Darkside - Part 3, 1992
© Gairid
stat1791@myway.com

Spoilers: Up to Memnoch the Devil
Rating: NC-17
Status: Complete
Characters: Lestat & Louis
Other Characters: OC (Brian Callahan) and other mortals
Summary: A look into the lives of Louis and Lestat told by a third-party observer. Brian Callahan is my window into their world.

March 1992

When I let myself into the house during the day I tended to move quietly. Louis was not always in the house anymore, not since Lestat left, but I was quiet anyway, just in case. He was restless, see, even in the grip of the deathsleep and that was something that I was not accustomed to because it never happened when they were together.

He did not occupy the bedroom they always used when he did stay in the house, instead sleeping on the floor of the library or the guest room. Some days he lay there just out of reach of the sun's rays, having left the shutters open and I would step around him gingerly to close them and pull the blackout shades and draperies. After a while I nailed up blankets in these rooms and he did not bother to remove them.

As for me, I suppose I suffered from a mild sort of depression and not a little baffled anger of my own. Part of it was my feeling for Lestat and the unrealistic disappointment I felt at his abrupt departure, but something else had happened when I saw how Louis suffered.

Louis made no effort to hide his pain, but neither did he display it in any way. He was elusive at night, though he would appear occasionally to exchange some terse words with me while he signed whatever stacks of papers and checks had built up. He did not refer at all to Lestat and I did not dare to ask, but I saw it anyway. He was gaunt and drawn and I knew that he was likely not feeding until he was driven to it by instinct alone.

It was warm already, another in a string of days too hot for this time of the year and when I came in the back door into the kitchen of the townhouse, I closed it behind me gratefully. Just the short walk across the stifling courtyard caused me to break into a light sweat. I paused at the fridge to get a bottle of water to take upstairs with me. The fridge held water and beer and soft drinks for the odd occasion when someone might stop by and there was need to offer something. No one came by these days, not with Lestat gone. Louis wasn't one to bother with mortals much.

I checked the rooms to see if he was about but they were all empty. This happened more and more of late and he'd told me he was staying in a house on a property they owned in the Garden District. I knew where it was, an overgrown little bungalow with no electricity or running water, moldering away at the back of a deep, overgrown lot. I never went there because I knew he didn't want to be disturbed. If he wanted me for anything, he would let me know one way or another. I assumed that he was there and I went into the office to check the messages on the answering machine and work on winnowing through the stack of mail.

I was at work for maybe a half an hour when I heard a noise, a grating sort of wail like the agonized squeal of rusted hinges being forced open. I sat very still, ears straining to try and ascertain where the sound had come from. I heard the dim clip-clop of hooves passing on the street below the closed window and the soft hum of the air conditioning. After a minute or so of listening, I stood, knees creaking and muscles tense with adrenalin and when I took a step toward the door, I heard it again, louder this time, followed by the sound of something heavy falling. The sound came from above, from the attic crawl space. I made myself move to go see what was going on up there.

The weak arc of yellow light cast by the bare bulb on one of the roof beams did very little to illuminate the further recesses of the space. There were trunks and boxes, all liberally coated with dust, as well as furniture, most of it draped with sheets. It was ferociously hot.

There was not enough room to stand upright, so I duck-walked with my head forward. It was explosively hot and I was sweating freely, the drops stinging my eyes and making dark spots on the dusty floor. Nothing seemed to be out of place, but I couldn't swear to it, since I rarely had a reason to come up here. In spite of the heat I lingered there, feeling that something was dreadfully wrong. My eyes became accustomed to the dimness in the further portions of the space, and like flipping a switch, I saw that what had at first looked like an indistinguishable mound of sheets fallen perhaps from the tumble of upended chairs beyond was, in fact, a body.

It was Louis, sleeping up here in that thick, blasting heat with only a few inches of wood and flashing and slate between him and the harsh Louisiana sun. Another sound, this one a soft, moaning wail, and of course it was him because who else could it be? I had never heard him make a sound during the day, never mind such a sound of distraught pain. Unable to help myself, I moved closer, abandoning the awkward position and instead crawling forward on my hands and knees.

His eyes were open. Not the slitted wet glitter I had seen upon occasion when I would look in on them before Lestat had gone away, but wide open, rolling in tormented distress. When his head turned and he looked at me, I backed away in confused fear, breath coming in short, tearing gasps. His face was slick with bloodsweat, his arms bleeding where he had very obviously torn at his own flesh.

"Leave me, mortal. Leave or die." His voice was grated harshly, as though torn from him. I skittered backward out of his immediate reach. What was this? How was he awake? He groaned and the sound escalated into a spiraling, grief-stricken cry, and his body shuddered, trembling, arching in some awful pain that I could not fathom, did not understand.

"Sortez. Sortez!"

And I did, nearly falling through the open trap in the floor, snatching at the folding ladder with panicky fingers. I sat still, trying to control my breathing and get my racing heart under control. I was horrified at the depth of his pain and the obvious grief and I jumped at each sound I heard from above, thinking he would come down and -- and what? Kill me? He would have done that in the attic if that was what he wanted. I was afraid that he would kill himself, immolate himself in the sun.

I sat with my back against the wall in the hallway for the duration of the afternoon, watching the ladder and listening to the occasional agonized sounds from above. At sunset he rose and I heard him take several lurching steps to the ladder which he did not use, instead jumping from above and landing heavily on his feet. His expression was blank, his eyes cold.

"I will be gone for some time and I do not wish to be disturbed. Carry on with seeing to things if you will; I will have the lawyers extend Power of Attorney to you for the interim."

"What has happened? What?" I couldn't help myself. I touched his dusty sleeve.

He shrugged me off and walked to the stairs without looking at me, but he paused before he descended.

"He has gone. Gone to the sun, though I don't-- I don't think he is dead."

He went down the stairs and I heard the door close as he left the house.

June, 1992

"It doesn't matter what you believe, Mr. Gibeault. What matters is that Monsieur Ponte du Lac's wishes be followed and he has made it clear in no uncertain terms that I have POA in these aspects of their business dealings. He spoke directly to you on this point, I believe."

My head ached and I felt much less sure than I may have sounded. Gibeault's lack of respect didn't bother me; I even understood it in a way, since he had probably researched my background in as far as he was able and was very likely trying in his own way to work in the best interests of his clients. What he did not understand was that I was also doing my best to work in their best interest, as far as it was in my power to do.

"I did not realize that your signature was valid on this particular account." He said shortly.

"This and all the others." I replied, just as shortly. "Look. The check is legitimate, as all the others have been. Would you care to speak to Monsieur about it? He has specified that he would rather not be disturbed at this time, but if you really wish it..."

"No. No, that will not be necessary." He said hastily. "But be assured, Mr. Callahan, that should there be any question as to any of these proceedings, it will be on your head."

"It's all on my head." I said stiffly, "And no one is more aware of that than I am." I broke the connection and set the phone in the cradle.

Would anything be on my head? I wondered about it sometimes. I wondered if I would ever hear anything from either of them again.

I had not heard from or seen Louis since the night he came down from the attic and there had been no word from Lestat, assuming he was alive as Louis had said. I spent a good deal of my time obsessively going over work, checking any and all documents that the bank and the lawyers sent, as though by doing so I might somehow make things normal again. It didn't work. I tried to drown myself in drink and anonymous sex, neither of which alleviated the depression that hung about me like a dark cloud.

The worst thing was being left in the dark, and if it was like this for me, how was it for Louis? I obsessed over that, poring over each argument I'd heard, each altercation witnessed.

******

"You leave for weeks at a time and when you return I am to ask no questions, show no concern?"

"I was not gone for weeks." Lestat snapped. "And I never said you could not ask questions."

"Ah, non. You just refuse to answer them. It has not changed at all, has it? You will always keep things to yourself, share only bits and pieces. You lavish me with things that I do not need and would never ask for, but the one thing I have ever wanted from you is the thing that you refuse me."

"I have no idea what you are talking about, Louis."

"And so it has always been. You hear what I say but you don't really listen. You grow restless, you seek out another and another until you find one that holds your attention for a night or a month or longer. If you don't wish to stay, I would never hold you back."

*****

"Why would you trust him? You have said yourself that you cannot tell what he is thinking. Why would you trust any of them? The Order has it's own agenda and you know it is not always just watching."

"I can't tell what you are thinking, Louis, and I trust you, yes?" Lestat's voice, sneering and angry.

*****

Louis did not always engage, but there were times when Lestat drove him to a cold fury that would cause him to strike out and they would grapple and fight like angry cats, heedless of their surroundings and the damage caused.

"I don't think he is dead." Louis had said. I believed him then, but as the days passed and I heard nothing at all from either of them I began to wonder if Lestat had actually managed to immolate himself. Had Louis, unable to bear being left behind, followed?

I kept working with a sort of feverish doggedness, sick at heart and wondering just what I should do next. A missing persons report was beyond ridiculous and my own methodical searching has been fruitless. If Louis was still living in the sagging old house over on Annunciation, I could find no sign of it. Neither had he turned up at any of the other properties I went to, hoping to find him, or some trace of him. My one consolation, strange as it seems, was that if he did not wish to be found, I had very little chance of happening upon him. It was a faint hope, yeah, but it was all I had and I clung to it with all the tenacity of a drowning man clinging to a bit of wood in a dark, angry sea.

Mid-July, 1992

Louis finally made an appearance in the small hours of an uncomfortably humid night. I was sitting on my porch staring morosely at the darkened townhouse across the courtyard and pouring myself shots of Black Bush at ever-shortening intervals. He stepped into the weak circle of light cast by the citronella candle flickering on the table beside me, and because I was pretty numb at that point, his appearance didn't startle me at all.

"I'd offer you a drink, but what's the point?" I said, gesturing to the wicker chair he was standing beside. He sat down. "You look like you could use one, though."

"Do I? Well, it would appear that you have had enough for two." He remarked mildly. "No criticism intended. I was well-acquainted with the bottle myself at one time."

I nodded and poured myself another glass. "I wondered if I was ever going to see you again."

"Why not say what you mean? You wonder if you will ever see Lestat again."

I shrugged. "That's a given. I went looking for you at that house you'd been holed up in."

"To see how I was? Very touching, I am sure. I have not been there for a while."

His sarcasm didn't bother me; I was just glad to see him again.

"Actually, no. A message for you, left on the answering machine, a very British Mr. Talbot calling to say that Lestat was staying with him in London, at least for the time being. That was three weeks ago, so I imagine you probably know already. The vampire underground or whatever it is."

Louis did not say anything; he did not even appear to have heard what I said.

Had I so easily forgotten how he looked? How fine his features were and how dark the sweep of his black hair was against his white flesh? He blinked and shifted his unsettling green gaze my way. Bolstered with whatever courage good whiskey bestows, I did not lower my eyes, braving the burn.

"I know." He said at last. "I know about that and more. I have seen him, you see, but he is gone again. He left very angry and in his mind he thinks that I have betrayed him. Again."

"You? Why would he think that?"

He gave me the barest hint of a smile. "He does not like to be refused, as you well know. Even now his bull-headedness may get him out of what he views as the worst of situations, even though he has brought it all upon himself. I couldn't do what he asked of me and so he thinks I have betrayed him."

"What did he ask you to do?" I said, mystified.

"That is a very long story and I haven't much time left."

I dragged my gaze from his face then and looked about to see that the courtyard was no longer dark. There was a mist rising from the plants and the fountain splashing midway between the townhouse and my little house. Louis made no further attempt at elucidation.

"I shall stay in the house today." He said, rising. "Good night."

Late July, 1992

I was considerably more startled when I finally saw Lestat again.

I was in the office when he came back, and when I heard the door open, I thought it was Louis, back from wherever he'd been. He had been staying in the townhouse sporadically and our paths had been crossing on a more regular basis. The footsteps on the stairs were light, but somehow different and I turned in the chair when I felt the presence at the doorway.

"Oh, my God." I said, standing up.

It was Lestat. Breathtaking as he always is, but so vastly changed from when I had last seen him that I didn't even know what to say.

"Well, it's nice to see you, too, Brian." He said expansively. He pulled me into an affectionate embrace and I responded by giving him a strong, relieved hug.

"You look so different." I managed, after he released me and stepped past me to take a desultory glance at the sprawl of papers on the desk.

"Yes. An improvement, I think."

His skin was tawny and he looked so much more human that I wondered how on earth anyone had ever thought he was before. His eyes were unchanged, however, that same mesmerizing, oceanic shift of color.

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, still at a loss for words. The relief I felt was huge, so much so that it was suddenly difficult to breathe. I sat down and he turned to look at me.

"I want to thank you for attending to things while I was -- gone. I am sure you have many questions, but I am in a hurry right now. I don't suppose you know where Louis might be?"

"No. He's been stopping in here more often lately, though."

"I think I know why that might be." He remarked with a bit of a hard-edged smile. "I'll come back if I don't find him." His smile softened and looked more genuine. "I meant it about you attending to things. I'm sure it got a bit difficult."

There were things I wanted to say to him, but I couldn't get past the joy of seeing him again, at least not right then. He nodded and I knew that he'd caught that last thought.

"I'm glad you've come back." I murmured.

"So am I." He said.

September, 1992

I don't pretend to I know a lot about these beings that I have bound myself to. My frame of reference is not theirs; they are mysterious and capricious and disturbing. They are, in other words, not human and so by this time you'd think I would understand that their actions can't usually be compared to human actions.

Except -- except that sometimes, they seem overly human. Human emotion, certainly, is evident; love and anger and jealousy and pain, these are all emotions that they share with humans, only they are often magnified to a volatile degree.

There had been several changes since Lestat left a few months back. I can only guess at the sequence of events and how some of them came to pass; there has been little time for the asking of questions and in any case, I am not even sure what I would have said had there been the opportunity.

A big change was that Lestat had himself another fledgling. Another was that he, Louis and this David had, all three of them, gone off to South America. This was the David Talbot that I'd spoken to briefly sometime back, and from what I had managed to piece together, he was human and an old guy at that time. And let's not forget that sometime between that conversation and now, Lestat had gotten himself into a mortal body and found out that being human was not the sunshiney picnic he'd remembered it as being. He'd come back in that form to get Louis to turn him back into a vampire. Louis wouldn't, so he left and somehow, with this David's help, he had managed to get his own body back from the guy who had tricked him into the trade and now David wore that body, like it was a suit of clothes that Lestat had decided didn't fit.

Crazy, huh?

Like I said, I don't know all the details, but I was having a hell of a time trying to digest it all; there were a lot of things, beyond the whole body-switching thing that didn't connect properly.

I'd only gotten a few glimpses of David; I heard more than I saw the times that I was in the house when they were all there. Maybe it was just the whole because-they are-vampires-that's-why thing, but it was hard to miss the tension in the house with David there and Lestat's overboard all is well attitude. Louis was impassive and quiet, speaking in an overly polite tone whenever David addressed him. I was surprised at first that he'd agreed to go with them to Rio, but thinking it over after they had left, it occurred to me that if I thought the dots didn't quite connect, then it was very likely that Louis knew it as well and had gone along to observe the situation further.

My own feelings were much less ambiguous; Lestat may well have thought that Louis betrayed him when he'd come looking for help in his fragile human shell, but if anyone should have felt betrayed, it was Louis. First, there was the suicide attempt, or whatever the hell it was and then bringing this David character into a mix that was precarious at best. Lestat had not been here to see how Louis had been, how he had suffered, but I had, and I found the new situation infuriating.

Not that anyone had asked my opinion.

In the meantime, I went about my daily business and I made an effort to distract myself with less destructive means than drinking myself into oblivion. In attending to the various repairs around the townhouse and my own place, I discovered I had a knack for woodworking. I learned about plastering and started reading books about local architecture. I got myself a small boat and I taught myself to fish. Oh, and I began flying lessons. I had more money now than I knew what to do with and it seemed like something that might be useful.

October, 1992

Louis arrived back in New Orleans alone and took up residence in the house again. He was not immediately forthcoming about anything that had happened when he'd gone to Rio and I forbore asking him any questions, limiting myself to speaking only when necessary. He did not seem to be in any extreme distress, nor did he seem angry, but he was almost impossibly remote when he first got back. He would sit or stand unmoving in one place for hours at a time and then he would suddenly stir himself and leave the house for short periods. Sometimes it was evident that he'd gone to hunt, returning with his skin pinked and warm-looking but what he might have been doing the other times I had no way of knowing.

The month wore on and Louis thawed by degrees, going so far as to have several actual conversations with me that did not concern the running of the house or the finances. If it was anyone else I would have said he was lonely, but with Louis I figured it was more along the lines that I was, in my own small way, a connection of sorts to Lestat. I don't mean that I heard from Lestat; I hadn't, except for emails with instructions to dispose of certain stocks and the gradual buy out of some others. I didn't fool myself into thinking that Louis and I were the best of friends; far from it. When the mood struck him he was as cold as he'd ever been, though slightly less distrustful, but clearly something had changed.

There was the night he spoke to me at length about fishing in the bayou when he was a boy and how I should forgo the little powerboat I used and get myself a pirogue. "Do you think the fish like petrol flowing through their gills? That they will surface for your bait through an oil slick? All the noise? Of course not. Fishing is a quiet enterprise, Brian."

Another night he came to the back to see me, bearing a bottle of expensive, old wine. He uncorked it and set it down to breathe while I went in and go a wineglass. When he thought the time was right he poured a glass for me and went into a long and interesting soliloquy concerning wine and vineyards and how his father had grown up tending grapes in Marcenais on his grandfather's land.

"Why did he leave?" I asked him. I was on my third glass, feeling extraordinarily mellow.

"He was the third son and would not inherit, you see. He came here to make his way."

"I thought you were born in France."

"I was. My mother had her confinement in France and my father brought us to Louisiana when I was very small. "

He spoke no more about his family and I was sensitive enough to his facial expressions to know that he would not welcome any more questions about them. I gathered myself and asked him one other question.

"Is Lestat going to come back?"

He looked at me curiously, perhaps wondering why I'd chosen that moment to ask him.

"In time." He said.

"What about David?"

"What about him?" Again, the look of curiosity, as though he could not fathom why I would ask such a thing.

"Will he be coming here?"

"No. Do you think I would welcome such an arrangement?"

"I didn't know what to think after you left with them." I said truthfully.

"Ah. I believe I understand your confusion. You thought that my leaving with them suggested some sort of approval?"

I nodded and he smiled very slightly.

"Lestat does as he will. He does not seek my approval and neither do I seek to enforce it. Do you see?"

"I see that. I still don't know why you went."

"I went to watch him, this David Talbot." His eyes narrowed for a moment and I swear I felt a wave of heat pass over me, negating for an instant the coolness of the rainy night.

"What did you see?" I asked. My voice sounded small and far away in my ears.

"Subtlety."

"Subtlety? How so?" I asked, trying to follow his reasoning.

"Deceptive, Brian. Perhaps injuriously so. The word has more than one meaning. Think of it in conjunction with poison, for example."

He said this in tones of patient instruction and I appreciated the effort he was making not to sound condescending.

"How do you know?" The comparison to poison made me uneasy. Lestat may have been able to face the sun and come through with nothing more serious than bronzed skin, he may have had his body stolen from him and then been able to wrest it back but that did not mean he was safe from all harm, did it? After all the Eldest of all of them
had been annihilated.

"I could not read him as I thought I might be able to." He said, picking up on my own thought. "But I caught an impression and I do not think he was aware of it. He is newly made and his focus was on his senses, the remarkable vision, the strength in his limbs."

"Subtlety?"

He nodded and poured the last of the wine into my glass. "Just so."

Early December, 1992

Lestat returned on the first day of December. I was in the office watching as Louis dutifully signed a small stack of checks and assorted legal documents. He did so with startling rapidity, blurring through the paperwork in a manner that was very unlike him. He usually took his time, signing his name carefully with an old-fashioned fountain pen. He once told me that he liked the smell of the inks and the scratch of pen on paper.

When he finished, he pushed the stack back to me and rose to open the doors to the narrow balcony. Here was an air of coiled tension about him and instead of standing still with his hands clasped behind his back as I had so often seen him do, he stepped out to the rail balanced on the balls of his feet as though he might at any moment spring up into the air.

"Louis, is something the matter?"

He turned his head and I stepped back from the blaze of green, heart fluttering in my chest.

"Lestat is back." He said in a low voice.

Mid-December, 1992

Lestat had come back, but I didn't see him for the first two weeks of the month. I rarely saw Louis during that time and more often than not when we crossed paths he barely seemed to notice me. I didn't take it personally; I hoped it was a sign that he and Lestat had been having some sort of dialog.

It was hard to tell anything by just looking at Louis. Any difference in him would be noticeable as a certain gauntness to his face and frame, occasionally turning to an emaciated appearance. His skin at those times appeared almost translucent, accentuating the tracery of blue veins beneath. This gauntness made his teeth much more prominent; he'd looked like that for a while after Lestat had done his disappearing act.

He did not look like that now, however. In fact, he looked like he'd been feeding regularly and even though he hadn't spoken to me much, there was a certain aura of careful satisfaction about him.

I was walking along Decatur toward Virgin Records when I saw Lestat at last. He came up beside me just as I was about to cross the street.

"Hello, Brian. "

And just like that, all the anger I'd let build up again drained away and I wondered briefly if he was softening the edges of it.

"I was beginning to think Louis was imagining things. It's good to see you."

"You weren't thinking that a minute ago." He said, taking my elbow and hurrying me across the street.

"Nosy." I said. I couldn't take my eyes off his profile. "Where's your new buddy?"

I guess some of that anger was still there after all.

"A parting of ways." He said a trifle brusquely. "Where are we going?"

"Virgin." I said. "Can I ask you something?"

"As long as it's not about David." He said. "I've talked about him until I'm blue in the face and I'm weary of it."

"I guess that answers my question, really." We went into the store, loud with reggae and overly warm for the mild night. "I was going to ask if you had been speaking to Louis."

"I have, Maman Poulet. Never fear, he is more than able to fend for himself." He said ruefully.

"Are you coming back to Royal Street?"

"In time." He said, echoing what Louis had said to me some time back. "It's not as though I am unaware of how much damage I've done, so you can stop looking at me as though I were an idiot child."

I had been doing no such thing, of course. I may have been angry and upset about what he'd done but I knew better than to overstep. Louis often called him mercurial: I thought of it more as volatile.

"I never thought that." I said quietly. "But I don't understand a lot of it."

"Neither do I." He said heavily.