Part 2

The same year, 2---, June.

The speedboat surged through the murky black waters of the Mersey river like a knife, throwing up droplets and spume at a formidable rate. Across the docks, the lights of Liverpool gleamed in the night.

Armand watched the city with his eyes narrowed against the onslaught of the wind. It was rather chilly here, even in high summer, and he fervently wished he were in warmer climes. At his side, Daniel propelled the speedboat through the water with ghastly ease, needing no lights to see by, a good thing in a riverfront which was as blacker than the night itself.

“Can’t we go any faster?” asked Armand impatiently above the roar of the boat’s engine. His hair whipped frantically about in the wind and even he could feel the cold.

“We’ll be there soon. I just have to bring it around to the docklands area—there’s less chance of late-night revellers attempting to drive away with it.”

“Let them try,” said Armand, showing his fangs, “and we’d have been there hours ago, if you hadn’t felt the sudden need to go on a tour of Ireland!”

“I wanted to look up some of the Molloy family history. So what?” he asked, ignoring the baleful look Armand gave him, “and besides, our targets won’t start their little deeds until late at night, anyway.”


If nothing else, Daniel was right about that. The two vampires had been tipped-off by Lestat, himself garnering the information from one now-deceased Damon Stone, that an illegal trade-off of weapons was going on at a derelict warehouse bordering the docks.

This in itself was no unusual thing; what perturbed Armand was the liberal use of the words “atomic” and “poisonous” in the description of the goods. He himself rather enjoyed upsetting both sides in the conflict; unlike Lestat, he felt no overwhelming malice towards one party. He felt it to them both.

Armand rather thought that weapons of mass destruction were A Bad Thing, though. Especially when it tended to contaminate his food. Tonight’s mission was to simply destroy the weaponry, and the insidious people involved in the trade-off, too.

They stopped to speak near the grand buildings overlooking the waterfront, Armand paying a morbid interest in the Titanic memorial outside the old Cunard building. He liked to imagine the ghosts of people here, converging at the gates and banging on the main door, begging to hear news of relatives who had been aboard the doomed liner.

Daniel was slightly nervous. He dragged Armand out of his thoughts with questions. “How do we know how many people will be there? And what on earth are we going to do with the weapons?”

“Burn them?” murmured Armand, only half-listening. He was watching the two great stone statues, the Liver Birds, that watched the riverfront with steely eyes. He could make out every lovingly crafted detail on the emblyms of the city; the cut and shape of their feathers, the sprig of an olive branch caught between two sets of rough granite bills. He decided he rather liked this place, a city of gothic romance, where gilded and polished builidings nestled alongside scruffy alleyways and tenement halls. Over there, by the centuries-old India Building, a Starbucks. He grinned toothily.

“Burn them?!” Daniel was ranting, “Machine guns and atomic crap and who knows what else!” He slapped a hand to his forehead, raking his fine ash-coloured hair back in distress, “I mean, do you have any idea—“

“Daniel, really,” said Armand, “don’t worry. A slip of the tongue. We’ll dump them in the river.” “

“Where they’ll probably be disturbed by the next passing ferry---“

“All right. A little farther out. The Irish sea, then,” he decided, casting a look of malicious amusement at his companion.

Daniel was near-speechless with indignation. “Over… over my dead body!” he snapped.

Armand raised an eyebrow pointedly and sauntered off towards the docks, an outraged Daniel following in his wake.


Liverpool, like most places in the western world, had not changed all that much as time had marched onwards. Certainly, there was the innovative housing style here, the advanced car there, but no hovering bikes or space civilisations to speak of. Daniel had once complained to Armand that if the twentieth century had seen such amazing progress in only a hundred years, surely they should have perfected hovering skateboards such as the ones in *Back to the Future*, by now.

Armand himself, well, he had seen the constant attempts to reinvent the world of moral and aesthetic as interesting; after all, how many could say they had seen the first Renaissance, never mind the second, and the third?

If anything disappointed the youth about these times, it was mankind’s sheer refusal to learn from its past mistakes and history to forge a better world. There was still a Third World, even if Africa was now amongst the most prosperous of all the nations, there was still widespre ad homelessness, unemployment, violence. And above all, there was still war.


IT was nearly three ‘o clock before there were major signs of activity at the old warehouse overlooking the tourist-trap that was the Albert Dock. Two Range Rovers pulled up outside, men armed to the teeth guarding the lackeys who carried in several heavy crates. No need to check the contents; the cold metallic smell of gun-metal tainted the air.

Two bodyguards opened the door to the warehouse, already slightly ajar, whilst one scanned the darkness outside. The lights were on, but the four men inside gazed in abject shock at the sheer emptiness greeting them. There were plenty of crates and lots of dust, but where were the men with whom they had set up this little deal?”

“Are you sure this is the right place?” asked the first bodyguard, nervously.

“Don’t ask bloody stupid questions,” his colleague hissed.

“What’s going on, Asher?” asked the first man whom had been carrying in the crates.

The man who was in charge, a greying, stocky fellow in his late fifties, growled. “The bastards haven’t shown up, that’s what’s going on.” He snarled. He took out his mobile telephone from his coat pocket. “Just wait ‘til-“

“Hey, what the hell--!” cried the first bodyguard suddenly. They all followed his gaze.

“What the f—“ whispered Asher, gazing over at the corner where a man’s body had clearly been burned, only the face remained, frozen in agony, an ashen sculpture. “What is THAT!” he screamed.

And then Armand, bursting through the open door, snapping a neck here, biting out a throat to his side, smelled burnt flesh. Vampire flesh. As the bodyguards fell to the floor, dead, and the two remaining men, Asher and his cohort, cowered in terror at the preternatural sight before them, Armand felt his own heart quail at the sight before him.

That… thing, in the corner. It was a vampire. More, it was a vampire’s remains. His first thought, which had stopped him dead, was that it was Louis. He could barely look, could barely stand to know that he had been wrong… and then he studied the face still visible, the long features…

“Mael.” He breathed.


Asher groaned in agony as Daniel slammed him against the wall for the umpteenth time. His face was a bloody mess, his clothes ripped and torn. “Who DID this?” snarled the vampire, deadly teeth mere centimetres from his face.

“I… don’t know,” he gasped between mouthfuls of blood, “they set me up, they never gave me their name, they—“

He groaned as Daniel sank his fangs into his neck, listening, searching for any clue as to how it happened.

“I wouldn’t bother trying to find out,” Armand said from across the room, “these two are mere lackeys, used by some higher echelons within the organisation…”

Daniel was barely listening, and then he wasn’t listening at all when the swoon overtook his senses, his all. He was drowning in a crimson sea, of salt and smoky richness… the man had known nothing, he had indeed been used…

And then he was apart from his victim, gasping, finished. Armand had only just started with his.

The man was gasping pitifully, as Armand tightened his grip on his neck, crushing vertebrae and muscle until the mortal was the very image of silent agony. Daniel felt rather sickened; he looked away. Like Louis, Jesse and Marius, he did not understand the sheer savagery the others seemed to display in their chosen methods of killing.

There was a cry of shock and pain as Armand savaged his throat, clamping his fangs into the man’s veins with practised ease. Then the vampire was caught in a weightless dance, swooning against his victim like a lover. Daniel was eaten up with lust and jealousy and love all at once.

At last, Armand dropped the bloodless corpse to the ground, uncaring of any evidence he left behind of the kill. Daniel was upon him, then, grasping the back of his neck and kissing him, Armand running his hands through Daniel’s hair, down his shirt, smiling against his mouth as Daniel moaned in lust.

And then his eyes drifted to the charred remains of Mael. Abruptly, he pulled back. “What should we do with…him?” he asked, suddenly sounding lost and young. Mael’s death had reminded him of his own vulnerability, immortal unless someone decides to do a simple thing like expose you to the sun.

He grasped Daniel’s hand and walked over to the remains. How sad and final. He felt guilty, for that initial gladness that it was not Louis. But the truth was, he had barely known Mael, he had meant little to him, though Armand’s heart ached to see that another member of the coven had been lost. He cast his eyes over the floor around, where ashes mingled with dust, at the ghastly face—he must have screamed out his life—and then, the wall, where, carved into the stone, were the words--

KEEP AWAY FROM US

He knew it was because of Lestat’s murderous and hasty actions. He raged at them, he raged at Lestat. He raged at Mael for being so stupid, for being caught like this…

“How did they…” Daniel gasped, “…what was he doing here?”

“Lestat, the idiot,” Armand seethed, “he sent the message about the embargo out to everyone, not just us. All it needed was one lone vampire…”

“But mortals, getting the better of him-“

Armand’s eyes were cold and hard in the dim light. “I suppose,” he said in a measured tone, “it would have been even easier with Louis.”

With that, he turned and walked out of the warehouse. He did not care about the weapons, now. He felt old, suddenly. He felt weak and despondent. Daniel was alongside him, asking him, what should they do with the body? Should they bury it? Should they tell Maharet?

“Leave the body.” He commanded. And that was it.

They walked in stunned silence back towards the city, a million unvoiced questions whirling through their heads. They walked through the shopping precinct, Clayton Square, up towards Mathew Street, the clubbing mecca, lost in the crowd of revellers, lost in their thoughts.

“Supposing,” said Armand, “they somehow knew where Mael lay-“

“How?” Cut in Daniel.

“Supposing!” he snapped testily. Daniel flinched, and Armand lay his hand on his lover’s arm consolingly, “I’m sorry. I just… well, imagine they could get to him, before sunset, I think he lay in one of those very crates at the neglected part of the store, and they killed him before he had even awoken.”

“Cremation, Louis-style.” Daniel quipped.

Armand shot him a glare, then nodded slowly. “Yes.” He murmured.

“It’s possible…”

“…But unlikely.” Armand conceded.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “Vampires are unlikely, too.”

Armand kissed him quickly, affectionately. “Exactly, my friend.”


They mingled amongst the crowds, visited the bars, watching, thinking. Armand had wanted to see these places earlier, talked of how he wanted to visit The Cavern, haunt of the Beatles, because it was the thing a good tourist should do. Right now, he simply felt empty.

They stalked through the street, speaking little, pushing through the crowds. “What are you thinking?” asked Daniel finally.

“That’s two of our coven killed by them,” Armand moaned.

“What do you mean?” asked Daniel.

“First Eric, now Mael.”

“It’s *three*,” Daniel reminded him sternly, “or did you forget Louis?”

His maker shook his head, sighing. “I keep telling you, he’s not dead.”

“David says he is.”

“David’s a fool.” Replied Armand, pushing his way through the crowd. A young woman draped herself over him suddenly, and he pushed her away, barging past the two young men drunkenly arguing

“Then where is he—“ Daniel cried, running after him.

“Drop it.” Said Armand shortly.

“No, damn, you, stop being so elusive!” snarled his companion, grabbing him by the shoulders and spinning him around to face him. Armand was a little perturbed by his fledgling’s show of strength and even greater fury.

“Get off me…” he threatened, but Daniel pushed him further into the little alcove, and he glanced back in surprise at the life-sized statue of John Lennon leaning in the doorway. He gazed at the eyes of stone that stared back at him with a look of frozen good humour, recalling Louis’s bitter words of art cut off cold and lifeless from its master. Louis had never seemed so to Armand.

“I don’t know where he is,” he said dully, “I can’t tell you if he’s hurt, or happy, or even mad…I simply *know* that he is alive. I didn’t feel his death, though I’ve watched and waited for signs of him all this while. I just know it…”

“And who could keep a vampire captive for ten years—“

“It’s not ten years; it’s eight. Eight years, seven months.” He sighed, turning once more to gaze at Daniel. “I don’t understand what has happened, or why anyone would take him—they would at least demand a ransom, wouldn’t they? But he’s not dead. And that’s the end of it.”

Daniel regarded him for a few moments. Armand was content to leave him with his thoughts. He watched the crowd of revellers moving through the bars, smiling to himself at a little old lady dressed up for a night on the town, uncaring about who stared.

“I hope you’re right,” said Daniel finally. That was the last they spoke on the subject that night; there really was no more to be said.

“Besides, we have other things to think about right now,” Armand whispered, “because Maharet will surely want to know of the fate of her beloved Mael.”

Part 3

June, 2____

Lestat--

It is a couple of days after I have sent news of the proposed weaponry deal in England that I meet up with David. It is our habit to meet up at least once a week now, simply because David, bless him, thinks that I need company. Someone to keep the madness and the loneliness away.

We meet up in a bar not too far from either of our flats—he too, owns property in New York, now, but declines to live with me—and I notice at once that is was rather nervous.

After seeing him peel off the label on the bottle of beer that he wasn’t drinking, then tearing it into strips miserably in his hand, I scowl. “For goodness sake, David, will you just tell me!”

“I want you to know, that if you don’t want me to leave, I won’t, but… I want to travel. I’m tired of New York, and Jesse has asked me to come and see Africa—“

“You never stay around very long, nowadays.” I complain.

He casts a glance at me. “Do you want me to stay around, Lestat?”

I shrug. “If you want to travel, then travel.”

“Travel with me, then. I’ve been thinking of returning to Africa for a while. You love Africa, don’t you?”

“I loved a lot of things.”

He has caught the subtext, but pointedly ignores it. “I think you might like to see how it has changed! You haven’t been there for so long- it’s not a country blighted by war now. We could explore the more savage parts, get away from this… *this blasted place.*”

I lean back in my seat and watch the people coming and going in the bar for a while. The truth be told, I want to stay here. The place has memories now, for me, of course—but not all of these were bad. Some were pleasant and sweet and lately the grief has been eating me up more than usual, and I want to stay. I want to be here, alone. Vaguely, I wonder if this is what the grief of losing Claudia did to Louis.

Finally, I say, “Look, I don’t want to travel. I don’t want to go to Africa, or Spain, or Wales or even to the next block. I don’t need to travel. Leave me alone, David.”

He shakes his head, “Lestat, Armand is right. You are such a *brat* at times.”

His comment is meant in a light-hearted way, and I smile despite myself. He is a good friend to me, always trying to draw me out of the sadness that haunts me now. He makes me laugh, he is unquestionably loyal. I trust him with my life and my friendship, and without him I think I would be so lost. “And you are so *British* sometimes.” I reply. I expect a reaction from him, and I get one.

“What do you mean by that?” he asks, affronted. David likes to think that he is “with it” these days and all those old stereotypes of boarding schools, cricket and the Empire are enough to send him into a diatribe about false perceptions.

“…In that you hate the clammy New York summers,” I reply smoothly. “Why, what did you think I meant?”

He laughs, then. An earnest, pleasing laugh. I am glowing in the light of his friendship and I’m rather sad that he’ll be leaving me on my own again for a while. The adventurous part of me wishes to travel, but the anger, the killer in me, is still hankering for someone’s blood and I won’t be satisfied if I don’t get it.

***

We part on good terms, and he promises to call me before he leaves. I am grinning, lion-like killer that I am as I stride down the street, but the memories chase me like dark shadows and I know that my light-hearted mien is fleeting at best.

I take the nearest drug-dealer I can find in some deserted alley, and as I swoon against him, a light rain begins to fall. The moment is arresting; the sights and sounds of New York are lost in a haze of blood and all I can feel is a slight breeze, and cool droplets falling on my clothes, my skin. I’m being foolish, Louis-like, walking in the rain, lost in thought, and, leaving the victim’s body slumped there, I make my way back to my apartment. It may be lonely, but at least there is warmth and cable television to lose myself in.

All right. So you want to know what happened to Louis? Well, I’m not sure of this myself, what happened, exactly—but here are the details as I remember them, the day he went missing.

I’ll have to start the tale a little before that day, though. Let me tell you about the evening before it all happened, how lovely and peaceful that last full night was with him. Some say he may have simply ran away, but I don’t believe that. Not only because it is impossible to hide in a world of vampires, but because, for once, everything had been going so well…

We had taken up residence in New York on a semi-permanent basis. I had a profound love of the city’s lively nightlife, and, tiring of our Rue Royale flat for a while, we found ourselves spending more and more time in the luxurious, modern apartments of an exclusive area in Manhattan. I recall, at the time, though, I was considering returning us to New Orleans for a while. Louis was beginning to concern me, for some reason.

He had been acting rather strangely for weeks. I knew that he was melancholy by nature, that he was rather prone to staring aimlessly into space for hours at a time, that the light of one candle could keep him enthralled for hours, but… something was different.

I would be talking to him, and he would suddenly stare off into space, distracted, as if somebody had called his name and he was straining to listen. Crossing the road one night, he almost got hit by an oncoming car when he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and gazed at the pavement behind him, searching for someone or *something* on the crowded street.

I began to fear that he was falling into another mire of self-pity and loathing, after appearing to be strong for some time. It upset me, and I confronted him about it only to feel lithe arms and a supple body pressed against mine, lips kissing my own, and a reply, fierce, quick; "I love you.”

Looking back on it now, I feel convinced that he knew something was going to happen. Maybe he did not guess the nature of it, but something was telling him that we would be separated. He was so tender, in those last few weeks. If I called him, he would come. Our lovemaking was gentle and intimate, and his eyes shone with love for me. In all our years together, I had seen him cry maybe three times. He did it continually now, moved by the slightest romantic gesture, crying for the beauty of a blossom on a tree, weeping copiously because I stroked his hair and told him how happy I was, living in New York now.

So it was late one night that he called me from yet another business meeting, and asked me to meet him in a small park far outside the city limits. I was filled with such a rush of anticipation to be with him that I did not question his motives, and when he settled down with me on a hillside covered in a carpet of sweet-smelling grass to watch the stars, I obliged.

We made love in that place, amongst the sound of the crickets and the pink petals of blossom leaves spiralling down from the trees around us. It was our own little utopia, a place of greenery, our Savage Garden not a few miles away from suburbia. Later on, back in the comfort of our flat, I lay on our bed as he massaged away the stresses and the strains of the night.

“I want you to promise me something, Lestat,” he murmured, rubbing some oil between his palms and then massaging it into my shoulders. I groaned with pleasure.

“Anything.” I replied.

“I—“ he began, when suddenly the bottle of oil he was holding in his left hand shattered, crushed by the intense pressure he had been placing on it. I jumped up in shock, to see him holding his hand, tiny shards of glass glinting on the floor.
The tears sprang unbidden to his eyes. “Oh…” he moaned, gazing at his fingers.

Really, I thought he was being rather melodramatic, crying over a minor cut. I took his hand and licked at the blood there, watching with morbid fascination as it healed. “Louis, cher, what is wrong?” I asked, “you are crying over a cut?” I could not stop the gentle mocking tone that pervaded my voice, and he glanced at me, hurt. “Louis, what is *it?*” I asked, getting a little impatient now.

He took a deep breath, and I felt a sense of dread, that he was going to say something awful. Instead, he said, “I want you to promise me that you’ll never try to end it.”

“What!”

“No matter what happens,” he continued, grasping my hand now, meeting my eyes until I was lost in pools of jade, “no matter what… promise me you won’t end it. I don’t think I could bear to go on without you.”

I grew flustered. My lip trembled, through sadness or hilarity, I didn’t know. Finally, I laughed. “Louis, what a question—“

“Promise me!” he whispered fiercely.

I rolled my eyes. “I can’t promise you that. All I’ll do is compromise--- I’ll never end it without telling you first.”

He sighed, deflated. But after a moment, he nodded, conceding defeat. We stared at each other in the darkness as the lights of the city cast eerie etchings on his face, so that he was a stone angel brought to life by neon lights. He placed his hand on my chest and held it there, making me feel inexpressibly tender towards him. He swallowed, closed his eyes. “I love you.” He murmured for what seemed like the umpteenth time that week. It had lost none of its pleasant shock, though, none of its resonance, he was entirely sincere. Nothing about him was ever insincere.

I was at a loss for words. What could I say to a thing like that? I felt too exposed, called to account for my love for him. “Come here,” I whispered fiercely, pulling him towards me. And the remainder of that night was so sweet, with him acquiescent and loving in my arms that I scarcely gave his words a second thought.

After the hellish twenty-four hours of the following day, though, it seems that they have haunted me ever since.

***

It was dusk when I awoke, disentangling myself from a sleeping Louis to draw back the curtains, take a shower and consider my options for the night. What I haven’t told you is that during this time, I was having an affair.

It meant nothing, finally. She, the woman, was simply some mortal with a morbid fascination for the dark side who knew what I was. She had flattered me endlessly and I had started off some crazed seduction of her, delighting in the lust in her eyes, her near-worship of me. At some point, I would kill her and delight in the smoky essence of her death.

I’m not sorry that I ever did this—Louis went through these fleeting and intense passions all the time--- they never meant anything, although most of his would-be lovers had a strange tendency to disappear when I learned of them. Vampires love life, and death, and sometimes we did this. It didn’t lessen my love for Louis, God, I mean it when I say he was everything to me, even if I didn’t realise it at the time, but affairs were exciting and taboo and I was having one.

Now, Louis and I had arranged to see a play that night. It was due to start in a couple of hours’ time. It was John Webster’s “The Duchess of Malfi”, and despite the obvious misgivings I had about a play that could only remind me of Claudia, I intended to see it with him. The thing was, my brief and false lover had asked me come over to her place. She was lonely and bored and needed me.

Of course, I would always choose Louis over her. I started to dress in my finest clothes, preparing for a night’s theatre-going. I smiled indulgently as he awoke, tousled and sleepy. “Come on, Louis—get up.”

He stretched and yawned, gazing at me, pleased. “So you remembered that we were going out tonight?”

I smiled. “Of course.” I knotted my tie and fixed it comfortably around my neck, gazing with satisfaction at my handsome reflection in the mirror. “Although I might have to annoy the people around me if the acting is awful, or the seats are to uncomfortable,” I joked.

He grinned at my reflection in the mirror. “You could at least try to put on an act, to pretend you understand the words.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, suddenly stung. I turned to face him. “Are you saying I’m stupid? I can’t understand the ways of the world like you, Monsieur Einstein?”

“I didn’t say that,” he replied, a note of irritation hardening his usually softly spoken voice.

“Then what did you mean?” I demanded.

He shook his head. “Forget it.” He snapped.

“You know,” I hissed, glaring at him, “ I really don’t have to take this from you. Any of it. I don’t even want to see the stupid play with you. I have better things to do!”

“Fine, then!” he cried, “don’t let me stop you!”

“I won’t,” I muttered darkly. I walked over to the chair where my coat was slung, and put it on with theatrical pride, watching with a smug kind of satisfaction as his face fell. The argument was silly in the extreme; typical of us, brought about in an instant over nothing of any importance. But we always took it too far—tonight was no exception.

“Lestat—“

“Go to hell, Louis.” I stalked towards the door. It looked like she would be getting a visit, after all. That would teach him to piss me off.

“Lestat…” he tried again, his voice deliberately soft. I did not stay to hear. I stormed out and slammed the door behind me, feeling a little childish triumph at the gesture. Doubtless it would make him feel guilty. I could hear him move towards the door, stubbornly pull back from it. I heard him sigh.

Well, fine. Let it be like that. I shrugged and made my way down the stairs, satisfied that he knew he had taken things too far. Of course, when he saw me again, he’d be apologetic, softly spoken, and, most invitingly, acquiescent. I remember that I smiled, because I knew it was fun to tease him in this way until, just when he was truly fighting back tears, I would pull him into my arms and kiss him and reassure him.

I could never hate him-- never-- no matter what he did or said or didn’t do. I’d let him think I was truly angry with him a little while longer, make my point, end the fight.
To this day, this fight is still technically unresolved. If only because I never saw him again.

***

I took off down the street and walked for a while. I hunted and killed, and wondered if I should go back. No, teach the smug bastard a lesson, I decided. I would go to hers, after all, listen to her inane mortal chatter and kiss her, wondering to myself, is this the night? Is this the night that I’ll finally take her into death? I went to her flat, and I was suddenly grateful for her sun-kissed blonde hair, her flush of mortal embarrassment to receive me in her night-robe. I entered the flat and though I thought of Louis constantly while I was there, I switched off my mobile telephone and played my little “will-I-or-won’t-I? “game for the rest of the night.

I sauntered into the flat a couple of hours before dawn, unsatisfied from the little drink that I had taken from my female lover. I felt slightly guilty over letting Louis down, and now I grinned in anticipation of making it up to him. I tried the handle on the door, but it was locked. Louis never locked the door.

I scowled, thinking, *he must still be in a sulk.* Well, I wasn’t going to play his game. I unlocked the door with a little mind-control, and sauntered on into the flat.
“Louis?” I called out, taking off my overcoat and draping it over the settee. Of course, he wasn’t in; I knew it already from the silence of the rooms, the fact that he hadn’t shed a wake of keys and clothing and books through the flat.

I was vaguely annoyed—I had wanted to take in the show, after all, and I had forgone it simply to annoy him. He had probably gone off sulking somewhere, riding the trains or meandering through some dark alley or another to come home quiet and miserable. Or maybe simply withdrawn and forgetful, living his life in a dream, as he had been doing increasingly so over the past few weeks.

Well, I wasn’t going to pander to him, I thought angrily, though I could already feel a creeping sense of regret devouring me. Perhaps I had been too harsh on him; perhaps I should have stayed to argue the point. I scowled and flopped down on the couch, grabbing the remote moodily and switching the television on.

Automatically, I switched to the six ‘o clock news. I must admit, I had, and still do have, a certain voyeuristic fascination with the news. I liked to know that other people had worse lives than I did, always. I liked how quickly news travelled now, on the screens within moments of it happening. That day’s feature was concerned with terrorist action within the city, *again,* an increasingly common phenomenon in what were troubled times, spreading from England and France to the Americas. The woman reporting the event, standing amidst the debris of a street perhaps a mile or so from my flat, had nice, deep brown eyes. I cast a critical eye over her, barely registering the news or the dark relevance it had to my own life. I must have heard that report a dozen times since then, forgetting her in lieu of an attempt to gain some clue, some insight into just what had happened.

“The blast was of such force that it effectively demolished the half-mile banking and legal strand of the city. The victim count is still rising, with five deaths, dozens of hospitalisations and numerous people still unaccounted for. Police put the explosion down to various splinter groups of the main terrorist parties, with no one faction as yet identified as the culprit—“

More mortal lunacy. I glanced at the news with the desensitised indifference of the television generations; more and more bloodshed, death and pain and hunger, blah, blah, blah and what was on the other side? I flicked over the channels, all the way up, past soaps and gameshows and other trash before working my way back down again to come back to the news. I lowered the sound to a dull background noise, and got up from the couch restlessly. Bored already.

Where the hell was he? How inconsiderate of him, to simply go off on some other stupid task when I had been prepared for a good fight or argument, choosing my weapons of words throughout the day, *“Well, you’ve been so bloody strange lately. It’s like when I first made you, all over again, staring at things for hours and acting as if you do not hear half of what I say to you.”* And then, *“Besides, what makes you think you’re so goddamn right all the time, anyway? You insulted me this morning, what am I made off, stone, that your words should bounce off me?”* Finally, *“And stop throwing wet towels on the bathroom floor. We have a laundry basket, use it!”*

Beautiful Brown-Eyed Newscaster was still speaking on the television. She was showing the cameramen the wasteland that was once a busy boulevard, using emotive language and a shocked countenance to describe the unhinged idiot who had done this. I stood up and walked over to the stereo to put on some music, when I noticed that the answering machine was flashing. Sighing, I pressed the ‘Playback’ button to hear the message.

“Lestat? It’s Louis.”

Well, of course. What the hell did he want now?

“I’m on the main street, about a block from the theatre. I’m at that little intersection, you know the place—the main area of the banking strand—“

I raised an eyebrow. Well, he could just wait there a bit longer, couldn’t he?

“Lestat,” he said, and he attempted to steady his voice, “I want to apologise for the way I acted. We shouldn’t fight over such trivial matters.” He paused, to sigh expressively, “You know I love you, you know that, don’t you? Meet me here, Lestat. 11 ‘O clock, yes?” Silence. “I’ll wait for you. Please come.”

Here he hung up, and those are the last words he ever said to me. It was only as I smiled, despite myself, and pressed the ‘rewind’ button on the tape that the significance of his words hit me with the force of a physical blow. The banking strand. He had been there hours ago, waiting for me.

I turned and looked at the television once more, frozen in place as I took in the debris, where the area Louis had told me he was standing had been reduced to mere rubble.
I recall, icy fear clutched at my heart. A cold hellish feeling spread to my spine, my legs, my fingertips. That inescapable dread one experiences when all is lost, and you know it. When something dark and significant has just come crashing into your sorry little life. Oh, God, *Louis!* I was out of the flat and hurtling through the night within seconds.

When I arrived at the scene, my heart sank. Fire gutted most of the buildings, whilst the ambulance men searched amongst the rubble for any victims. Police were pushing people back, away from the debris, clearing the area. If Louis had been exposed to such heat, he would be ashes by now. I screamed his name so loudly that people cried out and pressed their hands to their ears. I pushed past the cops and stalked through the area, heedless of my own safety, calling his name, begging him, with blood tears collecting in my eyes, to answer me. I could not sense him there, at all. My head told me he must be dead; my heart refused to believe it.

I searched for him until I could feel the sun approaching over the horizon. I returned to the flat, pleading with the fates, with the god I did not wholly believe in, to let him be safe. Let him be home, asleep. Of course, he wasn’t. A moan of utter, consuming misery escaped from my throat as I found myself in an empty flat. It was too late in the morning now for him to return safely, if he were indeed alive. My own limbs were aching, tired, and with my last ounce of strength, I closed the curtains. I locked the door and, suddenly remembering, I grabbed the telephone and called his mobile.

There was no tone at the other end. It was not switched off. He was not ignoring my call, because the phone was not ringing. It was simply dead.

I think I knew, that first night, from the very moment he left his sad and pleading message, that he was gone. I knew that I wouldn’t be seeing him again, at least for a while, and any while was too long, really.

I don’t know if he is dead. I don’t know whether he was captured or turned to dust by the furnace of the explosion. I don’t know, God, if they tortured him, or if he escaped. Did he learn of my affair? Did he decide that he hated me and simply leave? I don’t know, and it drives me to the brink of madness, only to pull me back again, me and my hideous grief for him. When I learned that it was Marcus Stone responsible for the bombing, I got involved in the guerilla war raging across the western world-- and now it is mere hate that drives me.

And years passed in this way. I made abortive attempts to find him, each time feeling that my spirit was crushed, a little more, my hope was wounded, a little more. It couldn’t be the end of the narrative, could it? For even if I never saw him again, I *had* to know what had happened to him. It was strange how life went on without him, but I finally learned that his disappearance was only the start of a chain of strange events. Everything came back to Louis, in the end.

Part 4

Lestat--

The week flew by in a haze of mundane images and sounds; there were the same sights to see, the same paralysing few minutes spent in the swoon,

Wednesday soon came, and, as pathetic as it may seem, I had been looking forward to tonight rather too much. I ached for some company; not the comforting friendship of David, the fiery love-hate with Armand—simply, I wanted some affection, mortal or immortal.

I woke up with a start, in my empty bed in my empty flat. I showered and dressed, looking into the mirror where empty blue-grey eyes reflected a soul empty of something important for a long time. I hunted early and was back within minutes, taking a bottle of vintage wine from the cooler in preparation for my proposed meeting with Nathan.

I looked at my watch, seeing that there was still half an hour until he was due to arrive, and sat down heavily on the couch. I had made all the preparations necessary. I switched on the television, growing bored within seconds so that I switched it back off again. But then I found the sheer silence of the flat unnerving; I did not like the play of shadow on the walls, the lack of any life around me, vampire, human, animal. There was a strange churning feeling deep within my stomach, a queasiness.

I jumped up and placed a CD in the stereo. The music made me feel even worse, though, and finally I switched that off, too, and stalked over to the window. I placed my forehead against the glass and stood watching the lights of the city. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes, as one brief, sad image flitted past. Well, of course. Louis had always used to do this same thing years ago. He would become lost in the mass of lights presented to him—sometimes I had had to physically drag him from the window.

I looked at my watch again. Nathan should be here within minutes. I turned back to the room, still following those shifting shadows with uneasiness, watching as they melted and danced in the aura cast by the lights. I cleared my throat and I said, in a steady and soft voice, “Louis,” I said to the empty flat, “another night has gone by and you haven’t come home. What I’m doing is not a betrayal—you asked me never to end it without you there—and I need this to survive.”

I didn’t say any more, partly because it was silly, and madness to talk to a lost lover who wasn’t there, but because if he did hear, if he could hear, then he would understand.

The doorbell rang. I flicked the CD player on as soft music filled the room, opening the door as the shadows fled to haunt me some other night. I was alive again and basking in the warmth of a tender, if brief, love.

Nathan stood there, a little overdressed in suit and a tie, clasping a bottle of champagne nervously in his hand. “Hello again, Jean.” He said, blushing slightly. I stood there for a moment, gazing at him, his beauty. I could almost love him, for his elegant ways and that lovely shock of black hair.

“Hello, Nathan.” I murmured.

He hesitated. “May I come in…?”

I pulled the door wide open. “Why, of course,” I said as he walked in, “I was worried that you might not show.” A lie. Of course, I had known he would.

He smiled and took off his jacket, handing it to me as I grinned and shut the door behind him.

***

Well, not to go into too fine a detail, but the date went rather well. We simply stayed in, had a few drinks. He had a deep love of classical theatre and literature, and of course then I simply had to go on about Macbeth—delighted that he had studied it in his final year at university.

He was rather wary at first, polite, strained. I loved it. A few more glasses of wine, with me surreptitiously throwing mine into the plants dying of alcohol poisoning when he wasn’t looking, and he loosened up. By the time we had cracked open the champagne, he was tousled, irresistibly uninhibited.

We started touching each other tentatively at first. I could have just ripped him apart with lust right there and then, but I had to play along. So, when his fingers ‘accidentally’ brushed mine, I accidentally let my hand linger too long on his day. And as the night wore on I knew it was a forgone conclusion where it would end up.

“So,” I asked finally, as his head lolled slightly with drink, “do you want to go to bed with me?”

Nathan smiled. “Voulez-vous couchez…” he laughed out loud. “I forgot the words…”

I smiled despite myself. “Shall we?” I asked, indicating the bedroom with a nod of my head.

He took my hand. “Why not?” he murmured.

***

Marius was another vampire who spent a lot of time in New York, feeling a strange affinity with its urban grandeur, the modern aesthetic—the sheer antithesis of his beloved Venice. He wandered the art galleries for hours, taking in rooms and rooms of beautiful paintings and sculptures, finding his own inspiration in the towering buildings or even in dirty alleyways.

Another reason was that he simply felt the need to check in on Lestat from time to time, despite the younger vampire’s protestations of independence and an inherent dislike for ‘prying’. He knew that Lestat grudgingly liked these visits, brief bursts of friendship to cut through the loneliness. And then, of course, there was David—a kindred spirit to Marius, a lover of fine arts and old European cities, a person who could both talk and listen.

He met David in a café on an exclusive Manhattan sidestreet, where they basked in each others’ friendship as they watched the world go by on the streets outside. Marius closed his fingers around the cup of steaming hot mocha, delighting in the earthly aroma of the drink warming his hands.

They talked of art, literature, the weather. Sometimes it was simply good to enjoy a little chit-chat, it warmed the soul. Marius mentioned in passing about how he intended to travel onto South America afterwards. “Why don’t you come along, too?” he asked.

David frowned. “Jesse has already asked me to come to Africa—“

“Oh. Well.” He smiled. “When do you go?”

David ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair. Marius watched in fascination as it fell over his handsome face. “I don’t.” he said.

“What? Why not.”

David looked up. “One word.”

“Let me guess,” said Marius, with a sigh, “Lestat.”

His friend laughed. “Very perceptive, Marius.”

“You don’t have to stay around all the time just in case he might suddenly need to vent.”

“I don’t think I should leave him,” said David soberly, “he hasn’t been himself lately.”

Marius placed his hand on David’s own. “David, my friend, you cannot hold yourself responsible for Lestat’s emotions all the time. He is always going through some kind of inner turmoil. Go and meet Jesse in Africa. Get away from this place for a while to clear your head. Don’t worry about Lestat—I’ll talk to him.”

David raised one dark eyebrow. “I’m sure you will, Marius. But will he listen?”

The Roman sat back in his chair and watched the steam rise from the cup for a moment, before levelling his gaze at David’s own brown eyes once more. “Oh, he’ll listen.” He said. David sat back, apparently satisfied and relieved with the answer, while Marius kept a smile on his face as he wondered how on earth one could reason with the zestful and sometimes rather selfish Lestat de Lioncourt.

***

Lestat--

I awoke in blanket darkness. Sighing, I envisioned the heavy velvet curtains covering the windows. I imagined them pulling back, and I smiled with satisfaction as they did so. I imagined unlatching the shutters of the windows to the bedroom, and as they fell open I ran my hand over my face, surprised to feel what appeared to be sweat drenched there.

It was blood.

I opened my eyes in surprise to see, laying there on the bed, lit up by the ambient light of the city, Nathan’s mauled corpse. I wrinkled my nose in utter disgust, and then stared down at my own body. I was covered in his blood. It had spattered across my face, dripped from my fangs and dried on my skin.
“Bloody hell, not *again*!” I muttered angrily.

Ugh. I would have to disentangle myself from the bedsheets and get this crimson crap off my body. I refused to look at Nathan’s grotesque figure—like any predator, I had a profound dislike of being near the decaying matter of my victims.

At that point, the telephone rang. Instinctively, I picked it up, leaving a great bloody handprint on the receiver. “Hello?” I asked coolly.

“Mr. Gregor?”

Monsieur, you idiot, monsieur. I sighed. Let’s be nice. “Yes?”

“It’s reception here. You have a visitor, a Mr. Romanus…”

Oh, shit.

“Could you-“ I began.

“He’s on his way up, Sir.” She said curtly.

I leapt out of bed, hauling the corpse out with me so fast that it fell with me onto the floor. I retched in disgust, then dragged it up again before making a desperate grab for the blankets. What to do? What to do!

***

Marius had been knocking at the door for a few minutes before I answered it impatiently. “Bloody hell, Marius, you could have just let yourself in,” I lied, trying to pass the blame onto him when I saw how annoyed he was at being left to stand there for so long.

He walked in with a shake of his head. “Lestat, you are—“

“The damndest creature.” I finished for him. “I know, I know. So, what brings you here?”

He shrugged, turning to face me as I closed the door. “I was simply—“ he stopped. “Lestat, there is blood all over your clothes.”

I wiped at it guiltily, before I glared at him in annoyance. “So what? You’d think I was a vampire—“

“…And a messy one, at that.”

I grinned and spread my arms out wide. “’Who’d have thought he would have had so much blood?’” I quoted. I walked into the living room, Marius following me in bemusement. The first thing he noticed was the draught. He would.

“Isn’t that window a little wide open?” he asked pointedly.

I looked at it, then back at him again. “So I like fresh air,” I said, and threw him a challenging look. I sincerely hoped he would leave it at that. How to explain the bloody corpse of a young man wrapped in even bloodier sheets dumped on the roof of the building? I grinned at him.

Marius regarded me for a moment, before clearing his throat. “How are you, anyway, Lestat?” he asked me.

I despised this mollycoddling. I don’t like the way they are always asking me questions, analysing me, Jerry Springer-style, simply to make them feel better about their own sorry little lives. “I’m fine, Marius,” I replied curtly. “And you?”

“Fine, fine.” He said.

“Good. Then that’s all there is to say, isn’t there? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to be going---“

“Lestat!”

I turned to him, intending to make some cutting remark, enjoying this little argument, when the voice cut through both of our thoughts.

*ALL THE COVEN: THIS IS MAHARET. COME TO LONDON STRAIGHT AWAY. URGENT.”

Marius and I looked at each other, perturbed. This was something bad, something monumentous, we both knew. “What do you suppose it is?” he asked, rising.

I shrugged. “Who cares?”

He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, closed it. “Whatever you say, my friend. Whatever you say.” He started walking towards the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked haughtily, “I thought you came to see me!”

“I did. And now Maharet calls us. We can talk on the way there, can’t we?”

I narrowed my eyes and folded my arms. “I’m *not* going.”

“Lestat—“ he said, exasperated. He was eager to be away and I was stalling him.

“Don’t push me, Marius,” I growled.

After Louis had disappeared, Maharet had neither offered help nor authorised the rest of us to take action. In fact, she let it be known that she did not think it a good idea for us to get directly involved in mortal affairs. She didn’t *care* what happened to Louis, because he was not Mael or her beloved Jesse. Well, that sent me into a rage—but one thing neither of us had counted on was that the majority of the other vampires agreed with me. They took action, partly because Louis had been well-loved amongst us, but also because Eric, too, had been the victim of some loony vigilante group that didn’t like vampires picking them off.

I never forgave Maharet for not helping, for failing to understand my grief. Despite Armand being my very best frien-emy, he was there for me at the time. I can’t forget that—like I can’t forget that self-righteous, arrogant excuse for a woman—

“I’m not going to see that bitch,” I said, “and that’s final.” At that point, I felt my mind whirl, as if someone had shaken it like a rag. I gasped and clutched at my temple, closing my eyes for a moment against the blinding pain.

Marius raised an eyebrow. “I think that is a sufficient answer. If she wants us there, we have to go.”

“Fine,” I snarled, “just don’t expect me to be nice.”

Part 5

And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom; let it be.

-- “Let it Be”, Lennon & McCartney

***********************

That very evening…

Marius and I arrived in London that same night. There was scarcely time to find a place to rest, given the time differences and the fact that the evenings were shorter in high summer. We buried ourselves in the earth in a derelict field on the outskirts of the city. The next night, we would arrive at Maharet’s meeting-place to hear what she had to say.

My sleep was plagued by dreams. Mael, a vampire whom I had spoken all of four sentences with in my entire life, was speaking with me. He was lost and lonely and where was his body? If I had been mortal, the nightmarish vision would have woken me in a cold sweat—but I had to endure it in the death-sleep and I suffered the daytime hours in anguish.

***

As soon as the sun was dying in the horizon, I burst out of my resting-place to see Marius looking at me, having waited for me to rise. He and the two teenage boys who had just entered the field to play a game of late-night football. They looked so shocked, standing there, frozen in terror at this thing that had just emerged from the earth to stare at them with luminescent eyes.

At least it solved the problem of having to hunt before finding Maharet.

***

We found ourselves in an exclusive area of Notting Hill soon after, Marius leading the way because he had been here before. There was a rather grand-looking house, not that all the others were rather marvellous in their own way, that would have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds anywhere else, but here in London probably cost a couple of million.

I took in the suburban grandeur of it all, the well-trimmed saplings lining the street, the flash cars and high railings, suddenly homesick for my beloved New Orleans, its splendour and corruption, the place that was home to me above all else.

“Lestat,” Marius said, turning to me as we mounted the steps and he rang the doorbell, “if I can ask one thing of you, it’s to be polite this evening. Maharet would not call us for some trivial matter—“

“Don’t lecture me.” I replied, but I could not be angry with Marius. He was always so concerned that I do right, that I keep from harming others and myself. I grinned at him, to soften my sharp answer, and he shook his head, smiling ruefully.

We heard soft footsteps, and then Jesse had opened the door and was standing before us. She was wearing a simple blouse and dark pants, her red hair tied back and a pretty chain hanging from her neck. She looked beguilingly ordinary, mortal, able to blend in with these times better than the rest of us though the twentieth century was by now long-gone.

“Lestat,” she said soberly, nodding at me, “Marius.”

I knew then, that something was dreadfully wrong. Jesse was always so bubbly, so full of good will and charm, a modern woman still at heart, but now she was withdrawn; serious. I missed her happy-go-lucky ways, suddenly. I tried to smile at her, but the smile died on my lips. “Are you all right?” I asked.

“This way,” she said, turning, not wishing to answer me. I exchanged a long, foreboding look with Marius. He shrugged and then we stepped inside, following her through the narrow hallway and into a large, Victorian-style room that was simply furnished. A large table dominated the room, and the rest of our depleted coven was gathered around it.

“Déjà vu.” I muttered, only to feel Marius’s hand squeeze my arm gently, a tentative request to please shut up.

He walked straight over to Armand and Daniel, who seemed the only ones in the room that could muster up half a smile. Pandora whispered something to him, quick, intimate. Santino sat watching everything moodily. Khayman was his usual thoughtful self, watching us all with fascination. Gabrielle was sitting there, too, looking at them all with a haughty air, doubtless annoyed to be dragged back into civilisation again, wearing khaki pants and a simple top. David sat near her. I walked over to them and sat between them, embracing my mother and feeling an overwhelming sadness engulf me as she wound her arms about me, my oldest surviving fledgling, to whisper, “I know, my love. I worry for you, Lestat.”

I drew back and regarded her; barely able to stand the sheer familiarity she presented to me, so much my kindred spirit even after all these years of separation. I remembered the night she had rescued me at the San Francisco concert, dependable in that moment when I had truly needed her. I squeezed her hand reassuringly, and then I turned to David.

“I’m glad you came,” he said simply, and I smiled. My scholar, suddenly looking so lost. I took his hand, too, and felt the affirming strength of him, loving the strength that both he and Gabrielle possessed, the only two fledglings of mine who had never truly needed me in their fierce independence and who were the only two left. I had thought Nicki my true love; I had been wrong. I had thought Claudia intelligent and loving—she was, but she had been eaten up with malice, in the end. And Louis—well, I had thought him a survivor… I sighed and gazed around the room, at the assembled coven.

“So,” I said, “where’s the Guest of Honour?”

At that moment, my most favourite vampire chose to make her entrance. “Here,” she said, with her sister Mekare following her. I glared at Maharet, despite myself, despite David’s disapproving sigh, and then my eyes caught Mekare. She was staring at me, delving into my soul, taking my measure. I felt suddenly scared, confused. I turned away.

I don’t think Maharet even saw me glare at her. Those mortal eyes she insists should not be replaced have almost totally failed her now; she is virtually blind. It was Mekare who led her to her seat, at the head of the table, before sitting down next to her protectively, gazing at us all fiercely before settling that unnerving stare on me again, so that I had to struggle to avoid looking at her. And each and every time I glanced back at her, there she was, watching me. I felt like snapping at her defensively, but of course, even I am not stupid enough to challenge the Queen of the Damned.

Maharet settled herself down, cleared her throat—rather theatrically, I thought—and then she began. I hoped she would not talk the entire night away. “I have called you all here tonight for a reason I think you can all guess at. We need to, as a coven, discuss this war that some of you,” and here she looked pointedly at myself at Armand, “have been getting more and more involved in. I had already expressed my disapproval—“

“Ad nauseum.” I muttered.

“What was that?” she asked, glaring at me.

“AD NAUSEUM!” I shouted.

She was consummate rage. “I have had enough of your games, Lestat. I have had enough of your moods, and your silly raging.“

Jesse touched her arm lightly, consolingly. “Maharet, please, go on.”

Maharet looked at us all soberly, then fixed her failing eyes on the table. “Perhaps you have noticed that a member of our coven is missing this night.”

I had not, and as I looked around our assembled coven, I saw Marius, of course, Armand, Pandora, quiet and beautiful in the dim light, my fledglings… Mael was missing.

“Yes, Lestat,” she said, turning to me once more. “Mael, a good friend and a companion to my Jesse, is gone. He is dead, Lestat. You sent out a message to stop a weapons deal in Liverpool and the result is that one vampire, eager to aid your little ideologies and your quest for revenge, was burnt to a crisp when he was exposed to the sun.”

“But, how—“

“Sheer mortal clairvoyance. They knew a vampire would be there. They only needed a spiritual guide, a woman who could sense the supernatural, and they sought him out. They killed him in his sleep. They are not stupid. The death is a warning, as if the previous ones were not enough—“

I felt the bitterness eating at me like acid. “So we are supposed to leave them in peace, because, bless them, they only took two vampires who meant little or nothing to you!”

“Eric was a good friend to us,” said Khayman softly. “And you know, Lestat, that we all miss Louis.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” I sneered, “but we only take any form of action when precious Mael is killed.” At that point, Jesse looked up, and I saw the blood tears collecting in her eyes, the sheer misery painted on her face. I was sorry for that, I was sorry for her, and Mael. But I could not stop the nasty sense of satisfaction that engulfed me. At least now they knew what I was feeling for Louis, how the misery tried to drag me down with it each passing night.

“Do you see the misery you have caused?” asked Maharet. “Our interfering has brought this about. More, *your* interfering.”

“I needed revenge.” I said quietly.

“Lestat,” she snapped, “you are an *idiot!* You let emotions rule your head!”

“And how does that make him an idiot?” cut in Gabrielle, before I could stop her, “all it does is make him more human than you.”

“And you,” Maharet shot back.

“Of course,” said Gabrielle smoothly, “but he has suffered these last few years in grief. He asked for your help, Maharet, and you refused it. I know that Louis meant little or nothing to you, but to the rest of us, he did. You ignored the loss of one of our coven, two, if we count Eric—and thereby that includes Santino’s same grief for Eric. You have not aided us trying to find out what happened to them, or avenging ourselves on the mortals—“

“How can I help?” Maharet said desperately. “They are both lost, Gabrielle. They’re both gone, and all I can do is try to shield the coven from any further bloodshed. I tried to warn you all that it could only escalate, and now we have a third victim because of your foolish interfering.”

“We could not simply forget them.” Said Marius. His voice was low and soft. Both of them were our companions for centuries, and one foolish war has robbed of us two lives in one small coven.

“So why endanger the rest of us?” cut in Khayman.

“Why, indeed?” echoed Gabrielle sarcastically.

“You haven’t exactly been an active member of the resistance, have you?” asked Khayman pointedly.

She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

Pandora stirred then, “Please, do we really need to argue over this—“

Gabrielle glared at her friend. “Frankly, yes!”

Maharet slammed her fist down on the table, so that we all looked at her in shock. Even Mekare turned to her, and I was glad to have her burning stare away from me for the moment. “That is enough!” she commanded. “We must not bicker amongst ourselves!” She folded her arms in the silence that followed, and spoke in a low, calm voice. “We will end this now. The mortals responsible for the deaths of Eric, Louis and Mael will be killed. Both in revenge and to end our involvement in the wars. The vigilante groups will be destroyed. Marcus Stone will be destroyed—there is no need to kill any of those around him, because they are already dead, thanks to Lestat’s interfering. Once this has been achieved, we fade away from this. We return to the night and anonymity and we allow the dispute to be played out amongst the humans. No vampire is to so much as speak of this afterwards.”

She looked at us all, at the assembled gathering of vampires who stared at her in incredulity. Some of us, Khayman, Jesse, Marius, obviously agreed with her. Armand, Daniel, Gabrielle—they looked angry and affronted with the decision. And then Armand spoke up. “There is one small problem with this, Maharet.” He said.

“And what is that?” she asked wearily.

“Louis isn’t dead.”

The table erupted into a series of arguments, moans of disbelief and discussion. “Enough!” cried Maharet once again, sweeping her long red hair away from her face in an agitated movement. “Armand, you have to stop this madness. Louis has been gone for the best part of a decade. None of us have heard of him, nobody can feel him. He must be dead.”

“Then what happened to him?” I demanded.

She sighed. “I don’t know. Can’t you let it rest? He is gone. It is sad, but it is also final. Can’t you leave it at that?” She gave me a look that was almost pleading, but I couldn’t let it go. I *couldn’t*.

“Don’t you see,” I cried furiously, “it broke my heart! I can’t bear not knowing what happened to him! I don’t care what happens to us anymore, because I’m done grieving, I’m done torturing myself to insanity with the same old questions and the battles and the darkness!”

Maharet was staring at me, stunned. I cast about, and I saw that they all were. I could feel the heat rising to my eyes, and I was damned if I was going to let them see me cry like this. Snarling, I stood up and headed for the door.

“Lestat—“ came Armand’s voice suddenly, full of fear, warning.

I whirled around to face him, and it was at that point that Mekare reached forward and sank her fangs into my throat.

******

Dimly, as through a haze, I heard Armand shouting. Gabrielle had rushed forward, screaming, only to be pulled back and restrained by Khayman, who was trying to reassure her. Maharet was there, pleading with Mekare to let me go, to spare me; I was only a fledgling…

I felt my entire being transported. I was transfixed, paralysed by her fangs, the press of her weight against mine. And then she was moving me to her neck, and we were drinking from each other, as I had done with my beautiful Akasha, such a long time ago. I was stroking her hair, lost in rapture, wondering why she was doing this, inviting the blood union, when the images came.

Mekare, of course, was unable to speak, to communicate properly because of the savage mutilation of her tongue by Akasha. And now she used the blood swoon to speak to me, in quiet, soothing words. She had something to tell me; a secret she had kept locked up inside of her for years.

She dreams. Mekare, the Queen, sees and hears things the rest of us do not. Like Akasha before her, she can walk in other people’s bodies, understand our deepest thoughts. She had been spending hours dreaming of her beloved Africa, and one time, soon after Louis had gone, she had dreamt of walking across the plains. The sand was white-hot under her feet; a snake was disturbed here and there under her footfall. The sun shone overhead, unable to hurt her in this dream, this trance.

Another figure was close by. In her dreams, there was never anyone else, only Mekare. Walking and Alone. A slim, delicate hand lay on her shoulder, and she turned to see Louis, standing there, smiling at her in that saddening, lovely way that always made me draw my breath in sharply. She knew him infinitely in that moment, his great grief and his even greater love. He, too, was walking these dreamlands, revelling in the secret world she had thought only she knew. He was happy and unafraid in the sun.

“Mekare, my Queen,” he had stated simply, and she had taken his hand, walking with him without words. In her dreams, she could speak, hear her own rich accent come spilling out from her healed mouth. But there was no need, to talk with Louis. I understood that. He could fall into silence for hours, but his company was always a balm to me. We never really needed words. Touch meant more than words.

She had been eager to show him her little land, the desert of her dreams. His hair was dusty from the sand, and she ran her hands through it, delighting in the black silk that embraced her fingers. She kissed his cheek, and he smiled, loving this affection. Mekare understood him, and he understood her.

“Louis,” she had asked softly, feeling her red hair whip about in the cool breeze, “they are worried about you. I am worried about you. Where are you?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’m safe, I think, because I am here, with you. I am not hurt.”

“Are you dead?”

He laughed, then. “No, Mekare. I am not dead.” He knelt down and took a handful of sand in his palm. He watched it run through his fingers. “I like it here.” He said. “I feel free.”

Mekare knew what he meant. She loved it, too. But she never stayed, very long. It seemed he did. “But are you going to come back? They miss you; Lestat misses you. He needs you.”

Louis did listen, then. He turned to her and took both of her beautiful, small hands in his. She felt the cool strength of his slim fingers over her own, and she loved him. “I must come back,” he said, “I know that. But at the moment, I can’t come back. Something…” he searched for the right words. “They haven’t shown me everything yet. They want me to know.”

Mekare wanted to ask, who are they? But she felt that Louis did not know this thing; he knew the limits of his confinement, his life, and that was it. “And Lestat?” she asked.

“He knows I love him,” he said simply, “I wish you could tell him that, I wish you could let them know that I am all right. But how to explain it, Mekare? How to make them believe you?”

“I can’t.” she said simply.

He nodded in agreement. “I know that. But will you look after him, Mekare? Will you stop him from doing anything foolish, or walking into the flames? I asked him, before I left, never to end it, but he’s so impulsive, so intense…” he gazed at the blue skies and sighed.

“Did you know, then, that you were going to leave?” she asked. She stroked his high cheekbones in wonder, and he allowed it.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, I knew. I didn’t *want* to leave, you understand,” he whispered, “but it just—happened.” He wiped the sand from his palm. “But you don’t answer me, Mekare. Will you take care of him? And Armand? And the rest of them? I need to know that, or I will not be able to stand it.”

She nodded, yes; she would take care of us. Wasn’t she our Queen, after all? She pulled him to her, suddenly, and kissed him. His lips were soft and his arms wound their way about her seemingly fragile back. They shared a certain affection, a love for this place and for each other. And then she was pulled away from the dream because Maharet was shaking her, asking her if she was all right.

*****

I felt myself being slowly released from Mekare’s fangs, and reluctantly, I willed myself to pull away from the rich fount of her blood. She was kissing me, my face, my neck, my mouth. I realised that I was crying. Blood tears were running down my face, I was shaking like a human. I was elated and surprised and sorrowful all at once.

Gabrielle was embracing me, asking what the hell that bitch had done to me, and I tried to speak, to let her know what I had seen. I couldn’t. The entire coven was gathered around me, concerned, intrigued, as Mekare silently left the room. “He…he’s alive.” I whispered, and they of course knew whom I was talking of.

“Lestat?” asked Maharet worriedly, and suddenly, I couldn’t bear to look at her. I couldn’t bear to be here, with them. I wanted time to think, to reflect on what I had seen and learnt. I kissed Gabrielle quickly, whispering to her that I would be all right, and then I was out of the door, out of the house, running along the street like a mortal, hearing my feet pound against the pavement as I heard David cry out in alarm and follow me. I didn’t care, the air was rushing through my lungs painfully, the night was cool and dark and embracing and Louis, my beloved Louis, was alive.

Part 6

Lestat----

I had run and run through the streets of London, until I was a preternatural blur, and I did not stop running until I was out of the city and in the relative comfort of the leafy suburbs. I was strolling through a bourgeois cul-de-sac, rubbing my arm absentmindedly, lost in thought, when I felt a hand touch my shoulder lightly.

My first thought was that it was Louis, greeting me in the way that he had Mekare, but of course, it wasn’t. I stared at David as he cleared his throat. “I’ve been trying to catch up with you for the best part of an hour,” he said, his breathing slow and laboured, “and you could have waited. I know that you heard me calling you.”

It was true. I had, but I hadn’t wanted to answer. I didn’t want anyone to follow me. “I… wanted to be alone.” I mumbled.

“But we’re all so worried about you,” he said, “and you were crying. You looked so lost, Lestat. You looked so confused---“

“But I am fine.” I replied smoothly. “I feel a lot better than I have in a long time, my friend.”

He was staring at me ruefully. I smiled at him, before breaking out into a grin. I reached over and tousled his hair, much to his annoyance. “Lestat—why the sudden mood swings?”

“Sudden?”

“Oh, all right. Why the characteristic mood swings?”

I laughed. “Like I said, Mekare has told me what I needed to know. Louis is alive.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said sadly, “much as I would like to, I don’t believe it.”

“Why are you such a pessimist?” I demanded, as we began to stroll further and further into the fields surrounding the little village.

“Because of something that convinced me he was gone…”

I scowled. “Pray tell.”

We walked into a little meadow at the edge of a wood. The place was teeming with life; crickets in the long, cool grasses, a hedgehog stumbling through the undergrowth, even a fox padding slowly along the field. It was so quaint and evocative of David’s beloved England that it made my heart ache. He was in his element in this gentle little place, whilst all I wished for was to be back in America, in Rue Royale, with Louis at my side. God knows I could never return there, to the home that we had fashioned together, without him.

There was a little footpath through the field, to a large oak tree from which hung a tyre swing. Children had been playing here all day, and I could smell their inviting, warm, human scent still. But I was in no mood for the hunt or bloodshed. I simply wanted to talk.

“So, what do you want to tell me?” I asked, dropping to sit against the tree’s sturdy trunk.

He sat down next to me. “I’m rather afraid to tell you,” he admitted, “You seem alive again, Lestat, and I don’t want to take that away.”

“As if you could,” I laughed easily, but I did not like this. He was right, I did suddenly feel alive again, full of hope and happiness. The promise of regaining Louis was making me heady with love and anticipation. Louis’s presence always sustained me like nothing else.

*Sometimes love and hate serve the same purpose.*

I hadn’t been quite sure what I meant, back then; it was a sentence that was simply typed in some abstract way and then was there, a testament to how I felt about him.
I mean, the same purpose? What purpose, I often wondered afterwards. What had I meant? But now, in this dull and monotonous time, the answer is as simple as it is clear; I had needed him, for the feelings he stirred in me. My conscience, my lover, more easily my enemy than my friend, but full of passion and goodness for me. The purpose was simple: he kept me alive.

I had always known his beauty a rare thing; his effortless humanity even more so. But how rare! In all this time, in all the places I’ve been, all the people I’ve met, I’ve never found anyone remotely like him! True, it was our shared history that bound us so close in the first place, but…

“Lestat?”

“I’m listening.” I said, “Please, David, tell me this thing.”

“You’re sure?” he asked hesitantly.

“DAVID!”

“All right, all right. I’ll tell you.” He watched a car slowly winding its way through the darkening country lanes, the beam from its headlights falling on us for a moment, so that we had to turn away and shield our eyes, not because they would dazzle us, but to look upon us would be to dazzle and most probably terrify *them.*

As the world settled down again, he cleared his throat. “I’ve always kept from telling you this to spare you, but also because I have no idea what it all means, finally.”

“What is it?” I asked impatiently. I knew that he was going to tell me something unpleasant, something I didn’t want to hear, and it made me irritable.

David ignored my hurtful tone. He was straining to hear something, and a dark, morbid fear that those voices or things that had called my Louis away were turning to him made me suddenly fearful.

“David?” I asked uncertainly.

“I experienced what could be called a vision,” he said suddenly, “the night after Louis went missing—remember how you called me? You told me you were frantic and you asked me to try to contact him.”

“I remember,” I said, “and you, my fledgling, you said you couldn’t contact him.”

He smiled nervously. “Well, that was a lie. I swear, Lestat, I only did it to spare you---“

I was glaring at him. “Go on.” I whispered. My voice was dripping with malice, though I fought to contain it.

“Lestat,” he warned, “don’t?”

“Don’t what?” I asked, my eyes glinting ferally

He sighed. “Will you at least *listen* to me?” He did not give me pause to retort. “That night, I sat down and I concentrated. I didn’t spy on Louis, that wasn’t me—I respected him too much. But it was so easy to track him if needs must, because apart from Mekare, I had to be the closest vampire to him. He was my brother…”

I wanted to say, no, Gabrielle was closer in terms of the timeline between the three of my fledglings. But I didn’t—because then he’d ask why she had not searched for Louis. “Go on.” I urged again.

“I *did* see something of him. I tried to focus on his mind, but no thoughts were coming from him. Usually, I would know what he was feeling, or thinking, and though I soon found myself *with* Louis, in some room or other, he didn’t seem to be all there.”

“What?” I asked. “Like, mad?” Please, not another Nicki.

He shook his head. “No, more…” He frowned. “Well, let me try to explain it as best I can. Wherever he was, it was a cell— lit up in nauseating bright light. Windowless, clean—a bed and a reinforced steel door. A CCTV camera was set up in the left-hand corner, above the door. No wire protected it, but Louis had not attempted to destroy it—he knew, as I did, that his captors had the power of life or death over their prisoner. One error and he would be exposed to sunlight, come the morning.

“The only indication that it was night was the occasional movement from Louis. I mean… I *felt*, rather than saw, Louis’s hand lift, his foot twitch. But he wasn’t awake and alert like he should have been at night…”

“Then what?” I asked, starting forward, frightened for Louis and what I might learn.

David sighed. “He…he kept drifting in and out of consciousness—it really scared me, Lestat. I mean, what could cause him to be so weak, so powerless? Something was wrong—his breathing was far too slow, his movements too languid. He was blinking furiously, wiping at his eyes, trying to stay awake. And then the world went black.

“I recall, I gasped in shock and fear as this darkness engulfed Louis, because of course I was feeling it all as if I was experiencing it myself. And then he was rising, rising over this compound, over an industrial estate, a nearby town.”

“Where?” I cut in quickly.

He shook his head. “I have no idea,” he admitted hopelessly, “It all was happening so very fast, and I was so scared, that I didn’t think to take in the surroundings. But Louis wasn’t scared. I could feel his calm infecting me—it must have been so easy for him to simply let go. His soul was drifting through the atmosphere, so euphorically unaware of the terror of this, but listening and feeling and *experiencing* something beyond his ken.”

He picked up a daisy near to him and began to tear out each petal absent-mindedly. “It was such a rush, Lestat. So final a release that how could I ever imagine him to be anything but dead?”

“I understand,” I admitted softly. “But he’s not dead, David. I know that now, I know that Mekare saw the truth and wrongly, wrongly she held it from me, thinking that it would spare me from pain when all it did was increase my unhappiness. Like you did.” I spoke gently, but he heard the implied accusation in my words and in my voice, and he looked at me earnestly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in that crisp, sincere English accent and my growing anger faded away under the sadness of his dark gaze.

“Mekare’s vision took place *after* yours,” I said suddenly, “and it all ties in, doesn’t it? Escaping the confines of his body to wander the world as he wanted?”

“What did she see?” he asked, interested.

Briefly, I told him. I left out the parts where she had embraced him and kissed him, though, because I felt oddly jealous telling it to David, though it had meant little in the crush of Mekare’s arms. I revelled in telling him how Louis had begged her to protect me, though, and in all the strange things he had said.

“Who are *they*?” David asked.

“I don’t know.” I admitted. “But *they* had better let him go, the bastards.”

“But don’t you find it a little eerie—“

“No. They must be some stupid humans. And then I’ll kill them, and that will be the end of it.” He was gazing at me in incredulity, unable to fathom how I could deceive myself in this way. I couldn’t; but it was easier to pretend than to confront the shadowy details of it all.

We sat in silence for a while, listening to the noise of the city, still so audible to us even in this little meadow, miles away. David became preoccupied with destroying the flowers, while I leaned against the great oak and lost myself in thought. I was thinking silly, fanciful things, like, had many changes occurred in these past few years, that might surprise him? I wondered if he were awake tonight, and how on earth his captors fed him, because surely his body would still crave blood even if his soul did not.

I was disturbed from my thoughts by David’s voice. “So what are you going to do now, about Marcus Stone? Still hell-bent on his revenge, are you?”

I shrugged. “Of course. But there are so many other things to think about now, he can wait.”

He regarded me for a long moment. “I haven’t seen you like this in a long time.” He said finally.

“Like what?”

“Happy. Content.”

I laughed. “Probably because this is the first bit of truly good news I’ve had in a very long time, my friend.”

The stars pulsed and faded in the sapphire evening sky. I imagined him, my lover, my Creole beauty with the emerald eyes and the black hair, walking amongst them. It was the only place fitting for such a being.

“I hope he’s safe,” said David softly. “I hope he’s happy, wherever he is.”

I nodded in agreement, loving the sheer contentment that blanketed me now, despite the enormous task that lay ahead. Louis was alive, the world was still a beautiful place, and I felt my wounded soul slowly beginning to heal itself.

All that was left was to watch, and wait for him to return to me. The only thing was, I absolutely hated to stand by and wait passively. Something would have to be done—and I had an idea.

Part 7

Lestat--

The week drew slowly to a close, and my initial euphoria at Mekare’s message slowly subsided. Yes, it was great to know. But what mattered was the here and now, and I was still alone.

I returned to New York that Saturday, but the city seemed to press in on me, with its sweltering heat and the questions that still chased me in my flat. I knew that Armand, Daniel and Khayman had joined together with Jesse to seek out those responsible for Mael’s death, but my heart wasn’t in it. I knew they would not find my beloved enemy Marcus, and he was the only person I truly wanted dead right now.

Marius had returned to New York, too, staying in one of his properties downtown. I went to see him surprisingly often, loving to hear his softly-spoken words of comfort, as he listened to my arguments and debates before responding with words that always soothed me.

“Why didn’t he ever do one of his magic appearing acts to me?” I demanded of Louis one night. “I’m just his lover, I don’t count—“

“Lestat, have you forgotten the rift between fledgling and maker?” Marius asked, quite reasonably.

“That’s no excuse!” I ranted, “this goes far beyond vampiric nonsense. David and Mekare glimpsed his very *soul*…”

And so on.

I was also dwelling on other things; I had told David that I had a plan, to flush that stupid mortal out of hiding. However, my initial idea, to turn the tables on him and kidnap someone dear to him until I found out what the hell he did to Louis was quickly shot down by David:

“But, Lestat, you’ve killed everyone around him, remember? You even killed his ex-boss.”

“ God, will you ever let that drop?! I *thought* he was involved in it, too!”

“The man was an accountant, Lestat.”

All right, so I would have to think things over a little more deeply. I watched Marius paint sometimes, at others, I would go and sit in his garden, reclining on pretty benches that set off the ornate pond and the delicate, exotic trees he had imported from Japan. Sometimes he would join me, and we would talk of things past, or he would try to goad me into talking about Louis and how I felt right now. But I liked to be alone, most times. I would be alone with my thoughts, in this little microcosm of a Savage Garden, and I would listen, watch and wait.

***

Connecticut, New England, that Saturday.
***

The rather chubby security guard stationed on the third alarmed gate that led to The Compound pressed the buzzer on the control panel irritably. “Confinement Wing, this is Stan at Gate Three. I’ll ask again, nicely this time,” he said sarcastically, “there is a vehicle here, already cleared by Gates One and Two, requesting entry into the wing. Are you going to fucking answer me or what?”

No answer.

Scowling, he put down his rifle and walked back over to the pretty young lady who was standing at the front desk. She smiled at him as he returned, pushing a stray lock of red hair from her violet eyes. “any luck?” she asked.

He shook his head. “They won’t answer, the assholes. Oh, pardon my language, miss.” He sat back down at his chair and took another bite of his iced doughnut.

“So…are you going to help me?” she asked, laughing.

“I’d like to, miss,” he spluttered, so that Jesse watched in disgust as several sticky crumbs landed on her shirt. She brushed them off in annoyance, “but I’m not allowed to admit you until they answer. ‘VIP’ or no, I can’t make up the rules for you. You’ll only have to wait a little while, anyway. They’re probably changing over to Night Watch, or something.”

“But can’t you-“

“No, not even for pretty little things like yourself.” He grinned, “of course, there are ways to make me change my—“

At that point, Jesse reached over and snapped his neck like a twig. The look of agonised surprise on his face as he slid to the floor would have moved her to tears at any other time, but Mael was gone and she no longer felt so philanthropical, anymore.

Tossing her head lightly, she walked back to the black Mercedes, its engine still running impatiently. She slid into the front passenger seat, where an irate Armand glared at her. “That took far too long, Jesse. Next time, leave the talking to me.”

“I tried to spellbind him,” Jesse retorted, “But he was too busy looking at my body to return my gaze, much. Besides, the last gate has to be opened by the people *inside* the compound, not the guard, so we’ll have to force our way in there.”

“I don’t even so why we should bother,” said Armand, putting the car into gear and driving towards the main compound, “we’re going to have to take on limitless amounts of trigger-happy fools simply to uncover the secret of a prison. There you go; it’s a prison, probably for people they don’t like much.”

“But why would they be so secretive about it—“ began Jesse.

“because it’s illegal.” Cut in Armand.

Daniel, sitting on the leather-lined seats in the back with a reticent Khayman, here merely to protect Jesse, spoke up then. “Come on, Armand—what about all the damned security about? The amount of people they have protecting the place, there’s surely got to be—“

“It’s a prison!” shouted Armand in exasperation, and he was so irritated by their sincere but, to his mind, rather simple, reasoning, that he was in a dark and quiet humour for the rest of the night.

***

Getting past the imposing high electric fences that were infamously guarded with sub-machine guns day and night wasn’t all the hard. In fact, it was rather simple—open as they were, with the two sets of guards on either side deadly silent as their blood dripped down from the watchtowers to spatter the car in red.

“What the hell happened here…?” asked Daniel, as Armand stopped the car and the four vampires got out, rather nervously.

“A trap?” asked Jesse.

Nobody answered her. The entire place reeked of death. There was so much blood spilt, and so recently, that it was severely limiting their ability to think.

Daniel gazed at the building around him in sheer wonder. It was shaped like a bull-ring, a towering mass of cells and rooms that could house hundreds of prisoners, or at least those that Marcus Stone thought of as enemies. The architecture was clever, though; they looked more like run-down university halls than cells, and it was only through a tip-off (if Jesse reading it in a dying man’s thoughts as she drained him was a tip-off) that they had ever brought their attention to this place.

As it was, it was hidden amongst a forest of evergreen trees on some neglected back-road deep within the countryside. Certainly, one would have trouble finding it by car—and who, flying overhead, would ever suspect its dark secret? It was simply some quaint reminder of the twentieth-century; an antique to the people of today ,dating all the way back from 1991.

“Do we dare go inside?” Asked Khayman.

In answer to that, Jesse stalked over to the huge security doors at the front of the building, ignoring the others’ pleas for caution. She fully intended to break down the doors, but there was no need; they were open, inviting her inside with sinister intent.

She pushed Daniel in ahead of her. “Go on, Molloy.”

Scowling, Daniel pushed her back, then entered hesitantly. He wished he had a gun with him—if people were waiting to ambush them, he dreaded it—bullets were rather painful to take, machine guns were like peppering oneself with thousands of bullets all at once.

But the place was empty. There was not so much as a heartbeat, as he entered into the grand hallway, where there was an oak desk, a sign saying ‘reception’, and a metal-detector. He walked through it, jumping in shock when it went off, taking offence at the Rolex watch he was wearing.

The others laughed behind him, and he turned, sneering .”Shut up, you cowards.”

They followed him across the hall, glancing left and right at the numerous corridors leading off, and then up to the stairs, where a young man dressed in military uniform, camouflage pants and shirt, lay sprawled on the steps, his eyes wide open in terror, his throat ripped out.

Armand kicked the corpse aside as they mounted the stairs, so that it tumbled to the floor, a trail of fresh blood following the descent.

The sight before them unnerved each vampire, but each kept silent. What had happened? Had Lestat been here before, perhaps, because a vampire such as him would have had no trouble ambushing a few guards and one young man. But the place was so sinister, so quiet, and everything could only have happened a few hours ago at most.

They walked in a tight knit together, Armand’s cool exterior falling for a moment when he realised that the killer may still be stalking the corridors even now. Nevertheless, he closed his eyes as he pushed open a heavy fire door that led to the cells.

The corridor was a clean, modern-looking aesthetic; tiled floors and heavy metal doors with a small peephole for each one. Armand could imagine the torturing and the terror that went on in each one, and in the first cell that was open, he glanced a low bed, a toilet, a heavily-barred, minuscule window. And, of course, the sad figure of a prisoner, in grey, ripped clothing, sprawled across the bed. No need to investigate the nasty wound at his throat, the cause of all the blood staining the blankets.

Sighing, he drew back and left the room, to leave Jesse to gasp in horror like some damned mortal, and for Daniel to take off after him. “Armand,” he began, “I don’t understand—“

Armand declined to answer as he stalked through the corridor. Everywhere, the same. The prisoners killed, the guards slumped, dead, on the floor. They would have their throats ripped out, or strangled with sheer brute strength, as if attacked in a frenzy.

He stopped at one particular cell, because the unmistakable scent of vampiric blood hit his senses. It did not have the musty tang of human blood; it was unmistakable, overpowering. There was a bloody handprint in the doorway; the metal door, so phenomenally heavy that even Lestat might have had a job in trying to move it, was twisted off its hinges. He looked inside, where everything was chaos.

The others crowded about him, obviously attracted by that same scent, gazing in horror and wonder at the overturned bed, the camera that had been ripped from the wall and crushed into mere shards. There was blood everywhere, human and vampire. It splattered the walls, pooled on the floor. The dead man lying at Armand’s feet had almost been torn apart—though he was half-drained.

“I’m getting sick of these little ‘surprises’,” muttered Daniel.

There were deep claw marks in the cell door. Someone, the vampire, had clawed at it in desperation, or madness, or both. “What on earth-“ whispered Jesse. “Who…or what, do you think was here?”

“Are there any survivors?” asked Daniel.

Armand scowled. “From this wreckage? I doubt it. No human, no beast for that matter, could have wreaked such carnage. Of course, it could only-“

“…Be one of us,” cut in Khayman. “A vampire.”

“And one that is crazed, and most probably wounded.”

“It could simply be a really, really mad vampire.” Said Daniel helpfully.

Jesse grimaced as she bent forward to pick up the shredded remains of one of the pillows, inhaling the scent carefully. “I don’t recognise the scent. I don’t know who it is.”

Daniel gave Armand a questioning look. “Surely they tried to keep someone captive…”

“You don’t think-“ began Jesse in horror.

Armand’s eyes were gleaming in the darkness. Jesse thought she saw a faint line of red gathering in the corners of them. When he spoke, his voice was strange; it sounded laboured, unhappy. “No, I don’t.” he said shortly.

They did not speak until they were back outside and driving away from that place of death, all of them subdued and chased by the ugly images and dark reality they had been presented with.

Part 8

What a wicked thing to do
To make me dream of you
--Wicked Game, Chris Isaak

***
The Night Island—

***

Armand watched as Daniel and Khayman sat playing chess in one of the extensive lounges of his mansion. They had almost entirely forgotten the events of the other night; that ugly place, the blood… Armand had thought of nothing else.

Daniel had tried to shrug it off. “Well, don’t be so despondent. Someone just did our job for us, that’s all.”

And that had been the end of the discussion.

Armand did not press the matter. He did not feel much like talking about it, though Jesse had pressed him. She was unconcerned; she did not recognise the blood. Well, she wouldn’t. Not after all this time.

To Armand, though, it meant everything. That scent had been evocative of Nineteenth-century Parisian nights and rain and incredible beauty. He closed his eyes and sighed, remembering the first time he had ever caught that scent, carried on the cool night air—and watching a horribly beautiful young vampire child walking alongside him. Black hair, green eyes, so slender, so timid and human. That man had meant so much to Armand; a lesson in humanity and love in the darkness of the vampire’s world. He could never forget him, or his scent.

He had known, from the very first moment he stepped into that cell, that Louis had been there. And all that destruction, all that bloodshed…

He turned, miserably, and tried to focus on the game of chess once more.

***
Marius’s home, New York

Marius paused for a moment, a piece of charcoal in hand, to contemplate how his artwork was coming on. He was not fully sure why he had chosen this one as his subject; perhaps it was all the furore that he been stirred up recently. Perhaps he was simply caught up in memories and the shadows of imagined things so that it was inevitable, as he started to draw, that this would be the outcome.

The night was still young; he would most likely go hunting in a few hours. But for the moment, he was at peace with the world, pretending that he was some mortal artist, his guest a modern youth. He glanced at the figure of Lestat, through the open window, sitting there just outside, reclining in a bench like some golden lion. He smiled. He was glad for Lestat’s company. He felt that they both needed it right now.

The coven never really gathered much anymore. Armand had rushed to Lestat’s side at the loss of Louis, because the love they both held for that beautiful creature had been their one common trait. He had been met with derision, a cold refusal to talk of something so close to Lestat’s wounded heart. Marius had understood Lestat, but still, he hurt for Armand—it had been as much an ugly shock for Amadeo, too.

They had never thought anyone would target them; surely the mortals would bow to their superior strength, their savagery? Well, Louis had been the one to demonstrate that the coven had been wrong. Although they had lost another few after that, Eric, Mael; it didn’t matter to Lestat. It never really mattered to Marius, either. Something precious, indefinable had been taken with Louis, and this truly was the waste land.

Marius himself thought it was a downright travesty, that someone so unique and beautiful be taken. He frowned as he worked at the sketch. He swept the charcoal over the crisp white paper, creating here, with his hands, a mass of shimmering black hair.

Maharet and Mekare, ever the lofty goddesses, had refused to be drawn into this war. They had seen countless civilisations rise and fall; this, to their minds, was no different. After one of their own kind had been taken, surely they would intervene? But spare, passive Louis was nothing to them but Lestat’s companion. He was not Jesse. Thus, Lestat had become something of a figurehead for the coven and the rogues alike. He entered war with child-like excuberancy. Marius supposed that was to be predicted, though- it wasn’t as if he had guns or assassins to fear, was it?

Lesta fought with a shocking ruthlessness. He tortured enemies, grinning in the face of their pain. And the rumour was, many lovers had entered his flat with him and never come back out. He had no time for the coven. He had no time for anything, any more. Just war. Lestat was every inch the ruthless killer he had always professed himself to be; his last remnants of humanity were being washed away in a baptism of blood. Marius found it hard to remember the same creature that had talked in a low, passionate voice to his quiet fledgling on one enduring time at the Night Island.

And now, everything had changed so swiftly in a matter of weeks. Mael was dead. Suddenly, Maharet was taking charge of everything, and Lestat was apparently content to allow that. He was still full of rage, but now Louis haunted him more than ever and Lestat was lost in dreams.

Marius suspected that was why Lestat was visiting him so often, now; not only as a means to combat the loneliness, but because he was so uncertain of where the land lay at this point. Lestat would spend hours alone, virtually ignoring his friend, when he would suddenly erupt in a series of questions, rages, ideas. His heart belonged to Louis, as it had for hundreds of years, and now he was full of passionate expectation. It was an infectious mood that he carried, now, but Marius was full of foreboding.

So Mekare had seen Louis in some vision. So what? Did it mean anything, nearly nine years on? David’s vision had been disturbing in the extreme—and still, there was the simple fact that for years, there had been no trace of Louis. Shouldn’t the coven try to move on?

He blinked and stepped back from the drawing in surprise. Almost unconsciously he had worked at it, creating it from memory. There, the sweep of that black hair, the expressive eyes, that slight, lop-sided smile he had sometimes blessed you with.

He sighed and placed one hand on the portrait; lovingly drawn, but so flat, because people would believe it too ideological- nobody of such perfect features existed- well, not any more. It seemed that this little portrait answered Marius’s question far better than words ever could have.

The worst thing about Louis, he decided, was that he was very hard to forget.

**********





Two weeks, three weeks, I stayed with Marius, Sometimes I needed his company when I felt that all-encompassing loneliness clawing at my soul every now and again. His beautiful house and the idyllic, well-kept gardens that surrounded it, gave me pause to think. And it was on one otherwise ordinary summer’s night that I had a vision that did at least offer some comfort to my battered soul for the first time in a very long while.

I had been sitting there awhile, ignoring the rising bloodthirst, a thirst I had neglected for a few days now. I listened to the sounds around me, gazing up at the glittering stars until I felt hypnotised by them. I was lost in their white-hot depths, imagining myself walking amongst them. I closed my eyes against the silver stream of moonlight above and then…

I dreamed.

I was walking across a landscape illuminated from within; pure white rock, whiter than my own skin. There was nothing else but this rock and the stars glittering overhead in solemn silence and the void was vast and content. I felt the crunch of my boots on the surface, revelling in the beauty around me. I realised I was walking on the moon.

So savage and so beautiful and gentle—I knew whom this was for. And there he was, rounding the curve of a luminous rock, his black hair loose and curling in the wind. Against the whiteness of the moon, his green eyes lit up like brilliant jewels. I had forgotten how wondrous they were. He was wearing a white shirt, like my own, just showing a glimpse of delicate collarbone and that dusting of freckles; the cotton pants he was fond of wearing in hot climates. My Pagan beauty, walking along with no shoes on his feet and graceful turns of his heel, always one with nature. He strolled along like he was a tourist, taking in the sights and sounds of the moon. He turned to me and smiled.

“So this is where you’ve been.” I said fondly. I wanted to throw my arms around him, but somehow it didn’t seem right. This was his place and I was out of my league. He was mine, as he ever was, but it was different, somehow.

He nodded. “I always told you I’d be all right, didn’t I?”

I nodded back at him. I looked down, feeling the hot tears prick my eyes. “Yeah.”

He walked closer to me, his smile becoming tender. “I’m not *gone,* you know.” He said lightly.

“I know.”

“And you know I love you, yes?”

I nodded again, as the lump in my throat became so painful that I gasped. “Louis,” I said, “it’s so dark down there. Can’t I stay here, with you?”

He shook his head. “Now, you know you can’t do that. It’s not right for you, simply not *savage* enough, my friend.”

I had known he would say something like that. I would probably have to go to some awful, fiery place like Mars. I reached out my hand to touch him, and he took it in his, just for a moment, so that I could feel the cool strength of his long white fingers encircling my own. It reassured me. “When are you coming back?” I asked. “Are you coming back?”

He smiled. “Of course I’m coming back. I simply have to sort some things out first; things that were puzzling me before I left.”

“I miss you.” I said. I meant it, too. I missed his company, and his beauty, and the way he always kept the loneliness from taking a firm grip on me.

“I do think about you,” he said, “and I think about so many other things. It’s too much, really, but I’ll come through it all.”

“When?”

He smiled. “Don’t you know, Lestat? That’s what I came here to tell you. I’m coming home, finally.” His smile widened, and he repeated it to himself, as if delighting in the comforting words rolling off his tongue. “I’m coming home.” He paused. He looked around himself like he had that night in California, before the concert, so many years ago. I knew it meant he had to go, but not from the sun, this time. Something was calling him back. “Watch out for me, won’t you?” he asked.

“Yes.” I murmured. He began to walk away, and I knew it was futile to try and stop him. I looked up. “Louis,” I shouted, “where are you, anyway?”

He turned, smiled at me and shrugged, as if amazed that I had not worked it out yet. “Oh, come on, Lestat!” He laughed softly and then was gone.

Somewhere, a man and a woman were arguing. The woman was saying what an idiot the man was, that they had taken the wrong turning because of him, and I awoke with a jolt to hear her shrill, unpleasant voice. The sky had grown a little darker, but the crickets were still serenading the night, the occasional car sauntered past. I stared at the lush little lawn, and the sprawling beautiful garden further ahead, at the smooth marble statues carved into delicate figures, and then I gazed up at the moon, remembering that strange experience. I was certain that this was some sort of monumental vision, neither a dream nor out-of-body experience, but somewhere in between. I was certain that, for a few blissful moments, I had talked with Louis’s soul. But, more than all this, I was certain that he was alive. And he must have been striving to speak with me as I had pined for him! Surely some yearning within both our souls had transcended the boundary between fledging and maker, that we were able to find some common ground for a few precious moments.

So what now? Renew the search for him? Of course I would. I could never leave it like this—he had obviously wanted to speak with me. I thought that he could not be awake, that maybe he was lying somewhere in a kind of sleep, or a trance. I had a lot of work ahead—I could never give up on him, now. The vision was all too painfully real.

“I’m coming home, Lestat.” The words echoed through my mind continually. I expected to be filled with anticipation, happiness, but a certain sense of expectant dread clutched at my heart. Louis, home. It seemed too unreal—something to be confronted.

For now, though, I leaned back in my chair, listening to the sounds of the night and replaying that dream in all its detail. I imagined that he was sitting here, right beside me, and speaking in that low, melodious voice he had used when reading to me. I told him I loved him, and that I would find him. And finally I sang to him, old French songs that only he and I remembered, and Creole love songs, then my own, and anything I could remember. He harboured a strange liking of Madonna’s earlier work, and I sang them in homage to him, my words drifting away on the night air. I hoped that, wherever he was, he could hear me.

Part 9

Warning: Suggested…stress on the ‘suggested’ M/M content, not so suggestive as a Freudian reading but more than one would find in a Barbara Cartland novel, anyway.

***
All alone in space and time--
There’s nothing here-
But what’s here is mine.
- Placebo, “Every Me and Every You”

***

Two Weeks Later—

The basement of “Alykos’s Greek Restaurant” was a squalid affair. The place itself, more of a fast food bar than a restaurant, was nestled on a crowded New York sidestreet. A “Closed for Refurbishment” sign hung in the grimy windows, but the only refurbishment taking place was the continual destruction of the shop by a veritable plague of rats.

Alykos, real name Alex, had run into financial difficulties; the place itself was no longer an asset so much as a millstone around his neck. Thus, the refurbishment sign had gone up and rot set in.

It was raining heavily outside; and through the damaged roofing, the rain came in, creating puddles of muddy water along the dusty floors. The rain soaked through the quaint floorboards, and through to the basement, dampening the deserted rows of glass bottles and rotting food that the rats habitually plundered.

Tonight, though, they were wary, the fur on the scruff of their necks raised in terror as they gazed with beady eyes from the corners of the room at the sleeping vampire nestled amongst *their* crates of food.

They watched as drops of rain ran along the floorboards above, holding themselves suspended over the predator for a moment, before plopping onto his still features. Then there was an unearthly groan, and, squealing in terror, the animals scurried back to their hiding places.

He furrowed his eyebrows as another drop hit him, square in the face, so that he rubbed at his wet and cold features in irritation. He sat up slowly, tentatively, because his body had not yet fully healed, peppered as it had been with bullets and beaten mercilessly with batons, bars, anything his captors could lay their hands on.

He blinked furiously and opened his eyes into the darkness of the cellar. There was a slight draught, from the hole in the brickwork that he clambered through last night, before sealing it shut with crates and boxes, anything he could find in his haste to find a resting place. It took him a moment to orientate himself, to remember where he was, who he was.

He was cold and still so tired. He glanced down at his body, where flashes of white and often bruised flesh could be glimpsed in the ripped and bloody remains of his grey jumper. The thirst was raging in him, though he had hunted America like an animal for the past few weeks, leaving a bloody trail from Connecticut to New York. And now he was here.

He jumped down from the crates he had stupidly lain on, and staggered over to the other end of the cellar, where a cracked window pane had been stored.


He wiped away the dust from the grimy window, uncaring of the grime that coated his ripped sleeves. He felt a sense of quiet satisfaction as, for the first time in years, he gazed upon his own reflection. His black hair was tousled and snarled, thickened with blood. He looked a fright, so pale and gaunt in the failing light. Those green eyes, though—they were sharp and clear and possessed with the power of the knowledge that he now carried. They were exceptionally bright and beautiful, even he knew that. He was tired and alone and ethereal in the shifting light. But above all, he was Louis. And he was home, finally.

***

The nights were cooling rapidly, and each tiny raindrop was a shock to his bruised and battered skin as he made his way through the darkened streets. He kept to the side roads, away from the crowds, in an attempt to soothing his frayed nerves and his aching head. Where he was even going, anyway?

He stopped and looked around, at the familiar streets—even after all this time, he knew the place intimately. It hurt to walk, though—what had those idiots done to him? He blinked against the rain, staring up into the heavens with a sigh. The sky was overcast and he could not see the stars. He wished he were back up there.

With a scowl, he stalked on. What nonsense, *back up there*, indeed! He was as earth-bound as he ever was; they were merely strange dreams. But then, he had been talking with Lestat, on the moon…

Lestat. He shivered and pulled the remnants of his ragged clothes around him tighter, He would have to kill, and steal some clothes. He was a disgrace, a fright to behold, if the mortals avoiding him were anything to go by. He was so tired, he wanted to go home and forget about everything. Weren’t they going to go to the theatre? And where was his mobile phone? It had been in his pocket, with the coat that the blast had reduced to rags.

His head hurt so much. He wanted to sleep away the night, and the next night, in Lestat’s arms. But he was no fool. He crossed the street, heedless of the traffic that screeched and horns that were blasted at him in anger. “Hey, pal, watch were the hell you’re going--!”

“Fucking idiot!”

“Almost caused a crash---“

Silly mortals, and their silly little lives. Didn’t they know he had bigger things to contemplate? He had to get home… And what if Lestat no longer wanted him? What, then? Louis was no fool; ten years was a long time, even to a vampire. But Lestat had to have him back, he had to. He had to let Lestat know what he had learned, and save him, finally…

With a strangled sob, he dragged the remnants of his filthy sleeve against his eyes. He almost wished he had simply stayed.

***

The receptionist at the exclusive Manhattan apartments, the grandest of all those in this part of New York, looked up in consternation at the young man that was guided into the building by a reluctant security guard.

The young man was dressed in ill-fitting clothes; a named shirt and smart trousers, but far too big on his slender frame. He appeared confused, irritated, but his eyes shone with fierce green intelligence.
“Stella,” said the security guard, leaning close to her and speaking in a low voice, “this guy was hanging around outside. He reckons he knows one of the residents here—he just wouldn’t let him up until I brought him in.”

Stella pursed her lips in disapproval at her colleague. She knew he had come to annoy her simply because he had taken it into his head that he loved her, and now he plagued her, day and night, with these little nuisances. “You could have just told him to go away!” she hissed angrily, and when the handsome young man moved towards her, she turned her automatic, how-can-I-help-you smile.

Glancing at the guard angrily, so that he stepped away a few yards, she turned her attention to Louis. “And just whom would you be looking for, sir?” she asked.

“Mr. Lafitte,” he whispered, hoping that Lestat hadn’t changed his alias in the time he had been away.

“Mr. Jean Lafitte?” asked the receptionist incredulously, drawing up images of that sexy, blond-haired man that always gave her a special wink when he sauntered past.

“Yes.”

She glanced at the security guard. He glanced back at her, raising an eyebrow. How could this scruffy young thing ever hope to even stand in the presence of this building’s most glamorous resident? She had to bite her tongue, hard, to stop from laughing out loud.

Louis scowled as he regarded these two mortal buffoons, degrading him like this. He wished Lestat were here, to blow up in indignation at how his fledgling was being treated. Gazing down at his scruffy appearance, though, he realised that Lestat would probably join them in mocking him. He had to fight down the rage within him that screamed he tear them both apart. No, not again. Not that madness, again.

Stella pulled herself together. She smiled in her most sickly way at her guest. “I’m afraid Mr. Lafitte is not available to receive you at the moment.” She said.

“That’s no hindrance,” he said, “I co-own the apartment, too. If you’ll just let me up—“

“I’m afraid not, sir. There is no evidence of another owner. Simply Mr. Lafitte.”

Louis glared at her in annoyance. “If you’ll just check—“

She clasped her hands in front of her and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need to, sir. I know the facts.”

“You weren’t even here the last time I was!”

“And when would that be, sir?”

He scowled. “What does it even matter?”

Stella sighed, as if explaining to a small child why he should not touch the hot pan. “Look, I can’t allow you up there without Mr. Lafitte’s express permission. You’ll have to come back some other time.”

Louis ran his hand through his silky black hair, a gesture that always seduced Lestat but meant nothing to a power-hungry receptionist. “Do you at least have a number with which I can contact him?”

“No.”

“For goodness’ sake,” he shouted, losing his temper. “I haven’t seen him for nearly ten years! Surely… surely he’d maybe like to see me after all this time?”

The receptionist sighed. “Sir… maybe he does not.”

The vampire knew that if he did not leave within the next few minutes, he was likely to kill them both right now. And yet, he needed to talk with Lestat! He knew that his maker was not up there, she was telling the truth about that at least—but where was he? Why wasn’t he there when Louis needed him most? And where would he go now?

Can we help you with anything else?”

“No,” he murmured, drawing the sweater of that night’s victim about him more tightly. “I’ll be fine. I’ll…” he turned to go.

“Would you like me to leave a message?” she called out, suddenly feeling her heart ache for his vulnerability, his gaunt look and soft eyes.

“No.”

And then he was out on the street and into the night.

“Bloody weirdo,” said the security guard, and then he turned back to Stella with a leery grin.

***

The rain was coming down in a near-torrent as he walked dejectedly along the pavement. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm was sounding—police or ambulance, he no longer knew the difference. Everything seemed so dark and built-up now, vastly more ugly and strange in ten years than it had progressed in his entire lifetime.

He wished he could remember Lestat’s number, but it was probably no good now, anyway. Everything had changed. Everything changed too fast.

Where should he go now? He felt like he was going to drop dead of exhaustion if he did not find somewhere warm and safe to stay. He needed to see another member of the coven before he went mad with loneliness in this newly dark world.

***

It was nearing dawn when David heard the light tapping on his door. He had been preparing to retire for the day when he heard the rapping. He paused, listening. Someone was out there, standing in the rain at the steps to his apartment. A vampire. Not Lestat, because he never knocked, and too sudden and unexpected for Marius.

It could be a rogue vampire, he thought, as he walked towards the door, but who would be stupid enough to try and take him on? And then he opened the door and a soaking wet Louis was standing there, staring up at him like some pathetic waif.

David actually jumped back in sheer shock at the sight before him. He stumbled against the little table in the hallway, his mouth wide open. Louis wiped the rain away from his hair that was dripping into his eyes. “”Hello, David,” he sniffed, his voice low and infused with that unique French accent, “I’m sorry to do this to you, but I was so tired and lost and I just needed somewhere to stay for the day---“

***

“Come here,” said David, taking the towel from Louis’s hands. He had watched the tiring vampire try to dry his hair off for the last few minutes, only to glance around in confusion every so often. He stood behind Louis and ran the fabric across his head, marvelling at the feel of the soft black hair beneath his fingers.

He had wanted to bombard his friend with questions; where had he been? How had he escaped? Was he all right? What had happened? But he did not ask these things. Louis looked so tired and unhappy, though his eyes shone with brilliant awareness of what was going on.

“I know that you have things to ask me,” said Louis, his voice muffled beneath the towel, “and I’ll tell you them, but David, I need to find Lestat. I need to tell him some things. But above all else, I really need to sleep.”

“Of course,” said David, running his hands through the silken hair, “I won’t push you. I’ll prepare the spare room for you—“ he made to move away.

“No!” said Louis. He gazed with green sincerity into the concerned brown eyes of David. “Don’t leave me alone. Not tonight, after all this time I’ve spent alone. Let me sleep with you.”

“Louis,” he began, “I don’t—“

“Please.”

David frowned. What could he say to such a request?

***

“So where is Lestat?” asked Louis, as he settled down against David. The house was locked up, the blankets around him were warm, and he could hear David’s heartbeat soothing him to sleep.

“He’s… with Marius. He’s staying there for a while, to talk things over—“

Louis smiled. “Marius sorting his head out for him again?”

“Well, some strange things have been going on…” said David pointedly.

“I know,” said Louis with confidence, and David did not doubt that he did. He reached over and ran a hand tentatively against Louis’s cheek. Louis did not react, and he watched him in wonder. He became alarmed when he saw the crimson tears collect in those green eyes and run down the smooth cheeks.

“Louis,” he whispered, mortified, “I’m sorry, I---“

“Don’t be,” murmured Louis. “I’m all right, really. It’s just…” he lay his head against David’s shoulder, and David frowned. Louis was beyond his ken. All this, was beyond his—

Louis looked up and kissed him full on the mouth. He was still crying.

“Louis, what are you-“ He whispered, as Louis ran his hand across his face, the move bold and erotic and so unlike Louis that it disturbed him.

“Sshh…”

“You don’t want this,” said David softly. His voice was full of foreboding, but he did not move away.

In reply, he shifted closer to his friend. He wound his arms around his strong neck and gazed into his eyes, unblinking, unmoving. He knew that David would be seduced by his touch.

After a long moment, David shifted against him, entwining his stronger legs around Louis’s, holding him close. It was a betrayal, they both knew, but it was inevitable and sadly fitting and they did not speak throughout it.

After sex, Louis saw the sense of guilt and unhappiness swirling in David’s eyes. He felt no such qualms, himself. Lestat would understand. There wasn’t enough time to fight over such trivial matters, there was no reason to hold things like this to the heart when…

He closed his eyes as David kissed his forehead. He felt the cool, relaxing press of his friend’s lips on his eyelids, his cheek. He nuzzled further into David’s neck, simply wanting comfort. It was not Lestat, but it would do. After so long alone and aloof from them all, any affection was something to embrace. He murmured sleepily against David, and then fell into a dreamless sleep.
***
TBC…

Well, I guess Louis has a lot of sorting out to do. Which is what he will be doing, with the help of Lestat, in the next chapter.

Part 10

The very next night:

When David awoke the next evening, he smiled in pleasure at the comfortable weight of Louis against him. The weaker vampire was still asleep, and in his curiously defenceless slumber, his hands curled against the pillow and that mass of dark hair spilling against his skin, he looked more beguilingly beautiful than David could even think to remember.

To look upon him, with his bee-stung lips and fine cheekbones, was to feel weak with the knowledge that something so beautiful had ever been mortal, a natural creature now assuming the gilded mantel of immortality. He knew full well in that one instant why Lestat had been so heart-broken over losing him; why he had struck out in bitterness and rage at a world that could dare to steal his Louis away.

The smile faded from his face abruptly. Lestat. The heated and intimate details of the previous night came flooding back to him in an instant. What had he done?

He stood up abruptly, moving away from Louis, feeling the guilt course through him like hot acid. Neither Louis or himself had really enjoyed the encounter last night; both knew it to be wrong. “Oh bollocks.” He mumbled. The swear word sounded silly and wrong in this room, in Louis’s presence, but to David it summed up the entire situation rather well.

***

Louis awoke with a murmur of contentment. He stretched in a most feline way, taking in his surroundings. The lights had been switched on, in this windowless bedroom, but for one blind moment his heart quickened. He couldn’t see outside; he was walled in; he was back in that prison, with the corpses lolling around him, their eyes wide open in terror, their throats gashed. He closed his eyes.

Stop.

Look; the pillows were so comfortable—there was a desk nearby, and a bedside telephone. If he so wished, he could pick it up and dial anywhere in the world. He was free. He was safe. And then he felt a vague, ridiculous notion of guilt, as if he *should* be back there, as if he belonged to them, his captors.

“So you’re awake.” The voice was spoken from behind him, and he turned, shocked, to see David standing over him.

“Oh,” he sighed, placing a hand to his forehead, “I thought it was… well, never mind.”

“Are you all right, Louis? You looked frightened then.”

He smiled ruefully. “Well, you did just creep up on me.” He took his hand. “And thankyou… for letting me stay here last night. Thanks for being there, when I needed you. You’re a true friend, David.”

The other vampire closed his eyes and swallowed. “No,” he said softly, “I’m not.”

“What?”

“We need to talk,” said David, sitting down next him. He seemed so serious and sad, doubtless torn by his loyalty to Lestat, that Louis had to smile.

“No we don’t,” said Louis. He sat up and pushed his hair back behind his ears. “David, I know what you’re going to say, and you can forget the guilt and the awful sadness. *I* pushed you into that last night—“

“You knew I wouldn’t resist you. You knew I wanted you…”

Louis nodded. “That’s true. And then it happened and now it’s a new night for us and that is in the past. Lots of things are past.” He reached down and picked up the scruffy shirt he had been wearing the night before. “Do you have anything for me to wear? This was like a tent on me…”

“No, my clothes would be too large on you” said David, feeling irritated at how easily Louis was brushing this aside. “Louis, will you listen to me?”

“I am listening, David.” Said Louis. He was pulling the sweater on over his body, grimacing at the dampness of the garment.

“For God’s sake!” Snapped David. He grabbed Louis by one shoulder and held him still. “What about Lestat? Don’t you care about him? Doesn’t he mean anything to you?”

The expression on Louis’s face changed abruptly. His smile fell, so that his face was a mask. His eyes glittered with cold green fury. “Don’t you ever say that to me again,” he whispered, his voice full of threat and malice, “I came back for Lestat. Heaven knows I hate this place, and its petty people and its wars, but I came back for him. How can you accuse me of such a thing?”

His reply was cryptic, confusing, but David knew that he had overstepped some personal boundary for Louis. In all his immortal life, he had seen his dark brother angry maybe twice. He knew when Louis was filled with real fury, and the sheer malice he sensed in him now was akin to those times. “Louis,” he began apologetically, “I don’t mean that. It’s only that you don’t seem so bothered as you normally would be.”

“I’ve changed,” Louis conceded. “Everything’s changed. But not the way I feel for Lestat. Not him.” He sighed. “Give me some privacy, please, to get ready, and I will talk with you about this.”

David nodded numbly, all his arguments forgotten in the face of Louis’s calm. He turned to his wardrobe and took out a casual sweater and a pair of ripped khaki pants—assuring Louis that yes, this was the style for twenty-somethings these days. “They’ll probably be a little too big for you, but, well, anything’s better than wet clothes.” He mumbled.

Louis took them and smiled gently. “Merci.”

***

Louis was out of the room within minutes. He was eager to be off, to find Lestat, and now, he realised, with a sinking feeling, he had created a quandary for himself that would have to be resolved with David before he went anywhere.

He walked into the living room, where David was miserably flicking through a magazine. He looked the very picture of guilty sadness. Louis felt for him, that he had made David succumb to the most basic of urges, human or vampiric, in what was a direct betrayal of his best friend. “David,” he said, walking over to him and sitting in the chair opposite. “I don’t want you to be full of guilt and self-loathing; it was my fault, entirely.”

“That doesn’t really matter, does it?” asked David, setting down the magazine and shaking his head. “Louis, when Lestat finds out—“

“Stop that,” said Louis, “he doesn’t need to find out.”

“He’ll know,” he whispered, “he’ll see the guilt on my face—“

Louis pulled up the sleeve of his jumper, in an effort to make it fit him a little better. David saw, with a pang, the dark and numerous bruises on his arms. He wanted to know just what had happened, but most of all—“And besides, David, it’s not like he’s a martyr.” He said. “I know… I know that he’s had lovers while I’ve been away…”

“Surely you can understand that. We all thought you dead.”

That green gaze was turned on him, and with horror, David realised he could very well guess what Louis’s answer would be. He was right. “I know that he was having an affair the night I went missing.” He said softly.

“So this was a form of revenge, was it?” asked David furiously.

“It’s nothing of the sort,” retorted Louis. He shook his head. He looked tired, suddenly, confused. “Don’t…don’t you see, David? It doesn’t really matter, does it? To him, it all meant nothing. To us… it means nothing.”

“His best friend and his lover, though! Still, it was wrong—“

“David,” said Louis sternly, “how can you even worry over such a thing! I needed you and you were there! You said yourself, it meant nothing!” He stood up and folded his arms, pacing the floor in agitation. “How can you carry on so! What it does it mean, at all, when there are other things to worry about? Why should we let this eat away at us when everything is moving forward so drastically and so finally towards chaos that nothing matters---!” He clasped his hands to his face, trying to quell the sobs and the anger. It was threatening to engulf him, then. Why did nobody understand?

David was at his side in an instant, laying his hands on his shoulders tenderly. He turned him around. “Louis, what’s wrong?” he asked, feeling confused and rather scared. “Why are you crying…”

His friend was shaking, so full of pure green fury that it frightened David, and then sorrow and fear. Of what, he did not know. He pulled Louis closer, holding him there, trying to quell his sobbing and his frayed nerves. He silently chided himself—he should not have pushed Louis, he had obviously been through so much… “I’m all right, David,” said Louis, drawing back, “really, I am.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked softly, stroking back a stray lock of hair from Louis’s face.

“Yes, there is. Please, contact Lestat. I want to see him. I want Lestat.”

***

Louis did not speak to Lestat on the telephone. He had asked David to simply ask their maker to come over, it was an emergency.

David placed the receiver back down and turned to Louis. “He’s on his way. He thinks that it’s something trivial—I hope you don’t scare him into a second death.”

It was a small attempt at lightening the atmosphere, but Louis did not feel much like smiling. He sat alone with his thoughts whilst they waited, listening to David move about the house. And then the front door was opened, Lestat never knocked, of course, and David was talking to him.

“This had better be important,” Lestat was saying good-naturedly, “I was watching a good domestic going on then—“ he stopped dead when he saw who was sitting there in the living room.

Louis looked up nervously as David stole away, leaving them in each other’s presence. Lestat was standing there in the doorway, staring at him as if he were some fragile thing that he was frightened to touch. It hurt Louis, to see his lover so estranged from him like this.

“Hello, Lestat.” He ventured.

“Hello, Louis.”

There was an awkward silence. Louis wished that David were back in the room, to ease the tension. He could not stand this! He did not like sitting here as if this man meant little to him when for years he had dreamed of him. “Did you—“ He began.

And with that, Lestat darted forward and had hauled him up into his arms. “Where’ve you been?” he sobbed, burrowing his face against Louis’s, “don’t you know how I’ve missed you!” he whispered fiercely.

Louis felt the tender trappings of love and devotion to Lestat clutching at his heart once more. This was why it was right to come back. He had been so lost, so lost. They both had. He felt Lestat’s arms tightening around his ribs, so that he felt as if the life was being squeezed from him. He did the same, embracing Lestat, learning once again the familiar strong muscles of his shoulders and back, and he loved him, he loved the feel of his golden hair, and his scent, and the fierce love Lestat had for him.

They embraced for what seemed like hours, and then Lestat was kissing him, across his face, his cheekbones, his nose, and again and again on his lips in what was less a carnal love than sheer unadulterated joy. “Louis, Louis,” he whispered continually, delighting in saying his name and having him there, able to hold him and have him there for the first time in years.

Louis smiled against his lips, kissing him back delightedly. “I love you,” he declared breathlessly.

“I needed you, and I missed you,” murmured Lestat, his breath hot against his cheek. Louis smiled. He was still unable to say those three simply words, even after this, and there was a time when he would haven turned away from Lestat, bitter and disappointed. Ah, but he knew now, didn’t he? He knew how the sheer love Lestat had for him choked back those words, and how Lestat meant it when he said he would do anything for him.

He could feel Lestat tensing, waiting for him to move away in anger, but instead he took his hand and sat down with him on the couch. “I expect,” he said tentatively, “you want to know where I’ve been.”

***

Louis sat back in the couch as he began to relate his story. It felt good, sitting in what he now saw as relative luxury, to be here with his friend and his lover and simply talk, even if it was annoying that Lestat would not let go of his hand no matter how much he asked.

“Well, as you both know,” he said, “it all started on that night when the banking strand of the city was destroyed. The night of the explosion, I had gone to the theatre regardless, Lestat. I knew you were angry, but I had hoped you would show up. I can’t remember everything… there was a sudden blast. There was rubble everywhere, people screaming. An alarm was going off.

“I was thrown to the ground, and the sheer heat of the blast was burning my skin. I was in agony—I think I must have screamed. And then someone was nearby, maybe a helper, I thought, until I felt myself being struck, over and over again. I must have passed out, because the next moment, I was in a cell.”

“What kind of cell?” demanded Lestat, “Who the hell had you?”

Louis sighed. “It was a resistance group. They were responsible for the bomb blast—you know, followers of that man, Stone.”

Lestat’s eyes were glittering dangerously.

“…And the cell was dark, so dark. There was a tiny window there, a mere slit, Lestat. There was a camera there, watching my ever y move. They told me, one false move, and I would be exposed to sunlight immediately. They knew I was a vampire… they were targeting me.”

“But why!”

Louis fixed Lestat with his gaze. “You. They wanted you to kill someone for them. They knew, with you on their side, that they would be virtually unstoppable. I was a means to an end,” he said bitterly, “they wouldn’t hurt me, they said, not if you came across—“

Lestat scowled. “Then why no ransom? Why the silence, Louis!”

The room was silent for a moment. Louis was lost, deep in thought. He started when Lestat rubbed his hand reassuringly. “Because, Lestat, because I’ve been asleep for the past eight years. I don’t know how it happened; one minute I was there, and afraid and crying out for you. And then…”

“I had a vision,” said David suddenly, “you were laying there, in a cell of the kind you have described, and then you were floating upwards, through space—“

Louis looked to Lestat, and he saw that his lover was watching him carefully. “You must be mistaken.” He said quietly.

“No,” David insisted, “Louis, it frightened the hell out of me, it truly did. I felt it all as if it were happening to me, and when…”

Louis jumped up. “Why do you keep insisting on this!” He snapped. “What is this, that I have to sit here and answer your ridiculous questions? “Floating” away, indeed!” He ran his hands through his hair in agitation, only to see his companions staring at him in consternation. “Lestat?” he asked in exasperation.

Lestat ran his tongue over his fangs for a moment, lost in contemplation. He watched the anger on Louis’s face soften to a look of silent pleading. “Let’s forget this, for now.” He said. He stood up and placed a hand on Louis’s arm. “We should be getting back.”

Louis nodded gratefully, as Lestat and David exchanged hesitant glances. They had learned virtually nothing from Louis, and there were still so many questions. They both knew, this tale was far from over.

***

“They said WHAT!” cried Lestat as he swerved to avoid an oncoming car after he had tried to overtake in a crowded lane. “Idiot!” he shouted at the driver.

“Lestat, it meant nothing, really, “ said Louis, “I only wanted to explain why I went to David’s—I don’t want you to make a fuss of this.”

His lover shrugged. “All right, I won’t.”

“Do you promise me?”

“I promise.”

Louis lay his head back against the seat and sighed. He knew from long experience not to believe that.

***

As they entered their apartment block, the first thing Lestat did was sneer maliciously at the security guard. “Lestat…” Louis warned, but Lestat was on a roll.

“Good evening,” he said grandly as he strode up to the desk, keeping one arm tightly about the waist of an annoyed Louis. He watched as Stella, sitting at the main desk, walked over reluctantly.

“Good evening, sir.” She murmured.

“This is my partner,” said Lestat., “he lives here, with me, and he comes and goes as he pleases.” He kissed Louis on the cheek, “say hello, Louis.”

“Hello,” Louis murmured back.

“Say hello to him, Stella.”

“Hello, Louis,” she said, feeling the humiliation creeping up her neck. She imagined she was blushing as furiously as that green-eyed bastard had last night.

“Now, Stella,” said Lestat, leaning against the desk, “I believe that you were rude to our Louis here.”

“Oh, sir—I apologise. It is just that you were away, and I thought that you would not want to be disturbed—“

Lestat sauntered forward. “If you ever so much as look at him the wrong way again, *Stella*, I’ll kill you.” And his eyes glittered in such a way, that she remembered a trip she had taken a few years ago, to a zoo, and there, amongst the childrens’ rides and the candy floss, a lion had fixed her with a cold predatory gaze full of what she saw as contempt. It had been placed behind thick bars and was a prisoner, but its soul was fierce and in any other place it would have torn her apart.

She was spellbound as he reached out and stroked her face. “Do you understand, my love?” he asked softly. She must have imagining it, but she thought she saw the flash of a fang in that generous mouth.

“Yes.” She said simply.

Nodding with satisfaction, he moved away, still keeping his arm possessively around his companion’s waist. As he entered the lift, she shivered. The last few minutes had been a blur, and she could remember nothing of them, but she spent the rest of that night feeling anxious and scared. When she went home, she was plagued with dreams of lions and blood and eyes that spat green malice.

***

“Here we are,” said Lestat, as he took Louis’s hand in his, leading him away from the lift and towards their apartment as if he had never been there, “home, Louis.” He said it with a quiet satisfaction to his voice, and Louis smiled tenderly, to see him so familiar and so different at the same time.

He opened the door and stepped inside.

The apartment was much the same as it had always been; granted, the furniture had been moved around, or replaced, but that was to be expected. The walls had been redecorated who knew how many times, and Lestat had had a bigger, better sound system installed, one of those devices that played the video to each and every song as well as drawing up countless useless facts for each artist.

He looked towards the main wall, where a painting he recognised still hung. It depicted an Irish landscape, where the waves of the Shannon crashed against the shore, stirred up by the setting sun. There was still a golden hint of it in the sky; bidding a farewell to that water until the next day.

Louis turned and smiled at Lestat, “You kept it up.”

“Well, even though I hated the damned thing,” an understatement; he had argued and fought with Louis for weeks over buying it, “I just thought you might like to come back to it.”

His lover smiled and squeezed his arm. Lestat grinned, watching as he broke away to stare out of the great glass windows of the room; retaining his little quirks to the last. He walked over to him and stood behind him, wrapping his arms around that slender waist and breathing in the smell of his hair.

“It seems lighter here, somehow,” said Louis, meaning the lighter décor that Lestat had picked.

“The shadows,” said Lestat, “they’ve left here, at last.”

Louis had no idea what he meant, and he didn’t question it. Instead, he leaned back into his maker’s embrace. “It’s good to be home, Lestat,” he said, meaning it.

“I thought you were dead, you know.” Lestat said softly. “I tried not to, I told myself that I didn’t believe it, but I thought you were gone.” He lowered his head.

Louis cupped his hand underneath his lover’s chin and raised it slightly, until Lestat’s face was level with his own. He took his face in both slim hands and kissed him full on the mouth. “That’s all past, now, Lestat. It’s all past.”

He took his maker’s hand and drew him onto the couch. Lestat lay down on his back, pulling Louis with him, and Louis followed, laying his body silkily against his maker. He met that stormy gaze and smiled into their swirling depths, feeling his heart gladden when Lestat did the same. The only sound was the ticking of the clock on the wall as they basked in their contentment. They were together again; they were Louis and Lestat, and together they felt as if they could take on the entire world.

Part 11

Louis--

The cell was darkening in front of him. They had placed something in his blood while he was asleep, he knew that now, and the poison was working its way through his body with every beat of his strong preternatural heart. He wondered, vaguely, if he was going to die like this. How miserable it would be, to perish at the hands of some mortal fools! Rather die at the hands of Santiago in blood and flame than in some miserable little cell. Well, perhaps not.

He closed his eyes and moaned low in his throat. The voices had caught up with him, now. They were telling him things, that he would not die, not yet. There were things to see. They wanted him to see these wonderful things…

Like death?

No, not like death. Other things…

Who were they, anyway? Demons?

Soft laughter. No, not demons.

The vengeful souls of those he had killed?

A pause. He deserved that, didn’t he? But no, they were not that, either.

What, then?

They wanted him to come and see.

Somebody came into the room after he had closed his eyes for a few minutes. Though it was night, and the thirst was as strong as ever, he could not move. But then, he did not really want to move, not even to escape, because already they were whispering things to him, things that made him want to weep. And then the silly mortal voices cut in through all that.

“I can’t revive him! What the hell happened here—“

“I told you! One minute the bastard was shouting and the next… his face just went blank. We watched him and he hasn’t moved, at all, for the past hour!”

“Why didn’t you realise something was wrong, then, you idiot? Why didn’t you do anything then!” A pause. “Well, you can go and wake the fucker up.”

“Like hell I am! It’s a bloody vampire-“

He wanted to cry out, to beg them to tell him what was going on. Why did he suddenly feel so… so constricted? His veins were pounding, his head throbbed and he couldn’t move an inch. He wished someone would come and rescue him, take him away from this confusing place.

*Oh, Lestat, where are you?*

He was regarding his body from a distance, though he knew that it was locked to others. He was outside of it, but this was no experience like that of Lestat. This was not some mortal or vampiric event, this was something else. He was still Louis de Pointe du Lac, he still possessed that body of black hair and green eyes and long willowy limbs, but for now he was free.

And then the room warped. The walls were closing in; the people were shouting louder, and then they were pointing to the CCTV screen in the corner. He turned his attention to it. The television screen began to expand, like chewing-gum, growing bigger and bigger before his terrified eyes. It exploded, in a vision of light and burning fire.

He woke up suddenly, with a gasp, and gazed into near-darkness. “Where am I? WHERE AM I?” He screamed. He was running his hands across his face, damp with blood-sweat.

And then something moved in the dark and was telling him to be quiet. He was all right, he was safe. Shut up, because he’d probably woken all the neighbours up. “What was it?” asked Lestat, pulling him close.

“It was nothing. A nightmare. A stupid dream; you know how it is.” His voice was muffled against Lestat’s chest. He burrowed his face further into that hard chest, wanting to feel the affirming strength of his lover.

“Are you all right?” asked that rich voice, as his black hair was stroked, combed away from his face.

“Yes.” He looked up, forcing a smile. “Hold me, Lestat.”

Lestat lay him back down on the bed, then lay on top of him, pinning him underneath his body. He liked this; he liked the comfortable weight of his maker against his own body, to feel safe and loved in his maker’s grasp. He stretched lazily and smiled as an affectionate kiss was planted on his lips. It was easy to forget, in Lestat’s arms; it was easy to let the world go by in a haze when he was with the person that completed him. Lestat was his savage side; Lestat was his darkness, full of a joy for vampiric life that Louis had never been fully able to embrace.

He moaned in pleasure as the kiss deepened, as Lestat drew back to regard him with possessive love, stroking his dark hair. His captors had not been so gentle, and he hoped he would not have to explain away the bruises, because then…

Lestat kissed him again, and he responded warmly, forgetting his troubled thoughts. “You know,” whispered his maker, grinning, “there are certain things I’ve missed doing while you were away…”

Louis tried to look innocent in the face of Lestat’s lascivious come-on. “Oh?” he laughed, “like what?”

In reply, Lestat pulled him closer, smiling like a predator, “Let me show you.”

***

“All right. Thank you for taking the time to call us. Yes, you too, thanks. Bye.” Daniel placed the receiver back down on the telephone and bit his lip thoughtfully. “Well, will wonders never cease?” he murmured.

He walked back into the lounge, where Armand was lazing on the couch, watching the same German Expressionist film for the third time that night. He did not look up as Daniel came in, instead completely absorbed as the eerie figure of Conradt Veidt crept through a sleeping German city in search of his next murder victim.

“Who was that?” he asked in a bored voice.

“David.” Daniel walked over and switched the television set off, to face Armand’s angry glare.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, annoyed, “it was getting to the best part—“ He pressed the remote, and the screen flickered back to life.

Daniel stood in front of the set, his arms folded, as black and white images flickered over his body. “Don’t you want to know what he wanted?”

Armand scowled. “All right, I’ll play along. What did David want, Daniel?”

His companion smiled ruefully. “He didn’t want anything. He ‘phoned to give us a little news.”

“Which is?” Armand asked, his eyes still locked on what he could see of the television screen.

“Louis’s alive. And he’s returned to Lestat.”

He was afforded Armand’s full attention, then. “Really?” asked his maker, suddenly looking as lost as the child he professed to be. “Is… is he all right?”

Daniel frowned. “David said he’s acting strangely. He kept flying off the handle…”

Armand smiled. “You and your endearing twentieth-century phrases, Daniel. Surely he’s got every right to be upset, after all that’s happened?”

“There’s more to it than that—“

“I know.” Armand furrowed his eyebrows and sighed. “Look, could you move out of the way? I’m missing the film.”

“Armand?”

“I know; I know. Just let me finish this and then we’ll go.”

“Where?” asked Daniel, confused. He sat down next to Armand and placed an arm around his shoulders.

“To New York, of course. After this.”
***

Louis smiled contentedly as he felt the smooth woollen jumper against his skin. It felt good, the relative luxury of this garment, green of course—Lestat had picked it out—against his body. He liked the physicality of everything around him, the clothes, the soft blankets, wet grasses, cool air, and Lestat’s soft lips against his own. And though his feet ached after being dragged around every late-night department store to gather together an updated wardrobe, he was able to even embrace this slight pain.

Lestat had put some soft music on; it calmed and soothed his frayed nerves. His companion took out some paperwork to check through, pushing Louis away even though there were finances, because “I *like* taking care of my own things now.” Louis had turned his attention to the vast collection of CDs before him.

It amazed him, again, at how much the world could change in a few short years. Musical tastes had gone around the block; through classics and pop and various new genres and back again. Of course, some people in these times regard such delights as The Spice Girls as ‘classics’, so Louis supposed there was no accounting for taste.

He picked up one CD, and was reading the songlist, when he heard it.

*Louis*.

So quiet that it was barely a whisper. He looked around, frightened, to see if Lestat had heard it, too. His lover was still writing, oblivious to the sound. Louis stood there, frozen, unhappy, when Lestat looked up.

“All you all right?” he asked.

Louis nodded, turning away from him. Lestat frowned and returned to his work, glancing up every now and then to keep a check on his fledgling.

*LOUIS*

Stronger now; a warning. Do not ignore all this, do not turn away from it. Reminding him, that it was there, that time was running out and always, always it was behind him. He could leave the flat or cross the street or take a plane, but the song would remain the same. He shuddered and closed his eyes, willing himself to ignore the curious churning feeling in his stomach.

***

It was as the night was drawing to a close that Lestat put aside all of his work and reading, and looked to where his fledgling was flicking through the almanac for that year. “Louis?” he asked in a low voice.

Louis looked up. “Yes, Lestat?”

The blue eyes watched him for a moment, deliberating. Lestat clasped his hands together, squared his shoulders and sat forward. It was a gesture meant to intimidate. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Louis regarded him warily. “I already have, haven’t I?”

Lestat shook his head, smiling, before speaking in a slow voice as if addressing a simple child. “No, my darling, you haven’t. You haven’t explained anything—you started off on some pathetic excuse and threw a tantrum worthy of myself when David asked you a simple question.”

“Lestat—“

“Are you going to tell me?”

Exasperated, scared, his fledgling stood up. “I already have!” He could feel the anger, the greater fear, eating at him already. He wanted to flee the room, to escape the questions and the troubles that would make him face up to—

Lestat launched himself at him. They fell to the floor, grappling silently, Louis intent on escaping, Lestat intent upon answers. They rolled over and over until Lestat inevitably outmatched him. He drew Louis’s hands above his head and pressed him down with his weight. Louis was gasping for breath as he lay his face against him, nuzzling him as if they were simply making love.

“Lestat, please,” he whispered, “don’t.”

“Just tell me, Louis. Tell me everything, and it’ll be all right. I’ll protect you from whatever it is that’s worrying you, that’s making you this way.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking!”

Lestat scowled. He caught his wrists in a tighter grip, staring down into his green fear with calm poise. “You’re going to tell me what’s going on, Louis,” he said softly, “you’re going to explain what happened—“ he placed his hand over his lover’s mouth to prevent any argument, “you’re going to tell me what they did to you, and how you escaped. You’re going to tell me what the hell is wrong with you.”

Part 12

*You’re going to tell me what the hell is wrong with you.*

I hadn’t known, entirely, what I meant at that point. What was wrong with him? On the surface, my lover was still the same Louis. He was as loving and as gentle as ever, but something was wrong, if one looked close enough. One example was how he was happy and content until I even *mentioned* something approaching a question. I would start, “But how—“ or “What was it like—“ and he’d be instantly on the defensive. Take that dream he had woken up from, screaming so that the whole damn block heard.

In the past, we would often lay in bed when he awoke, and talk of our dreams. It was a simple thing, something that demonstrated our trust in one another. Sometimes, if I had a particularly disturbing nightmare, I would keep it from him, to protect him. He never seemed to have such qualms about me—but tonight he had been so secretive! He was so secretive about everything, now!

Louis was struggling against me half-heartedly—he knew he could never hope to outmatch me in strength. He was sobbing uncontrollably, so that it disturbed me that simply wanting to know the truth had thrown him into a wild panic.

But I had to know! I did not like the way he kept glancing around, as if shadows were following him, or the rather pathetic tale he had fobbed myself and David off with. All this time I had waited for answers, and now he was refusing to give me any!

“Are you going to tell me?” I hissed in his ear.

“No.”

“Louis…” I growled, low in my throat.

“Lestat, please…” More sobbing.

Eventually, I’m pleased to say, I wore him down. At first, I refused to even let him get up—partly because I loved the feel of him beneath me—but he conceded that if he had to talk, it wouldn’t be laying in an undignified heap on the floor.

I let him up and took a seat on the couch. I had expected him to, as well. But he was so agitated and upset that he refused to sit down. He walked over to the windows and leaned against the wall nearby, glancing at the darkened sky every so often. “All right; I’ll tell you. I’ll try to explain it as best as I can, but it will mean little, really. The physical aspects are so mundane as to be barely worth explaining.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I smiled and nodded my head politely.

He turned to face me. “I have been asleep for these past few years, Lestat. That’s the truth. It’s the reason why I love to feel the fabric of the chairs as I go past them, or why I like standing in the rain—“

“You’ve always liked doing that,” I cut in testily. His lips fell into a pout so sensual and pathetic that I could not sustain my bad mood. “Please,” I said, “go on.”

“I was kept captive in a place in Connecticut—some old building that your friend Marcus Stone possesses. He *was* out to get you, and he was going to use me as a ransom. I had been laying there in the debris of that explosion, to feel hands about me. I was beaten and kicked, and in my delirious state I knew that I was being carried somewhere. I was placed in a van, or something large enough to contain my body—you have to understand, it was nearing dawn; I was weak, badly burned and the sun would make ashes of me if I wasn’t moved, and fast.

“I have no idea of what happened in the daylight hours, but when I next awoke, it was late at night. I was in a cell of some sort. I remember, I groaned because the pain was unbelievable. My flesh was burning from the heat of the explosion. I began to cry out for you, and then someone was outside the door. A human. He told me to be quiet—if I played along, I would be free in no time. If I didn’t… he reminded me that I was at their mercy. The door was solid steel—the walls thick. I would never escape, not in one night, and all they had to do was expose me to the sun.

“I was raging, then; but I knew he meant his words. He calmly explained the purpose behind all this; simply, that they needed an enemy of Stone’s taken out—you know that politician, the one who pledged to end his terrorism and is always surrounded by bodyguards? Him. All this happened because of a bloody stupid mortal conflict!

“The pain was too much. I was begging him, to give me water, anything, to at least ease the burning. He laughed, telling me that it was a good ploy, but it wouldn’t work—the idiot. It all came too much, and I was becoming feverish. I tried, Lestat, I tried to contact David, to let him know I was at least alive.” He lowered his head. “But of course, I’ve never mastered that technique.”

“I always warned you!” I snapped despite myself, “look where your humanity gets you!”

I expected him to become angry at those cruel words, but instead he nodded. “I know,” he said brokenly, “I know that sometimes I’m foolish in my sentiments—“

“You’re not,” I conceded, “I… I *like* that in you, your misguided attempts at rebelling against our life, your refusal to let go of who you were… but, Louis, it does you little good.”

He was gazing at me in wonder, lost in some faraway thought that I feared would require me shaking him to make him snap out of it. But after a moment, he shook himself, as if rousing himself from a dream, and continued: “Well, it did little good, anyway. My head hurt so much… I fell into some kind of mortal sleep, a doze to try and forget the pain. And when I next awoke…something was drastically wrong. I was sluggish and weak—and there was a certain scent in the air—a medicinal smell.

“They had poisoned me. I was later to learn, through simple eavesdropping, that a couple of men, dissenters to Stone, had hoped that getting rid of me would drive you to kill their leader. The entire movement, Lestat, it has more traitors than Caesar’s court. I was in terror; I could barely move—my arms felt so heavy, and every time I closed my eyes, I feared that they wouldn’t open again.”

I sat up on the couch. “David had that same vision. He said he dreamt you were struggling to stay awake, and then—“

“I know,” he said quickly, cutting me off. I glared at him suspiciously, but he was continuing in that calm voice of his: “…It was a losing battle. People were around me, demanding to know what had happened. The idiots who had poisoned me had been caught on camera, and the man in charge was demanding to know, did they know what they had done? They were all in danger now.

“But it was as if their voices were fading. I was drifting, as if entering a deep and pleasant sleep. It was so final…”

“You’re honestly expecting me to believe that poison drove you into a coma for the best part of ten years?” I asked. I was honestly insulted that he dared think me so gullible as to fall for that.

He closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose. I knew what he was saying, in that body language of his: don’t push me. Don’t force me to confront you on this. At last, he opened his eyes. “Believe what you want, Lestat. It’s the truth.”

Well, fine. Let’s try a different strategy: “…And the wounds on your body?”

He closed his eyes as he turned to face Lestat, bitter tears coursing down his face. “The remnants of my captivity; reminders. I don’t know all that they did to me, Lestat. I know that they experimented—that while I was asleep they took my blood. Perhaps they drank it--- no, I know they did. And now you have humans glutted on vampiric blood, not quite as strong as us, but faster, stronger than the average human.”

I understood the threat implicit in his words. Of course, this spelt trouble for the coven; men who almost matched the weaker vampires in strength, but who could play with the sun and perhaps even track us down—and above all, we knew the importance of anonymity. “Go on.” I said quietly.

He folded his arms, clasping his elbows defensively. He kept pacing, an agitated movement, back and forth past the windows. I wanted to shout at him to stop it, but I held my tongue. “…And this went on for years, Lestat. I dreamed in all that time—“

“What did you dream of?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, nonsense dreams. That I was walking in the sun. That I was riding through my plantation. That I was a child, playing hide-and-go-seek with my sister on a fresh sunlit lawn whilst my mother nursed Paul.” He shrugged. “Fanciful dreams. They meant nothing, finally.”

“And you didn’t dream of me?” I could not help bursting out.

He held my gaze; I thought something vaguely challenging crossed his face. “No, why would I?” he asked softly.

I knew that to be a lie; not only because of my own vision, but because he was obviously trying so very hard at that point. He was fighting his emotions, trying to keep his face set like a mask. Well, let’s play it that way. I’d find out sooner or later, anyway. I stared straight back at him, endeavouring to play along. Finally, he looked away.

“…I was almost completely unaware of my body for all those years. They did not know what to do with me; Stone had wanted to ransom me, but then those idiots poisoned me and they thought they had hurt me in some final way. Obviously, if you were to see me like that, you would kill him—but then you started picking off his family, anyway.

“Some of them wanted me dead. They did not like being around the nearest thing to the personification of the Grim Reaper itself. They also knew that while they had me, they were marked. But Stone could not allow this; if you ever caught up with him, his bargaining point could be that as long as he remained alive, so, too, would I. So they could do nothing but wait for me to revive.

“The poison was eventually absorbed by my body. It certainly wasn’t enough to actually kill me. At first, I could hear their voices trying to awaken me. They beat me—surely I’d rise and attack them? A mortal victim was placed in the cell with me, quivering and crying out in alarm—but I never rose to kill him. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t move—I couldn’t—but also that I simply wasn’t interested. Eventually, they removed him.

“I was walking the land of dreams, but I knew what was happening to my body when they first removed some of my blood. I could not feel the needle in my arm, but I knew it was there. I knew, too, that they were testing the limits of my body. They burned part of my arm—“ he rolled up his sleeves to demonstrate where, “—and it took almost two years to heal. They cut my hair and watched in fascination as it grew back. I was vaguely afraid that they would just open me up in their quest for knowledge, but they did not go too far. They were afraid—of you.

“They were delighted at the effects my blood wrought on them—they grew fiercer; their eyes were so strong that now they no longer fumbled blindly in the dark, but could make out detail in the night—just as we can. They were not stupid, though; they knew that to take too much was to inherit the weakness we suffer with the sun.

“Eventually, they seemed to lose interest in me. Of course, every so often someone would decide that they needed to see how long I would take to heal if I was cut, or if I would swallow blood instinctively if offered—I didn’t, but when they fed me it intravenously, my body was rejuvenated within minutes-- and so on.”

He had walked over to the desk, and leaned on the edge of it. He suddenly looked very fragile, with his bruised and battered body. I furrowed my eyebrows. “But why are you still so wounded? Surely you’d be healed by now?”

He grimaced. “How do you think I escaped, Lestat? Do you think they simply let me walk out of there?”

“What, then?”

“One day, I awoke. It was as sudden and complete as if I had awoken from the death-sleep. I even thought, for one moment, that I was back here. That I had fallen asleep for one day only. Of course, then I realised that I was in that miserable little cell. I knew that I had been away for a long time. The place was dusty and dark and I wanted to get out.

“I could hear people around me, shouting, screaming, praying. They tortured people there, you know. Other members of the splinter groups in direct opposition to Stone were incarcerated there. The noise was unbearable. I was thirsting; I was so painfully thin, and I could feel that savage part of me, the one that knows bloodlust and nothing else, growing more frenzied. I started to scream—in that high-pitched way that makes mortals mad.

“They were screaming, telling me to shut up. In one instant, I smashed that silly little camera with which they were watching my every move. I tore up the pillows, the bed. I scrabbled at the walls, uncaring of the blood that coursed down my fingers as I tore them against the brick.

“And then the door was opened and they were upon me. They had electrical batons, the kind that stun. They were beating me, mercilessly, and any other time it would have had me down. But, weak as I was, I was half-mad. It only took one instant to bring one of my assailants down, and then I was at his throat, ripping through the protective headgear he had on to get at his blood.

They had grown lazy in their neglecting of me, stupid, even. They had underestimated me. They drew back in horror as I gorged at this man’s throat. I was ripping him apart, snarling like some demented animal—“

I closed my eyes, wanting to shut out his voice. Sheer madness. An image came to me, of Nicki, raving and injured by what he had suffered. A dark fear was rising in me that this was the same thing with Louis.

“Lestat,” he was asking softly, “are you all right?”

I opened my eyes. “Yes.” I lied.

“Do you want to hear the rest of this?” he asked. “Because it is not what you want to hear. I am not mad, you have to believe that.”

“I believe you,” I said, but he read the uneasiness in my features. He glanced away miserably. “You have to understand, Lestat,” he whispered, “I had been starved. I was desperate to be away—like a caged creature. Get away, come back home, that was all my mind said to me. And I was up away from that body within a second. They fought to close the door on me, but I was in such a frenzy that I simply tore the heavy thing from its hinges.

“A red mist was swimming before me. I was snapping necks, biting out throats, barely stopping to taste the blood. An alarm was going off, and shots were fired—I could feel each stinging bullet, and it only maddened me further. I launched myself on anyone—prisoners, guards, snatching a gun from one man’s hands and turning their beloved weapons against them.

“I obviously managed to escape, but it is such a haze. I truly was mad in those minutes,” he said, looking at me quickly, “but it passed. When I next awoke, I was in some little backwoods house somewhere, buried beneath the raised steps to the house. I was covered in blood, my own, theirs, and my body was so sore and wounded.

“I was tired and confused. I wandered though Connecticut like some tramp, feeding every so often, attempting to gather my bearings. I had a rather silly notion that they might hunt me down and kill me, but I think any survivors of that massacre will probably be mad themselves, now. And then one night I was in New York.”

He looked up at me, and then regarded the scene outside, suddenly very quiet and sad. His green eyes shimmered in the ambient light, and he looked so ethereal, ghostly in that illumination that my heart ached for him. I felt a painful lump in my throat, and I wasn’t sure why. He seemed too gentle, I think. Despite what he had just told me, he was not meant for this world, these times. He did not like it, I knew.

“Do you think me mad?” he asked finally. He turned his saddened gaze to me.

“Surely,” I choked out, “surely you are exaggerating about your escape? I’ve heard tales, from the others, about the scene that greeted them there. Perhaps you are capable of it, Louis, physically—but…”

“…But I would never be so savage,” he finished for me. He shook his head and walked over to me. He sat down and leaned into my embrace. I held him there in my arms, trying to fight down the pain that was threatening to swallow me whole.

“What happened to us?” I murmured.

“Nothing,” he said, “the world simply got that much darker.”

“What am I going to do?” I asked, feeling the tears prick my eyes. I hated to cry in front of him! I wiped them away furiously, but they kept coming, because I didn’t understand all this and I felt so enraged and so helpless all at once. Why had any of this ever happened? He had suffered, was suffering, and for once I knew that lashing out would not solve anything.

We were like strangers now, groping for each other in the dark. Bound by a common love, but separated by something dark and final. I knew that he was holding something back, but in that instant, I did not want to know. I knew that whatever he was carrying with him was slowly destroying him. He was not the same Louis. He was stronger, now, and appreciated in his vampirism what he had not for centuries—and though I embraced these changes, I could not help but mourn the gentle and faintly timid soul that had wept one night at the beauty of a flower. He loved me, and he was the passionate soul he had always been, but he was right. Everything had changed.

Part 13

Hello, darkness- my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
[…]
“Fools,” said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.”

-- Paul Simon, “The Sound of Silence.”
***

Louis lived that next week in a flurry of activity. David was the first vampire who visited; and he felt obliged to apologise for his earlier outburst while all the time trying to sit poker-faced as David’s anguish over Lestat was all too apparent.

Marius was next; and almost as soon as he had arrived, Armand and Daniel were there. The reunions were becoming something of a cliché, he thought with a grimace. They all embraced him and marvelled at him sitting there, like some fine emerald jewel to be admired. Each of them talked for hours, but they eventually led to the same questions, so that he knew each reply by rote:

Yes, he had been scared.

No, he couldn’t remember everything.

Yes, the world had changed in a few short years.

No, he did not care for today’s fashion. He did not care for today’s people, either.

Armand was slightly different. He regarded Louis coolly, his searching brown eyes turned on him always, even when the others turned to talk of other things. He kept asking, “But what did it mean, Louis?” so that Lestat told him to stop being so bloody cryptic, trying to confuse his poor fledgling.

Louis was uncertain whether Armand could somehow read his mind, despite him shielding it constantly, even from Lestat when he fed from him. It disturbed him, that Armand might know what he did, but a strange fascination overcame him at the same time—Armand was not frightened. He was calm and thoughtful. If Louis was all emotion and sadness in the face of all this, Armand was a soothing effect upon his frayed nerves.

He wanted to ask the older vampire, what did he know? Did he understand it all? But, frustratingly, he never seemed to find time to be alone with him. Lestat had seen Armand watching Louis, and now, in typical Lestat manner, he would not let his fledgling out of his sight whilst Armand was around.

***

Armand and Daniel stayed with Marius for a few days after that, and Louis had expected them to return to the Night Island while life went on as usual for himself and Lestat in New York.

He was a little shocked, therefore, when he returned to the flat after a night’s hunting to see that Lestat had packed their bags. “Where are we going?” he asked, furrowing his eyebrows as Lestat locked up each case.

“We’re off to England,” he replied.

“England!”

“Oh, don’t look so despondent, Louis. It’s not that cold over there, yet.”

“But why?” asked Louis, following him through to the living room as he began to dial a number on his mobile telephone.

Lestat held a hand up to silence him, and he glared at his maker in frustration. “Hello. We’re ready. Yes, we’ll be there in a few minutes—“

Louis returned to the bedroom and sat down on the chair next to the desk. He hated how these little surprises were sprung on him; he didn’t want to go anywhere. He pouted as Lestat sauntered into the room. “Louis, don’t worry. We’re only going to be there for about a week. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“You could have told me, Lestat,” he murmured, “did you think that perhaps I didn’t *want* to go travelling—“

“It’s not a holiday, Louis!” Lestat snorted in exasperation.

“Then what?”

“Don’t you remember what we were all talking about the other night?” he asked. Louis’s face was blank. Lestat scowled. “Remember? Revenge for Mael’s death? We’re paying a visit to one of Stone’s main men—“

He scowled. “A resistance movement? What are we now, dark angels sent to govern the world in God’s absence?”

Lestat’s eyes glittered in the lamplight. He curled back his lips so that Louis could see the faintest glimpse of a very white, very sharp fang. He did not know whether his maker was doing this deliberately, but he shivered all the same. “We are vampires, Louis,” he said softly, “they are silly little mortals. They’ve struck three of our coven so far; you, Eric, Mael. I want revenge. Maharet has ordered that these men be finished off.”

“But why! You don’t have to do what Maharet tells you—“

“No, I don’t. But I want to do this.”

Louis shook his head as his lover walked over to him and sat down in front of him. “Lestat—“ he began.

“I’m going to England, to see this through. I’ll do it with or without you, Louis.” He cupped his palm under Louis’s chin and forced him to meet his gaze, “but I’d like you to come with me. You don’t have to do anything there; it’s simply that after nearly nine years of separation, I want you with me. I’m scared, Louis, I’m scared that I’ll return and you won’t be here—and that you’ll be gone for good.”

Louis raised a hand and placed it over Lestat’s own. “Then I’ll come.”

Lestat gave a smile of palpable relief and sat back. Louis smiled shyly in return. He knew that Lestat was fighting to keep him interested in what was going on, that he felt obliged to pull Louis along until he followed. His maker sobered under the green gaze, and stood up slowly. “Right, then. You’d better wrap up warmly—the nights are getting more chilly and you know how bitterly cold England can get.”

He walked out of the room and moved through the flat, closing windows and locking doors. Louis sighed and sank back into his chair. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He wanted to stay here, in its familiar comfort. But it was important that he stayed at Lestat’s side, always, just in case…

“Louis?” Lestat called from the front door.

He stood up and opened his wardrobe door, taking out his warmest coat. He groaned in pleasure at the sensation of the warm material against his skin. So good, little physical comforts like this. Home was a comfort, not the freezing winds over the Atlantic. He scowled and closed the door. It wasn’t like he had any choice in the matter, anyway. Lestat would be angry with him if he didn’t go, and he could already sense the growing rift between them. His maker was full of questions and suspicious of what Louis was holding back—and now he would have to fight to retain the peace. God, sometimes life was such a pain--

*Louis*

He looked around frantically. “Lestat, I’m coming!”

***

So it was that they arrived at David’s manor in the Cotswolds soon after. David showed Armand and Daniel around the lavish home, before showing Lestat and Louis to their room.

Louis fell in love with the quaint room almost instantly; the four-poster bed reminded him, with a pang, of their home on Rue Royale. He had not realised how much he missed the place, with its familiarity and the sheer memories New Orleans carried for him.

He gazed out of the lead-lined window, across the immaculate lawns to the woods that framed the manor. A woodpigeon was cooing contentedly in the mild night; a blackbird flitted across the lawn. He sighed contentedly. It was so very peaceful here, a place that seemed so ancient and relaxing all at once that he was unsurprised so many mortal writers found their inspiration here. Nathaniel Hawthorne had claimed places like this as giving him his finest inspiration; a place of Gothic imaginings; he called the New World, America, a land of shadowless daylight in contrast.

Louis gazed down at his own slim hands of alabaster and smiled. If only he had known.

Two hands closed about his shoulders. He jumped, then relaxed into Lestat’s embrace. He felt cool lips kissing his silky black hair, his earlobe, his neck. He reached up and ran his hands through his lover’s golden hair. “I love you.”

“I know.”

He sighed. In compensation, Lestat nuzzled his neck, kissing the slim white throat beneath his lips gently. Louis closed his eyes and murmured low words of happiness. “All right, I’ll let you off.” He whispered. He felt Lestat smile against his neck.

“Will you come with us tonight?” his maker asked quietly.

He meant to kill. He wanted Louis to go to those offices where Stone’s right-hand man was known to be hiding out, and give in to his killer instinct. He closed his eyes and swallowed, feeling Lestat tense next to him. An image, of a man in that prison screaming for mercy, even as he ripped out his throat, came to him. “The bloodlust,” he choked out, “I’m afraid of the bloodlust.”

The hand laying on his shoulder was heavy. He glanced out at the English countryside once more, and saw that the sky had darkened from the dusky blue shade to a light violet colour. “It’s all right, Louis,” said Lestat, his voice low, “I understand.”

Lestat kissed him once more, then turned to go. “Louis, we’re not leaving for a few hours, yet. You’ll at least come downstairs and show your face, won’t you?”

“Yes,” he murmured, already lost in his thoughts, “I’ll be down soon.”

His lover nodded and shut the door. Louis turned back to the window. He closed his eyes and let the memories, and the dreams, wash over him.

***

After a while, Louis opened his eyes and blinked in surprise. He roused himself sleepily—had he been dozing? He gazed out at the grounds once more, realising that the sky had darkened considerably.

The ivy outside the window was slick with rain; he watched as each infinitesimal drop glistened in the pale lamplight. The night sky, overcast, was starkly purple against the mass of ivy. He frowned. He felt so enclosed, so trapped at this moment. Everything was ethereal; the ivy, the night. The vampires.

What was it about England that saddened him so? It seemed, every time he beheld this country, his thoughts inevitably turned to Morgan. The English painter, regarding him as a friend and now dead, loyal to a murderer.

Claudia. In all those years, he had never glimpsed her. Much less dreamed of her. And it was strange, because of course he went through each night remembering her He remembered so many things, and though he knew it was dangerous to keep turning to the past, he found he was living in his safe eighteenth-century world more and more.

He closed his eyes against the silent accusation of his own mind: you promised to protect her. And she died, because of you, and you live on.

Claudia had died alone. He doubted the maddened and terrified Madeline was any real comfort.

The wind howled at the window, a flurry of rain akin to claws scrabbling at the pane.

Only one thing kept him tethered here. There was only one reason why he had returned, finally.

The door opened and he narrowed his eyes against the light. “Why are you hiding up here?” Lestat’s voice; tender, strong.

He glanced back at the darkness outside and shrugged. “I was just thinking.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come downstairs for the past hour. Really, Louis, the view isn’t all that spectacular.”

“I thought I’d only been here for a few minutes—“ he began. Lestat frowned, and Louis knew that he was beginning to concern him. He blushed and looked down. “I suppose… I just lost track of time.” He finished weakly.

“You’re not trying to hide from us, are you?”

“I don’t want to be part of this,” Louis suddenly burst out, “I don’t want to be a part of any of it.”

“And you don’t have to be, but show your face at least?”

Louis nodded and stood up. He took the hand that Lestat offered him and followed him towards the sitting-room. He tried hard, that night, to banish all those melancholy thoughts from his mind.

***
Lestat—

When I finally coaxed Louis to come out of that room and face us, I forced a smile on my face as we entered the room. My stomach was churning, and I wasn’t sure why; I led him to the nearest couch, and bade him sit next to me. He did so, leaning his head against my shoulder. I wanted to pull away from him. I loved him so much that it hurt, but I couldn’t face him.

Armand was watching him again, and I felt the rage building up inside me. Why the hell wouldn’t he leave Louis alone? He was always there, always trying to come between us—well, it wouldn’t work.

But there was more to it than that. To tell the truth, Louis was beginning to unnerve me. Ever since he had returned to me, he was prone to snapping into these dream-like states. He was incredibly calm, at times, full of tears and melancholy at the slightest thing. He unnerved me, the way he kept turning, as he had done before he left, as if he had heard voices speaking to him. And what the hell were they, these mysterious voices, anyway? Was he mad?

I shuddered to think upon it. And what if he were mad? I couldn’t abandon him; not after Nicki. God, would I have to kill him? Would he simply *turn* one night, and force me to make that decision?

But then, I did not think him mad, truly; like I keep saying, it was as if he was holding some ghastly and ironic secret from me. I couldn’t stand it! I began to think that perhaps he was trying to drive *me* mad. Was this revenge, for the questions I staved off from him, when I first made him? I didn’t know.

What I did know was that I was growing to resent him.

***

Later that night, Armand, Daniel, David and myself left the manor to begin the journey to Birmingham to carry out our little revenge tactic. Mael had meant little to me, but I was hungry for this man’s blood, anyway. I hated that he thought himself above us, that he could escape our retribution. I hated what he had done to me and Louis.

David parked the Bentley a few blocks away from the office building, on a quiet side-street. We found ourselves in a rather ugly industrial area on the outskirts of the city. The office blocks of our target, Simon Parkin, were a small, squalid affair, nestled between a printer’s workshop and a dirty little greasy-spoon café.

I sneered. “The man has deplorable taste.”

David shook his head, smiling ruefully. “Lestat, we’re not here to pick at his décor. We’re on a mission, remember.”

I pulled my leather coat around my body proudly. I sniffed. “It will hardly take four vampires to take out one man.”

“No, but it might to destroy his guards and whatever the hell he’s hiding in there.” Said Armand.

“He’s right,” cut in Daniel, “the man will be armed up to his teeth. He’s already been marked by two other gangs for death. He’s been expecting trouble for some time. Why else hide out in this shitty little place?”

“You *would* agree.” I muttered darkly. “Pity you weren’t so well-prepared with the information in Liverpool.”

Daniel glared at me, outraged. David patted his arm soothingly.

Armand ignored our little sparring match. He was caught up in the bloodlust—he had not fed for three nights in order to psyche himself up for this. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Let the games begin.”

***

Simon Parkin had known for weeks that he was going to die. It was one of those nasty visions that kept coming to him, that had been coming to him ever since he had ever met that accursed vampire. Two of Marcus’s rivals had put a considerable bounty on his head after he had double-crossed them over a drugs embargo nearly a year ago.

But that didn’t matter, not anymore. Although he had six men guarding him here, that was at Marcus’s request. Stone was worried that he might talk, and in any other circumstances, he would have killed him. Parkin knew that he was needed, though. He knew the ins and outs of every faction owned by his boss. He was virtually indispensable. If he had had his way, he would simply go out and welcome death.

He moaned and ran his hands through his sweat-drenched hair as the next wave of nausea shook him. There came a knock at the office door and he looked up, trembling. Was this it? “Yes…?” he called out.

“Are you all right in there, Simon?” asked one of the henchmen from without. “We’ve been worried about you—“

“Yes,” he snapped, “I’m fine! Get the fuck away from me!”

What was this thing, anyway? He had known, that there would be side effects from allowing this… this supernatural poison into his body. But it had been so good at first! The night could be read, it was no longer something to fear, and how much fun it had been to read people’s thoughts!

And then, six months ago, the visions had come. Little hints at first, voices that were not meant for him whispered things. They were with him constantly! They talked of things, from over his shoulder. He had seen and heard things that he knew he shouldn’t; he had glimpsed some dark and eternal secret, and it was driving him insane.

So when he heard the glass shattering in the large window at the front of the building, and the guards screaming in fear and alarm, he almost embraced the death which he now knew was inevitable. Sighing in relief, he reached down beneath the desk and pressed the red “start” button on the little monitor.

May as well take some of these bastard demons with him.

***

My senses were screaming for blood when I first threw myself through that window. The guards were screaming in alarm as I picked myself up, wounds from the shards of glass already healed. They didn’t even have time to reach for their guns as the other three vampires descended upon them.

I didn’t care about the guards; they were expendable yes-men at best. I wanted Parkin. I knew the bastard was the target, and therefore the ultimate prize, but more than that—I knew from instinct that he had been of the men who had taken my Louis.

I stormed my way through the rooms, throwing open every door as I stamped up the stairs, letting him know; I am the Vampire Lestat, I am going to kill you. I threw open one door, tucked away there in the corner, and the next instant, this man was flying at my face.

I admit, I was shocked. I was amazed at his sheer strength; he was a lithe thing, but full of such fury! He actually knocked me, Lestat, back against the far wall. I was away from it in an instant, but I was still completely shocked.

This man was still mortal, but so much stronger, faster. There was a look in his eyes—half animal—and a slight tinting of the pallor of his skin. I remembered Louis’s words: “…while I was asleep they took my blood… and now you have humans glutted on vampiric blood, not quite as strong as us, but faster, stronger than the average human.”

He came at me again, and I grabbed hold of him by his neck. Of course, I was stronger and faster than
Louis; this half-breed stood little chance against me. I crushed him to me, breaking his ribs, and sank my fangs into his neck.

Mortal thoughts came to me as I opened my mind to his; chubby hands pattering against the carpet as a baby, being told off by a teacher in school. Older now, and a man lay bleeding on the street when he had taken a knife to him. Days at the fair, beating an old man up because he had differing political views. An interesting mix, but not what I was looking for.

I drove my fangs deeper.

And through a red mist, the vision came to me. Marcus Stone was standing in front of the man, giving out directives. One of his spies knew where Louis was to be at a certain time. They were to create chaos—a fire, a bomb, whatever—and bring the vampire to him.

Not Lestat? The man was confused.

No, not Lestat. Bring Louis.

And then the man was watching Louis from a screen. My fledgling was in a frenzy, screaming, attacking the door of his miserable little cell again and again. He was trapped and injured and afraid.

A flash, and the vision altered. Louis was leaning against the wall and his green eyes stared straight ahead, blank. His face was expressionless. And someone came up to him and cut his arm, catching the blood that dripped out. They shared it, the people there.

The man tasted the smoky essence of Louis and he was intoxicated. Memories, thoughts of Louis were flowing through him. Only very small snatches, but images I recognised the same. Suddenly, a dream came to him—Louis’s last thoughts. The vampire was falling into darkness, scared, confused. And a voice said, “We’ve been watching you for weeks. And you wouldn’t answer us. Why are you afraid? Come and see.”

Come and see what?

“We want to show you something. You might be interested…”

The man’s heart was stuttering. The vision faded even as I, tears gathering in my eyes, fought to retain it. Full of frustration and fury, I ripped my fangs from his throat, and smiled evilly into his terror-filled eyes. “You’re going to die now.” I whispered. I threw him to the floor and crushed his neck under the weight of my boots.

I stalked into the little room to investigate further. But my head was spinning, from the bloodthirst and the questions. I ransacked the desk, throwing all the papers onto the floor. And then, I smelt it. Nitroglyceride. In horror, I looked under the desk to see the little red counter charting the seconds towards destruction:

20 seconds.

I could try and diffuse it—maybe work out the wire combination. It looked so easy in the films.

15 seconds.

Fuck that.

12 seconds.

I was out of that room and down those stairs within three seconds flat. I was dragging Daniel towards the door, gesturing to David and Armand. “Get the hell out of here!” I snarled, “the entire place is going to blow up!”

In a rather impressive display of how fast a scared vampire can move, we were all out of that place and cowering behind the adjacent building long before the ominous rumbling signalled that the bomb had detonated.

As missiles of flaming debris rained about us, Daniel grinned. “Well, that was certainly an exciting night.”

Armand raised an eyebrow and shook his head in consternation.

***

The night was growing old by the time we returned to the Cotswolds. Indeed, there was less than an hour left before even I would have to retire. I could feel the sun looming somewhere over the horizon, pushing at my senses, daring me try and take it on.

I knew I should return to the house, but instead I excused myself and climbed up to the roof, staring out over the woods to where the Thames was snaking through the countryside. I wanted to be alone, to take this peaceful moment in time on a quiet English morning to gather my thoughts.

There were so many questions, again. I remembered Parkin’s wild eyes, the blood in his body that had been undeniably Louis’s. And so he was infected by the same thoughts that were plaguing my fledgling. Dear God, how on earth did he keep his sanity about him? And what, what *did it all mean?*”

Something stirred near me, and when I turned, I saw Armand making his way up towards me. He stood next to me for a moment, silent and brooding.

“Go away,” I said.

Regardless, he sat down next to me. I allowed it. We sat there in silence for some time, and I knew he was aware of what I was thinking. He had seen that man’s body. He knew there had been dark blood flowing about him, blood I had taken back into myself. What came from Louis came from me, right?

“You have so many questions,” he said finally, “and you’re eating yourself up with worry over Louis. You’re turning him away from you without actually getting the answers from him.”

“I have asked him!” I snapped, “and he hasn’t told me anything—well, not what I wanted to know!”

“Then ask him again.”

I turned to him, sneering. “What do you care, anyway? You’ve never held anyone’s interests to heart except your own.”

“That’s not true,” he said softly. He shook those auburn curls, and I stole a glance at him, at that beautiful face of a teenager, “I love Louis. I always have. But he loves you, Lestat. And you’re going to drive him away.”

“”What do you know?” I sneered. I stood up and dusted myself down. I cast a disdainful glance at him and began to walk away.

“I know that you’re afraid,” he called out.

I felt a shudder of anger dance through my body. I bit my lip and made my way back down from the roof.

***

Our room was as dark as night itself as I entered. I took off my boots and crept soundlessly into the room, as quiet and as slinky as a cat. The windows were shuttered and from the bed there came the faint sound of Louis’s breathing. He had not entered the death-sleep yet, though he would within a few minutes. I took off my coat and laid it on the chair, regarding him as I did so.

*Afraid*

Of what?

Of *him?*

My tender and quiet fledgling, curled up now on that bed, dozing amongst crumpled sheets of silk like some Greek hero waiting to be ravaged? I walked over to the bed and stood above him, watching him. I could break his neck so easily. I could simply reach out, and feel those glossy black strands of hair cut into my flesh as I crushed his throat.

My hand trembled against his throat. He shifted suddenly, and I pulled back in alarm. “Lestat?”

“I…I’m here.” I worked my way out of my clothes and then walked around the other side of the bed. I locked the door then got in next to him, delighting in the feel of his cool, sinuous body next to mine despite all that had gone on that night.

I pulled him to me, possessively. He obliged, snaking nearer to me and laying his head against my shoulder. He wrapped one arm around me, as I did with him. He was sleepy and comfortable in my arms, but I could feel his heart thudding. He had been frightened.

I kissed his black hair, and spoke against its silky coolness. “Do you want to know what I was doing just then, when I was standing over you? What I was about to do?”

A pause. “No.”

He knew. He had known, in that instant, the overwhelming malice I had felt towards him. Just as he knew now, in my arms, that I was full of remorse and love for him, and that he was safe. How could he trust me like that? How could he know me so well?

He shifted against me and then was quiet, falling into the death sleep easily. I ran my hands over him for a while, making sure that he was mine, my Louis, and not some all-knowing demon sent to torment me. Satisfied, but still so confused, I let the death-sleep claim me.

Part 14

“Imagine,” said Armand, smoothing a pebble against his palm, feeling it slide across the contours of his palm, “that a person had seen something dark and barely understandable and they kept this secret hidden deep within themselves.” He gazed out to the glittering waves of black, illuminated here and there in the moonlight, listening to the roaring of the waves breaking against the battered English coast.

Daniel, sitting next to him, near the cliff’s edge at Dover, furrowed his eyebrows. “Well, that was a pretty sudden turn our conversation just took. And a rather nasty one, too. We went from discussing the landscape to cryptic dark crap?”

“So perhaps I have a short attention span. I thought teenagers were allowed that one flaw?”

“You’re as much a teenager as I am a “perpetual student.”

“Lestat always did dwell on your characteristics too much in that book.”

Daniel laughed, sitting back and resting his head against his palms. “And you always did complain about how he presented you, and me, and the entire universe. He can’t do anything right, can he?”

Armand smirked, “I don’t think he knows how to.” He sobered under Daniel’s gaze, his hair flowing gently in the sea breeze, “but this I want to talk about. This thing---“

“The conversation that isn’t but might be about our friend Louis?”

“Yes, that one.”

“He’s been having strange visions.”

“Perhaps.” Armand shrugged, gazing out towards the sea once more. “And supposing… well, what if you could read that person’s thoughts? And what if the things you saw were frightening and profound… and all you felt was contentment?”

Daniel smirked. “What?” he asked mockingly, “like Heaven and Hell and some twisted version of Dante’s *Inferno?”*

“What a stupid thing to say,” Armand scorned. “Of course not!” He sighed and turned his gaze to the stars, glittering overhead like divine watchers. “What if you saw how it was going to end?”

“The world, you mean, or us?”

Armand shrugged. “Us, I suppose. Why should the end of us be the end of the world?”

“I don’t know. Typical twentieth-century self-centred way of thinking? I can’t imagine the world without vampires, never mind without me.”

“Louis didn’t foresee this,” Armand said, his voice a low murmur. “He saw… that everything was going to get so much uglier. He saw destruction, not the apocalypse, but something approaching that for our coven. This man, Daniel, this inconsequential mortal fool, Marcus Stone, has set something final and deadly into motion.”

Daniel felt like he was ready to explode in sheer frustration. “Then what was it he saw!”

“That’s just it,” said Armand, turning to face him. His eyes were glittering brown orbs of emotion in the darkness. “I don’t know. Louis’s mind is not like a text, there to be read, interpreted and understood. I only feel his emotions, his reactions to each encounter, and then I try to interpret these feelings.”

“And what do you feel?”

He grew sad, then. He lowered his gaze to the crashing waves below, his face becoming as smooth and as expressionless as a mask of alabaster. “I feel that Louis is slipping away from us. He’s holding all this back amidst all the questioning and the worry, and time is crashing forward. Something, or someone, is going to break.”

*********

Walking down a cobbled Liverpool street on a chilly autumn night, Louis at my side, I found that all I could think about was Cream.

“Cream?” Louis asked.

“Oh,” I said, “some club. A veritable mecca for children of the nineties… the 1990s, that is. It’s like sheer cultural history now.”

Louis raised an eyebrow cynically. “Oh, I’m sure.”

I grinned. “In fact, some would put it on a par with visiting Bethlehem, or walking through the Louvre, or gazing upon the Constitution.”

“That’s not even funny, Lestat.”

I laughed and entwined my fingers through his own. “So, this club—“

“I don’t want to go to any clubs,” he said automatically.

Right. I wouldn’t fly into a rage. I wouldn’t. Gentle persuasion was called for: “Still, it’s been a while since we did anything like this—“

“Nine years.” He said, smiling.

“So you’ll come?”

He tightened his grip around my hand. “Why not?”

****

All right, so this place was a little… grimy. After all the profits that the owners had been reaping in over the decades, you would think they would have fixed it up. Still, at least we made our way past the ridiculously long line of clubbers done up in weird and wonderful dress, and all it took was a little mental manipulation of the bouncers.

We made our way through the press of mortals up to the VIP lounge, where some has-been footballers and D-list celebrities were drinking over-priced champagne. Louis watched the dancers from the balcony with a passive kind of interest. Myself, I was dying to be down there, in the press of sweat and blood and adrenaline, to feel the heat of their lives around me, to feel Louis’s body supple against mine.

I led him down the steel steps and onto the dance floor. The music was pounding, a kaleidoscope of sound and beats, and as intoxicating to my exhibitionist self as any drug. Louis stayed close to me, crushed against me as he was by the crowded bodies of the mortal revellers around us. Some intoxicated moron threw himself into the crowd from the stage, only for nobody to catch him. He fell to the floor with a groan.

“Bloody students,” I muttered.

I was getting irritated, to be honest, with all that sweat being rubbed onto my expensive silk shirt. Someone next to me was ‘Elbow Dancing’, so I shoved him into the crowd. But I could overlook these things, in this strange twilight world around me. The darkness was complete and whole, laser beams of light cutting through it to create strange and fantastical patterns in the air before me. I felt hypnotised by it all.

I was intoxicated, with the smell of blood, the lights… and Louis. The music seemed to fade into the distance as I watched him dance in front of me. He was sinuous, moving in a sensual and cat-like manner to the music. A flash of light from the strobes, twisting shapes in red, blue green, danced past him.

His green eyes lit up in their glow. His skin was smooth and took in each light, becoming that colour, like a chameleon. I loved having him near me. He was so beautiful, so sensual and so much mine. He moved nearer to me, and I embraced him eagerly. He placed his arms around my neck and buried his head against my neck, grinding his hips against mine, pressing so close to me that I felt as if we were one person.

“I love you,” I choked out.

“What?” he asked over the pounding music.

I tipped his chin up to me and kissed him. “Nothing.”

****
A few hours later, we were both tired and drenched in sweat—mainly other people’s. I led Louis back up to the VIP lounge before stealing off into the crowd to drink. I danced and flirted, taking a drink from this person and the next, until, sated, I made my way back to him.

He was sitting there, looking out to the crowds once more. His eyes were faraway, away from this club and in some secret world of his. I sat next to him and clicked my fingers in front of him.

“Louis?”

No response.

“Louis…?”

Now, Louis has always been prone to switching off like his. I could be with him in any public place, and a light would catch his eye, or he would gaze into a dark corner, and whoosh, he was off again. He would fall into these trances and ignore the world around him until I shook him out of the stupor.

So that’s what I did.

Of course, he was instantly furious. He threw himself at me and grappled with me, and I was laughing. I was laughing at his fury, and his passion, the way in which he tried to fight me even though I was so much stronger than he was. I crushed him to me, settling him down in my arms.

“I missed this.” I said, smiling against his hair.

“The fighting?”

“Us,” I said, “and our fighting. Our lovemaking. All the stupid things that we do.”

He trembled against me, then. “Let’s leave now, Lestat.” He whispered.

“But, Louis—“

“Now, Lestat.”

I stroked his hair. "Don't you like it?" I asked. "Don't you want to spend one night out, with me?"

His green eyes were emerald shards cutting through to my soul. "Lestat." he said in a low voice.

***

Outside, in the darkened alley that led to the main shopping area of the city, I felt my concern for him growing into anger. Again. It had begun to rain, and I walked ahead of him, feeling the heavy rain splattering against me, soaking my clothes through to my skin, and running down my neck. It only served to increase my temper, and I thrust my hands into my pockets, stalking ahead of him.

Why did he always have to ruin everything? Why was he being like this now? One moment, he was tender and happy, intent on pleasing me—the next; he was quivering, crying. And he was holding something back! It was driving a wedge between us, so physically palpable that I was storming down the road a few metres ahead of him, gritting my teeth in frustration.

“Lestat!” he gasped, running up to me. He grabbed my arm and spun me around. And when he saw my gritted teeth, my glinting grey eyes, he backed up against the wall in trepidation. “I’m sorry—“ he began.

“Oh, you’re always sorry now!” I snarled.

“Please, Lestat—“

“What the hell was that back there, Louis?” I snapped. “Why do you keep going through these crazy mood swings? Why do I have to pander to your every demand!”

“I’m sorry.” He repeated. He lowered his gaze, looking so very lost and unhappy that my heart bled for him. I wanted to caress him, to protect him and reassure him. But I couldn’t. I was too angry, too confused and upset. Ignoring his pleas, I turned and stalked away from him.

Part 15

“You gain power by pretending to be weak. By contrast, you make people feel so strong. You save people by letting them save you…you’re proof of their courage, proof that they were the hero… so stay the underdog.”

-- Chuck Palahniuk, “Choke”.

***

Lestat---

“I’m going home, Louis,” I announced haughtily as I walked away from him. “You can do what you like—doubtless, you’ll keep that a secret from me, too.”

“Lestat!” he cried, running up to me once more. He grabbed my arm, and I thought, sod this. I began to rise to the air, intending to escape him. Instead, he clung steadfastly onto me. “Don’t just go—“

“Let go of me, Louis,” I growled, “or I’ll drop you.”

“Do that, then,” he retorted, “but I’m going to do my damnedest to make you listen!”

It really was becoming a case of go back down or drop him, so I reluctantly began to descend to earth once more. We alighted back onto the pavement, and he stepped back in satisfaction, still keeping hold of my arm. “Let go of me!” I cried furiously, “I don’t want you touching me!”

His face was contorted in anguish. “But why?…”

Well, he had wanted to have it out. So I’d tell him. “Because I’m growing to hate you.” I hissed.

He looked so stung at that, defeated. I instantly regretted what I had said. He let his hand drop away from my arm, and closed his eyes against the pouring rain. He was soaked through—he had forgotten to bring a coat, as usual. I wanted to grab him, and tell him that I loved him, but this was tearing us apart, this secrecy—instead, I just stood there, silent.

“All right,” he said finally, refusing to look at me. “I’m sorry. I won’t trouble you again—you have my word. Leave, Lestat.”

“Louis—“

“Please leave.”

I scowled. “Why? So you can run off again for another nine years? So that the coven can learn what an awful fiend I am!”

“No,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “but because my heart is breaking, and I don’t want to see you cry. I’ve suffered heartache and loss and fear and I’ve done my best to bear it. But if you have any heart left for me at all, you’ll spare me the indignity of breaking down in front of you.”

“I didn’t mean what I said!” I cried furiously, “You *know* that! I never mean what I say! But I can’t bear the way you are to me now, the emotional wreck you are! That’s what I hate—not you, my lover, my Louis—but what you are becoming at the hands of all that has happened!”

“For goodness’ sake, Lestat,” he gasped, “I’ve spent nine years in a personal hell and you don’t think it will have affected me *at all*?!”

“Not this much—“

“Lestat! I’ve just spent like 8 years being drugged and prodded and drained and who knows what else… at the hands of some mortal idiots! I *am* likely to suffer the after-effects of such a thing—you’re lucky I didn’t go crazy!” He slapped his hand over his forehead in frustration, before raking his fingers through his hair. “Can’t you at least *try* and take that into account before flying off the handle at me?”

“But it hurts me to see you like this! I love you so much, but I feel that I can’t help you! And it hurts me Louis, I feel so useless!”

“Well, forgive me!” whispered Louis furiously, his green eyes narrowed like a cat’s before a fight, “next time I’m kidnapped and hurt, then I’ll make sure not to upset *your* feelings too much!”

I turned at that. “Don’t you dare say that,” I hissed.

“What? About your feelings!”

I stormed over to him and gripped his shoulders, shaking him furiously. “Don’t say ‘next time!’ I’ll never allow that to happen to you, ever again! I won’t let *anyone* hurt you again!”

He looked up at me, his teeth gritted in his anguish. He was crying freely, now, “then why did you ever let it happen at all! Why couldn’t you help me when it mattered!”

I knew that was uncalled for. It was an accusation over an event that I had no real control over. I should have been angry—well, I would have been angry—normally. But as soon as he said that, he collapsed into my arms.

“Louis,” I choked out, “God, Louis, I wish I could have—“ my voice cracked. There was a painful lump in my throat as I swallowed. I clutched him to me, giving into my own hideous grief, glad that it was raining because it hid my tears. “I wish I could turn back time, and save you. Why did this happen to us! Why couldn’t I protect you—“

“I can’t stand it, Lestat!” he cried, “I can’t bear being apart from you like this! And I can’t fail you, don’t you see?” he whispered passionately, curling his hands into my shirt.

“Fail me?” I asked.

“I failed Claudia, Lestat,” he murmured, and there was a glimmer of red in his eyes that might have been tears, “and I can’t fail you. I can’t—“

I took his face in my hands. “I don’t understand!”

He swallowed, closing his eyes. “The dreams, Lestat. They tell me that I’ll fail you— they tell me lots of things—they have since I was asleep.“

“Like what?!” I whispered, thinking all the while to control my temper.

“I dreamt of the end.”

“The end?”

He swallowed miserably, blinking against the falling rain. “I dreamt of how we were going to die.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I snorted, “You’re no clairvoyant, no sightseer! And even if you were, so what? I refuse to believe any of it!”

“Lestat—“

“Do you believe it?” I asked, grinning, “do you, truly?”

My voice sounded oddly strained, low and strange to me. My lips felt as if they were going to crack, they were pulled that tight in a grotesque parody of a grin. I felt, that if he said yes, he had believed it, that I would reach out and crush his bloody neck. No, he couldn’t dream of such stuff. It wasn’t possible, and if it was, then it wasn’t real. Not Louis. The end—there can never be an end! Can there?

He regarded me timidly. His green eyes never left my gaze. He was shivering slightly, in the cold, I think, and he lowered his head. “No, of course not.” He shook his head. “It’s just fanciful trash, isn’t it? The workings of a morbid mind.”

“Yes, that’s it.” I reached out and pulled him close, wrapping an arm around his waist tenderly.

“Do you trust me, Louis? Do you trust me that I will never let any harm come to you?”

He nodded, and I loved him, that I could see a sparkling honesty in those green eyes. “Yes. I trust you.”

“Then that’s settled,” I said. I felt his black hair rubbing against my chin, like soft shredded silk. “I’m sorry, Louis. I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you. It’s been so hard, seeing you like this. So tense… always hiding your thoughts from me. But it’ll get better. I swear. You know why?”

He spoke against my neck, his breath hot, “why?”

“Because we’re Louis and Lestat, that’s why. We’ve come through everything so far, plantation fires and Claudia and bloodthirsty crowds of vampires—twice. And we’ll come through this.”

I held him close to me, feeling the tears of misery course down my face. I had hurt him tonight, and deeply. And God, I was sorry for that. I would have to make it up to him, and let him know how truly I regretted it all. But most of all, I would have to protect him, and let him know, yes, Louis, the world was dark and what happened was tragic—but come what may—I’d look after him.

***

Louis--

Falling through space with a whooshing, roaring wind screaming past his ears, his hair flapping wildly around him, a voice said: “We’re curious to know— you do want to see this, don’t you? Because we’d rather you didn’t waste our time. We want you to see what it all means.”

Are you God? Are you the devil?

“Why should we be any of these things? Maybe we just found something we would like you to know.”

Are you death? I think I’m dead.

Soft laughter. “No, Louis. Not death. But we can bring you death, if that is what you want. You can leave now. We mean, we will allow you to die. If that’s what you want—it is what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? Peace of mind.”

But what about Lestat?

“Ah, well…then maybe you should see this. And all the other things we have to show you.”

He closed his eyes against the wind, listening to the whispers around him. And then he was standing on something solid, a floor. The air around him was still. He opened his eyes and started in surprise.

Oh, he knew this place. He knew every sight, the very fall of the light. He understood every shadow and the smell of polished oak and heavy Egyptian draperies spoke to him. Home. The bed, with muted green blankets—at Lestat’s request, of course—and the solid oaken desk were too achingly familiar.

He looked down at himself, dressed in sturdy boots, and fine trousers—silken shirt and green waistcoat. A cravat was tied at his neck. His breath caught in his throat. Was he dreaming? Was he in heaven, or hell? Was…was he *dead*?

Somewhere in the flat, “Für Elise” was being played. He swallowed, hard, against the rising sense of loneliness and grief deep within him. But he was in Rue Royale, and for all its eerie and tense atmosphere, it was the one place Louis had ever felt some semblance of peace through his long life.

He walked out of his room and down the hallway. The burgundy walls, the ornate little table on which rested a gold-mantled clock… his heart ached. The canaries, caged in the other room, chirped incessantly, bringing life and goodness to this dark little place. Normality. Trappings of family and safety.

He glanced into the sitting room, expecting to see either of his two beloved companions there, but it was empty. He moved onto the music room, where the strains of Beethoven were coming from. He felt an odd tightness in his chest. There had better not be something morbid and frightening in there. He knew this text—it was a dream, wasn’t it? And dreams had a nasty habit of turning.

But the room was much the same as he remembered it; everything was in its place. Claudia’s doll lay abandoned on the chaise lounge. And Lestat was seated there, at the piano, splendid in his nineteenth-century dress; dashing. Louis’s heart filled with love.

He walked into the room, feeling how strange it was that his heels did not click against the polished wooden floor. Lestat looked up at him slowly, unsmiling. He did not miss a note of the haunting tune, though his eyes never left Louis as he came to stand near the piano.

“You’re here,” said Louis, with relief. He had to tell Lestat about the kidnapping, that he was all right, that something had been talking to him—

“Of course I’m here,” said Lestat, shrugging. “Sometimes you say the most foolish things.” This was said with a theatrical sigh.

“And Claudia?” Louis asked, in a rush of anticipation to see her.

“Out. She demanded it so. She’ll be back shortly.”

Louis turned to take in the room in all its splendour. He rather loved New Orleans, this, his home. He must speak to Lestat and tell him that maybe it was time to move on from New York now… “Do you want to hear a poem?” Lestat’s voice cut through his thoughts.

“I… oh,…”

“Wilt thou go with me,” Lestat recited, his eyes locked on Louis, “wilt thou go with me?”

“What? Why are you speaking like that?” asked Louis. His maker ignored him.

“…Through the valley depths of shade
Of night and dark obscurity
Where the path hath lost its way
Where the sun forgets the day
Where there’s nor life nor night to see…

Where life will fade like visioned dreams
And mountains darken into caves
…will thou go with me
Through this sad non-identity
Where parents live and are forgot
And sisters live and know us not

Wilt thou go with me
In this strange death of life to be
To live in death and be the same
Without this life or home or name
At once to be and not to be
That was and is not—yet to see

The land of shadows wilt thou trace
And look nor know each other’s face
The present mixed with reasons gone
And past and present all as one
…To join the living with the dead
Then trace thy footsteps on with me
We’re wed to one eternity.”

And with that, he smiled, his grey eyes boring through to Louis’s soul until he was forced to turn away.
“And what is the meaning of this verse?” Louis asked, walking towards him, “what divine message are you telling to me?” His voice sounded as low and as full of hurt as the old days.

Lestat shrugged. “It’s a poem; nothing else. You read too much into everything, my friend.” He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “It was written for a human heart, Louis. And like you always say, you ‘forgot the human heart’.”

“That’s not—“ he began in protest, but Lestat was not listening.

“Hush, you fool. Let me play the piano for you.” With that, he launched into a light tune, and Louis, lost for words, confused, sank slowly into a chair near him. He clasped his fingers together. He suddenly felt restless. There was purpose to this dream, yes? There was something… holding back. He felt as if some dark and deadly thing were crawling through the walls of the flat, hiding in the brickwork to form a cell for him. The light of the room, of Lestat, was threatened by this.

He noticed the mirror, then. He stood up and walked over to it, remembering that mirrors and truth were supposed to be synonymous in dreams. In visions, whatever. And reflected there was simply himself. Louis of the eighteenth century, smart and eternally young-looking. His skin was so white, as ever, his green eyes demonically beautiful. And this was nothing but a memory! He couldn’t rejoin the past anymore than he knew the future!

“What are you doing?”

He did not turn to look at Lestat. He narrowed his eyes and regarded himself a little while longer in the mirror. “I’m trying to find truths…” he murmured absently.

“And do you see anything?”

He did, actually; he saw how wasted he looked. How pale. Of course, he always felt he had looked like that—Lestat had, though he hid it behind euphemisms—“Lithe”, “skin like moonlight”. But his eyes were dead. They were no longer full of wonder. He felt weary, and his reflection frowned back at him.

“I’m dying, Lestat,” he said simply. “I can feel it. I don’t think I can come back again.” He turned to face his maker miserably, feeling that Lestat here was wrong. Lestat was life and vibrancy, and perhaps to Louis alone, in the whole world, a tender and essentially good person. A lover.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lestat said, “you can’t die! I won’t let it.”

“What is this… this vision, if not death!” Louis demanded.

“Questions—you ask too many questions!”

Louis did not want to argue. Lestat was scaring him, anyway. Like some Sybil, offering him half-truths and riddles that he simply did not want to think upon. Tiny rivers of silver were running through the mirror, crackling each smooth plain until it was a mass of jagged patterns. He couldn’t see himself properly in it; everything was distorted. He caught a glimpse of one green eye, and it glared back at him. The mirror pulsed, waited. And then, in an explosion of pain and glass and light, it shattered in front of his very face.

***

He woke with a start into the comfortable darkness of the guest bedroom at David’s manor. Lestat lay next to him, dozing lightly as they waited for the sun to rise. The smell and the heat of their lovemaking still hung on the air, and he relaxed into the sensual familiarity of the place.

Another vision. Or, rather, a remembrance of said vision. He wished he could forget, for one night, what *they* had shown him. And then, as he reached over and ran his fingers through Lestat’s loose blond hair, that simple statement his maker had made in the dream came back to him:

*You can’t die! I won’t let it.*

The dreams, the visions—they were following the events of his life now. Only, Louis knew what happened next. And surely this meant that he could change it? Surely it meant, that the sad and terrifying last vision they had shown him could be avoided?

He had returned, though he had been happy in that netherworld. They said to him, would you return, for Lestat?

For Lestat, yes. And he could be with him when it inevitably happened, or he could fight, survive.

And if Louis was anything, he was a survivor.