DISCLAIMER: This is a work of amateur non-profit fan-fiction and is not meant to infringe on the copyrights of Anne Rice, Knopf, Random House, or anyone else. It contains spoilers to The Vampire Lestat. It also contains erotic situations between members of the same gender - you have been warned!
Sound.
It poured from the violin in waves, drawn from the strings like a tortured cry of exquisite darkness, swelling until it filled the empty Theatre with its presence. The bow came down in great riffs of notes, vibrant and vicious, each sharp note blending with the ones before and after, until the music as a whole became a blur of great, powerful energy. It transported him, drove his fingers to fly over the strings, feeling them slide beneath his fingertips. His entire body bent and swayed with the force of the sound that welled up, his eyes closed, lips pressed tightly as he concentrated.
The music grew, furious, a thing alive. The intensity of it could almost bring me to my knees. I leaned against the wall in the wings of the stage where I stood, needing the firm feel of it beneath my back as the sound poured over me. If I closed my eyes I could feel the black touch of it, like wings against my face and chest, a pressure bearing down on me. The devil's music, Satan's instrument. The fiery majesty of hell given breath and life on the strains of music.
And then it ended.
The last note hung in the air, trembling, reluctant to die. I opened my eyes to see him. He stood upon the stage, head bowed, breathing hard. Slowly, with trembling hands, he lowered the bow, drew the violin from beneath his chin, let his arms fall to his sides. His hair had come loose from its ribbon, hanging in limp dark curls about his neck and face. It tumbled down over his forehead and hid his eyes. His shirt was partially unbuttoned, the lace at his throat falling to one side, his waistcoat hanging open. The gold brocade gleamed against the deep green velvet, shining in the little lamps at the edge of the stage. The lights shone off of the polished surface of the violin, off the gold buckles of his shoes. And most particularly off of the pale perfection of his face and hands.
For long moments he stood, just breathing, lost in himself. And then, in a sudden burst of movement, a statue come to energetic life, he whirled to face me. He tossed his hair back from his gleaming dark eyes, that hard smile pulling at his lips, transforming the features. Hard, they were, and burning with an interior flame that forced a black sort of life through him, searing him and all around him with its heat.
He faced me with that cold, sardonic smile hovering on his mouth. With slow deliberation he crossed his arms, letting his weight settle back on one hip as he regarded me. "Well?" he drawled.
I didn't answer and his eyes narrowed slightly. "I assume you were listening, Monsieur..." he added, putting a sneer into the title, letting his voice trail off in question though we both knew the answer. He was mocking me.
I pushed myself away from the wall, stepped forward onto the stage proper. The wooden floorboards echoed beneath the sharp tap of my heels. Closer, I could see the dark sheen of blood sweat that covered his forehead and upper lip, trailed in trickles down his neck to dampen his loosened hair. He was watching me sharply, like a bird of prey, his eyes dark and unreadable but filled with hostility. His entire posture radiated it.
I stopped a few steps from him. He was still waiting for an answer. "The music is... forceful, Nicolas," I told him. It was such an understatement as to be almost a lie.
For a moment more he watched me, his eyes boring into me as though to uncover any trace of ridicule or double meaning. And then he threw back his head and laughed, a great bark of mirthless sound. Spreading his arms wide, he turned to the darkened theater, to the empty rows of seats and the silent private boxes. And, still laughing that hollow laugh, he bowed to the emptiness, as though accepting the accolades of an adoring audience. Turning back, he bowed to me, mockery in every graceful line of his body. "Coming from the great Armand," he cried, "that is a compliment!" I stiffened but he pretended not to notice. Tossing the Stradivarius lightly up and catching it again, he tucked it beneath his arm. He saluted me sharply with the bow, then, chuckling, brushed easily past me to walk backstage. He couldn't resist the last barb, though, as he passed me. I saw the smile on his lips before he spoke.
"It's funny, though," he said in a conversational tone. "I could have sworn that I heard a certain mighty coven master swear that he wouldn't step foot on a common theater stage." He glanced pointedly at my feet and the wooden boards beneath them as he strode past me with a jaunty stride. I think I looked at him rather blankly and he laughed again. Then, whistling between his teeth, he turned his back on me and stalked into the wings.
I did not follow him immediately. I stood upon that little stage and closed my eyes, reminding myself again of the promise I had made, reminded myself that this pretentious and infuriating little fledgling was more then half insane and that I had promised to treat him mildly, to do him no harm. There were times, when he was in these moods, that it was hard to remember this. His petty anger and sarcasm could sour even the great, beautiful purity of the music he called forth, until I could not bear to see or hear him. It angered me.
Yet I always came, and I always listened. A moth drawn to the dark flames of hell. I had called myself a child of Satan too long to be unaffected by the sound of an instrument that many condemned to damnation. It was for that, for the music, that I left Nicolas alone and did not end his badly conceived life before it had barely begun- not for any promises. For the music I could even forgive him the anger he invoked in me, the irritation and countless little jabs that pierced into places within me that I didn't even know that I had. The music touched me, brushed cool fingers over the edges of my mind, made me feel the echoes, for that short time, of what it was to be infused with that energy that burned through its creator. For that, I could forgive Nicolas almost anything.
When I did follow him backstage I found him in his dressing room, the little cramped space with its cluttering of clothes and paints and papers that he had once shared with that fiery blonde haired fiend that had turned so much of my life upside down. Lestat de Lioncourt. The demon in red velvet, Gentleman Death with his mother-daughter at his side, who had stalked the streets of this great city as though he had owned them. Who had made me feel more things in less time then I had thought myself capable of. And who had, ultimately, left me.
I tried very hard, in the months that followed our parting, to not think of Lestat. Usually, I succeeded.
Nicolas had placed the Stradivarius back in its case. He was flitting about the room, a bundle of barely contained energy. His slender fingers moved, stabbing down at imaginary strings, his breath exhaling in a low humm of sound as he spun and paced across the small room. Composing. Nicolas was always composing. New plays, new songs, an unstinting flow of ideas and genius. The others were in awe of him.
I wasn't sure what I felt about him, or that I felt anything at all. He was an enigma to me, a mystery of this age that, like so many things in this time, I could not relate to.
He took no notice of me in the doorway. I was not sure he even saw me. His eyes were open but half rolled back, the whites fluttering beneath his dark lashes, his head thrown back to regard the ceiling as he paced. Three quick steps one way, heels clattering against the floor, then a rapid turn and three more steps back. Over and over. Click, click, click, spin. And all the while that droning hum coming from him, not music now, but words breathed deep in his throat, a rush of syllables and sound, his lips barely moving. Impossible to understand. Finger's moving in mime across an invisible neck of an imaginary instrument, accompanying the lines he was whispering.
Incomprehensible and entrancing. I could, and had, watched him for hours when he was like this, as he worked and reworked every word in a play; until the moment it would crystallize, through some unseen chemistry inside him, and he would snatch up pen and paper to scrawl it down. Ghastly to see. He would be panting, almost blinded by blood sweat, but it wouldn't matter because his hands moved of their own accord, even his preternatural speed barely able to keep pace with the words that flowed from him, the notes that he scratched out on the staff. Entire plays written in one night, pouring from him like the sweat that poured from his brow before the stagelights. And no matter how many times I watched it, how closely I studied him, I could make no sense of it. Plunging into his mind was like thrusting my hands into a vast whirlpool of inky black, feeling the cold bite of utter chaos. I had to draw back from it every time, it was like touching the mind of something so utterly alien that I could not bear it. And no clue of where this came from, the energy, the vitality, the vast creative swelling that boiled up from beneath that darkness and came bursting out in great waves. It was that which I wanted to understand, to connect to. Months of studying Nicolas had left me no closer to this goal then I had been when I started.
Yet I couldn't abandon that faint hope. To do so was to consign myself to the blackness that opened under me, a great yawning abyss of cold isolation, slow death, the madness that gripped the old ones and eventually thrust them, screaming in insanity, into the flames. Lestat had refused me but he had left his fledgling, this Nicolas, this burning flame of energy that could lead me to understand this century that I found myself in. So I studied Nicolas, watched him, and tried in vain to understand him.
I had fallen into a tranced state again, watching him. I often did. I shook myself then, recalled myself to my purpose in coming to the theater. "Nicolas?" He continued to pace, not acknowledging me. I pitched my voice louder. "Nicolas?"
One more step, another. And then he stopped in the very middle of the room, frozen in mid gesture. His fingers repeated a pattern in the air, then repeated it again. Abruptly he tilted his head back down, looking at me, a frown drawing down his fine dark brows. Hopelessly disarranged curls fell into his eyes, which now fixed on me with cool displeasure. "I lost it," he announced. "I had a thought, but I lost it. You interrupted me."
Then, with complete and utter unconcern, he turned away. Hooking a decrepit wooden stool with his foot he flung himself down in front of the cracked little mirror. Flipping back the lace edging his cuffs he thrust his hands through his hair, dragging it back from his face. It did little to help the tangled mass.
He was always like this.
I stepped into the cramped little room, coming to stand behind him. I gathered up the fine strands of his hair, crisp curls twining themselves about my fingers. Nicolas didn't resist when I picked up the silver toothed comb and dragged it rather roughly through his hair, though I knew it must have hurt him. Wordlessly, he handed me the crushed green ribbon that had fallen from his hair earlier and become entangled in his crumpled cravat. I took it and tied his hair back, straightening the limp little bit of satin as best as possible. His eyes, inscrutable and edged with that dark, mocking humor, met mine through the clouded mirror.
"I assume there's some reason behind all this sudden solicitude," he said, his lips twisting upwards. He swung around to face me, thrusting up a hand, one thin finger extended, miming sudden discovery. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "No, don't tell me. You drew watchdog duty tonight, right?" And then he laughed, a low husky sound, wagging a finger at me in mock chiding.
'Watchdog duty'. He had named it himself, in jest. We could not allow him to go out by himself, to hunt alone, so one of us always accompanied him. Nicolas seemed to find it the pinnacle of amusement, a fiasco we had arranged solely for his benefit, and he let us know it.
I slapped his hand away. His shirt was in disarray, half untucked, buttons done up wrong, his cravat hanging in hopelessly crushed and limp folds. I brushed his hands away and set to work straightening him, rebuttoning the shirt correctly and tying the cravat about his neck. The lace was crumpled but it was the best that could be hoped for. Faint pink stains dotted the linen, where his sweat had touched the fabric. I could still smell the rich scent of the blood. I turned the stains inwards, tucking them out of sight.
Nicolas was still laughing but he stood at my urging, tucking his shirt back in and settling the waistcoat on his broad shoulders before buttoning it properly. He let me help him into his coat and I managed to catch his hand before he unthinkingly reached up to disarrange his hair again.
"So, Armand, where do we go tonight?" he asked as we left the theater. "The market, Les Innocents? The Theater? A soiree held by the aristocracy?" And then he laughed again, a brittle, harsh sound that rang in my ears and drew the eyes of the people we passed by on the evening street. I took his arm, gripped hard enough to make him wince, silencing him.
Little warnings like that were enough to hush him sometimes, but they never lasted long. Before we had gone much farther he was lost in the crowd. I might have been a shadow for all he noticed me beside him. He walked with great ground covering strides but his eyes were sunk into the people passing us by, devouring them with a fierce hunger. He would smile to them as he caught their eyes, this tall, exuberant young man with the pale face. Smile and let the light glint from the sharp fangs beneath his lips, let their startled eyes see him for just a moment. Most looked away, hastily, convinced it had been a trick of the dim street lamps. Some would look back, startled, disturbed, but I had already seized Nicolas' arm again and pulled him away. I took hold of his elbow and let him know by the pressure against the joint that I would break it like a twig if he attempted to speak to these passing mortals. Nicolas just continued to smile, playing his little private game.
This was why we could not let him go out alone, why we needs must watch him so closely. It was a game to him, a great game of hidden secrets, and this flirting with danger, with discovery, was like a drug. He flaunted himself before the citizens of Paris in a crude way that Lestat never had, daring each mortal he passed to recognize him, to declare him for what he was. To bring disaster upon us all. So we watched him, accompanied him, and guarded him against his own folly.
I took him to the Market, to the teeming throngs of early evening bustle, the clattering of carriages on the cobblestones and the animated chatter of people. The press of so many mortals did what no warning of mine could do, drawing Nicolas away from his game as the hunger rose in him and began to gnaw at his attention. He stopped smiling, grew more sober, his eyes flickering over the passing crowd with sharp hunger in their brown depths. He searched among them like a hawk circling over a still pool, watching the glint of fish beneath the shimmering water. Picking the perfect morsel to satisfy his hunger.
The strike was sudden and lightning quick. Nicolas stiffened and pulled away from me, his eyes fixed on a target. I let him go, followed at a distance as he stepped briskly forward, his stare never leaving the man he had chosen.
Tall, young, blonde haired and blue eyed. Almost always the same, it was these that Nicolas picked for death. If he himself realized the significance of his actions he never spoke of it. I knew, and it made me smile. Such sullen, bitter hatred festered in his soul.
The man had turned into a side street, shadowed and narrow. I could feel the cold energy surging from Nicolas as he pushed at the man, made him turn from his path. The mortal would never know why he had suddenly entered this tiny little alley, prodded by the sharp force of Nicolas' vampiric hunger.
Nicolas knew very well that if he had attempted anything in the market itself, without the relative concealment of that dark little street, I would have beaten him bloody. He had tried it once when I had been with him. He had been remarkably well behaved when accompanied by me ever since.
I stayed near the mouth of the darkened street, watching, as Nicolas took the man. I pushed at the people passing by out in the market, touched them, made them turn away from anything they might hear. Nicolas never killed neatly, or silently. He was, however, very thorough.
He spun it out over several minutes this time, letting the man turn, see him, recognize the danger he was in before Nicolas seized him. Let him struggle and fight against Nicolas' grasp, before Nicolas ripped his throat out. Choked screams, gurgled whimpers. Blood splattered Nicolas' shirt and coat and face as he gulped the blood that jetted out in great bursts. No, Nicolas never killed cleanly.
Hunger won out over playing with the man and Nicolas' drained him fast, dropping to his knees on the rough street, his lips fastened to the ragged gash in the man's throat. Within moments it was done. I saw the massive shudder rip through Nicolas as the man died, the death surging into him.
I had to go to him and pull him back before he made himself sick with the rapidly cooling blood.
The rip in the man's throat could have been made by any sharp instrument and a quick search revealed a purse of coins, which I pocketed. A robbery, a stabbing. A vampiric murder neatly concealed.
Nicolas was leaning against the wall, head lolling back, breathing hard. His chest rose and fell quickly, caught in the grips of the death swoon. Blood smeared his face, trailed wetly down his chin, covered his hands and shirt cuffs.
I went to him, touched his shoulder. His eyes opened and looked at me, no real recognition in them. Then he smiled, an expression for once devoid of that biting mockery. The smile lit his face and eyes with a warm inner light, a sober joy. He leaned heavily against me, boneless and pliant in a way he never was except during these times, as the swoon took him. Immediately after the kill I could see, for a moment, what had attracted Lestat to his dark beauty.
Nicolas raised a hand, traced a wet finger drunkenly over my cheek. Blood smear. He might have been a mortal in the grip of opium, it took him that hard when he killed. Beautiful and drunk and utterly at my mercy as he wallowed in the rush of the kill.
I liked to think of him that way, to think of him needing me, this brash young fledgling who professed to need no one and nothing. But, at that moment, he needed me, clung to me with determined strength just in order to stay on his weakened legs.
I pulled his head down, pressed my lips to his, tasted the blood in his mouth. He let me push his lips open, his fingers tangled in my hair, his tongue flickering against my teeth, the sharp points of my fangs. I pulled him closer to me, feeling the warmth of his blood flushed skin, enjoying the taste of the blood and of Nicolas.
The only warning I had was the suddenly hard grip of his hands. I wrenched back, jerking my head away just as his teeth closed with an audible snap. Pain flashed in my mouth-- his teeth had grazed my tongue and I could taste my own blood.
Nicolas was laughing, drunkenly, cruelly. "Naughty Armand," he whispered, his soft husky voice a mockery of a lover's whisper. "If you don't want to be bit you shouldn't tempt me like that!" He pushed me away from him, cold blood smearing wetly across my cheek as he deliberately wiped his palm across my face. Still laughing, he turned away, kicking carelessly at the body of the man laying discarded by the gutter.
I wet my lips, tasted blood. My hands were clenched at my sides in tight fists, my entire body shaking. I was furious. Nicolas had perfected raising my anger to a fine art form and he was provoking me deliberately. I watched him turn his back on me and walk away, listened to his ridiculing laughter, and in the moment before I rushed him I felt the entire world collapse into that small ball of perfectly furious anger that dimmed everything but him from my sight.
NICOLAS
"Nicolas?"
Woman's voice, and a soft tap tapping at the door. Oh, go away. Leave me alone.
"Nicolas, it's five minutes until we start. Nicolas! I know you're in there! Nicolas, they need you out front."
She wouldn't go away until I answered. I wrenched my eyes away from the lantern flame I had been studying and rose to my feet, going to the dressing room door and cracking it open. Eleni's eyes looked back at me through the opening, dark rimmed with kohl. Great circles of paint stood out garishly on her white cheeks, her full lips painted a vibrant red. Ghastly.
"The curtain goes up in five minutes," she repeated. "They need you out front."
"No they don't," I replied. "Besides, it doesn't matter if they do or not. I'm not going out there."
Exasperation in those flashing eyes. "Nicolas..."
Dear God, I couldn't bear listening to her tirades. She was worse then my parents had ever been. I had an excuse, though, and I used it mercilessly. "Eleni, I can't. My wrists hurt. Let Thomas conduct, he's halfway decent at it." I let a little hint of pain creep into my voice, pulled my mouth into a half grimace. Leaned on the door and let it open a little further, let her see me rubbing my wrists. She didn't need to know the gesture was completely faked.
It got me the response I wanted. Her red lipped mouth opened a little, concern in her expression. "Oh, Nicki, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't realize. Are you alright?" She reached out as though to touch me and I moved back.
"I'll be fine." Oh, she wasn't going to leave this alone. "I'll conduct tomorrow night, all right? Just not tonight." There. That should satisfy her.
"Eleni?" Laurent's voice. I could have thanked him. Eleni turned away, and, with one last concerned glance to me, hurried off down the hall.
I closed the door, resisting the urge to slam it. Silence. It closed in on me, claustrophobic, cloying. I couldn't bear it. Striding across the room I grabbed up the Stradavarious, my muse, my dark beauty.
My wrists did hurt a little, I realized, as I settled the violin beneath my chin and ran my fingers over the strings. I gritted my teeth and ignored it. Raise the bow, let it drop to the strings, let it caress them as the music pours forth, unbidden, making itself...
But it didn't make itself. And only a discordant screech rent the still air, not music.
I stopped, stunned. I checked the pegs, carefully plucked each string, listening to the clear sound. No, it was in tune. The bow was tightened and waxed. I flexed each finger, set them carefully on the strings. I played a scale of notes, up the scale, down. The violin was fine.
Bach, I thought. A sonnata. I could hear the music in my head, see it thrown out on sheets before me. I spun into the music, relaxing as it poured from my fingers, the notes coming easily and perfectly. But it was Bach, it was someone else's music, and it was not what I wanted. Let it fade, let it transform into the other, the sound that could entrance and seduce me.
A horrible, crying scream of jumbled notes, the string equivalent of slamming your hands down on a harpsichord. I jerked the violin away, held it out, literally shaking.
The minute I had stopped concentrating on the Bach the music had vanished. Silence in the small room. And I couldn't hear the music, I couldn't bring it forth.
Oh, this was monsterous. I wanted to cry. It had been this way for the last two days, the silence, that hurtful, hated silence. I couldn't bear it. And nothing I did, nothing I tried, brought the music back. The words, the ideas, the plays and the music, it was all gone. As though it had never been. I couldn't stand to hear the orchestra out in the little theater and I avoided even the rehersals, not being able to bear hearing the ideas I had once been filled with brought to life. But, away from those echoes of the past I was trapped in the silence, and nothing would get rid of it. I couldn't fill it with anything, and I was drowning in it.
I stared at blank sheets of parchment for hours, until the ink dried on my pen, and I saw nothing but blank sheets of white that stretched on forever, a desert of emptiness. I held my violin, my only love, and she turned upon me and cast the rabid screeches of alley cats back at me. If this did not end soon I might truly go insane.
I was replacing the violin in its case with shaking hands when he burst into the room. He didn't knock. He never did.
"What?" he said, affecting surprise. "Ah, don't tell me-- your wrists pain you too much to conduct, yet you can play?"
Wretch. He knew how much my wrists hurt. He was the one who had broken them, in that wretched little alley off of the market, only two nights before. My wrists, my leg, a whole score of ribs... But I was pleased to see that he still bore a mark on his hand, where I had bitten him and ripped the flesh away, exposing the bone. And his left eye, above the cheek, was still a little puffy. I had heard the bones shatter like glass when I had slammed him against the wall. For all his vaunted age and power he could be hurt.
I placed the box in it's place, snapped the lid shut. "Not at all," I said. "I thought I might try, but my wrists do indeed hurt." Steel myself, turn to face him. "Shouldn't you be out in your box, Monsiuer? The show starts soon."
"It's already started," he answered. "And I've seen it."
Silence between us. Always before I could fill that silence, ignore him if I needed to, retreat into the music. Now the silence pressed in on us, like thick gauze, wrapping us in its suffocating depths. I was breathing hard, I realized, it was as though there weren't enough air in the little room. I was going to scream if this continued...
When he spoke it was like a rush of cool breeze. Horrific, to stoop so low that even his voice could bring me relief.
"When will we be seeing something new?"
The Theatre, of course, he was talking about that. A new play. Did I have one written? And why couldn't he just come out and ask me that, just like that... 'have you written a new play, Nicolas?' Why ask around it like he did?
"Soon." The lie came easily to me. "I was just working on it, actually..." I spun away from that cold violet gaze, flung myself down before the little table, shoving things aside and pulling out paper and ink. I nearly spilled the bottle in my haste.
He was still standing in the doorway, his back against the closed door, looking quite as if he meant to stay there for all time. Stone still and watchful. What was wrong with him? Memories came to me, jumbled... He had done this before, hadn't he; he would sit and watch me when I composed, just sit and watch, like a starving man before a banquet, as though he might find some deep inner meaning in watching me write on paper. How strange that it had never bothered me before. Now, it was as though his presense filled the room, as though he were physically standing behind my shoulder, leaning on me, watching me. My hand was shaking again and I paused in mid-motion, the pen poised above the ink. Get ahold of yourself, Nicolas de Lefant. It's only that misbegotten fiend, Armand.
I set the pen down to hide the quivering of my hand. I looked up at him, fixing him with a stern gaze, horrified to realize that I had to struggle to keep my lips from trembling. "DO you mind?" Let the sarcasm drip from the words.
Armand raised a fine auburn brow. "Not at all." He smiled, thin lips pulling back, and inclined his head gracefully. "Please," he added, sounding almost civil. "Don't let me stop you."
Of all the wretched nerve. "I meant, would you mind leaving," I snapped. "You're disrupting me."
He actually looked mildly surprised. I expected some biting come back but he mearly nodded again, executing a quick, graceful bow. "Of course," he said, quite cordially. "If you will excuse me...?"
"Get out," I hissed, half rising to my feet, my hands slamming down on the table. "Get OUT!"
The door shut behind him and I was alone again. I sat slowly, reaching to pick up the pen, mechanically dipping it into the ink and holding it poised above the paper.
Nothing. White, a blankness that stretched before me forever. Empty. And as I watched, shaking now, a heavy drop of ink fell from the nib of the pen and landed with a splash against the pristine whiteness of the paper. The fibers soaked it up, spreading it out in minute tendrils, like a gangrenous wound stretching its poison out through a network of veins.
I sat before the paper, my eyes open but not seeing, and slowly the red blood of my tears fell to add their wounds to that blankness, filling its emptiness with my pain.
"Nicolas! Don't you dare run away from me!"
Eleni again. I almost flinched, then gathered myself and paused, hand on the door to my dressing room, and turned to face her. "My dear Eleni, I assure you, I am NOT running."
My cold tone didn't stop her. She came right up to me, all dark hair and flashing eyes, like a defiant kitten before a wolf. The analogy amused me for a moment, then the amusement vanished. No, no wolves. That called up too many associations to him.
"Nicolas," Eleni was saying, "where have you been?"
I affected a surprised look. "Been? Why, right here. Where else?" I gestured to indicate the entire Theatre, then back to my dressing room which had turned into my retreat during the last week.
Eleni wasn't hearing it. "You've been locked in there for over a week, Nicolas, not a sound or word out of you. You go out to hunt, you come back and lock yourself there. You'd sleep there if we let you! What is wrong?"
I didn't want to answer that. I didn't want to think about it. I had perfected NOT thinking to a fine art form. "Nothing, Eleni. Nothing at all. I just... I'm working on something, that's all. I need quiet to work on it." My mind gibbered in fury at this lie, it was all a lie, I needed sound to work, the quiet was killing me! But Eleni didn't know that and I knew from experience that none of them excepting the head fiend himself could read my mind. Too much genius for them to handle, I suppose.
Eleni was frowning at me. "Working? Are you writing a new play? We need a new one, Nicolas, this one has been running for three weeks. We should start the orchestra rehearsing a new score, if nothing else. When will the new one be done?"
Oh, God, don't ask me that. "Ah... well, soon. I'll have it done soon. I just need peace to work on it, instead of having you all banging on the door!"
Surprise in those dark eyes. If she had been mortal a pink flush would have spread over her cheeks. "Oh. Well, then, I guess I'll let you get back to work... I'll tell the others to leave you alone for a bit..." She smiled then, and, leaning forward, pressed her lips to my cheek. "Just take care of yourself, will you? We really do need you, Nicki." Whiff of perfume in her hair, and then she was gone.
Need me. They all need me. But they don't really care.
Back into my room, slam the door, light the candles. Let their little twinkling lights sooth the rawness of the silence, let my eyes get lost in their flickering flames. Let the silence invade my very soul. It hurt, but past the hurt there was a state where I did not think, did not feel, and the whole world was wonderfully numb. I had discovered this trick in the last few days, and it was all that kept me from the brink. That, and the blood of the kill. Nothing else helped me to escape the pain.
It had become a ritual, a shrine of sorts. My little wooden desk, with parchment and pen and ink set out upon it, surrounded in candles. The Stradivarious set before me. And I would sit for hours, eyes locked to these things which had once defined me and provided release for the darkness inside. The wonderful cancer in the side of society, my Theatre of the Vampires. And I was its creator, its driving force, the inspiration for it all.
No inspiration now. Nothing but the silence. And over the hours my eyes would wander to the candles, loose themselves in the flames, anything to escape the silence. The candles with their little lights became my friends, my saviors.
It was hours later that I roused from that trance. A few hours from dawn, the Theatre silent and empty around me. Had they forgotten about me? Left me here?
I had to get up, go look. In stockinged feet I wandered the empty halls backstage, silent as a spirit. I fancied that, a white undead spirit in white shirt, wandering the Theatre in silence, forever trapped. And I felt so close to that now, so very close. Easy to imagine.
Footsteps, echoing out on the stage, just barely audible even to my ears. Someone was here. One of us.
I crept into the wings, peered around the velvet curtain. What I saw made me stop, stunned.
He stood before the darkened stagelights, a waif in loosened shirt and waistcoat, no longer the fine gentleman. He had loosened his hair and it tumbled down around his face in a soft auburn cascade of curls, hiding his eyes. Beautiful. Even as I watched he reached down and slipped off his shoes, let them lay where they fell. I saw that his coat lay on the boards as well, several feet away. And then, on stockinged feet, he walked the length of the stage, in slow, measured steps. As though he would feel the stage, understand the very principles of the wood, through his feet. So very careful, slow, and infinately graceful. Music in motion, a lone waltz.
I heard a sound. Humming. He was humming. Oh, this was too sweet. I let myself smile, the expression cold on my lips. The great Armand, who disdained to have anything to do with the Theatre, prancing about on the stage and humming to himself. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. I started to step forward, out onto the stage, to confront him. I wanted to rub his snitty little nose in this one.
And then he opened his mouth and all thought of petty revenge or jibes flew right out of my head.
Sound. Sweet, beautiful, blessed sound. It rolled over me like the swoon of killing, I had to step back, steady myself. I could do nothing but stand as though I had been struck mute and dumb, listening to this sound that he made.
Words emerged slowly from the pure, clear notes. Italian, it was Italian, one of the operas. Armand went to all of them these days, any production, he had developed an obsession with them it seemed. And now he was singing an aria in a breathtaking voice, like a musical instrument given lips and lungs and soul.
I watched as, with eerie grace, he raised one arm. And then a foot. Slowly, he spun, effortless, the steps of a ballet done in great, slow, exageration. And all the while he quietly sang the aria, almost beneath his breath, an outpouring of music and beauty that made my breath catch in my throat.
Oh, this was too much. There were tears in my eyes, streaming down my cheeks. I was trembling, my heart racing. And in the back of my mind, like a tickling touch, was the warm touch of the great blackness that had fueled me for so long.
I could do this, I was thinking. I COULD do this. It will come back to me, the music, the words, it will all come back. To write it for that voice, that grace, to see HIM enact the notes that trickled into my head... I could DO it! And the silence would be gone!
Suddenly, he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I wanted to run to him, catch him up in my arms, cover that pale face in kisses, swing him around and around. Tell him of the ideas, that countless streams of ideas, the FLOOD of ideas that suddenly coursed through me. And all of them, every one, was for him. For that voice. That body. He would be the instrument of my inspiration, as the coven had been, as the Stradivarious was. Through him I would pour out the dark fire that burned within me, fueled my life. With him, I could kindle that fire again, return to myself.
I was gripping the velvet of the curtain between icy cold hands, my fists drawn up to my mouth, knuckles pressed to my bared teeth. I felt the sting, tasted the blood as one of my fangs pierced the flesh, but it was beyond notice. I was rivited, feeling the press of his voice against me like a physical thing. I was shaking. And then, like a bar of printed music cut by shears, he stopped.
The silence was a thousand times worse in comparison. I almost staggered under its weight. I peered out to the stage through tear hazy eyes.
Armand stood in the center of the stage, his back to me, arrested in mid-motion. He lowered his arms slowly, came down to rest on his heels, the muscles in his calves and thighs leaping beneath his silk stockings as he rocked gently on the balls of his feet. And then he laughed, rather self consiously, a little derisive snort of disdain. Reaching up, he pushed back his hair with his hands, shaking it back like a fire laced mane of silk. I could see that hair dressed for the stage, the beautiful profile he turned towards my vision outlined and accented by the flickering stagelights...
"Rediculous," Armand pronounced, softly, to himself. And then, louder, "How would you put it, you fiend? In the language of this day? Sheer absurdity!" His voice rang out with the last words and he spun, flinging his arms out to the empty theater. "Foolishness!" he proclaimed, his words projecting out to the far walls with magnificent force. And then he lowered his hands and began to laugh, a soft chuckle that came from his chest and grew, striking out with sharp, statacco mockery. He bent, catching up his shoes and coat. Still chuckling that derisive laugh, he turned to leave the stage.
And came face to face with me.
I had hurridly wiped the tears from my cheeks, gathered ahold of myself, but I couldn't find my tongue as Armand's eyes met mine. And then he smiled sardonically, almost a sneer, and inclined his head gracefully. "And here we have the King of Fools," he said, that silky voice sliding out to strike me like a knife blade. When I made no respone he swept past me, disappearing into the darkened corridor.
I stood for a long time in that place, feeling the silence with me again, torturing me, cutting into my heart and sanity with every second a whip lash of emptiness. But it didn't matter. Not any more. I had a solution.
Salvation, as close as his voice.
He had left and he had taken the music with him. All that was needed to regain it was... him. Armand.
I would see him on that stage, before those lights, before the roaring crowds of Paris, if it was the last thing I ever did...
ARMAND
I stood there, before the coven, before this presumptuous little fledgling, in absolute amazement. Nicolas' voice still rung in the air, it seemed, like a wild bird beating at me. I stood and stared at him, stunned by his brazenly delivered ultimatum. The others made a half circle about us, watching us nervously, all tense. They expected violence, I think.
And Nicolas, watching me with white ringed almost frantic eyes. Blood sweat on his brow, beading on his upper lip, his hair dangling down in limp, damp curls.
I did the only thing I could do. I laughed. I stood there before him and I laughed in his face. "You're mad!" I told him. "You are stark, raving mad! Nicki, you have finally come truly unhinged!"
It had all started several weeks ago. I had been vaughly aware of it, hearing the others talk of it. There was no new play, Nicolas needed to write one. And Nicolas was locked in his rooms, composing, he said, but no one knew what. He demanded peace to work but no one saw the work or knew anything about it. He promised again and again that the new play was forthcoming shortly. A week passed. Another. Nothing.
Finally, Eleni had confronted him. He had grown angry, all but physically thrown her from the room. Almost in tears she had come to me, pleaded with me to speak to Nicolas, find out what was wrong. He would speak to none of the others.
I let her convince me. I went to Nicolas and I tried to talk to him, inquire politely as to the state of his work. Glowering silence, as though I were to blame for some unknown thing which disturbed his peace of mind.
Finally, incensed with this sulleness, I had reached out to touch his thoughts.
Silence. Great, gaping silence, not that dark maelstrom I had come to recognize as Nicolas. And not the silence of a shielded mind, but the quiet of despair. And one thing which came to me quite clearly, as though he had shouted it to me.
There was no new work in progress. Nicolas was not composing. He was not even trying to. He had lied to Eleni's every question for the last few weeks.
I truly cared nothing for the play or the Theatre, but it meant a great deal to the others, as did Nicolas. Eleni was truly concerned about him. So I had brought him before the others, telling them of what I had found out. Let them judge their precious musician.
Laurent spoke out first. "Nicki... is that true?" Hurt, a little betrayed. Their great inspiring genius had failed them.
Nicolas had closed his eyes, looking almost ill. He was dishelved and wane. "Yes," he admitted. Standing outside their circle I regarded him with some surprise. It seemed to me that he would typically have defended himself, instead of meekly admitting the deception.
"Yes, it's true," Nicolas said, and then he poured out his tale of woe to them, of how he could not find it in himself to write or compose, of how the words and music had left him completely. I had to smile. Such a consumate play of victimized suffering. It should have been Nicolas on that stage, instead of Lestat. He would have made a fine actor.
The others had fallen for the little act completely. They were all sympathy and anxious helpfulness. What did he need to continue writing? Did he need quiet, a retreat from the others, a place of his own? It was Felix, in light hearted jest, who made the suggestion. "I know! We shall keep you from Armand. The two of you snipe at each other so... surely if we take this thorn from your side you will find yourself able to concentrate better!"
Nicolas had stood in their midst, his eyes half shut, head bowed, unresponsive. But now his head snapped up, his glittering eyes fixed on me. "No," I saw him mouth, and then he took a breath and spoke aloud. "No," he repeated, clearly. Such a manic look to his features; I think I actually took a step back as he raised a hand, stabbing a white finger towards me.
"I WILL write a new play... I will compose such a thing as will have all of Paris at our doors... but ONLY if Armand will take the lead in the production!"
And now I stood before him and I laughed. It was all just too rediculous. He, standing there before me, issueing this silly ultimatum. The others standing there in stunned silence. It was all absolutely hysterical and I laughed at it and at him. I let the laughter pour out of me, enjoying the feel of it, the sheer, undeniable humor of the situation.
I watched the anger flood his face; the pinched, tight set of his lips, the glassy hardness of his eyes, and the flush of blood that rushed to his cheeks. He lowered his hand, the fingers curling into a fist. I sobered abruptly. "Don't," I told him softly. "Or I'll break your arms in three places this time."
"I'd love to see you try it," he said just as softly, but I could see his fist tremble slightly. I smiled just a little, baring the very tips of my teeth. He clenched his jaw, the muscles leaping under the skin of his cheek, his mouth pressed into a tigh t line. I couldn't resist baiting him.
"I don't have to try , Monsieur," I whispered, knowing that he could hear the barely breathed words. "I can do it. And you and I and everyone here knows it."
Nicolas sucked in a sharp breath, his weight shifting on his feet as he gathered himself to leap at me. I braced myself, thrilled at the sudden surge of adrenaline that these conflicts with him brought, the quickened pace of breath and heart.
Eleni was suddenly between us, arms outstretched as though she would hold us apart, her dark eyes huge with alarm. "Nicolas! Armand, stop it! What's gotten into you? Stop it!"
Nicolas had actually stepped forward until his chest was pressed to her hand, and I could see her knuckles go white and her arm tense with the pressure to restrain him. Then, abruptly, he recovered himself. He stepped back, almost quivering with suppress ed fury.
"You are correct, Mademoiselle," he said stiffly. "Armand, this is undignified, and your reply was rather hasty. Would you like to rephrase it?" I plucked the rest of what he would have liked to say from his mind easily enough- ::Would you like to rephrase, or should I rearrage your teeth?::
I smiled broadly, showing him all of the items in question. "I rather thing that's unlikely," I said, and watched his eyes narrow. He knew I was answering both questions.
He managed to keep ahold of his temper, though. "Let's discuss this somewhere else," he grated. "In private." Away from where the others could interfear.
I inclined my head gracefully. "Agreed." I started to gesture to his little dressing room, but Nicki had already pushed past me towards the door leading out of the theater.
I turned to follow him but Eleni caught me by the arm. "You leave him alone, Armand," she said sternly. She was bristling like a mother cat over a threatened kitten. "Don't upset him! Don't hurt him! Armand, we need him!"
I looked at her calmly. "I am neither going to hurt, nor upset him," I told her. "We are just going to discuss this rather odd idea of his." I removed her hands from my arm and she made some small, alarmed noise as I took her by the shoulders and physically lifted her slightly, setting her back away from me.
"Peace, Eleni," I said. "Your precious genius will be returned to you unharmed in body and as whole in mind as he ever is. I promise it." Letting her go, I turned to follow Nicolas.
Nicolas had paused to wait for me outside the theater door. He waited with barely restrained temper, his dark eyes flashing, fists clenched as though he would assault me when I stepped through the door. He opened his mouth the minute I closed the door be hind me but I interrupted him.
"Not here," I told him sharply. "And not in the street. I will not brawl with you in an alley again, Nicolas!"
He sneered. "Oh, heaven forbid the great Armand should dirty his hands by engaging in something as common as fisticuffs in a gutter," he drawled. "Excuse me, Monsieur, I mistook you for the man who jumped me from behind and broke my ribs!"
"If you don't be silent for a moment I'll do it again," I snapped. Then I took a deep breath, biting back the other things I might have said, and reached out to link my arm through his and pull him bodily after me as I strode out to the street.
Nicolas was too astonished to resist for a moment, but then he planted his feet and pulled against me. It did precious little good, of course- I could have picked him up and carried him if I had wanted to. But he was being blatantly obvious about it and several people on the evening street had already turned to look at his struggles. The wretch knew very well that creating a scene and drawing attention to us was the last thing I wanted, so that was what he was doing.
I released him abruptly and he only barely managed to keep from losing his balance and falling backwards. "We're going to your house," I told him flatly. "The one you keep in the Ile St.-Louis. We are going to discuss this idea of yours."
He went quite still, regarding me with some amazement. He cocked his head a little, looking much more like the normal Nicolas that I was used to, instead of this stooped, miserly, manic creature he was rapidly becoming. "That's right," he mused, sounding rather as though he found the idea funny. "I do have a house there, don't I? I forget, sometimes." He looked back at me. "Discuss it?" he asked warrily.
"Yes, discuss it, like the gentlemen we are pretending to be," I snapped. I turned on my heel and started to walk away, pausing after a few steps. "Are you coming?" I called back to him. "Or shall we let the matter stand as is?"
That got him. He caught up to me in two long legged strides, falling into step beside me. We walked in silence for a time, Nicolas sneaking looks at me from the side when he thought I would not notice. His brows were drawn down, a fine crease forming bet ween them as he considered this change in me.
"This 'discussion'," he finally said, rather casually. "If it is going to be at all like our last 'discussion', we might do better to conduct it out of doors. I don't fancy having my house demolished."
"Nicolas, you said yourself that you don't remember owning the house most of the time," I reminded him. "And no, this will not resemble our last 'discussion', assuming you could call it that. We are going to talk. That's all."
He mulled this over for awhile, reaching up to push his fingers through his already disarranged hair as the rather chill night wind blew stray locks into his eyes. "You're sure this discussion won't involve broken bones?" he inquired lightly.
"No. It won't." It was something like talking to an idiot.
A smile broke out over his lips and too late I saw the sardonic gleam in his dark eyes. "Pity. Why, Armand, what brings on this sudden display of mercy? Don't tell me you're going soft in your old age!"
I didn't let a flicker of response show in my expression. "Heaven forbid," I replied, using his own flippant tone. "But I promised Eleni."
He raised a dark brow, regarding me with a scathing look. "And that's supposed to reassure me?" he asked. "You promised him not to hurt me either, and a great deal of good that promise has done!"
"I promised Lestat," I stressed the name slightly and watched him flinch, "not to kill you. I've kept that promise. And I haven't done anything to you that was lasting or crippling, Nicolas, so please stop with this hurting martyr routine, would you?"
He didn't reply to that and we walked the rest of the way in silence. He didn't carry the keys to the house on him, of course, so we entered via a window with a loosened lock. It was cold and empty inside the house, but it was a relief to be out of the w ind. A storm was blowing in.
Nicolas found several candelabras and lit them, placing them on the mantle of the fireplace before turning his attention to starting a fire in the grate. I sat in one of the chairs, watching him.
When the fire was going Nicolas shrugged out of his coat, letting it fall to the floor, where he kicked it to one side. With his back still to me he raised his hands to scrub vigorously throuigh his hair; from where I watched I saw the ribbon clinging to his curls finally give up the fight and fall to lay in a crumpled and defeated string of satin on the rug. When he finally turned back to me the fire backlit him, calling forth a fine halo of chocolate brown strands about his head and picking out the shadowy lines of his arm through the linen of his shirt.
He stayed near the fire, hands stretched back to it as though he felt the cold more keenly- perhaps he did. We regarded each other in silence for a time, the room filled only with the flickering light of the fire and the occasional pop of the sap in the wood.
Finally, Nicolas spoke. "We were going to discuss this," he prompted. "Does that mean you're considering it?"
Of course not, I wanted to snap. My hands were curled with crushing strength around the arms of the chair. I wanted to slap that hint of a smirk off of his face, I wanted to beat him bloody for having had the impertinance to make that ultimatum at all. I did none of these things. I sat, stiffly, and I stared at him coldly, my temper held tightly in check.
I had been coven master for over a hundered years. And yet I could not remain calm in the face of this one insane, irritating fledgling. Lestat had had no idea of the vengeance he had exacted on me when he had made me promise not to harm Nicolas.
"Let's say I find it interesting," I said slowly. "Nicolas, where in hell did you get the idea I would ever agree to appear in one of your little theatrics?"
He looked away from me frowning. There was silence for a moment as he rocked uneasily on his heels. Nicolas' shadow stretched grotesquely across the carpet, past my chair and up along the far wall, flickering in the firelight. He shifted again and the arms moved, great tendrils of shadow reaching out to engulf the room.
"I heard you," he said softly. His dark eyes were unfocused, and it seemed those whispered words were hardly meant for me at all. "The other night on the stage. You were dancing. And you sang. Armand, you sang. And I heard you."
The other night... I cursed myself under my breath for that moment of whimsical fancy. No, call it idiocy! For surely, that was what it was. A momentary fit of madness on my part, for which I was now going to be made to pay.
"I didn't know you could sing," Nicholas was saying. "You never..."
"I don't sing," I interrupted, my voice almost hoarse with the intensity of the words that I spat out. "I do not sing, I do not play, and I do not perform."
Nicholas wouldn't hear me. "But you do! Armand, why are you so set against this? I heard you, you have a beautiful voice..."
There was an awful, loud crack. The carved wooden arms of the chair had snapped under the pressure of my fingers. I felt pain flash up my arm as some of the splinters were driven into my flesh. Nicholas paled, stepping back in alarm.
I let go of the wood, let it drop. Matter of factly I stood, shaking the drops of blood from my hands. Without looking at Nicholas I stood, going to stand by the fire. Holding my hands out to its light, I picked the splinters from my palms. After a few moments Nicholas reached out, taking my wrist. I jerked back but he raised his other hand in a placating gesture. Stiffly, I let him remove the last of the wood shards. He kept his eyes downcast as he did so, his calloused fingertips moving over my palm with surprising deftness and a light touch. I watched him, saw the way he caught at his lower lip with his teeth, the flare of his nostrils as he caught the sharp scent of blood.
I moved to take my hand back but he held my wrist tightly. He pressed his fingertips to mine, forcing my fingers downward and out. He brushed his fingers over the lengths of mine, testing. Comparing.
"The lute," he said, finally. "You'd do well playing the lute. Or the harpsichord, you have the reach for it." He pressed my smallest finger and thumb outward, measuring it against his own. For all that he was the larger of us my fingers were slender and it gave the illusion of greater length. "You could reach an octave on the harpsichord. And you're good with your hands, your fingers are nimble. You'd probably find it easy."
This was too much. I snatched my hand away from him, thrust it behind my back to keep myself from hitting him. If I so much as slapped him now I would loose my temper. I might kill him. I wanted to.
His words had stabbed like knives into my memory. I was trembling, coiled too tightly to move. And Nicholas was staring at me, slightly puzzled, not understanding what he had done.
"We will not speak of this," I rasped, my tongue leaden in my mouth. The flickering of the firelight was making me ill, the room seemed to dip and swirl about me. I closed my eyes, swallowing convulsively. "I don't want to talk about it. I will NOT perform. Do you understand?"
"Armand..." His hand on my arm, he was looking at me, almost concerned. I pulled away from him, slapped his hands back.
"Let me be!" I cried. My voice broke. My vision was fading into red and black, the room collapsing about me. If I didn't leave I would strike him, wring his miserable neck for bringing forth this pain that raked at me. I was drowning in memory, the phantom pain of years before.
Nicholas reached for me again. He looked almost truely worried about me. I pushed him back, shoved him from me. He stumbled back, fell to the floor. I whirled and ran from the room, from the house, out to the cold night rain, the hounds of memory tearing at me.
I ran through the deserted streets of Paris without care or reason, until I could run no more. I slipped, staggered on the wet cobblestones. I fell heavily against a brick wall, felt the rough stone graze my shoulder and arm. My legs collapsed and I fell to the street, knees and hands submerged in the small rivers of water that ran over the stones, my hair dripping down in dark ringlets over my eyes. Rain fell in never ending sheets from the black heavens above, soaking me, plastering the linen and silk of my clothes to me.
"The lute," he had said. "You'd do well playing the lute."
Memories, flooding over me. They stung like the bite of a whip, they had spurred me on over half the city. I was drowning in them, memories called forth by Nicholas' thoughtless words.
The feel of the lute strings beneath my fingers, the weight of it in my lap. I could recall it distinctly, a four hundred year old memory that resurfaced from the depths of my soul, as bright and clear as if it had been yesterday. The sharp smell of the pigments and paints, as I sat among the jars of them. And his voice, his voice, calling to me, beautiful Italian speech, "Amadeo, put the lute aside. I need you to come here..."
A moan wrenched itself from my lips. I bowed my head, pressed my forehead to my knees. The lights of the lanterns above me, the flickering of so many flames. Kneeling there beneath the lights, so quietly joyful, so innocent... oh, dear god, had I ever been that boy? And if I had, how did I come to be here now, monster in human form, unable to even understand what I had been then...
It hurt. It hurt to think of that boy. To think of him. After all this time, and it still hurt. I was shaking, wet and miserable, kneeling there in the streets of this alien city in an age I could not understand, surrounded by too much I could not accept, could not comprehend. My memories burned me, I could not face them, and the world around me had changed too much, I could not seek solace in it.
Nicholas had brought it all back with his words. I cursed myself mercilessly for ever having given into whim and stepped foot on that little stage at the theater. I just couldn't resist, there in the stillness, to step out on the boards. Feel what it was like to face the empty seats, imagine that there were people there. Raise my voice as I once had as a mortal. Just to see if I still could, I had told myself. And Nicholas had seen. Had heard.
"You'd do well playing the lute." I had not touched an instrument in 400 years. No instrument, no pen, no brush. Nothing. I had put it behind me, all of it. I was a Child of Satan, a part of the coven. No such frivolity for me.
But I had used such things, once. I had played, and sang. In Italy. In Venice. For him...
"Marius," I whispered. The name tore out my heart, shot stabs of icy pain through my soul. I sobbed, tasted blood. The white silk of my stockings over my knees, where I pressed my head against them, was turning pink with the blood tears.
Nicholas had had no idea what he did when he asked me to perform in his theatrical. To sing. To dance, and play. I could not, and I would not. Not for him, not for anyone. Never again...
I knelt there for almost an hour, huddled in the rain, letting the pain of all of those memories wash through and over me. And finally, like the rain that swirled about my feet in rivulets, I let the pain drain away. I regained my calm, my composure. I s topped crying, wiped the tears and the rain from my cheeks with an equally wet sleeve. I sat up, heedless of the small river running over the paving stones. I very much doubted I could get any wetter then I already was.
I pushed back the memories, consigned them to the dark where they belonged. I was still angry, with myself, and with Nicholas. I hated the way he could do this to me, call forth every negative emotion and hurtful memory, until I reacted the way a child would. No other, not even Lestat, could do that to me so easily. And it infuriated me, drove me to lash out at him regardless of promises. He slipped beneath my every shield and stung me when I least expected it. I hated him, and I let the anger warm me, let it flood my veins with hot fire. It felt good, it banished the memories.
I hated him. And I couldn't kill him, I couldn't even seriously injure him. I had given my word. I certainly couldn't return to face him now, knowing what kind of supercilious expression would be on his face, what kind of haughty disdain for my actions on this night. What he did not know is that I had run less from cowardice and more from the knowledge that I would rend him limb from limb if I had stayed there another minute.
So I sat there in the rain, burning with my own anger and hatred, simmering in a thousand wishes to hurt this fledgling who could so hurt me. And over time the anger began to cool, the calm coming back, that cool blankness that I had worn for so long it was second nature slipping back over me like a familiar coat.
And it was uncomfortable, in a way, to release the anger.
I was alive when I was angry, alive in a way I had experienced all to infrequently over the long years. When I was angry, when the fire burnt through me to the exclusion of all else, I didn't need to understand the age around me. I didn't need to comprehend it, or try to mesh with it. When I was angry I simply was, with no need for anything else. I could forget the way I felt so out of place, out of time.
In the beginings of that ageless calm I mulled this feeling over. Turning it, in my mind, like a glass bauble in my hands. That feeling of just being, of burning life, was something that I craved. Maybe that was why I picked so many fights with Nicholas, endlessly baiting him and taunting him. It gave me an excuse to be angry. And the anger gave me a way to experience, just for a moment, life. It was like the blood, that heady swoon of rage that he could provoke me to. And I liked it, I realized. I liked it a great deal.
The music, too, that dark swelling rush of his soul given voice. That, too, could catch me up in it, let me forget for a time.
Nicholas. Child of this century, who walked through this age with effortless ease, the same way Lestat had. I thought of him, thought of every insolent word, every irritating habit, every sarcastic phrase and little cruelty that he had ever displayed thr ough all of our arguements. And I grew angry again, felt the intoxicating flush of that anger through me.
I rose, pushed back the wet mass of my hair. And with the anger still a delightful glow within me, I turned and retraced my steps to the Il-St. Louis. I was going to face Nicholas, and what I would do to him would be decided when I saw him.
He was there when I returned to the house. Standing there, before the fire, as though he had never moved. Just watching me with those dark eyes as I flung the door open, no arrogance, no concern. Just Nicholas, for once sober, serious. Heatwrenchingly beautiful.
"I HATE you," I snarled, leaning against the doorframe. My voice was barely recognizeable, all rough and angry. But the rage was long gone from my vision and all I saw was him.
His lips twisted for a moment. "Good," he said, very calmly, almost quietly. "I'd hate to think you ran out of here for any other reason." And then he opened his arms to me and in that moment I knew what I wanted.
The door slammed shut behind me and I was in his arms and suddenly all of it no longer mattered. Nothing mattered but his arms around me, his fingers tangled in my hair, his mouth crushing mine with bruising force as he all but lifted me from the floor. I clung to him with all my strength, needing the solid feel of him, the reality of him. Here, near him, I lived.
No words, no tender whispers. We came together in violence, his hands tearing the rain sodden clothes from me, his nails scratching welts along my back and thighs. I hissed sharply, drew my teeth along his lips, over the tongue that touched my own. Taste of blood, of him. I tore at his shirt, sent a shower of buttons flying about the room. I needed him with a pain that was almost physical, desire flooding me in a delicious wave of feeling and life. I was drowning in that heat and it was the sweetest thing I had ever known. The scent of him was all over me, blood and musk, I wanted to bury myself in him, claim him-- Mine, all mine, Nicki, MINE!
He gasped as I twisted my fingers in his dark hair, let lips and tongue caress the pale column of his throat. He caught my chin, pulled my head back up. His kiss was hard, fierce, his tongue pushing my lips apart, his teeth nipping at my skin. Sweet pain . I moaned against him, pressed myself to him, felt his heart pounding hard against my own. Calloused fingers pressing into my flesh, gentle here, hard there, drawing random patterns of pain and pleasure across my skin until it all took flame and I couldn't tell where the pain began... And then he was pressing me down, the rug cool beneath my back and thighs, his warm weight crushing me. His hands pinioned my wrists with a grip like iron. I twisted against that hold and heard his laughter, soft and husky, his breath hot on my cheek. "Who is the stronger now?" he whispered, his lips brushing my jaw.
"I am," I grated through clenched teeth, and then the warm, wet tip of his tongue found the pulse beneath my ear and I couldn't prevent the groan that escaped my lips. Nicolas chuckled, his fingers biting with hard cruelty into my wrists.
"Who is the stronger?" he whispered. "Say it!"
"I am!" I gasped out, then choked as his teeth grazed my skin. I was panting, burning with feelings I could neither name nor control. This was life, this fire in my veins, even the anger could not compare. I moaned, whimpering a little as the warmth of h is mouth withdrew from my neck. His lips closed over mine with brutal strength and I surged up against him, wordlessly begging. When he broke the kiss I almost cried aloud.
"Say it!" he demanded. I could taste the blood sweat from his lips, droplets of pure physical pleasure against my tongue. His dark eyes blazed with consuming lust, his breath coming in great gasps of air.
"I am," I whispered. And then, in the next breath, I admitted to defeat as I never had before. "But I give myself to you." And in return, he would give me the life I had been so long without.
Nicolas kissed me again, licking at my lips, breathing a small moan against my mouth. He traced the line of my jaw with his tongue, the wet tip moving along the rim of my ear. I was vibrating, each breath a labored gasp when his lips finally found my neck and my entire world exploded into fragments and dissolved into that one moment as his teeth broke the skin and the dark energy of his soul spiraled wide to include me.
NICOLAS
I let a single auburn curl twine about my finger, tugging at it gently. His hair was soft as down, like silk, beautiful to touch. I liked to bury my fingers in it, feel it slide over my palms.
I felt him stir a little, where he lay against me, his cheek cradeled on my stomach. His hair spread out like a rippling sea of dark flame, tendrils stretching across my chest. His fingers traced delicate patterns on my thighs, like the trailing touch of a blind man, the only sign that he was still awake. We had lain there for hours, it seemed, exhausted in the aftermath of what looked to be a battlescene.
Certainly there was enough blood splashed on and about the floor where we lay before the fire. It covered his pale skin in irregular splotches along his neck, his chest, the slender muscles of his thighs and the sharp angles of his hips. Everywhere that I had sunk my teeth into that creamy flesh, let a mouthful of his blood course like light down my throat. Never too much from any one place, he wouldn't let me take much at all... but it was enough. He was like a drug, addictive and wonderful. Even the th ought of rolling him over, decending on him again, licking that cooling red elixer from his skin... my heart was pounding fast, a drumbeat of desire.
"Armand," I whispered, breaking the silence. Almost an irreverant act, but his name curled like honey around my tongue. "My Amadeo."
He stirred and I closed my eyes, breathing out in a shuddering moan as his soft lips brushed my skin, tracing a line of fire up my stomach and across my chest. I felt his teeth just barely graze the flesh of my nipple as his nails drew hot lines of almost-pain over my ribs and I gasped, tensing.
He chuckled, a deep, husky sound, beautiful. I felt the movement of the air as he raised himself to his elbow beside me, and then the touch of his fingers on my chin. The hot tip of his tongue brushed over my lips, over the closed lids of my eyes. He drew away slightly and I opened my eyes, looking up.
Armand was bent over me, his lips curved into that slightly sardonic, knowing smile. His violet eyes were half closed, reflecting a cat-like satisfaction. He brushed my hair back from my face, wrapping a tendril about one finger and tugging just hard enough to make me wince. "Nicolas," he breathed, his breath a caress across my skin. I took a deeper breath and a predatory gleam filled his darkened eyes. "My Nicki," he whispered, licking his lips.
He kissed me, almost gently, and then lay beside me, his head on my shoulder, the sweet pressure of his body all along one side of me. I closed my eyes again and let my fingers play over his back, feeling his fingertips move lightly over my chest. We lay together in silence.
Outside, the night sky was lit with stars, burning candles in the rich ink of the heavens. I could see them from where I lay. Sounds of night- the breeze, the cry of a cat, the bark of a dog. And underneath it, winding through it all, was something else.
I shut my eyes to block out the distractions, letting my mind drift. And there, in the dark stillness of the late hour, as I lay on the cool floor and held my demon lover in my arms, I felt it. It touched me, caressed me like a lover, twined its way thro ugh my soul and nestled there, filling the empty silence within me. Borne on the night breeze, the siren call of my muse and mistress, the embodiment of the blackness within. It was calling me again, faint but clear.
It had returned.
The music.
"Dark and dangerous like a secret
When you kiss me like a lover
And I feel it like a sickness
In love with your ghost..."
-Indigo Girls, Ghost
END
ARMAND
That gets whispered in a hush
When I wake the things I dreamt about you
Last night make me blush
Then you sting me like a viper
I go follow to the river
Play your memory like the piper
How this love is killing me
But I'd walk into the fingers of your fire willingly
And dance the edge of sanity,
I've never been this close--