Well, this would serve, it's true..."

"And we can debate these weighty issues at our leisure," I said, hopeful. "And perhaps in time you will come to terms with all these matters that have disturbed you."

"I...." Louis hesitated, and then he actually paused. But then he relented, and agreed, "All right. You can invest in Pointe du Lac if you wish. As a silent partner, only. And... well since you seem to wish, I will teach you the proper administration of finances. And though you're but a silent partner, I will consult you about the my affairs here and in town; that only seems right."

My throat muscles tensed as I said then, "And all your prohibitions from before, Louis? Shall I see you only like this, so late that no-one in your family can possibly glimpse me?"

"No," Louis relented. "That... that was panic talking, Lestat. Forgive me--"

"I have," I instantly assured him.

"Yes," he said, a small smile lifting his lips. "You've forgiven me that, as well. I thought... you see, I thought that if I forbade you contact with me and mine, everything you had said to me would become as a dream. Remote, abstract. I was hoping to forget, I think. But it's useless, I see that, now. You're real not only here," he waved an arm about the porch, "but here and here, as well," he finished, pointing at her head and heart in sequence.

"That's good to hear," I softly admitted.

"It's good not to fight it any longer, I think," Louis said in return. "And too, I think that in my panic you became some sort of monster in my mind. One that would torment me, that would threaten my family and do us ill if you were about in any guise. But that's nonsense, of course. You're..."

"I'm human as well as vampire," I said to him, and he nodded.

"That's it, that's it exactly." Then he paused. "But what does all this mean, Lestat? A... have we compromised, then? I shall endeavor to overlook your nightly... needs, and then we can be together? Not just as business partners and friends, but as lovers?"

Such hope in those words! And I had to dash it.

"Business partners and friends, yes," I told him. "But your being able to 'overlook' my hunt, my very nature... that's not the foundation that an intimate relationship should have, Louis."

Tears rose in his eyes, and they didn't merely spring from the fact that his sexual needs were being denied. It went deeper, far deeper than that. He only wanted me so intimately and intensely because the love was there, too, in full measure. That was what his debacle with Colette had taught him.

"But I've given you the run of Pointe du Lac again," he cried, desperately unhappy with my pronouncement. "And the house as well! I've agreed to take you into my business here, and I will even schedule Sophie's wedding to take place in the evening when you can be there! I'll spend time with you as you wish, and I won't scorn what you do to your face, Lestat, I swear I won't! So what more can I do to satisfy your need that I accept you?"

I sighed. "All you've done and promised to do, Louis, is more than what we had. But it's not enough for me. Unless you can honestly tell me that you do not scorn me at all, not even in your deepest heart, then we cannot pick up where we left off. I can't, don't you understand that? To have you for a lover would be sublime. But to know that deep inside you really hated us both? No. I can't, Louis. I won't. I'm sorry."

"Is it my turn to say that you're not sorry, that you are pathetic?" he moaned, biting his lip when he was through.

"Shall I apologize for that?" I asked, willing to, for all it had been true.

"No," he said. "You were right to tell me that. It was horrible of me to practically... proposition you, even while telling you in the same breath that I hated myself for doing it."

"It was cruel, yes," I agreed. But before he could become more mired in guilt, I added, "I forgive you, Louis. Everything."

"And so we can be friends but not lovers," he said, the tone one of conclusion. Finality. "For I will never be able to say those things that you demand. Never, Lestat. Do you understand what you are sentencing us, too?"

I did.

"But 'never' is a long time, Louis," I assured him. "I dare say you would have claimed that you would never find Colette repugnant. And yet so she is. And you were never going to let me see Sophie again, remember?"

"It must be nice to be right all the time," Louis mildly scathed.

"It's marvelous," I quipped, and cast him one of my most bewitching smiles.

Alas, he didn't smile back. "Let's settle business matters tonight," he suggested. "We'll draw up papers."

"No papers," I said. "Your word and mine must suffice."

"All right," Louis agreed, and then with some reluctance, I thought, he proceeded to suggest a sum for investment in Pointe du Lac.

It wasn't a paltry amount he had named, but it wasn't remotely near the value of his properties, either. That is to say, it wasn't an appropriate level of investment. I rather had the feeling that Louis was afraid I might believe he was taking advantage of me, should he name a more substantial sum.

I mentally increased the amount tenfold, and told him that was what I'd bring to him in gold upon the next sundown.

"Gold from under my mattress," I quipped, amused anew at the image.

"Have you had a mattress made to fit inside your coffin?" he asked, in total seriousness, and I smiled, thinking that quite a nice idea, really.

"You should be in bed," I told him.

"Will you... will you hold me again?" he asked. "Or is that forbidden?"

"Sometimes I will hold you," I allowed, thinking that wise. "And sometimes we can even kiss. But more than that, no. Not until you stop pretending that my hunts do not exist."

"I understand," Louis murmured, discouraged. "Well, fine, if that's the way you want it."

"It's the way it is," I explained, aware that no explanation would truly appease his wounded pride. "Now, shall I come late again, tomorrow night, Louis?"

He considered that for a moment, his chin resting in his palm. "No. That wasn't well-done of me, I admit. You'll bring no harm to those I love; I trust that."

"À demain, alors," I bid him goodnight, and he smiled slightly. I didn't read his mind, but I had the distinct feeling that he thought he could wear me down. That I would take what I could get from him, now that he was disposed to give it.

And who knew.... perhaps I would end up doing exactly that.

I never have claimed to be perfect.

But for the sake of a true future with Louis, I would try.

I would surely try.

Part 17



Taking Louis at his word, I appeared the next night just after the family had finished dinner. They were congregated in the downstairs salon, my father included, Sophie sitting at the harpsichord when I walked into the room.

I didn't quite know how to approach my father, after all I'd learned. I pitied him, I really did. And yet the anger was still there inside me; he should have tried harder to disregard his base desires, his anger, his self-hatred, the brunt of which I had borne!

But if the anger was still there, the hatred was not. Truly not.

And so I bent down and took his hand and softly said, "Papa, it is Lestat. How are you, this evening?"

He all but blubbered, he was so moved, which rather embarrassed me, I will admit.

"Bien, mon fils," he answered me, his voice broken. "It is good to have you here again."

He meant that he was glad I'd come at last to see Louis, of course. But he was too discreet to say so openly.

"Lestat," Louis said at once, standing to greet me. Now that startled me, I must admit. Oh, not the standing. He was unfailingly polite. I liked that about him. But that he would call me Lestat like that, in company. You see, in the past, except on rare occasions, he tended to call me "monsieur" whenever his sister or mother was present. The occasional Lestat might slip out, but by and large, he treated me to a degree of formality that was almost stifling.

All in hopes of concealing from his family the sexual nature of our relationship. Well, that was pointless, of course. His maman was too shrewd to be fooled by a thin veil like that, although I could deceive her utterly if Louis would but let me. And Sophie... well, I was in two minds about Sophie, actually. I knew that despite her forays into the flesh with Freniere --unknown to Louis, I was sure-- she was really quite innocent. It would never occur to her that Louis and I *could* have a relationship that exceeded friendship. But at the same time, I knew with certainty that if she did come to learn of it, she would understand it. She would understand instinctively that nothing Louis and I did could be wrong or worrisome, not if it was done in mutual love.

Oh, I did so like Sophie!

Freniere, though, was another matter.

He was in the salon when I entered. Sitting alongside Sophie on the bench to the harpsichord, he gazed at me as I entered, his green eyes half-closed as he assessed me.

Green eyes, black hair. Yes, all that. And whipcord lean. But could he have been any less like Louis? I didn't think so. His angular face had a mean look to it, his lips perpetually twisted. And where Louis' slender form was muscled and firm in all the right places, Freniere's was simply gaunt. And his green eyes... oh, I shudder still to think on them. Nothing like Louis'. A dull sage, well mixed with brown. Perhaps hazel would be more accurate for they were but greenish.

I hadn't been in the same room with him, before. Now that I was, I knew at once that I didn't like him.

I liked his thoughts even less.

I hadn't sensed this side of him before. Of course, I'd only seen him a few times, and those at a distance, and at those times, I'd been focused on Sophie's reactions to him, not on him. Besides, when he was concentrating on Sophie, his thoughts were quite nice, if rather vapid.

But now, he wasn't focused on Sophie, he was paying attention to me.

Strange, really. I didn't think he recognized me for what I was. I'd fed fast and well; I was careful about things like that. Usually, anyway.

And neither was he attracted to me, gorgeous as I am, in any sort of physical way.

It was more like he was some sort of slithering beast, gauging me with his beady eyes. Predatory eyes. He...

He thought I was a mark.

Oooh, what a hoot! If he wasn't Sophie's intended, I'd lure him into a nice round of cards and take him for every penny. As it was, I had to wonder how Sophie would fare married to the likes of him. He wasn't after her money, not really; he did love her in his own way.

But he was far too fond of money and in ways I didn't believe healthy. I didn't care, of course, except as it might affect Sophie. And via her, Louis.

"I don't believe you've met Sophie's fiancée," Louis politely said, and made the necessary introductions. When he got around to my titles --good Lord, why was he even mentioning them?-- Freniere's petty little mind concluded that I was not just an aristocrat but an aristocratic fop, a fool.

"Monsieur," I politely said, but my voice held undercurrents he could not fail to miss. Warnings. Cautions.

Well, he was the fool in the room, not I, for he missed them all the same, and began calculating how the son of an exiled, dispossessed lord might best be turned to his advantage.

Putrid, really, his thoughts.

"Maman," Louis broke into my musings, "Lestat and I have some business to conclude, so I will bid you bonne nuit." And polite as always, he walked to his mother and bent to kiss her withered cheek. How she could be both fat and withered always did puzzle me, but she was most certainly both.

As Louis leaned close to her, she whispered in his ear, "The money, Louis? Has he brought the money?"

I must admit that I was stunned. Oh, not that he'd told the old bird that I was about to invest in Pointe du Lac, but that she had the effrontery to mention such a subject in company. Of course no one could hear her save Louis --and me-- so I suppose it wasn't such a horrid social gaffe, all things considered, but neither was it exactly decorous.

And Louis answered in a tone designed to soothe a fussing infant, "Mais oui, Maman, I am sure he has. We can trust Lestat. I told you this."

"Monsieur de Lioncourt," she hissed, correcting Louis' informal speech.

"Mais non. Lestat," Louis insisted. "And you know he is a good friend. More than a friend. You must know this. I told you how it was."

Dear God, I almost choked right there, standing in the middle of the room with Freniere's lizardlike gaze still pinned to me. Not that I was thinking of him. Louis had told his mother how it was? With us? What had happened to discretion, to social mores that would not, could not, tolerate the two of us together?

And what was he thinking, anyway? We might have been lovers that once, but we weren't such now, and not likely to be again, not unless I could get Louis past this enormous hurdle, this malady of morality. Mortality. Same difference.

I tried to read the mother but her thoughts were, strangely enough, all revolving around money. My money, and what it would mean to Pointe du Lac. Of course, she didn't know what precisely it would mean; she didn't concern herself with details of the finances. But she seemed to think it would mean something rather significant.

Stranger and stranger.

"Bonne nuit," Louis was bidding them all, then, and as I absently echoed him, he took me by the arm and led me out of the salon and to the beautifully appointed office he kept on the ground floor. It was the room where my father had tried to commit suicide, in fact.

But I wasn't thinking of that when we entered. I was thinking of Louis, and how puzzled he made me, and how I could scarcely bear it. Calling me Lestat in front of all the others, going off with me in front of them, even, although he'd neatly covered it with talk of business, and telling his mother about us? And why wasn't she shocked, in an uproar, having a fit of the vapors? Something!

Instead she was concerned about my investment!

Maddened by the not knowing, the minute the office door swung closed behind us, I snatched Louis straight into my arms, shoved him back against the wall, his back pressed against the lower edge of a portrait, actually, and ravaged his mouth with mine, taking him in a violent kiss that was born of my frustration and my need.

Part 18


Roughly, I kissed him.

And roughly, he responded, matching me nip for nip, thrust for thrust, his arms curled around my back, his fingers clawing against the fabric of my coat. He kissed me back quite viciously, in fact, but there was nothing negative about it. He was enjoying the challenge, the potent physicality of it. He was letting go of his inhibitions, as he had once dreamed he could with me, reveling in the fact that I was as tough and strong as he himself (more so, actually), and that he did not need to restrain his passions for fear of injuring me as he might a tender, cossetted lady.

Ah, we devoured each other in that kiss.

And it rose in me such a floodtide of passion and blazing need that I absolutely could not resist; when the sheer intensity of the kiss drew blood from his lips, I lapped it up, and the thirst snaking inside me like a whip, exactly as it had on that first night of my vampire life, I bit down deep into his swollen lower lip and moaned as Louis' essence filled my mouth.

And what did he do?

Ah, drive me absolutely batty, that is all. For he all at once reacted to the love-violence, the blood-play, with some of his own, his teeth snapping upward to capture my upper lip. He bit down. Hard. And when no blood flowed to reward him, he bit down all the harder. Viciously, but not with vicious intent. He was just in need, my Louis.

And he moaned too, but not in potent satisfaction as had I. His moan was long and low and rife with pain, for he did need me the same way I needed him --as a vampire, I mean; who says he wasn't made for such a life? Not I-- but his mortal teeth had no hope at all of puncturing my immortal skin.

It hurt me to hear that moan. Hurt me deep inside, where I was bleeding for him. Or wanting to bleed for him, I mean.

Again, I could not resist. Drawing back, I prepared to grant his unspoken request, but Louis misunderstood and thought I meant to deny him his need, although I had slaked a bit of mine. Would I be so selfish with my love? He evidently thought so, for he gave a soft, incoherent scream when our mouths parted, and blood oozing from the cut on his lip, glared at me.

Such a sight.

Louis in an uproar, his eyes blazing green fire. In need of me, but not merely the mortal need that pulsed through him whenever I ventured near, but with a positive bloodlust, wonderful to behold.

"Shhh," I said, and moved to take him in my arms again.

But he panicked, thinking --I believe-- that I meant to solace him with a mere hug and pat, something like that. Well, that wasn't my intention. But before I could make that known, Louis fled from my arms to his desk, and snatched up a letter opener, and dashing back to me, his eyes almost glazed with --I swear-- preternatural need, he grabbed my fingers with his free hand and yanked my arm so that the tender flesh of my inner wrist faced the ceiling. And then he placed the sharp blade edge of the letter opening across my vein.

But he did not slice me open, although his hand was trembling, itching with the need to do so.

No, he had too much love for me to actually assault me. And too much intelligence, as well. I think he believed that I'd actually tolerate it --which I would, mmmmm-- but on the off-chance that I'd take exception to his actions, Louis held himself in check. Barely, but in check.

"Please?" he said, his voice a plaintive, tiny noise, and I could not bear the sound. It was excruciating to see him thus. To deny him, unthinkable.

"Allow me," I said, and sliding the letter opener from his fingers which had suddenly gone nerveless --interesting; perhaps he had expected me to refuse, after all?-- I nicked my vein myself, and held my wrist aloft to Louis' mouth.

He latched on like a babe at breast. That trusting, that innocent, that much in need. And that dependent.

Of course he only got a drop or two. How else could it be? I healed so damned fast.

But a drop or two did serve to calm him, and when he raised his head, the fever pitch in his eyes had merged with a deeper green to make him look... contented, I suppose.

"I love you," he said, tears filling those eyes, but they were contented tears.

"Mmmm, I know," I answered him, and then I did what I had intended all along, which was to draw him back into my arms, into a soul-deep kiss. But this time, while we kissed, I bit my tongue to give him blood, and felt him latching onto me in a way entirely more intimate than before. I gave him more blood, too --hell, he seemed to want it-- because it was a simple matter to bite myself again whenever I healed.

I can't guess how long we kissed like that. Time stood suspended. But at some point I realized that too much of a good thing might really unbalance my Louis, so I let the flow cease with the healing, and I kissed him once more in a merely mortal fashion.

Not that I disparage it. *Merely* mortal, when it comes to Louis, can be devastating.

And then the kiss was over, and I was pushing him backwards onto a settee, where he collapsed, his head in his hands, and reeled. It was the blood, of course. Too damned much blood, and his mortal body was struggling with it.

God, I could have kicked myself at that instant!

But really, it passed rather quickly, and then Louis was sitting up and staring at me in something approaching rapt adoration.

"I.... I really do love you, you know," he said.

"Yes, I know," I answered. "Can you... can you say what we discussed, Louis? Say it and mean it?"

He closed his eyes, exhaled a sigh, and shook a helpless head. "That I understand your kills, sympathize with them? No. I can't say that. I'm actually quite tempted to lie to you, do you know that? But I figure that's all but useless. Sooner or later you'd read the truth from me, in some way, shape or form."

"So you love me only to the extent that you can tolerate my heinous evil?" I questioned, a bit harshly. Frustration does that to me. I wished I'd never kissed him, actually. What had I been thinking, that a little spot of self-torture wouldn't come amiss? "Only you don't tolerate it at all, do you?" I accused. "You just pretend it is not there!"

"I... I'm doing the best I can!" he cried. "I'm trying to find a way for us to be together."

His black hair was tousled from our passion, but he began sifting his fingers through it, messing it yet more, and my heart just melted. Especially considering what he had said. He *was* seeking for a way for us to be together, just as I had told him to, and this was all his morality-bound mind had managed to conjure. And then, all at once, I wondered if he thirsted quite so much for my blood because I'd enchanted him into that, too, unbeknownst to me. No, no, that couldn't be true, could it? He'd enjoyed my blood during our tryst, and had wanted more that night we'd confronted each other in the hallway...

"Shhh," I said again. "I know you are. I apologize. It's just... I wish you could understand, Louis. As hard as this is on you, this peculiar circumstance we find ourselves in, it's just as hard on me."

"Oh, no it's not," he said, with uncharacteristic candor as his gaze zeroed in on the crotch area of my trousers. Honestly!

"You," I laughed. "Oh, no wonder I do so love you"

Louis blushed, and then he tried to return to some sort of normalcy by saying, "Well, let's take care of business matters now, shall we?"

I reached into my jacket pocket and brought forth a velvet sack pulled tight with a drawstring, and held it out, then set it in Louis' outstretched palm. His arm shot toward the floor with the weight I had laden him with, and he gasped.

"Not gold?" came squeaking out of his mouth. "You said gold but..."

His point was clear enough. The weight would be worth a significant amount were it formed of silver, but if it were gold, it would be a king's ransom.

"I said I'd bring gold, and so I have," I answered.

"This is too much," Louis protested, but despite that, he *was* beginning to open the sack. "This is more than we discussed."

"But that was the only gold I had at the ready," I said, which was true enough. I held wealth in many forms.

"Take most of it back," Louis pleaded.

"And break the set?" I scoffed. "No, they are worth the most if kept together."

He poured the contents of the velvet pouch out into his hand, the multitude of coins spilling over onto his lap, and then he understood what I meant.

"Mon Dieu," he breathed. "Where did you get such as these?"

He was no coin expert, but he was versed enough to recognize Spanish reals, and to know that these ones were very, very old. They predated the discovery of America, in fact. Although, how America could have been discovered in 1492 when there were already droves of people living here, well, that has always puzzled me. It's a bit like a tourist knocking on your door and claiming to have discovered your front yard. Strange, indeed.

"Magnus," I said, grinning. "You would not believe the treasures he had stored up in his castle. This is the least of it."

Louis replaced the coins in the sack, and blushing again, retreated back to the settee where he watched me with wary eyes.

"You're playing with me," he distinctly stated, a light of resolve in his eyes. But I wasn't seeing that. I was seeing another damned vision. Louis, me, a Cathedral... oh wait, *the* Cathedral, the one here in New Orleans... and Louis was asking if I had forgiven him (oh mon Dieu, was he going to go back to Colette again?)... and I was saying no, I was only playing with him. And then I wanted to set him on fire. Dear God, set Louis on fire? And then I was setting something on fire. Thank God it wasn't Louis, though. It was only a small candle in the church, and I was lighting it for me, feeling damned sorry for myself. Strange. Self-pity has never really been my thing, you know? I'd rather go out and do something, distract myself, than hang about in churches lighting candles.

I shook my head at Louis, tried to make the visions go away, and answered, "I don't know what you mean."

Pure truth.

But Louis laughed in a self-deprecating way.

"Oh, you're playing with me, all right. And I quite likely deserve it, so there's no need to be upset that I've routed your little plan. But honestly, Lestat! Pounds of pure gold? And all of it in coins so old their value boggles the mind? Could you possibly have made your point in any less blunt manner?"

"Oh, I'm a rather blunt fellow, at heart," I said. "So allow me to be perfectly blunt now. What are you going on about?"

"The money," he sighed. "You've somehow found out that I'm in need of money, and you're chiding me for having hinted about it last night. I know you have a point, a good one; I should have been forthright, should have trusted you with the truth."

"You hinted?" I asked. "I thought it was my idea to invest in Pointe du Lac."

"I was the one who told you to invest in a thriving concern," Louis reminded me.

"But you said you did not mean your plantation," I countered.

"I lied," Louis admitted, his green eyes wide open as they met mine.

Momentarily taken aback, I remembered all at once that I'd seen him lie to his mother on occasion, and that he did it quite well. Before those visions came roaring back of him lying about *me* to that purple-eyed man --who the hell was that purple-eyed man!-- I swallowed, and hoarsely implored, "Ah, don't, Louis. Please, I beg you, don't lie to me again. I... I don't think I can bear it. I'd rather have the ugliest truth stand between us, than lies I don't perceive. Because at least the truth can be addressed, dealt with, sorted out, don't you see? Lies only serve to widen the gulf that even now separates us."

He nodded, his black hair swaying with the motion, strands of it having escaped the simple clasp he wore at his nape. Ah, I did so love his long hair. Longer than mine, it was, and so sleekly elegant with those blue-black shades that I think I could stare forever. Ah, forever. I only hoped I'd get the chance to stare forever and ever at him.

Beautiful One.

And his manner reflected beauty as well, for with newfound confidence in how I indeed regarded him, he was saying, "I'm sorry, Lestat. And don't say that it's all right. It's not all right, although I know you forgive me. You're like that. So very generous... in some things."

And because his thoughts were forbidden me, I didn't know if that last bit referred to my refusing to indulge all his mortal passions, or if he meant that I was less than generous when I went out to take life from those who yet had it.

Louis sighed, a small smile hovering about his lips as he explained, "The lying wasn't deliberate, Lestat. I honestly didn't mean to hint like that. I had intended to simply ask you for help. You had said, after all, that I could come to you for any assistance, that it would be your pleasure to be of service to me. And I believed that, trusted that. You are so good to me! I don't deserve it."

"Ah, but you do," I insisted, coming to sit beside him, laying a gentle kiss on his temple, then another one on his cheek. He smiled again. "So what happened, then, Louis? You had intended to let me know that you might need funds. And then?"

"Then... I didn't want to feel dependent upon you! More importantly, I didn't want you to feel I was taking advantage of you. I tried to frame a request, an explanation, but it just stuck in my throat. The whole time we were discussing ethics and justice and punishment and what you *do* out there at night, deep in my mind I was trying to force words of money past my teeth. But it was so vulgar, so very vile! And then you said you strewed coin and jewels --mon Dieu, jewels!-- about like so much dross, and I couldn't say it, I just couldn't. I felt intimidated, out of my depth."

"I'm sorry," I said instantly. You know, I'd had this conviction all along that Louis was going to think I was after *his* money, and for that reason I'd rather hammered home the point that I had far, far more than he could ever dream of obtaining. That had been selfish in the extreme; I saw that now. I'd flaunted my wealth so much that Louis here was actually threatened by it, now. No wonder he'd paled when he saw the treasure I'd placed at his disposal.

He shook his head in silent self-censure. "I suppose it was to feel in control again that I began to disparage your financial acumen. Such stupid remarks! Truly, I am the one who is sorry. Even when I said it, I didn't think you hoarded gold under your mattress! It was just a way to belittle you, and so make myself feel better about the turn things here have taken. And once I began, it seemed I couldn't stop. I was chiding you that you should invest, and I thought at once of Pointe du Lac. How could I not, in the circumstances? But you saw through me and I was so embarrassed then, not to have openly told you of the situation."

"And now you think I've brought the money in that form as some sort of... retaliation, Louis? But I didn't see through you, you know. I had no notion that you were truly in need of funds. I swear I didn't know. I merely wanted something more to bind us together; I thought you were accepting me as a partner from the same motive. And I certainly did not offer you Spanish reals from any need to chide you. That's simply the form of gold I had most easily to hand."

He glanced up. "Truly?"

"Truly, mon cher," I assured him. "So then, what is this of needing funds? I shall be your partner, although I swear to you that I shall never seek to take the reins of Pointe du Lac from your able hands. I merely want to be there to bolster you, a confidante you can talk to at any hour of the day... well, any hour of the night is more apropos. But can you tell me what has happened?"

"Able hands," Louis scoffed. "Were I any sort of true friend at all to you, I should thrust this gold back at you and insist you invest it elsewhere."

"Enough of that!" I spoke sharply. "This trifling sum is nothing to me, you know that. It can be put to no better use than to ease your burdens, so I'll not hear another word like that."

"Oui," Louis briefly agreed. "Merci, Lestat." He all at once set the gold aside on a little round table beside the settee, and then, as though dissatisfied with that, thrust all the coins back into the pouch. I sensed that he was stalling, that for all I'd assured him that the money meant nothing, that he was still the undisputed master here, he still felt... uncertain, now. It was tragic, truly. He had such mortal nonsense about money cluttering up his head! And to me, it was all just one thing.

It was just love. Love for him. And whether that love took the form of giving him coin, or listening to his woes, it was love all the same.

"So tell me about the plantation now," I said, because as much as he apparently needed money, I suspected he needed to talk, even more. After all, who did he have to talk to? His mother would be useless, and although Sophie was anything but, Louis had too much gentlemanly sensibility to burden her with the vulgar matter of the family's finances. Actually, I was his best and closest friend. "Spare me no detail," I softly added.

As it turned out, it wasn't the plantation at all that had caused Louis' financial woes; it was Freniere.

And when I heard the story in full, I gnashed my teeth, and had to wonder just *what* Louis thought he was playing at, letting his sister marry such a creature.

Part 19



"He seemed so sincere," Louis moaned. "So very sincere."

"Swindlers usually do," I grated. Mon Dieu, when I got my hands on the man... but no, there was Sophie to think of. How could I hurt Sophie thus? She would mourn forever if I simply slew Freniere, and I couldn't believe it would do any wonders for my relationship with Louis, either.

Much as Freniere deserved death for putting my Louis in an untenable situation, he was most likely beyond my reach. For now.

Of course this didn't mean I could stand back and watch Sophie bound in marriage to an utter wastrel, either.

"You can't approve this marriage," I said, more sharply than I'd intended.

Louis looked up at me with bleary eyes. "I gave my consent before I knew."

"Before Freniere begged funds from you, enough to cripple your plantation, telling you he was investing in a revolutionary new process for refining indigo dye?"

"It would have been a good investment if he'd been a man of honor," Louis insisted.

"Well, he's not a man of honor!" I shouted, at that point not even caring who heard. "There was no new process to invest in! He lost your capital over cards, mon Dieu, cards, Louis, and lied to you for months, stringing you along. I wonder what made him finally confess the truth. You learned of this just last night, you said?"

"I grew tired of his evasions. And suspicious. So when he called, I refused to let him see Sophie until he satisfied my questions. He lied for quite a time more, actually. And then he realized that I meant what I'd said, and that I was shrewd enough to see him for what he was, my eyes now being open, and the truth came spilling out in a torrent."

"But you admitted him tonight to see Sophie?" I gasped.

Louis frowned. "She insisted. I told her I was going to withdraw my consent to the match, and she raised holy hell. Well, perhaps unholy hell would be a more apt description. She gave me to understand that it was none of my blasted business whom she married. And she wouldn't listen to reason, Lestat, she just wouldn't."

"Ah, yes," I murmured. "Love is not an emotion much subject to reason."

"Tell me about it," Louis moaned, looking again at my wrist.

He seemed in need, so I made a convulsive gesture as though to offer him more blood, but he pushed my hand away with two closed fists and clenching his eyes shut, shook his head. "Non. I must... think. And that doesn't help."

I sighed, and wrapped a loving arm around him as we sat there side by side. I wanted to ask how he could have been such a damned fool about Freniere, but then I realized that such a query was hardly going to help matters. Besides, I knew how he could have been such a fool He'd been distracted for months now, by me. Distracted and confused. And this was the result.

A hell of a mess.

"I can persuade Sophie to give him up," I offered, but Louis shook his head, horrified.

"Oh, no. Not that. I hated it when you did that to her. No, no, there must be another way." Louis shakily reached for a decanter of brandy on the table beside him, and his arm clumsily knocked over the bag of gold he'd set there.

Before he could move, I roused myself to gather up the scattered coins and place them back in their pouch, then asked, "Where shall I put this, Louis? With Freniere about, I'd like to see it properly secured. After hearing what you've said, it wouldn't surprise me if he was a thief as well as a liar and bad card cheat."

"Oh, the safe," Louis moaned, waving a distracted hand. "It's--"

"Don't tell me aloud. Think it," I advised. "The walls may well have ears."

"True," he acknowledged, and then he quite clearly and distinctively told me in mind-speech that I could find the safe behind his father's portrait. He also told me the combination, which took me aback for a moment, but then I realized that of course Louis trusted me with it. We were partners, now, and even if we were not, I had wealth enough without stealing more.

I felt better when the gold was secured from Freniere, and said, "Well, that's one problem settled. You can redeem those mortgages in the morning, and rest easy again knowing that Pointe du Lac is once again free and clear of debt."

"But what shall I do about Sophie?" Louis asked, heartbroken. "She demanded this morning that we set a date! And I put her off, mumbled some nonsense, don't even remember what, and she started yelling, Lestat. Yelling! At me. She said six months hence, a decent interval that no one could possibly complain of, and not a day later. And when I argued, she marched right up to the calendar and circled the day, and announced that she would make all the arrangements herself if necessary, and I could go hang if I didn't like it."

"Determined young woman," I murmured, impressed despite myself. She reminded me of myself, actually. Although, with my history, I knew I wouldn't have confronted my family like that; I'd have just run off to do what I wished. My respect for Sophie, already high, jumped tell full notches more, even if I didn't think her choices were particularly wise. The point was that she didn't flinch from making them, no matter what anyone else said, not even Louis.

"Yes," Louis acknowledged, miserable over it. Then he added almost absentmindedly, "Oh, I told her I wanted an evening ceremony, by the way. And she agreed."

Touched, oh, I was so very touched.

And yet I didn't want to attend Sophie's wedding at all, not now, not if she was going to tie herself to Freniere.

Louis was shaking, almost beside himself with worry.

"You know," I told him, my voice a soft blanket to soothe his pains, "that I would never, ever do anything to harm Sophie. I love her, Louis. Almost as much as I love you, and that's a fact. But Freniere isn't under my special protection. So what do you think of this idea, mon cher. I'll play my little mind tricks on him, and solve matters that way."

"You'll make him break it off with Sophie?" Louis asked, hopeful. Then that hope was dashed. "No, no, what can I be thinking? It would break her heart, utterly break her fragile woman's heart. She loves him. She might never marry anyone if her faith and trust is so hideously wounded by one to whom she's given her whole heart."

Hmmm, he had a point, there. I didn't really see Sophie as fragile, mind you, but in the Auvergne there'd been these ancient spinsters who'd been disappointed in love as young girls, and had never recovered. Had forsworn romance forever after. I didn't want that for Sophie. She might be making a colossal error of judgment with Freniere, but she was young. She had mountains of love to give the right man, if she didn't become so embittered by the pitfalls of life that she dried up inside.

"She knows about the gambling, though?" I asked. Maybe that was all we needed to set this right, to simply tell Sophie the truth about the man she so desperately loved.

"Oh, she's known that all along. She's so wise in some ways, she far surpasses me. But when it comes to him she's utterly foolish. She had the poor taste to insist to me that his gambling makes him dashing and adventuresome." Louis shuddered. "She thinks his restless streak romantic, God help us!"

"She's young," I said. "She'll grow up and see him for what he is. The point is that she not be married to the lout when her eyes do open."

"Well, if you can think of a way to prevent it, please do let me know," Louis groaned, defeated. "I wanted to bar him from the house but she said she'd burn it down, and the creditors could seek for their money in the ashes!"

"She said that?" I gasped.

"And more. The rest was less ladylike. Maman ordered her forthwith to her room, and Sophie stuck out her tongue and flounced out the front door instead, bold as you please. She was walking, unescorted mind you, out to Freniere's, when I caught up with her." He gulped. "Lestat... I had to... oh mon Dieu, the shame is choking me, but I had to... to manhandle her to get her back home. And she fought me like a hellion, every step. And it was only when I relented and agreed to send my regards over to Freniere that she recovered a civil tongue in her head."

I could see the scene in my mind's eye, and despite my love and concern for Louis, I could not help but smile. "It sounds to me as though she threw a childish fit until you relented," I commented.

"That's about the size of it," Louis admitted, ashamed to have been subject to such manipulation, and by his little sister, too. And yet he didn't know what to do, how to handle her, that much was obvious. And neither did I. I'd never had a sister. Nicolas had sworn that his all went insane at certain times of the month, and were utterly unreasonable. And he and I had giggled uproariously at the idea, actually, that women's minds as well as their bodies went by the cycle of the moon. Perhaps Sophie was so intractable for that reason alone, and a few days would see her mental functions improving.

I suggested as much to Louis --delicately, of course-- and he went beet red all the way up to his scalp, and turned from me in a huff.

"You will *not* speak of Sophie in that manner," he grated.

"But Louis," I insisted, "she's a normal, healthy woman! You know what I'm talking about, don't you? Once a month, a woman has a spell of about a week during which--"

"Thank you for the anatomy lesson, Dr. de Lioncourt," Louis scathed, his brow furrowed in disgust that I would allude to any bodily function of Sophie's. "I am well aware of such matters. You will not, I repeat, not, speculate again as to what part of the month it might be, or not, for my sister. Is that goddamned good and clear?"

Touchy, touchy.

And you know what? It told me something about Louis, it really did. He only saw women in two lights, really. They were either available for his pleasure, or they were pure and saintly and fashioned of gold and white lace, above any sort of sexual connotation whatsoever. Even one so innocent as my merely pointing out that Sophie had her time of the month just as any woman did.

Ah, dear God. He'd watched Sophie throw an absolute hissy fit in his face earlier that day, but when it came to fleshly matters, Louis still believed she walked on water.

And she didn't. I can tell you most definitively that she didn't, for unlike Louis, I'd meandered in her thoughts. When she said she loved Freniere, she didn't only mean it in the purest sense of the word.

Louis would no doubt faint if I told him this. Well, faint or call me out. Neither of those held much appeal, so I held my tongue.

"Is that clear?" Louis grated again.

"Oui," I answered, uninterested in fighting. "So what shall we do then, Louis, to help her?"

"Perhaps God knows. I've no idea," he confessed, all his anger draining away.

Part 20



"We'll think of something, Louis," I promised, my arm curling around his shoulders. "We'll not let Sophie marry herself off to such a cad. We'll handle this together." I smiled, then, unable to resist a little nip at his neck. Just a nip, mind you. I was overcome with affection. And love. "We're partners, remember?"

Of course what we were was business partners, although that wasn't what I meant at that moment. And it wasn't what Louis meant, either, when he said, "Yes, partners. Yes, we are that. Together..." He said the word like some sort of chant. Or incantation, perhaps.

And then he stretched his neck out, and in the quietest, most loving tones imaginable, bade me drink.

Well, how could I refuse? My thirst was well sated for the evening --I'd never again truly feed from Louis, not until I brought him over-- but anytime I was in his presence, I wanted him. Just a taste of his sweet, rich, red, hot blood... oh yes, I did want him.

And I thought, why not? Why not, indeed?

Because he secretly despises you, my conscience whispered. Because when daylight breaks, he'll loathe himself for having been touched by you.

Well, St. Lestat I most definitely am not. He'd spoken more than once of how celibacy grated on *him*... well, it grated on me, too. I had to have him, it was as simple as that.

And so I drew him across my lap and up against a supporting arm, and very gently traced his lips with my finger as I tilted his head back at an angle over my arm.

And then I sank my fangs.

Ah, the sensation of sliding them into his skin... indescribable. And then the blood, flowing smoothly, not spurting forth, for I was most careful and gentle with my bite, of course I was. But the taste... so much Louis in a taste. A mouthful of Louis. I think I was swooning even before the flavor hit my tongue. I think I went into rapture just smelling his skin in that instant before my killing teeth pierced his vein.

And if I was swooning, it was nothing to what Louis was doing. Or perhaps it was; it's difficult indeed to compare what his mortal pleasure meant to him to what my bloodlust meant to me. Who knows? The only sure thing was that from the moment I'd drawn him across my legs, his half-swollen member --did I mention that Louis was at all times at least semi-hard around me? I mean always. *Always*. Even when he was raging and angry, screaming at me; even when his conscious mind was filled to bursting with worries about Sophie, he was in a continuous state of arousal. On account of my mere presence!

It was delightful.

No wonder I loved him so much.

But the point was that the instant I reached out and touched him with a lover's intent, his own rapture exploded between his legs. Oh, not literally! Louis had excellent control; I knew he would be a most satisfying lover, if I could ever entice him to take me.... but that, of course, would necessitate his leaving behind his maudlin ideas about the kill.... well, anyway, as soon as I touched him, he surged to life down there, hardness straining against the weave of his trousers, the bulge really quite noticeable. Really quite lovely. Or handsome. Pick your adjective; I tend to use them all.

"Lestat," he moaned, and he was so overcome that he couldn't bear it; one of his hands snaked down to caress his need.

Oh, no, none of that... I snatched both his wrists in my free hand, and held them over his head as I drank, as he squirmed and pleaded with both body and voice.

"Stat..." the groan came, thick from his throat, and I half-drew my fangs out, teasing him. All that got me was the urgent request, "More."

A pleasure to comply, but I still held his hands. Underhanded of me, most likely, but I had to have *some* advantage over that formidable will of his, didn't I? If Louis wanted me enough, and his mortal needs were denied... well, let's just say that the way I figured it, he'd have one hell of a good incentive to find a way for us to be together.

So let him undulate against me, vainly seeking his pleasure. Let him beg. Let him throw his head back and gasp in painful ecstasy as I had from him what I wanted. Let him babble in incoherent delight as passion swept him head to toe, as he gave himself to me and loved it, loved every second....

And that was when I felt it, a warm damp patch spreading across the thin silk of my shirt. Louis had turned on his side sometime in the past few minutes, and that was all it had taken: his thighs pressed to my belly as I half-lay with him on the settee... and he'd had his pleasure.

His full, mortal pleasure.

And so his passion had exploded after all. Right against me.

The scamp! The absolute rascal.

I drew my fangs from his throat, and growled, "You wily devil. Louis, if you only knew...!"

He colored slightly, then his pride coming to the fore, defended himself, "You're stingy; can you blame me if I take what I can get?"

"I damned sure can!" I objected, and then, drawing away, spoke the truth. "No, I can't. But Louis...." I shook a finger in his face. "That was...."

"Naughty?" he asked, impish in the face of my irritation.

"Sneaky," I grated, and unceremoniously dumped him off my lap. He fell on his rump, but his spirits weren't bruised in the least.

"Better than the supply of towels I've laid in," he quipped, letting me know in his way that when he'd truly been in need of late, he hadn't gone to Colette. Not that I needed to be told. I knew.

I trusted him.

"But how will you ever accept me as I am," I complained, "if you don't have a raging erection spurring you on?"

Too much plain speaking for him; his blush only deepened. Then he most kindly, gently told me, "Lestat, don't you think I've largely accepted... things? Look at us! Look at me!" And self-consciously, then, he all but covered the large stain across the front of his trousers.

"You...." I paused to think and then I said the bald truth, the open, honest truth, concealing nothing.

"You confound me... Louis."

And I was so wrapped up in him, in loving him, in trying to figure him out, that I did not so much as hear the office door open. Most unusual, that. My vampire senses...

Well, Louis was more powerful than all of them put together.

But I could not fail to realize what had happened when a voice broke into the stillness of the room, into the comfortable silence that had grown between myself and Louis.

"Mon Dieu...."

But that was Louis talking, for he had heard the voice too, and he slowly swiveled from where I had dumped him on the floor and turned to face the intruder who had disrupted this most private moment.

Part 21


Sophie had her hand against her lips, her fingers smothering a gasp. And then she was rushing forward to gather Louis into her arms, reaching out for him and babbling, "You're hurt!"

I closed the door she had left open, and returned, gathering my powers before me, prepared to do what must needs be done...

And then, even as she hugged him tight, she had a fierce glare for me. "What did you do to him?"

"Sophie," Louis began, "It's nothing---" but she was having none of that.

"Nothing!" she gasped. "He pushed you! I was walking past and I heard you fall just as he was saying terrible things, calling you wily, sneaky, devil!"

"No, no, I fell," Louis invented, but he might as well not have bothered.

"You fell!" Sophie scathed. "Why Louis de Pointe du Lac, what do you take me for, an utter simpleton? You fell! Ha, you fell. Did you bite your own neck, too?"

Did I tell you that Sophie there was sharp as a tack? Nothing got past her. Well, almost nothing. Freniere sure had her fooled to the teeth.

"No," Louis broke in, the colors in his eyes shifting madly as he tried to come up with some explanation, something rational, coherent. "Er... um, there was this rather large mosquito--"

Not much chance she'd swallow that, not without a little razzle dazzle from moi....

"Sophie," I crooned, "Look at me, chérie..."

Instantly, Louis was on his feet and shoving he away. "No! I told you no! Not her, not ever again!"

"I have to," I told him. "We have to."

Well, I desisted. What else could I do?

"Louis?" Sophie asked, her tone somehow sweet and demanding all at the same time.

Louis sighed, and looked at me, his eyes pleading.

I shook my head. Much better to enchant her.

But he did what he wanted, anyway. Not my lackey...

"It's not like you think," he told Sophie. "Lestat and I..." His courage failed him, but then he cleared his throat and admitted, "I love him, Sophie. Don't you see?"

She stared at me, then at him, then raised an eyebrow. "No, I don't see. How does that account for your fall, those bite marks, your obvious dizziness even now?"

She was right. Louis had stood up too fast, and now he was reeling. I held out a hand to steady him, and he took it.

"Careful, Louis," I cautioned, but he knew that I meant far more than for him not to tumble headlong. He knew I was referring to his words.

"I know," he said, and then turned to Sophie. "It's a bit personal," he complained, giving avoidance the best shot that he could. "Can't we leave it at that?"

"No, we can't!" Sophie raged. I suppose it should have irritated me, but all I could feel was respect for her. You see, it was love of Louis that was making her intractable. "If you don't satisfy me this instant that monsieur de Lioncourt hasn't abused our hospitality, then I shall go straight to mother with news that he is shoving you and biting your neck! Mon Dieu, what sort of guest attacks his host? And him with his father in residence! Has he no shame? I shall tell Maman, just see if I won't!"

"Fine, then," Louis harshly grated, and then in a low hissing coil of sound, whispered, "We were kissing, all right? And we got a little bit carried away."

Sophie stared again, her jaw dropping open, and just said, "Oh." And then, in tones far different, in tones of curiosity, "Oh?"

"Need to hear more?" Louis asked with narrowed eyes, and she recognized, a bit tardily, perhaps, that she was intruding on business that was just as personal as Louis had said.

"Oh," she commented again, this time thoughtfully. Her gaze sought me out again, and she looked me up and down. A good look. I smiled, hoping to put her at ease, but really, she already was at ease. The prospect of Louis having kissed me didn't put her off at all, except insofar as I might not be worthy of him. It was still concern for Louis driving her, that and nothing more. No moral outrage.

Which was surprising, considering she'd never given any thought at all to romantic entanglements between persons of the same gender. Or maybe it wasn't surprising. It simply didn't matter to her in the least, you see. Why would she have given it any thought, in that case.

Louis was close to fainting, but not from blood loss. Well, maybe just a little from that, but mostly he was just in shock. He had clean forgotten that the front of his trousers bore a rather suspicious wet patch. I wasn't about to remind him of it, either. Why make him feel worse?

I was quite proud of him that he'd claimed me, you know.

And besides, it was damned dark in that room. Sophie had seen the bite marks because she'd flung herself at Louis' face. But unless she planned to fling her face in more southerly directions --all right, all right, bad turn of phrase-- well, I just mean that there wasn't much chance she would notice Louis' little mishap.

"Well?" I asked her, eyebrows lifted as I wrapped an arm around Louis' shoulders and pulled him close. Louis shook slightly, and I rubbed my fingers on his shoulder, seeking to calm him. Unfortunately, he shoved my fingers away. Not the best tack to take at the moment, with Sophie so watchful. She still wasn't sure what to think, and this wouldn't help matters.

I tried to cover Louis' slip. "You see how it is?" I pressed. "We're... more than friends."

"Lestat!" Louis objected.

"What? You told her first," I pointed out. "And we are more than friends, mon cher. I for one think it shall be grand for you to have a confidante in your sister."

Sophie snorted. "Sure he loves you. All I see is that you've obviously got some sort of hold over my brother. So much so that he makes up this nonsensical story to explain his fall. But you've attacked him, that much is plain! And he's shaking with fright, right this instant!"

Well, I should have guessed. After all, "we got a bit carried away" hardly accounted for all she had seen, let alone heard. I'd been berating Louis. It was good-natured, but she wasn't to know that.

"Let me go, Lestat," Louis was pleading, but I hung on.

"Let him go!" Sophie rebuked me. "I don't know why he claimed to love you like that, don't know what you're holding over his head, but if he loved you, he wouldn't be struggling now, now would he?"

"You may have had your little dalliance with Freniere, but you're fairly innocent, aren't you?" I challenged. "You've never said let me go but meant hold me tighter, hold me forever?"

"Lestat!" Louis shouted.

Well, I couldn't resist. You know, there was this little voice inside me that was saying, Go on, Lestat, do it. Be a devil. Indulge. He wants another kiss, sure enough. He told *her* that you'd been kissing, so what matter if she sees for herself? It's either that or a mind trick, and Louis'll hate you for that, no question.

Besides, I sort of wanted to shock Sophie. It was her attitude. So sassy. I liked it. And I wanted to sass her right back, and I knew the best way to do it.

All at once, my grip on Louis grew more fierce. He froze, registering the change, and groaned, "No, you can't. Not now, now with Sophie here!"

"Quiet, my love," I breathed against his mouth as I bent my head. And then, in full view of Sophie, I kissed him like there was no tomorrow, my open mouth devouring his, our tongues mating. A kiss for lovers, nothing remotely chaste about it.

And blood flowed between us, mine and his both, as I had my wicked way with his most delicious mouth. I was careful not to spill any blood, though. I didn't want to sass Sophie that much.

Ah, Louis did so want to fight me, but how could he? He craved me utterly, and there was the blood again, the blood he needed for all he'd just had a generous portion. Within seconds he had melted, and the room filled with his little moans and pants, with the sounds of passion that Sophie would well recognize. His arms came around me of their own volition, his hands making fists in the back of my shirt, his muscles drawing me in deeper, closer, into union with him.

An animal moan of need came from deep within him to echo in the air. At that instant I opened my eyes to glance at Sophie.

She jerked with the force of her brother's noise. She recognized the sound, you see. She'd heard Freniere make it, or something similar. It was the rumbling force of a man's powerful need, almost ready to release itself.

And so he was ready, lost in rapture, ready to spend his pleasure yet again. Time to up the ante... I lifted my mouth just enough to speak, and breathed, "I do so love you, mon très beau Louis."

"Stat," he groaned back, the noise emerging from deep in his belly. "Ah, Stat. I must have you!"

Sophie blushed a charming pink, very ladylike, that, although her thoughts were anything but, and she said once more, "Oh."

And then she fled, her slippered feet sliding against the carpet, her hair flying out behind her, but she had the good sense, manners, and consideration to close the door behind her after she swept through it.

I was left alone with Louis, who had come straight back to reality when Sophie had uttered her single syllable.

He did not look pleased, and when I began to whistle a jaunty tune, intending to pass the whole thing off as a lark, he throttled me.

Part 22



It was with a rather sheepish face that I presented myself to Louis the next night.

"All right, now?" I tentatively asked from the doorway of his office, and he laughed a little under his breath as he waved for me to come in.

"All right," he agreed.

Then I grinned.

Oh, we'd had quite a time of it that night that Sophie had found us together and misunderstood, the night that I had made her understand just how things stood between mon Louis and moi. Louis had been furious, but personally, I thought his anger was as much with himself as with me. Once I'd started to kiss him, he hadn't been able to resist my potent charms (well, of course not!). So in front of Sophie he'd said some rather suggestive things.... and he'd been embarrassed.

He was mad at himself for not having more willpower.

And mad at me for precipitating the incident.

He'd throttled me... now, that was an interesting experience. All Louis' passions turned straight to violence, to rage... mmmmm, he really would be something else once I got him over his maudlin ideas about the kill. Such a vampire he would make! He might match me for vicious indulgence if I could find a way to harness the aggression and raw intensity he'd poured out on me that night.

Pummeled me, he had.

Ah, Louis...

Well, needless to say, he couldn't hurt me in any physical sense, so I'd sort of just let him vent his anger. And then, when it had started to die a natural death, he'd sat back on the floor, rested his bruised hands on one upraised knee, and just said, "Damn you, Lestat."

Such emotion, such angst...

I couldn't be flippant any longer; I just couldn't.

"I'm sorry," I said, and while I didn't exactly mean it, I didn't *not* mean it, either, if that makes a lick of sense...

"Why?" he asked, plaintive. "Because Sophie was accusing you of hurting me?"

"No, not that," I murmured, my brow furrowed. "At some level I don't really know why, Louis. I just wanted to do it, so I did it. Maybe I wanted to see what would happen. I'm like that. But there was also something else."

"Yes?" he asked, weary that time.

"Sophie's wonderful," I said. "I knew she could handle it, and I wanted you not to have to have so many secrets. I wanted you to be able to talk to her, I suppose. Besides, she was just so sassy I wanted to go her one better."

"You did that, certainly," Louis sighed. "But how... no, never mind. I suppose you're in her thoughts, that's how you knew she wouldn't go into raving hysterics over that matter? I... I didn't want to shock her, though."

"She's fairly unshockable," I told Louis. "She was just... surprised. Besides, I didn't think you'd mind all that much. I mean, you did tell your mother about us already."

Louis opened his eyes in blank astonishment. "What?"

"Earlier, I heard you talking to her. Saying that you would be calling me Lestat no matter what she thought of the matter, saying that she knew how things stood."

"Oh, that." Louis sighed. "You can't have thought I meant I'd shared with her that we have... that kind of affection between us! Didn't you read her thoughts?"

"I tried," I admitted. "She couldn't seem to stop thinking of finances, though."

"That's because all I told her was that she'd have to be more polite to you in future, since you were going to invest in Pointe du Lac and save us all from the poorhouse."

"You weren't headed for the poorhouse!" I objected.

"Well, no," Louis admitted. "But I led mother to believe things were a bit more dire than they really were. And it worked. Anyway, that's what I meant about her knowing how things stand. She knows I need you, but only in a financial sense. It should be enough to keep a civil tongue in her head."

"Ah," I said. "Hmmm, that's why I was so... liberal with Sophie present. I thought you'd already told your mother, so what harm if your sister knew as well?"

That did the trick. I mean, when I said that, Louis had realized that he'd forgiven me already. I guess he could see my point of view.

Still, I was a bit nervous until I got his "all right" the next night as well.

I strolled into the office and casually inquired if he'd settled the mortgages that had been worrying him the night before.

"Oh, yes," he blithely assured me. "All is well, except for the prospect of Sophie marrying that horrid Freniere."

"Well, six months is a long time," I told Louis. "Maybe she'll come to her senses."

"Maybe," Louis dourly agreed. Then, shaking his head as though to clear it, he took me by complete surprise by saying, "Let's take a walk by the bayou, Lestat. I want to talk to you where no one can overhear."

"Talk to me?" I asked, intrigued. "About?"

He took my arm and guided me out onto the porch, out into the humid night. "Not here," he insisted. "I know you have... influence, we'll say, but I'd still prefer to assure the good old-fashioned way that no-one overhear us."

"Why?" I pressed as we began to stroll across the manicured gardens and toward the woods. "Louis?"

"I've been thinking," he said, his voice deeply contemplative. "I've been... seeking after a way for us to be together. And I think I've found a way, Lestat."

I rubbed my hands together, the motion almost frantic. "Oh?"

"Yes," Louis confirmed. "Yes. I just need you to do one thing."

"What?" I asked, eager to comply. "What, Louis? Oh, what?"

But he made me wait until we reached the shelter of the trees before he would tell me.

Part 23



When I heard what Louis wanted me to do in order that the two of us could be together, I didn't know whether to weep rivers of pure blood or laugh in hysterical desperation until dawn came calling for me.

I can't actually remember what I did do, although I'm sure I must have stared.

Stared and stared and stared.

And then finally, I said, "You want what?"

He had the temerity --or perhaps just the foolishness-- to smile as he repeated, "Simple. It's so very simple I marvel that I didn't think of it long ago. After all, Lestat, I don't detest what you are, not at all. It's only what you do that bothers me. So all you need to do is be a vampire that doesn't... indulge."

"Doesn't indulge!" I echoed, narrowing my eyes.

Louis missed the warning. "Exactly," he said. "All you need to for us to be together is to simply abstain from your... shall we say penchant for a particular food? And then there'll be no bar to our coming together in every way."

That time I know I did laugh. A low, dry laugh.

Louis still didn't get the point. "No, no, it'll work," he insisted. "I won't hold the past against you, I promise. After all, as you pointed out yourself, you were young when taken and had no proper guidance. Not that I am qualified to offer any, but--"

"You're damned right about that," I growled.

He ignored me and went blithely on, "If you just refrain from taking blood I am sure you and I will get along just famously."

"And what do you suggest I eat, instead, Louis?" I inquired.

"You do understand that my 'penchant,' as you put it, comprises the one and only food source I am able to ingest? Anything else makes me quite ill. Believe me, I've tried to eat mortal food and it's a sight you *don't* care to see."

"I believe you," Louis said. "And I didn't mean to imply that you could never indulge at all. You can still take from me, time to time, as we've done. I wouldn't begrudge it you. I know you can control yourself and stop before you... overindulge. You've done it all along, with me."

"That's because I keep fed, you fool!" I hissed through my teeth. "You'd be a husk by now if I hadn't taken a basic precaution like that."

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic," Louis advised me. "You don't actually need the blood at all, the way I see it. You're immortal, Lestat! And you did tell me what could end your existence; a lack of sustenance was not on the list."

"You're counting on my being immortal," I murmured. "Well, the plain truth is that I'm not sure if prolonged lack of bloodfeasts would kill me or not. It's a moot point. I have instincts, the same as you do, and when I get hungry enough, I *will* eat. Don't you realize that?" By the end, I was shouting. "If I spend time with you without feeding well, Louis, I shall end up attacking you and it won't be done in loveplay! And I'll drain you to the dregs before I even realize I'm doing it!"

Louis frowned. "Oh," he said. "I... I didn't realize. You, er, you actually get hungry? I mean, you feel hunger pain, the same as do I?"

"God above, I feel it a hundred times worse!" I scathed. "Haven't you been listening to me, all this while? I have enhanced sensations in every way! And yes, I damned well do get hungry! What do you think I am, made of straw?"

Louis sighed. "I'm sorry," he said, but I was in fine form by then and having none of it. It was the disappointment, I suppose. He'd led me up the garden path with this talk of "you just have to do one thing for me" and then to find out the thing he had in mind was utterly impossible! Ooooh, I was fuming with it.

"You're sorry that you just suggested I should starve myself for the next sixty or seventy years?" I raged. "And this, after I had the good sense and compassion to make sure that you *did* eat when you were depressed! I can't believe you said that to me, Louis! Don't eat! What the hell kind of solution is that to our dilemma, eh? Merde! Don't eat!"

Louis shook slightly, and hugged himself with both arms as he cried out, "Put like that, it sounds every bit as dreadful as I suppose it is. I don't know what to say, except... it made sense to me, earlier, when I was alone. It doesn't, not now. But this afternoon, I was just thinking so *hard* Lestat. I wanted to find a way for us to be together! I wanted it so badly that I suppose I lost all reason." He finished, his voice stiff. "You have my most sincere apologies."

Uh-oh. I was starting to get a bad, bad feeling. Why would Louis, an uncommonly intelligent and well-spoken gentleman, have come up with a notion so daft as that one? I could only think of one reason, and it chilled me, it really did.

I had told him to.

That's right, this fiasco was my fault. I'd given him that little suggestion that he should seek after a way for us to be together, and his mind, amenable to my will, was doing just that. How could I blame him, in that case?

"It's all right," I sighed. "No apologies. Perhaps you don't understand just how much I need the blood. It's not a matter of dining preference, as you seem to think. It's craving. Comparable to your trying to go without water. Imagine three days without water and then someone puts a bucket of the stuff before you, Louis. You'd drink even if you thought it was poisoned. Some cravings are just that strong."

"You've made your point," Louis said. "I... I feel so foolish." He turned away.

"Don't, my love," I said, and turned him back to draw him close.

"I just want us to be together!" he cried, real tears slipping past his lashes, then. I kissed them all away.

"I know you do," I whispered back, lovingly.

"I'll never be like you, never," he admitted then, shuddering. "I can't. But I love you so, so very deeply, so very intensely. That's what I was trying to say. That I don't hold you in contempt at all. No, not you. Only your actions, and I thought you could stop those. But if you can't... well, there's no hope, is there?"

"What hope do you speak of?" I asked, most carefully.

"I want to live with you," Louis said. "To... grow old, with you, maudlin as that sounds. Except, it isn't maudlin, Lestat, not to me. It's the natural order of things. I want to spend my life with you, that's what I mean. And yes, I shall die in the end, but I'll have had you, and I shall die happy, knowing that you will go on to find another love. But... all this depended on the one thing, Lestat."

"The not killing," I said, understanding.

"Yes," he agreed, thoroughly miserable. "And without that... well, you know I've been trying to just... put that out of my mind. You know, but you don't approve."

"I don't think that's the best approach to a relationship, no," I agreed.

"Well, it's all we have, all we can ever have!" he disputed.

He might be right about that, but I still didn't want to settle.

"Let's just... keep on, and see how things go, Louis," I urged. "Don't be so fatalistic. It's early days, yet. Who knows what twists and turns life may hold?"

"Optimist," Louis accused, and I shrugged.

"Eternally."

"All right," he agreed. "We'll just... struggle forward, I suppose."

"No struggling if you love me," I chided, and threw him down on the wet grass and kissed him.

Part 24



"Oh!" Sophie said, a hand to her mouth a few nights later when she happened across me. That syllable seemed to be becoming a regular habit with her, although I don't suppose I could blame her, in the circumstances. One minute I'd been just an acquaintance, and now suddenly I was her brother's very heart and soul, and she wasn't actually all that sure that I was worthy of him. Besides, the last time she'd seen me, I'd been passionately tongue-to-tongue with Louis, and she had never seen Louis in the throes of passion with a woman, let alone a magnetic male presence like moi. Louis was nothing if not discreet --usually-- and the fact that I'd more or less forced a public display of lust on him didn't sit well with Sophie's sensibilities.

I had to hand it to her, though; she didn't let her sudden nervousness around me render her tongue-tied. She didn't even let it faze her that much, not after that initial start of surprise when she'd seen me laconically sitting on the divan, my knees crossed as my eyes scanned a local paper with preternatural speed. I put it down the moment I heard her, of course, and politely stood. She merited that. (Although I would do the same for Louis' mother, who didn't, come to think of it).

"I didn't know you were in here, monsieur de Lioncourt. I was looking for Louis," Sophie softly said.

Louis had gone to visit the necessary, but I hardly thought I needed to be that direct with Sophie. She might allow Freniere rather generous liberties with her person --mmm, *very* generous liberties, trust me on that--, but she was still a lady in my books. Every inch a lady, and I would no more deliberately offer her offense than I would kiss Louis into willing submission.... ha, well I do have my moments.

But the point is that I was going to try to get back onto an even keel with dear Sophie. Anything else would cause conflict with Louis, and I'd had more than enough of that, already. Besides, I liked Sophie. I was looking forward to getting to know her better, especially if a closer relationship would give me some sort of edge in putting her off the idea of marrying Freniere.

"Louis will be back in a few moments," I assured Sophie, and gave a gentlemanly wave towards a spot on the divan. "Would you care to sit?"

Oooh, she wasn't done with sass, was she? I was just being polite, and she knew it, but for some reason she saw fit to come out with, "I don't need an invitation to make use of the furnishings in my own home, thank you, monsieur." Then, with a little flounce to her skirts, she plopped herself down on the divan just inches from where I stood. You know, if she'd been any other girl, I might have taken that as a bit of flirtation. An invitation. And Sophie was warm and kind for all her sass, so I just might have taken her up on it.

But it wasn't an invitation, I read that straight off. If she was sassing me, it was because she had things on her mind. Important things, and she really know how to start, how to address them, and she was hiding her inexperience behind a show of bravado.

So like me, so very like me, that girl.

Well, I wanted to put her at ease, so as soon as I seated myself again --scooting over to put a decorous distance between us--, I said, "By all means, call me Lestat. Louis does."

That was all it took for her to remember --not that she had ever forgotten it, mind you-- that Louis had good cause to call me by my first name. She blushed a pretty pink, and I almost thought she'd flee then and there. She didn't judge, but she did find the concept of a man with a man exceedingly strange.

And yet she didn't flee. She sat down as I had requested, fussing with her elegant pelisse skirts as she contemplated what sort of reply to frame. But in the end, Sophie had too much love for Louis in her heart to beat around the bush.

"Do you love Louis?" she asked me, raising her eyes. Blue, those eyes, a startling blue. Like summer skies. "Truly love him?"

"Oh, yes," I assured her, lowering my voice as I looked directly into her eyes.

"Hmmm, then you might want to consider his feelings a bit more," she tartly advised me. "That display the other night! You may claim to love my brother, but you can't know him in the least, not if you think he cares to wear emotions on his sleeve. You should be ashamed, monsieur!"

Spitfire.

Oh, she was just magnificent!

"I apologized profusely to him," I admitted, which was stretching the truth a tad, but my heart was in the right place. "But I thank you for taking his welfare to much to heart."

"Hmmph," she merely said in reply to that, and I laughed out loud.

"I wanted you to know about us," I told her sincerely. "Is that so awful? I thought it would do Louis good to have someone he could talk to."

"And can't he talk to you?" she pertly inquired, her nose lifted.

Again, I laughed. She was so sharp. "Of course he can. But think of your own situation. If you should come to feel irritated with Freniere, wouldn't you want to talk to Louis about it? And just the same I thought it would do Louis a world of good if he had someone he could go to."

"Oh, you did it for love of Louis," she lightly observed, the words less cutting than before, although she did leave the implication that I'd had some motive for myself, as well. Then all at once, the sass just drained from her, and she slumped, her perfect posture crumpling. "I've been so worried for him, you know."

"I know," I said, and meant it literally, although she of course believed that the phrase was merely a pleasantry.

"He took it so hard, that business with Paul. Oooh, awful it was, all of it. And the worst part was that we all knew that Louis had had words with Paul just moments before the fall. And Louis refused steadfastly to say what any of it was about. Which of course was just insane, since it led to wild speculations that really did our good name an injustice. But no matter what anyone said, he wouldn't budge."

She glanced at me again, tears in her eyes. "I... I think he only really began to improve when you began coming around, monsieur."

"Lestat," I said again.

"Lestat," she whispered. And then, in hushed tones, close to horrified, she admitted, "I must tell you this... Lestat. I... I am so very, very sorry if what I say embarrasses you in the slightest, but in light of what I've learned about you and Louis, I simply cannot leave you in ignorance any longer. Maman... she isn't the most subtle of persons, and when you first came to us, I do believe she had some idea of..." Sophie's blush, present throughout our conversation, abruptly deepened to crimson.

Taking pity on her, I supplied, "She thought to pair us together, you mean? You and I?"

Sophie nodded, the muscles in her throat distending. "She told me I must make conversation with you, in fact. And I didn't understand, I'm sorry to admit, that there was no possibility of Maman's schemes... er, working. That is to say, I... the idea didn't seem entirely abhorrent to me. Your father a marquis, and you quite handsome and well-spoken, and such a gentleman that you put up with the most frightful verbal abuse from your father, that you didn't even flinch from him insulting you in company. I... I suppose I admired that. And so I did do what Maman said, Lestat. I tried to engage you in conversation." Her tones grew positively horrified. "Mon Dieu, worse than that. I flirted."

"I remember," I smiled. Really, her little overtures had been quite charming, and if there'd never been a Louis, I might have been tempted. But there was a Louis, as we both well knew. "Why are you telling me all this, Sophie?"

Of course I knew exactly why, but I wanted her motives to come into clearer focus. For her sake, not mine.

"Is this simply awful of me?" she asked. "I feel it must be said. Otherwise, in years to come... well, I've an instinct when it comes to Louis. Maman has tried for years to pair him with Babette, but I knew she didn't appeal to him. I knew he was waiting for someone entirely different. You, I must think. And in years to come, I don't want my past behavior or Maman's urgings to cause any tension among the three of us. So I thought it best to clear the air and make sure you understood that all that nonsense was Maman, not really me."

She was so sincere, and so very concerned for Louis that I couldn't resist a little gentle teasing.

"Oh, so it was all Maman?" I asked.

"Well, if you'd been repulsive I wouldn't have gone along with her plots," Sophie admitted. "I wasn't averse. But neither was I avid. I didn't know that at the time, though. I only realized it when one day Anton came calling, and my heart began to flutter..."

"Ah yes, Freniere," I said, damned if I would call him Anton.

"Yes," Sophie said. "And do you know, I actually did think that the way he looked at me reminded me of the way I'd seen you looking at Louis? That should have been enough to inform me, but it simply didn't occur to me that you could feel for him as more than a friend. Do I sound terribly foolish?"

"You sound sheltered, which is as it should be," I told her. That was enough said; I did sense in her a strong discretion. She would no more gossip about her brother than she would balk at taking me on, if it was in his interests. "But about Freniere, Sophie..."

Her expression became absolutely enraptured; she was a woman transformed. And yet there was a brittle quality to her love. But of course it wasn't love; it was obsession. And she clung to it because she could not bear its loss, but understanding all this was beyond her. Someday, she would know. I just had to make sure that when that day came, she wasn't rife with regret at how she'd let a little harmless infatuation ruin her prospects for the strong and pure love that would someday be hers.

If she waited for it.

How to explain all that?

"I love Louis," I told her, thinking that example might serve as a warning. "And I can be sure that my love for him is good and true and lasting because I've already had infatuations aplenty in my life. Passing fancies, I mean. They seemed profound at the time, of course; that's the nature of love. But in retrospect, I know I've grown past them. Mature now, I know the difference between that heart-stopping feeling of fleeting first love, and true love that will never die. But you, Sophie. Freniere is your first love, is he not?"

"First and last," she sighed, a smile lighting up her features.

"Oft times a first love is just a prelude to greater things," I said.

She nodded, her thoughts on the carnal delights she had already partaken of, even as she said, "Yes, marriage."

"That's not what I meant," I evenly explained. "First love is frightfully intense. So very easy to confuse with true love."

That got her attention, all right. "What Anton and I have is true love!"

It wasn't, but I knew it would do no good to bluntly state so. "Perhaps," I acknowledged. "But can you be objective enough to admit that it may perhaps not be?"

"I would think you would be happy for me," Sophie snorted. "You and Louis both. Instead, all I get are lectures. Freniere this, Freniere that. Well, I can tell you one thing. After I am Madame Freniere, my dear brother had better deign to call my husband Anton!"

"Louis just wants what's best for you, that's all," I assured her.

She only snorted again. "Men. You think you know what is best, do you?"

"I don't think it takes a man to see that a gambler who swindled your brother out of thousands is a questionable choice of husband. You'd see that yourself if you weren't so intent on proving Louis' assessment of him wrong."

Sophie tossed her head so violently that her curls began to fly loose from her elegant coiffure. "Well, you can just tell that brother of mine that--"

"Tell me yourself," Louis said.

Part 25



Sophie tossed her head so violently that her curls began to fly loose from her elegant coiffure. "Well, you can just tell that brother of mine that--"

"Tell me yourself," Louis said.

I froze slightly, unsure how to act or what to say, because for all Louis had forgiven my conduct of a week past, it was fresh in my mind that I was very lucky he'd done so.

Louis my love, I mentally projected to him. Shall I leave? Allow you some privacy in which to counsel your sister? We've avoided speaking of that night when we kissed before her, and now I've no idea how you want me to act, to behave. Shall I make myself scarce?

He closed the door, came straight to me with a little smile on his face, and laid a hand most comfortably on my shoulder, even as he bent down and whispered against my ear, "Don't be a coward, my love. It doesn't suit you in the least. You're the brash one, remember? Just be yourself."

And then, before I could openly gape that he was taking everything so very in stride, he kissed me.

On the cheek.

A chaste little kiss, actually. The sort friends would do all the time in Paris. Even casual friends. But we weren't in Paris. Here, it meant something rather more.

I gaped, astonished, and almost demanded out loud Who are you and where have you hidden away the true Louis de Pointe du Lac?

I managed to hold my tongue, but the curiosity in me was so great that I most definitely did *not* manage to hold onto something else.

My good intentions.

I'd been so good, you see, and it had been so very long since I'd been in Louis' mind. I'd almost gotten used to the continual deprivation. But now, I could not bear it, and I slipped straight into his thoughts to see what he was playing at, being so affectionate in front of Sophie.

And all I saw was that he'd come to terms with her knowing, and that sometime in the past week he'd had a talk or two with her. Nothing explicit, of course, just discreet generalities. But they understood each other. Actually, there was somewhat of a parallel between them. They each worried for the other when it came to matters of the heart, although in talking with me, Sophie was becoming less worried.

Enough, Lestat, Louis suddenly thought, and I knew that he'd felt me in his mind.

Sorry, I said, and wasn't above a little begging, even so. May I have your consent to read you again, time to time? Louis?

We'll talk about it, later, Louis thought back, and then, with a talent that surprised me, gave me a little mental push. Now how could he possibly do that? But he did.

It conflicted with everything I'd concluded about him, earlier. He was destined to be weak, wasn't he, when it came to the mental powers? Even as a vampire, he would be weak! Except, now, I wasn't so sure that I'd been right. I tried to conjure those visions again, those visions of Louis being unable to read minds, able to influence others only by accident, and I couldn't. The visions simply wouldn't come. And what that might mean, I did now know.

All I knew for sure was that *this* Louis, the one I was with today, was yet mortal but had begun to exercise some fledgling mental abilities. Exciting stuff.

I got out of his mind straightaway, of course, and to thank me he dropped another demure kiss, this one on my other cheek.

A gesture that might have meant friendship or respect, I suppose, but in our case meant something far deeper. And Sophie marked it. Easily.

She smiled, her thoughts full of only two things. She was delighted that Louis loved me so much that he would openly display it, and she was equally pleased that he trusted her enough to display it before her. She was touched.

"What were you going to tell me?" Louis pressed.

"I don't recall," Sophie answered, which was true enough. Seeing us together and seeing Louis so obviously content and at peace had disrupted her train of thought, but she strove to reclaim it. "Er... the gist of it was that this... oh, dear. I don't rightly know how to refer to your monsieur de Lioncourt. Shall I say 'your friend,' do you think? That might be best in mother's presence but I don't mean to demean or belittle your relationship, which I quite understand is as special and full of affection as is mine and Anton's."

"Partner," I suggested, winking at Louis, who had gone to sit in a chair opposite the divan. He looked affectionately at both me and Sophie, and all I could think was that partner was such a marvelous word. It meant so much to Louis and me, but would exclude others from that knowledge. Perfect.

Louis nodded almost as if he'd read my mind. Hell, maybe he had. "Partner," he repeated. "Yes, perfect."

And while I stared at him, my eyes intense and bemused all at once, Sophie sailed straight on with her most pressing concern. Two guesses what. Or whom...

"Fine," Sophie continued. "Well, Louis, this partner of yours is just as mealy-mouthed as are you when it comes to Anton. Mon Dieu, if the two of you dislike him so very much why do you dress it up in pretty words like 'you are so young, Sophie' and 'marriage isn't something to leap into' ? Just speak your minds, for once! Say you hate him and be done with it!"

"I believe that calling him a swindler and a gambler was far from mealy-mouthed," I pointed out.

"And I don't hate him," Louis added, his black eyebrows drawn together. "I just don't think that marriage to such a man is going to be to your liking, in the long run. You're sensible, Sophie. And he is not."

"Oh, so he's not as staid and upstanding as the grand portraits in the foyer!" she shouted. "We can't all be mirror images of decorous perfection, you know, Louis! What of it?"

"Sophie--" Louis began, but she was having none of it.

"No!" she shouted. "I love him! Much more of this idiocy over his high spirits and the family will rue the day, I promise you!"

"You call his thieving ways high spirits?" Louis raged, beginning to lose his composure. Oooh, he was fine indeed when he let emotion sweep him away.

"I'll elope, that's what I'll do!" Sophie snarled, her pretty face transformed by rage of her own.

Well, Louis might not know how to deal with her hissy fits, but I did. A little plain speaking, a little truth, even if it hurt, that was what mademoiselle de Pointe du Lac needed. In spades.

"It's a tad difficult to elope sans groom," I said. Harsh, but true. "Your precious Anton isn't going to marry you without the dowry attached, and you know well enough that Louis will withdraw it forthwith if you have the utter gall to throw his love and care back in his face like that!"

She opened her mouth, but I closed it rather effectively by scathing, "And don't start in on the 'I'll burn Pointe du Lac to the ground' nonsense. Louis would burn it down himself before he'd let you throw your life away. Isn't that right, Louis?"

Well, my one and only was in fine form by then, and standing, towering over his sister, he menaced, "I would, Sophie! Your threats are worthless. They'd mean something if the damned plantation was of import compared to you, but it isn't. You are what matters to me. And if I have to sacrifice Pointe du Lac to get that through your thick skull, by God, don't think I won't do it in a heartbeat!"

She went pale. Absolutely pale. Her trump card gone, she didn't know what to say save, "The two of you are absolute hogs for suggesting that Anton loves my money more than he loves me! I'll show you, I will! And when I'm living in a garret with him, I'll be happier than under the same roof as men who doubt our love!"

"He doesn't love money more than you!" I shouted, incensed. Was she really that blind, or was she deliberately being obtuse, misunderstanding all she could. "Freniere doesn't love anything, you besotted fool! He doesn't know how! Why else would he ask for your hand even while he treats your family to his contempt?"

Too much at once, too much truth.

Sophie stood. "He does love me, he does!" she insisted. "You don't know anything about him, either of you!"

Part 26



Sophie stood. "He does love me, he does!" she insisted. "You don't know anything about him, either of you!"

And with that she flounced her way from the room. Trust me on this one: the operative word was most definitely flounced.

The moment she was gone, Louis collapsed to the divan at my side and sighed in consternation. "Worse and worse," he moaned, biting his lip. "I fear we may have pushed her too far, the two of us. She may well run off with him, or try at any rate, merely to prove a point."

His distress was keen because he feared that Freniere would use such a circumstance as an opportunity to sully Sophie -- this fear was written all over Louis' face. I somehow didn't think it would help Louis' state of mind, either, to tell him that Sophie had been compromised long since. Not that I thought of it as her being compromised, let alone sullied. It made her a normal, healthy young woman with all the appetites one should expect, that was all. But I knew that Louis was hardly going to see things that way. Maybe later, after he was a vampire, after he had lost some of his mortal coil, he'd acquire a perspective he now lacked. I had a sudden sense of just such a thing happening... Louis, walking the plantation and seeing that his black slaves were just as capable as any overseer of managing the indigo operations... Louis, entrusting the administration of the plantation to a young black man named Daniel...

Daniel....

The name resonated, deep in my consciousness.

Daniel.

Now, why did that ring such a strong bell, strike such a chord within me? It was as if the name really meant something, as if this Daniel was a person of vast importance in Louis' life... as if someone named Daniel had been a lynch-pin, or a turning point of some sort.

And yet I couldn't reconcile all these impressions with the young black man of the name Daniel. It was like there was something else, someone else, something missing.

Who knew?

"I've been thinking about the Sophie problem," I told Louis, "and I think I've come up with something. Mind you, it may not be something you much like, but..." I gave a little shrug of my shoulders.

Louis sighed again, his eyes shadowed with grief. "As long as it doesn't involve your bewitching Sophie's thoughts... or your killing Freniere," he conceded.

How well he did know me!

"No, neither of those," I told him. "It's just this, Louis. I've spent the past few nights shadowing Freniere a bit, and dabbling in his thoughts. I had a feeling, you see, that if he hadn't balked at cheating you, he might well not flinch at cheating on Sophie, either. And so it is; I've discovered that he is involved with a certain young lady name of Consuelo Álvarez de Reyes."

"Involved?" Louis asked, eyebrows lifted. "Surely you can't mean that he is affianced elsewhere, that he's made promises to this other woman as well as to Sophie?"

So innocent!

"No, I didn't mean that," I allowed. "Freniere is dallying with her, Louis. Er... they're lovers."

"Ah," Louis said, his brow furling into thought. "I can't see how this will help us much, Lestat. If you were to tell Sophie about this dalliance, she'd simply disbelieve you. Or me, for that matter."

"Hmm, I thought I'd let circumstance do the talking for me," I said. "In a way that Sophie can't dispute. But I'll be guided by you in this matter. I do know how you worry that she'll end up broken-hearted."

"What's your plan?" Louis asked, his eyes beginning to glimmer with something approaching hope.

"Well, the mademoiselle Álvarez de Reyes, although perhaps señorita would be more apropos since she's obviously Spanish, is of good family. Old money, aristocratic bloodlines back in Spain. At any rate, she has a brother who'll take huge exception to her honor having been besmirched by a French Creole with a mortgaged plantation, and worse, by one who's actually engaged to marry already."

"So?"

"So I think I'll let the Álvarez boy know just how much of a heel Freniere has been. He'll demand a duel, of course, Spanish hothead that he is. And then I'll let nature take its course."

"You're trying to get Freniere killed?" Louis asked. "Just... not by your hand?"

"Well, I can't claim that I much care if he lives or dies," I admitted. "But that's all beside the point. What I'm aiming at is a scandal. It's going to be difficult for Sophie to overlook his philandering ways when it all coes out into public view. Females being as territorial as they are, Sophie might well find herself face to face with the outraged señorita."

"She'll be heartbroken," Louis complained.

"That may well be the case," I acknowledged. "But I have my hopes that she'll be blazing with anger as well. A good dose of fury does a great deal for the soul, in certain circumstances," I explained. "At any rate, Louis, unless you're banking on her coming to her senses on her own, we've little choice but to either allow the marriage or to settle for a little heartbreak, you know."

"Yes, I know," Louis glumly concurred. It was all there in his voice, how much he detested the idea of Sophie being hurt in any way. Ah, he did so love her. He loved her to such a degree that had she not been his sister, I'd have had a hard time sharing his love. But she was his sister.

And I was his partner.

And to me, that meant rather more than a sexual or a business connotation. It was for better or for worse and for ever and for ever. At least, I hoped it would be forever.

"Well, then, you tell me what you'd like me to do," I generously offered. "As I said, I shall be guided by you."

Louis swallowed, and then in one lithe motion, rose to his feet. He strode across the room and leaning one hand on the windowsill, morosely regarded the night. For a while he didn't speak, and I allowed him the space in which to gather his thoughts, thoughts into which I did not pry, much as I did wish to.

And then he whirled on a heel and looked at me, and his eyes a hard glittering emerald, said the one thing that he hoped would put an end, tragic as it might be, to Sophie's tendency toward calf-love.

"Incite the duel," he roughly announced, and then he strode from the room, his steps decisive.

I let him go; I rather thought that after saying such a thing, he must want to be alone. After all, I knew his views on death and redemption; I knew what it must cost him to ask that I arrange what could well lead to the death of Freniere.

I knew, and part of me grieved for him, my Louis. For when did I ever wish to see Louis in pain?

But part of me also rejoiced. It wasn't much -- certainly it wasn't tantamount to endorsing my nightly kills-- but it was most definitely something.

Something momentous, although deeply painful for him; it was my belief that he most probably would want to lick his wounds in private.

But as the matter turned out, I was wrong.

His steps clicked down the hall, but then they paused, the sound returning to me, and Louis poked his face back in the door and quietly, gently asked, "Lestat, mon cher? Are you not coming, then?"

"Coming?" I stupidly echoed.

"Upstairs," he said in a voice just for me, and then in louder tones, "Surely you haven't forgotten the projections I wished to show you for the next year's production?"

I sensed rather than heard, then, the thoughts of someone who had passed behind him in the hall. Who, I didn't know, save that it was neither his mother nor Sophie.

Ah discreet. Well, that was my Louis.

"Oh, I haven't forgotten," I said, casting him a devilishly wicked grin as I rose. Once I was alongside him, and no one was around any longer, I gre bolder and leaned in to nip him on the ear, the tiny taste of his blood sending me into shivers that coursed through my every vein.

"So, what's it to be?" I inquired, even as my tongue laved his lobe to lick up every drop that oozed forth. "A little hug and cuddle, or something more, eh?"

Louis closed his eyes. "Don't tease me," he pleaded. "Don't say things like that, not unless you mean them, not unless you've decided that we can... indulge."

Such need in his voice, and such potent charm that I nearly folded. But no... I had more tricks up my sleeve, more ways to torment Louis into abandoning those principles which would not serve him in the life to come. "Oh, we can indulge," I throatily murmured against his neck. "Of course we can indulge, Louis." And when he drew in a gasp of need and pleasure, I lowered the boom. "I speak of bloodplay, of course."

"Of course," he weakly echoed, although I heard his disappointment in the words.

To soothe it over, I whispered like a lover in his ear, "So what is it to be, mon amour? Shall I feast on you, a bit? Or would you a little taste of the ambrosia that flows like honeyed wine through me?"

He flushed, a pulsing need driving through him to center --of course-- between his legs. Well, he was mortal; where else would his need be?

But then he said, "Can we... is it possible..." He cleared his throat, and began again. "I'd like to do the both, Lestat. You and me, à deux, all at once."

Ah, mon Dieu, he did know how to kill me, did he not? "Louis," I huskily breathed, "I do so love you."

And with that, snatching his hand in mine, I rushed him up the stairs and threw him on his bed and kissed him with complete and total abandon.

Little did I know at that moment that Louis had a touch of Machiavelli in him. He had a definite plan in mind when he asked me to drink from him even as he drank from me.

A definite plan, indeed. And they call me incorrigible!

Part 27



Incorrigible doesn't even begin to cover it.

"Louis," I exclaimed, exasperated, "what am I going to do with you, eh?"

He grinned, sheepish, and wasn't above a blush or two either when he answered, "What's the correct etiquette for this situation, mon cher? Shall I say I'm sorry even though I am decidedly not?"

"You say you're sorry and I shall most probably smack you," I groused. "Especially considering that you planned this all the time. Oooh, clever tonight, aren't we, Louis? What did you think, that you had only to entice me into a circle of blood so that I would not notice when you came in great spurts?"

"Actually yes, I did think that," he admitted without missing a beat. "And I was right, wasn't I?" And then he had the gall to laugh straight in my face.

I laughed too, delighted with him. I mean, sure, what he had done had been sneaky and sort of underhanded, in a way, but I loved it, I just absolutely loved it. It was the sort of thing I might do, myself.

The only thing I didn't love was the fact that if Louis managed to eke orgasmic delights from our relationship as it now stood, I didn't see how I could make that relationship advance. I had been counting on his increasing desperation to make him compromise his principles. In short, I had been counting on him thinking with his crotch, being as he was still mortal and all. Actually, I was expecting him to let lust guide his thinking; that's pretty much how I had done things when I'd been mortal.

Then again, when I'd been mortal I guess I hadn't done so well letting my balls be my brains.

And in any case, Louis seemed more thoughtful and reflective than I'd ever been. My plan to let sheer mortal need drive him to me was a dismal failure.

Because the truth was that I needed him just as much as he needed me; I couldn't stay away from the luscious sweet elixir of his blood. And he managed to finagle a rousing good climax for himself each and every time, didn't he?

So the truth was that for all Louis did not let his male needs do his thinking for him, he managed to take ample care of his crotch, all the same.

Damn.

"Hmm, I'll have to keep a closer eye on you, that's all," I decided.

"Oh, you want a look?" Louis impishly challenged me. "Now, do you mean?" And with no further ado than that, he proceeded to unbutton the front opening to his trousers.

I grabbed his hands, forthwith, and held them at his sides as se lay there on the bed, facing each other. Not that I didn't want to see, mind you, but I was trying to be serious and Louis seemed bound and determined to take everything far too lightly for my liking. When it came to the two of us, I didn't want him to be flippant.

"I can't have you doing this!" I exclaimed. "It isn't right!"

"Oh, I know," Louis smoothly whispered, even as he sidled forward to kiss me long and lingeringly. "It isn't right at all, is it, wearing all these clothes when we indulge? Let's shed some of them next time. Or now, if you're inclined?"

Ah God, he did know how to distract me, did he not?

And I couldn't help myself from asking in tones of incredulity, "Now, did you say? Do you mean you could go again, Louis? So soon? You've only just finished the last round not five minutes past!"

"Hmm, I could give it a good try," he whispered, struggling to free his wrists from my grip. But if I let go, he would just resume doffing his trousers, and delightful as that would be, I had more pressing concerns.

"You can't drink from me, not if it makes you spend so readily," I announced in heavy tones.

Louis didn't take me seriously. In fact, he stuck his tongue out at me, and then used that tongue to lave my face. My cheeks, the bridge of my nose, the sweep of my long eyelashes. "Spoil sport," he accused.

"I'm serious!" I staunchly declared.

"But I'm just as likely to reach the summit of physical joy while you drink from me," he informed me. "And so?"

"And so I'll abstain as well, if that's what it takes!" I announced.

Louis laughed in my face. Again. And then he said, quite gently, his fingers trailing across the cold flesh he had just licked, "You need to have a little more joie de vivre, I think, mon cher. Why so serious? Let's enjoy each other. Let's enjoy what we can have, what we do have."

I think I gaped.

And then it was like my whole world split apart, like everything shattered. Everything I'd ever believed about him, everything I'd been sure of, was just blasted away in one breath by his playfulness.

The visions I'd been having all along vanished like so much vapor. Louis, maudlin? Louis, moving through the centuries like a wraith, hardly eating, his green eyes dulled by the stain of crimson tears he proudly refused to shed?

Not this Louis.

No, not him. I couldn't imagine it, couldn't envision it in the slightest. This Louis had moved past his inhibitions when it came to his own mortal desires, and I sensed that this achievement was but a shadow of the glory that was to come.

This Louis, could I but persuade him, would move past his inhibitions about the kill as well, I just knew it. This Louis would be not only my Beautiful One and my most beloved companion through eternity, he would have a vampire spirit to match mine own. He would be as fierce a killer as he was already a lover.

He was already my dream come true, of course, but now he was that a thousands times over, and more.

Joie de vivre, indeed.

And then his impishness faded slightly, and staring directly into my eyes, he quietly vowed, "Lestat, if you refuse to take my blood, then my body will find another outlet for the passion it holds toward you. I'll start to climax merely kissing you. And if you then refuse to ever kiss, or hold my hand, I dare say I'll explode the moment you enter a room, or just upon hearing your voice. It's that powerful, my need of you. It will find a release."

Something thick and hard rose up into my throat to choke me, and I couldn't speak. Speechless, that was it. He'd rendered me absolutely speechless with his declaration, for that is what it had been, a declaration.

A declaration of love. And sure, sure, Louis had told me before that he loved me. He had said so any number of times, and he had meant it. But this was different. This was physical, involuntary even, and somehow that made it all the more real. It must be the vampire in me. Love for me was physical. Love was in the blood.

Tears rose to my eyes, blood tears, proof of that love.

And Louis laying facing me, so close, eye to eye, smiled and licked the tears up, each one as it welled forth, and moaned low in his throat, a rumbling sound of pleasure that was physical in its very origin.

And with no more than that he gasped, his body stiffening, and then ripping his hands from where I still clutched them, ripped open his trousers after all, tearing buttons from their moorings in his haste, and freeing the strong thick length of his desire, thrust it up between us even as his hands now fumbled with my trousers as well.

I just lay there and let him do as he wished; I was still stunned by not only his declaration but his joie de vivre as well, and the last thing I wanted at that moment was to make him rein in his wonderful, vibrant spirit.

In nothing flat he had what he appeared to want, which was his member rubbing up against mine, and his large hands with his long elegant fingers wrapped around us both.

Mon Dieu, he was still slick with the seed he'd just so recently expelled, and I could smell it surrounding us, the heady scent of it hanging in the air like a cloud of lovely mortal perfume. And he was working us both, his breath coming in short gasps through his teeth, until overcome with need, he lunged forward to devour my mouth in a kiss so steamy I thought he'd draw my soul straight from my body, and send it right up to heaven.

An eternity in a kiss, and then he drew back just slightly, just barely enough to breathe a single word.

"Blood," he begged.

And what did I do, after all my fine words of making him wait, of not being able to give him blood if it meant he would come in my arms?

I gave him blood, of course.

And he came in my arms, the release so intense and powerful that a silent scream exploded in his lungs, a scream I swallowed in our kiss even as my blood filled both our mouths.

It was too intense for him, that release. His heart thundered with it, the beat reverberating all through me, and his breath came in short puffs through his nose, puffs which could not keep pace with the raging demand of his body for more energy to sustain the pounding pace of his orgasm as he writhed against me, his hand slicking his essence up under my shirt and all across my chest as he came absolutely unhinged.

Too intense, indeed, for the moment his climax had ebbed to a shuddering halt, he fainted dead away and lay trusting and pliant against me.

I shook my head in something approaching self-deprecation. So much for making him abstain, eh? So much for being this noble sort of being who wouldn't engage him in a truly sexual relationship until he had committed, really committed, to a love so strong that he could accept my kills. He loved me, yes, but not like that. He still did hate my kills, and resent them.

And yet his love for me was so strong that it was competing with his revulsion, and in large measure winning. He was right about what he had said; he *would* begin to climax just kissing me if it came to that. And so what was I to do? Quite obviously, if we were involved in any relationship whatsoever, it was going to be a sexual one; Louis was determined on that.

And I wasn't strong enough to resist, that was the long and short of it. Although, considering that we're talking Louis here, it's more like that was just the long of it... never mind.

Perhaps I'd been impetuous and misled, before, when I'd determined that I'd make Louis love me and my kills both by making him abstain until I was satisfied that he'd gotten over his obsession about death and redemption. Because really, did I want him to accept me just on account of his mortal need? Did I want eternity to be based on something that shallow, that simplistic? Did I want to manipulate Louis, that was the real point. Did I want him on those terms? Did I want him to want me on them?

All at once, I saw something I'd been altogether too dense to perceive before ----

Until that very moment, I had not believed that Louis could really want me on any other terms. I had not believed myself worthy of a man like him.

Part 28



All at once, I saw something I'd been altogether too dense to perceive before ----

Until that very moment, I had not believed that Louis could really want me on any other terms. I had not believed myself worthy of a man like him.

So no wonder I'd been willing to manipulate him, to do whatever it took to make him love me. I had believed that I had to *make* him love me. I hadn't thought that he could really come to it all on his own.

But now, I saw something different.

I saw myself as worthy of him, truly worthy. And why did I think I was? Because he had shown me that I was. Because he loved me so passionately and wanted me so desperately that he quite literally would not be denied.

And you know what? It wasn't just that really loved me, this great revelation I'd just had. It was more than that, much much more. It was that I loved myself. That I was worth something.

Not just in his eyes, but in mine as well.

It was his love that had lit this up for me, and that fact made me love him all the more.

I quite literally worshipped the man now, I really did.

Ah, Louis.

He was still out cold --well, out warm was more accurate in his case, at least for now-- and dawn was approaching, but I didn't want to leave him rumpled in the sheets and half dressed, and covered with a layer of sweat and passion that he might find distasteful when he woke up hours hence.

So I took care of him as he deserved, peeling off his clothes, rolling him off the soiled blankets and then bathing him with warm water from a basin. He roused slightly at that, shivering a bit as he dried and cooled, and then his green eyes drifted open and took note of what I was doing. I read surprise on his features. Surprise, and then love, but also some concern.

"I have slaves for this," he murmured, not really liking to see me doing the work of a menial.

"I'm your slave," I answered, and meant it. "I love you, Louis. I'd do anything for you. You're everything. You're my life."

A slow lazy smile --ooh, so sexy, that-- crept across his features. "Anything, eh?" he asked.

"Anything," I repeated, the word a vow. Now, don't get me wrong. I actually did know that saying such a thing was reckless. But I trusted Louis utterly, and I rather reveled in the knowledge that I could *be* reckless with him.

Besides, I knew what he would ask, didn't I? And after my epiphany, I was only too eager to comply with the inevitable demand for an openly sexual relationship, at last.

Except, he didn't make that demand.

He didn't make any demand at all; he loved me too well to abuse the trust I'd just extended to him.

He loved me, because I was worthy of his love.

"That's nice to hear," he whispered as I kept stroking his nude body with the warm washcloth. "Very nice."

"You're very nice," I responded, my voice warm. "But it's just about coming on to dawn, so I must go."

"Of course," Louis murmured. "I do so wish I could go with you, you know."

That was such a strange statement that I think I stared.

Louis shook his head as though to clear it, and murmured something about not thinking straight and being tired and of course I must go at once if the light was starting to bother me.

"Au revoir," I bid him, and like a magnificent nude Adonis, he rose up on his knees and kissed me. Not a glimmer of shame about him, and no hesitation to openly show me his love. No, none of that.

Just his joie de vivre, which he seemed to have in such stunning measure.

He was a new Louis, no doubt about that, and I suddenly wondered if this Louis wasn't going to really challenge me in ways I had never envisioned. I mean, when I'd thought of us together as vampires, I'd always seen myself as the teacher, the mentor. And no doubt I would be, but Louis here was already teaching me things I desperately needed to know. So maybe we'd mentor each other. Yes, I liked that. Partners, in every way.

"The duel," he remembered, his eyes glazed with passion but with a new awareness in them as the concerns of his daily life came rushing back into his consciousness.

"I'll come to you tonight later than usual," I explained. "Because I'll be haunting the Álvarez de Reyes place looking for my chance to talk to the brother. Then I'll come to you and tell you what I've managed to incite, as you put it."

His green gaze clouded over as it came to him, once more, that Freniere might well lay dead some early morning soon, as a result of what we were arranging at this very instant. But that couldn't be helped; he was going to see to Sophie's interests above the scoundrel's, come hell or high water.

All to the good... if I could get Louis to start prioritizing the relative value of one life versus another, he might start to understand how he could kill the evildoer and still live with himself.

"Until tonight, then," he sighed, clearly torn between his need to have me again, and his dawning guilt over the Freniere situation.

"Until tonight," I agreed, and then I gave him one more blood kiss --just a taste to remind him of me until I saw him next-- and then, I left him to his regrets, and his love, and his dreams.

Part 29




The next night, I found Louis upstairs talking quietly with my father.

"Good evening, papa," I bid him, and leaned down to drop a brief kiss on each cheek. To my great surprise, he stiffened at that. Strange, really. Ever since we'd had that heart-to-heart one dark night, he'd been much more at ease in my company. And I in his, as well.

"Is everything all right?" I asked, the question encompassing both my father and my Louis.

"He had a bad day," Louis whispered to me.

"Oui, he had a bad day but his hearing is as good as ever!" my father shouted.

"Ouch," I mildly complained, sticking a finger in my ear and wiggling it. The gesture was lost on a blind man, of course, but I still felt better afterwards. But taking his hint--hell, complaint--at face value, I sat down beside him, propped him up a bit on his pillows, and softly said, "Well then, you tell me about it."

He tried to glare, but the effect was rather lost past the unseeing expression in his eyes. "Nightmares," he said briefly. "Daymares, rather. I'm an old man. I need my rest. But along come the most horrendous dreams to haunt me."

"What dreams, Papa?"

"Never you mind!" he hoarsely yelled.

Louis shook his head, his grimace proof enough that my father had been just as irrational and unreasonable all day long, but he likely should have skipped the expressive gesture.

"Don't you talk about me behind my back, you striplings!" my father raged.

I rolled my eyes at Louis. Maybe he thought I was making eyes, actually, because a wicked little smile lit up his face, and he licked his lips a most provocative way.

Later, I breathed into his mind. Later, my love.

And then to my father I diffidently offered, "Would you like a glass of wine, Papa?"

"I'd like you to leave me the hell alone, for once!" he erupted.

Touchy, touchy. Well, I could relate to that, I suppose. When I'd gotten the letter announcing Nicki's death I hadn't wanted anyone near me, not even Gabrielle. Not that Gabrielle ever was much at giving solace. She'd been born of a stone, as far as I could tell.

But what on earth was my father's problem?

"Did he receive some bad news today?" I unthinkingly asked of Louis.

A crystal water goblet went flying through the air, followed shortly after by the pitcher, as my father screeched, his face maniacal, "Don't you talk about me as if I weren't here, you impudent brat!"

"Well, I'm not talking to you, the mood you're in," I announced, my voice kind but firm, I think. I mean, for once I actually wasn't trying to bedevil him --I think I'd outgrown that, somewhat at least-- but neither was I going to just let him abuse me in front of Louis. "I shall leave you alone as you wish, sir."

"Good, because I can't stand the sight of you!" was my father's vicious comeback.

Ye gods, I wasn't as mature as I liked to think, was I? Because that comment was over the top, and it made me boil over. Well, I always have been a little bit overzealous in the emotional department. "You can't, eh?" I threw back, all mockery, but not the gentle kind, this time. "Just as well, as you don't have the sight of me! Or anything else. No wonder you always miss when you throw things!"

My comments pushed him over the edge. Literally. I mean, he came up flailing with both arms as if trying to strike me, but lost his balance and tumbled out of bed in a heap, his night dress flipping up to reveal bony legs and leathery skin. Ugh. I know, I know, all mortals are beautiful to vampire eyes and all that, but please! You have to trust me on this one. He was one hundred percent unappetizing. Of course, that might have been the old aversion still running strong. We never had got on as mortals. Why should my being a vampire change anything?

Louis, I must say, was horrified to his bones. "Monsieur!" he gasped, rushing to kneel at my father's side and help him up. Rather dazed, he was. My father, I mean, not Louis. Louis was just wonderful, at least until he glared at me, emerald eyes fierce, and let loose with, "He's an old man prone to fits, Lestat! You must treat him with more tolerance. He might have broken a bone!"

Suffice it to say that just a few days prior, I might actually have smacked Louis for saying such a thing to me. I mean, he knew how much reason I had to loathe my father. And too, just a few days ago Louis would not have dared to speak that way, no matter how he felt, because THEN, Louis still held that my father was my own private business. But now, we were truly partners. Not just in Pointe du Lac, which reminded me that I'd better tell Louis what had happened regarding the proposed duel --although I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that weasel Freniere was too cowardly to take up the Spanish boy's challenge-- but also in life. Yes, that was it. We were life partners, Louis and I. And if he wanted to berate me over how I treated my pitiful but detestable father. . . well, I suppose in the final analysis I was actually glad that he felt free to do just that.

So I didn't smack him.

My father did.

Landed him a solid punch right in the eye. Let's just say that the old marquis was weak but when he was irate enough, he still could pack a whallop.

"Merde!" Louis shouted, recoiling. Jumping to his feet, he began sort of stomping all over the room. Trying to dispel the pain, I suppose.

I reached out my vampire senses at once and determined that he wasn't truly hurt, except in terms of pride. He would probably have a black eye. Hmmm, should be interesting to see how he explained it away. I mean, he wasn't really going to admit that a man with sixty plus years on him had beaten him to a pulp, was he?

Well, a saint I'm not. I probably should have gone and fussed over Louis, hugged him, whispered some sweet nothings in his ear, but I didn't. There was my father to deal with, you see. I'd had it with his childish behavior, but I didn't want to get into a slanging match over it. Far better, I thought, to say the one thing that would bring him to his senses.

I went to kneel by him, taking the place Louis had recently vacated, and softly remonstrated, intent in every word, "Papa, if you love me at all, don't hurt Louis again. He's the one whom I love with all my heart."

As angry as my father was, it wasn't lost on him that I'd said all that with Louis present. A light began to glow deep in his eyes. "Oh," he said, much calmer. "Have. . . have you two. . . oh, merde is right, Louis, and I do apologize. But you two have worked out your differences?"

"Mais oui," I vowed.

My father sighed with contentment, but it was still harsh-edged with whatever had been bothering him, before. "You don't think that I love you, Lestat?"

"I didn't," I corrected. "For many years. Non, most of my life, I thought you didn't. But now I know that you did." Blood tears rose unbidden to my eyes. Oh, why was I so maudlin! "I know you tried to stop, Papa, stop hurting me. . . but why couldn't you have tried harder!"

I quaked with sobs even as I tried to repress them.

"Mon Dieu," my father moaned. "If only you knew!"

"Then tell me!"

Ragged breathing. Was it mine or his? Hard to tell. Then I felt Louis' arms around me, holding me tight as I knelt, and I knew I'd be all right.

My poor father though, was red-faced in the candlelight, and I couldn't quite tell why. Grief, rage, pain? All three.

"I did try!" he cried, gasping sobs cracking every word in half. "I tried and tried, Lestat, God as my witness, I tried."

I should have accepted that, should have ended it there, for he was in so very much pain that it was wrong to drive him even further on. But I was in pain, too. "How did you try?" I demanded to know, childhood horrors choking me. "Name me one miserable thing you ever did to try not to rape me, you bastard!"

His face went absolutely white at my ugly tone, and then in a dead voice, word crept from him like maggots from the grave. Words I'd never thought to hear. Words I wish I hadn't.

"I blinded myself, Lestat," he dully intoned. No more gasping; barely a breath. "I could not see you without. . . and so I resolved never to see you, again. Literally. There was no accident. I took the lye the servants leached from ashes and bathed my eyes in it, over and over, until all vision was burned away. And then I thought I would be cured, thought that I could finally be a father to you instead of a depraved beast, but it didn't matter."

He sighed --strange, considering that he had no breath, but he did it-- and then went on, "And that was why I hated you, finally, mon fils. Because I was tormented. Blind, but just as wicked as before. Because if not for you, I'd still have had my eyes!"

Part 30



My father was rubbing at his useless eyes, although he wasn't crying, not at that instant, as he vowed, "So, now you know. I did try, Lestat."

"Father---"

"And the worst part of all was that it did me not one whit of good," he continued right across my words. "Once I healed, the old evil desires came flooding back. It didn't matter that I couldn't see you; I could remember you, as helpless as I'd once been, the thought taunting me. And then, as if I'd not offended decency itself enough, I had to ruin any chance you had at a true relationship with Augustin, by enlisting him to help me hunt you down when you would sleep in all those hiding places to avoid me. . ."

Ah, he did know how to twist the knife, didn't he? "How did you persuade him?" I shrugged off Louis' comforting arms and rose up on my knees, fangs bared.

"You know how Augustin was," the marquis sighed. "Always hating you, for no better reason than that you were worth something, and he wasn't. And he knew it. He. . . he knew I loved you best, Lestat."

Some love, I would once have scoffed, but I couldn't scoff now. My father's love had been twisted beyond all recognition, but now I knew that it had in fact been real. That he had tried.

I took his withered old hand in my gloved one. "Come, Papa. Let's get you back into bed, eh?"

"It was wrong to blame you, though, I know that now," he whispered, his voice fractured. "You didn't blind me. Sometimes it's as though I thought you did."

"Yes," I said, remembering strange comments he'd said in years past. It's your fault I can't so much as see my eldest son and heir as he marries, he had screeched once. I'd passed it off as ravings. Not too far wrong, actually. But he'd been blind and miserable with it, and I had been the focal point of all his misery, I saw that now.

"I tried other ways, too," he whispered. "Why do you think I sent you to the monastery school? You'd be out of my clutches, there. But I couldn't bear it. Not a month gone past and I had to drag you home."

"It wasn't because I wanted to be a priest?"

Behind me, I heard Louis' start of surprise.

"No, no, not at all," my father vowed. "I know you were led to believe as much. Convenient pretext, especially considering that we didn't have the money to launch a high-church career for you. But I personally thought that you would make a fine priest, Lestat. You always did try so hard to be a good man!"

"Come," I said again, and tugged a little on his hand until I felt him acquiesce. The slight move from him was enough for me; I slid both arms beneath him and lifted him into the bed, handling him as easily as though he were a child. He weighed little more. I didn't smell death on him, yet, but it occurred to me to wonder just how much longer he might have. "There," I soothed, settling him back into the pillows and drawing a quilt up to his neck. "It's long past dark, you know. You should be asleep."

"I'm afraid to sleep," he confessed, although he closed his eyes. "The nightmares always come. I couldn't tell you before, but I suppose I can, now. It's the lye-bucket, Lestat. The feel of it burning through my skull, and knowing all the while that I might as well not have bothered. What good did it ever do me, that lye!"

I took a deep breath. Not so very long ago, to hear his pain would actually have cheered me. Not exactly a character testimony, was it? So much for the good man. . . or maybe not, because now, everything was different. "It did you some good," I said. "It didn't cure you of your. . . but Papa, it did serve some good, it did. Don't let that thought torment you again, awake or asleep."

"What good did it do me!" he demanded again, and I had to answer.

"This," I said, and leaning forward, I dropped a kiss on the papery skin covering his forehead. Not a perfunctory kiss, either, such as I'd become accustomed to grant him. A true filial kiss, my lips lingering.

He went still, deep in thought, only speaking when I had moved away. "But what is that for, Lestat? I. . . I don't understand."

I wasn't surprised. I didn't understand myself, at least not consciously. But when I opened my mouth to reply, all thought coalesced into a single salient fact, one that I'd never so much as contemplated, before. And yet it was here with me, now, and it was truth itself.

"I forgive you," I whispered, my voice rough. "That's the good it did. Because. . . if you would go to such lengths in an attempt to protect me. . . well, I forgive you, Papa, I do. For all of it. Even for blaming me that you'd lost your sight."

"Oh, Lestat," he moaned. "Je suis desolé."

"I know you're sorry," I said. "And that makes all the difference. I. . . I love you, Papa."

"I love you too," he openly sobbed. "I always have."

"Shhh, I know. Now, you're quite worn out; you should go to sleep."

"No! I'll wake up and you'll have gone back to being distant with me---"

"I won't, I promise I won't. We'll talk later, I promise. All you like."

"All right," he subsided, grumbling, "for all the good sleeping will do me. Didn't you hear me say that I get nightmares about the lye?"

"You won't get that one again," I soothed him, stroking a hand along his temple to help him relax. "I think it was on your mind because you were trying to dredge up the nerve to tell me the truth, Papa. And now you've done that. The wound can heal, now."

"How did you get to be so wise?" he sighed, subsiding into the pillows.

"Ah, I can tell you that in one simple but beautiful word: Louis."

And as my father drifted into dreams---ones that would be pleasant even without my intervention, this time---I turned to glance at Louis.

What did I expect to see?

Love, because I'd just given him the highest praise I knew?

Approbation that after all this time, I'd finally forgiven my father as he'd wished?

Compassion for all I'd suffered as a child?

No, no, none of that.

There was nothing written across Louis' beautiful face except horror. Absolute and all-consuming horror. He'd repressed it while I dealt with my father, but now that things were settled, it was seeping from his every pore, his green eyes dulled with it.

Dulled, and strangely distant when he turned them to me.

"What is it, Louis?"

He cleared his throat, and stuttered, most unlike him, "Y-- y-- you, you were raped, Lestat?"

I nodded, wondering where all this was going.

"But how is that possible?" Louis saw fit to ask. "When you said before that he had abused you, I thought. . ."

"I know what you thought," I said. "Back then I used to read your mind all the time, remember. You thought it was all fondling, more or less." My father was asleep, but I moved away from him regardless. "But non, Louis, it was more than that. It was violation. Yes, rape, with all that implies."

He was staring at me, dumbfounded, although still horrified, and asked, "But what does that imply, Lestat? Rape? You are a man!"

Part 31



"Yes, I am a man," I answered Louis, shaking my head. I suppose it was inevitable, that it would come to this, if ever I wanted to advance our relationship to the next logical stage. I mean, I had known that he didn't really understand all we could be to each other. Of course, there was always the alternative. I could bring him over to me in all his innocence, and then we'd have the passion in the blood. A hundred times more potent than any mortal pleasure could be. . . but for all that, I didn't particularly want to skip enjoying all the delights his mortal form could afford, did I? And it wasn't lust talking, wasn't like back in the Auvergne when I would chase anything in a skirt. . . or pants. . . hell, anything with two legs. All right, not chickens. . .

What on earth was the matter with me? I was getting downright loopy. Nerves, I suppose. I'd been pretty blasé about telling Louis that Sophie had a woman's monthly time just like any other female---not that Louis had appreciated the lesson. What had he called me, Dr. de Lioncourt? Hilarious--- but this was something rather different. The real birds and bees stuff, the heart of it. And I suppose I didn't really know how to begin, except to say, "Let's discuss the rest of it out of doors, eh?"

He followed me out onto the gallery and down the stairs, and then we walked out across the fields and into the groves as we used to do. Back then, of course, we'd needed privacy for our little clandestine encounters. The thought shamed me now, the notion that we'd hidden as though we were doing something wrong. I didn't want to hide our relationship any longer. I wanted to shout it to the whole world. Mind you, I wasn't exactly ignorant of the fact that I dare not do so, but I did want to.

Louis sat down on a fallen log, neatly crossed his legs at the ankles as he stretched them out, and looked up at me, his green eyes filled more with contemplation than horror, now. "Well, mon cher?"

"I. . . er. . ." Mon Dieu, how pathetic could I be?

"You don't want to talk about it," Louis surmised. "Of course not. It must be a terribly painful topic. Please forget I ever asked. It was worse than presumptuous, it was actually rude. Most unlike me."

"Louis," I told him, smiling even through my pain, for he was right, it was hard to discuss, actually, "you're my lover. The last thing I want is for you to feel you must be polite with me. Be presumptuous, please. Be rude if it suits you."

"What concerns me more is what suits you, Lestat," he breathed, looking away.

"I want to tell you what happened," I said. "I do, Louis. But when I start to think of words to say, they come out sounding. . . so very base. What can I say, that my father put his. . . his. . ."

"Show me," Louis said simply.

For a moment I was so stunned that I just gawked. As invitations to make love went, that was certainly to the point! But how could I show him, anyway? He knew I wasn't capable, not in that sense, not any more. If we were ever to dally as I wished, Louis would have to take the active role. And mmmm, would that be nice, to have Louis riding me, his thighs straining, his mortal heat all over me as we writhed together. . .

"Lestat?" Louis asked. "You have a strange look on your face."

I bet I did.

"Well, I can't really show you," I pointed out. "My. . . er, equipment, shall we say, does not really function---"

"Lestat!" Louis gasped, truly shocked. "Mon Dieu, what on earth has gotten into you, this evening? I didn't mean that you should do to me whatever he did to you! I just meant this!" And he tapped his temple with his index finger, his eyes glowing with a knowing light.

Ah, so that was it. Show him, eh? Show him as in let him see what had happened.

"All right," I said. Cowardly, I know. I should have just told him in words. Less traumatic for him. But this way was less traumatic for me, and I always have been a selfish bastard at heart, haven't I?

I had to concentrate more than usual to get the images to flow. Nerves, again? Maybe so. But it was also a couple of other things. One, I was actually resolved to be as genteel as I could in my choice of tableaux. Louis might well faint---okay, probably not, but maybe---if I showed him the full extent of what I'd suffered. And two, quite simply I was having to step outside my own memories to even create the images. I mean, I'd never been a third-party witness to the cruelties the marquis had perpetrated on me. (That had been Augustin. And oh, how I had hated him for it. Even after forgiving my father I still found myself hating Augustin. And him dead in the Revolution, too.)

Anyway, I had to think hard to imagine how it had looked to see me, instead of be me, and then I had to tone it down a bit, for Louis sake. Less blood. Less screaming.

"Close your eyes," I said when I was ready, and then I began.

I don't want to put the details here. What's the point? Having written out my father's dreams, you can pretty much fill in the blanks for yourselves.

Louis was white-faced to have them filled in for him. As white-faced as a vampire, je le jure. It actually gave me a heads up as to what he would look like if I could get him over his aversion to killing. Mon Dieu, such beauty!

But his thoughts were anything but. He was reliving what I'd sent him, and believe me, it was not a pretty picture.

"Enough," I said. "Stop it, mon amour. If I can overcome having lived it, you can deal with merely having been shown, as you asked, what it was like."

He cleared his throat, and croaked out every word. "You. . . how can you have forgiven him. It's. . . mais non, it is impossible."

"The wounds in me are old," I said. "I've lived decades knowing what he did. It seems all the more harsh and cruel to you because you have just learned of it, that's all."

"Non, it was harsh and cruel regardless," he insisted.

"True," I admitted. "But it is good, in a way, that you finally know the whole story, mon cher. You see. . ."

Now it was me who was clearing a clogged throat. What WAS wrong with me? I'd lain with this man many times. We were lovers already, and partners in life, in business, in every way. So why be shy, Lestat? Why not just have at it, because if you do, then you can have him, just as you want. Or rather, he can have you, but you've wanted that from the first instant, too.

"You see," I resumed, more composed, "now that you finally realize all that is possible between us---"

"Well, that's not possible, that's for sure," Louis cut me off, shaking his head, his lips curling with disgust.

Uh-oh.

Disgust?

Something was wrong.

Seriously wrong.

"Not possible?" I echoed. "But it is, Louis."

"No. Absolutely not," Louis denied. "That is, certainly the mechanics could be put in place. But the very act is abusive, Lestat. Sickeningly so."

"No, you don't understand," I gasped, figuring out his problem at last. "What you saw was rape. Force. Of course it was abusive! I'm not talking about anything remotely like that, except in the mechanics, as you put it. We can make love, Louis, truly make love. Doesn't that sound nice? All we've done together up until now has been delightful, but we can have yet more intimacy, our bodies merged at an elemental level---"

To my horror, Louis was shaking his head.

"No, you don't understand," he said sadly. "You never have, and neither did I. But I do now. Oh yes, mon amour. After what you have shown me, I understand it all. I do."

I just stared at him in confusion.

"That you want this thing with me, Lestat. . . that you no doubt had it with Nicolas and others. . . ah, my precious darling, don't you see? The wounds he dealt you may be old, but they haven't healed. The abuse has twisted your needs and desires. God forgive me that my own affection for you only tied the knot all the more tightly! Because you are imprisoned, Lestat, in a past that haunts you to this day, making you want things you would never have wanted otherwise---"

"I've never heard such baseless drivel in my life!" I shouted, irate. "You're wrong, Pointe du Lac, wrong! My father doesn't control me still! What are you, some sort of twit?"

He didn't react to my rage, really, except to gently say, "Your vehemence only proves my point. You don't want to face these things, though they be truth."

"I don't want to face them because they aren't the truth!" I screamed.

Louis covered his ears, but not to be rude. I'd lost control of my voice, that's all, and blasted his mortal eardrums with far too much vampiric energy. They were vibrating still. I gave them a little mental massage, which he seemed not to notice, really, but it did make him move his hands away from his head.

"You love me," I fiercely told him. "And I love you. And that is all that matters, Louis. Not what my father did. It's history. Dead. I've even forgiven him, as you know. I'm past it. So why must you cling to it?"

"Because I do love you," he said, the words sounding like a vow, but a negative one.

"This is ridiculous!"

"No, this is what's right," Louis insisted. "I love you, Lestat. I do. I love you so much I ache for thinking of you during daylight, do you know that? I wish I could sleep beside you, in the dark, wherever you are."

He wished for WHAT?

"You want me to make you NOW, so you can have your wish, Louis?" I raged. Really, the prospect should have made me happy, but in this context, no. "Well, fine by me! Because then you'll never have to worry your pretty little head for another instant, will you, about desires you think are so pathological and abased! We'll just drink blood like proper vampires---each other's, when we please, which will be often, trust me on that---and be as merry as the night is long!"

He jumped to his feet and backed away as I advanced.

"No, no, I didn't mean that," he cried. "Mortal, I meant mortal, that I dream of laying by your side as you sleep, just to be with you. I want so much to be with you, Lestat, but as a mortal!"

Oh, was that what he had meant? I curled my lips back down over my fangs. His comments struck me as bizarre, actually---and dangerous---but I paid them little mind. I had more important matters to clear up. Besides, he couldn't find my resting place, so there was no chance he would try something stupid, like try to enter it while the death-sleep was on me.

"Oh, so you want to be with me, as a mortal no less, but you don't want me as I've suggested! Well, that's a lovely story, Louis mine, but I outgrew fairy tales long ago!"

"I know," he said sadly. "That's the point. You are innocence detroyed, in the flesh, and I'm sorry for it."

"Don't you be sorry for me, you bourgeoisie know-it-all! Or more like a backwoods rustic! Nicolas was sophistication itself compared to you, do you know that? He'd been places, seen things, done things. He really did know about life! But you, hah! I was wrong to call you wise. You're an idiot!"

"It's getting easier not to be sorry for you," Louis admitted, grabbing my hands---had I really been shaking him by the shoulders? Guess so---and shoving them off his person. "Rage all you like, Lestat. You're like a child insisting he wants his candy, though it will rot his teeth. And whatever you say, whatever insults you dream up, I will still love you too well to hurt you, no matter that that is what you evidently wish."

"It won't be rape, you imbecile! I love you! I want you!"

"Of course not, but I didn't mean 'hurt' in that sense, Lestat," he returned, shaking his head. "I want you too, do you know that? And yes, in that way. But it's wrong."

"Wrong!" I kicked the log he'd gotten up from, and sent it flying. "If you start quoting that idiot priest, the one who oh-so-helpfully informed you that your brother was possessed, I swear I won't be held accountable for what I do to you after!"

"I didn't say it was wrong for everyone," Louis said, standing his ground despite my threats. For all that though, the log sailing past had raised his eyebrows, hadn't it? "But it is wrong for us, Lestat. Your desires are founded on the cruelty you suffered. It's your way of coping, but if I let you go on thus, I will be helping to reinforce an unhealthy pattern. And I love you too much to do that. I'm your friend, your true friend."

"You," I said distinctly, "are my lover, Louis."

"No," he denied. "I'm not. I can't be, not now that I know what prompted you to ever want me in the first place. I have to be what you need, Lestat, not a crutch for you to lean on. Because if you do that, you'll never heal."

And with that, he turned his back on me and walked away.



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