Disclaimer: This is a work of non-profit amateur fiction and is not meant to infringe on the copyright of the inspiring author, her publishers, or anyone else with Heaven-knows-what-kind of legal stake in all this. I am not looking to get dragged into court, thank you.<
Spoilers: Up to ToBT, as well as Taltos and probably Lasher, just to be sure. This is semi-crossover.
Rated: R.
"And in the privacy of my cell, I began a great illustrated book, using all the skill I had acquired from my teacher in Iona."
- Ash, in Taltos (p. 397)
Part One:
I had been pacing idly to and fro in front of the same park bench for some time, regarding the glittering patchwork of lights through the trees, when I finally turned around. From a long distance off I saw him, walking at his customary thoughtful pace. I stood a moment watching him approach me, stepping lightly over the ice. This was a remote corner of the Park, and the lamps were fewer.
"Alors!" I called out. I allowed him to hear my impatience. "So, what was it this time?"
The wind had started up again, cold and gritty. I stepped aside to avoid a bit of blown trash. Louis advanced without speaking, coming up close to me. He was over an hour late.
"Well?" I demanded.
He slipped a gloved hand on my arm, brought his glowing face up to mine, squinting a little in the wind, and kissed me solidly on the cheek.
"Eh bien," I said, charmed unwillingly, my crossness momentarily deflated. "You missed me then."
I looked at him sideways, pleased. He hid his face a little shyly in his scarf as we walked on together. Above, the trees shook their bare fingers skyward at the wind-torn clouds. I wondered absently if we would encounter any snow as we flew.
"It's a manuscript," Louis began. "Possibly 6th century. We really aren't sure, we can't be certain until... It's fragmentary of course, but - " he stopped, eyes shining. "Remarkable!"
I loved to see him like this, his face suddenly so soft, animate, his cheeks flushed. "Really? Where did -"
"France," Louis said at once. "A crypt, undiscovered in the ruins of a monastery - it's all highly unusual. David says some children had accidentally fallen through the ceiling - playing - hiding away from their tour party. It was kept out of the French papers somehow, though word has spread among the scholarly and archaeological circles there, and in England. It looks to be a copy of another - perhaps, a larger text."
He had let his gloved hand remain on my arm as we strolled, and inwardly I rejoiced at the simple gesture. I'd given him those particular gloves before we'd come to New York; I had watched him shake his head at their trim, simple luxury; the leather was rich and pliant, lined in creamy cashmere. I was immensely pleased to see that he wore them now.
"If you could see it, Lestat," he said now, and turned his vibrant face again to me, looking up at me and speaking quickly. "Extraordinary, really. I've never seen anything - written in the style of the Four Gospels, and with letters and illustrations - the Latin is so pure; musical almost. And yet the story..."
He trailed off and we walked in silence for a moment. He seemed thoroughly carried away by his own excitement. He said:
"No one is exactly sure why the French have let it go. Some of the experts who've examined it are convinced it's a fake."
"What does David think?"
"David believes it's authentic. He's certain. He knows it might - he's seen something like this, that is - before-"
"Before?"
"With the Talamasca," Louis replied, lowering his voice. I hid a smile at his cautiousness. "He's a bit concerned now, that the Order may want the manuscript. He was certain that two members were at the Sotheby's sale."
"He saw them?"
Louis shook his head gravely. "He sent a representative to stand in for himself. He dares not go again, after what happened at Christies' four months ago - you remember, with the Dutch portrait he wanted - "
"Yes, yes."
"They saw him. And of course, they know exactly who he is."
I smiled, picturing the coolly silent negotiations across a crowded room between David and his former brethren. I thought of beautiful David, newly young and inhuman, facing those stuffy fellows, all of them armored in suits of expensive Brooks Brother's understatement. What a terribly polite territorial dance it must have been between them.
"Does he really imagine they'll approach him? To get the manuscript?" I asked.
Louis lightly rubbed his nose with a slim gloved finger, which was growing slightly pink. He considered.
"The wind bites awfully," I offered suddenly. "Should we go inside for a moment before leaving?"
"Yes, perhaps," he returned, absently. Then: "But you see he doesn't know - he doesn't know what their position is. Not really. There are new complications. And it weighs on him, wanting to pursue his old interests, the way of his old life, and not knowing how to negotiate the distance between them and him."
He looked at me now with a keenness that startled me. "The necessary distance," he said.
I nodded, knowing his meaning, but not wishing for a reminder. Stay away from the Talamasca. Then I felt suddenly the slight pressure of his hand again on my arm, and glanced it him, expecting the meaningful raise of the eyebrow, the reprovingly pursed lips. Instead his face looked imploring, almost sad.
I stopped short. His face was still alluringly soft above the deep wine-colored folds of his scarf.
"What is it?" I asked. For the first time in four weeks, very slowly and with great gentleness, I put my arm around his waist. The wind was coming in great rolling gusts, bitterly cold. It whipped his hair about. I could all but smell the coming snow.
He brushed a few strands out of his eyes and shook his head.
"Louis," I said.
He bit his soft lower lip, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Deliberating something in his silent way. I waited, endeavoring to be patient. It was sometime after four a.m. and I could feel the cold deepening, contracting the air around us. The dull roar of the city's traffic seemed oddly muffled and I could hear the rattle of the bare branches above our heads, scraping against each other with a brittle sound.
"I think you should see him," he finally said.
"Who, David?" I hunched my shoulders against the wind, gave a short laugh. I should have expected this from you, Louis, ever the peace-maker, I thought.
I looked away. We had reached the edge of the Park, I now saw. Lights were winking between the trees. I clasped him a bit more firmly to me, thinking to steer him towards a little all-night coffee shop across the street. But he remained rigid, resisting. Again I stopped, surprised, a little wounded at his opposition. Didn't he know how I had missed him?
"He wants to see you."
"Does he."
"Yes."
Louis looked as if he wanted to say more, but didn't. I cocked my head back, looking at the cloud-torn sky moving overhead, lit with the city's dirty orange glow from beneath. It was too late to fly home, I realized. I sighed, shuffling one foot, taking care not to scratch the fine Italian leather of my boot.
"Alright," I said after a pause. "Alright. Tomorrow."
Louis exhaled, his breath creating a little cloud that was torn away by a frigid gust. The trees shook violently, but I ignored them. My whole attention was devoted to the fluid motion with which he relaxed against me, slipping into my arm's hold. The tender crease between his brows disappeared, and I felt like kissing him. I savored the soft bundled weight of him, the sweet pressure of his shoulder and hip through the thick wool of both our coats.
Really, though, I was disconcerted by the strength of his apparent relief. Louis always tried his gentle hand at go-between, it was true, but it was unlike him to take these quarrels between David and I so much to heart.
Moved by this, and keeping him close against me, I made straight for the coffee shop's beckoning warmth. Looking a little curiously down at him, I offered, "You know, this business between David and I, it isn't - I mean, you mustn't worry," I went on lamely.
I was interrupted by the softness of the look he gave me. "I know," he said quietly. "It's alright. Only, it's important that you go and see him."
I nodded, satisfied for the moment. It thrilled me suddenly to be walking, stride matching stride, with him, secure against me. Slightly ruddy from the cold, he shone. How ever did I do without him for all those weeks? I mused.
"Go on and tell me more about this artifact of yours, this manuscript," I smiled at him. "You said it was in Latin?"
He beamed at me, his uncommon excitement catching him up again. "Yes, well, Latin, but the story is quite something. It tells of the trials and wanderings of another race of beings, strange, tall, childlike. Fantastical, the whole thing. And yet written with such feeling and mastery. I don't know what to make of it, though David has his own theories..."
"Well," I laughed. "This is indeed more substantial than what usually drags us up here. Really, half the time I expect to take you home with some bit of baked clay or moldy parchment to decipher the scratches on it -" (Louis glanced heavenward in silent exasperation) " - Or with a rock from Atlantis in your pants pocket!"
"I get no peace with you," he retorted, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Shouldn't you be off in search of another rock band to join?"
"Really, Louis. It will be hip-hop for me, next time around. Do try and keep up, will you?"
"Hip-what?"
"You bookish types," I laughed. I kissed the top of his head, stealing a chance to feel the rumpled softness of his hair, windblown, full of winter air. I was smiling senselessly, I knew it - and he was with me again...
The door to the coffee shop swung open, emitting the warm smells of milk and pastry. We stepped inside.
Part Two:
The lobby of the Manhattan Grand was too full, but it would have to do. It was already one o'clock in the afternoon and he didn't relish searching for another phone. The Thanksgiving crowds were all checking in as he slipped through the revolving doors, feeling the soft vacuum of warm air, then stepping out into the echoing chamber. He walked quickly past the row of reception desks, heading towards the group of payphones with their polished wood partitions. Queues were forming as the crowd spilled out and milled around. Someone had obstructed the revolving doors with an unwieldy baby stroller and an infant was wailing. The uniformed bellboys wrestled with luggage. He turned his back.
He realized his hands were shaking as he shed his gloves and fished in his pockets for his wallet. He swore under his breath and stuffed his gloves into his coat, fighting to steady his breathing. Dizziness came, briefly, in a wave. He swallowed, counting to himself slowly, one, two three, four, five. If he kept on like this he would be sick. He knew this.
Above the clamor he heard the faint, frantic strains of Vivaldi's "Winter" piped in from somewhere, and its familiarity calmed him. He set his shoulders and calculated the time difference again, removing his phone card from his wallet. He hadn't wanted to make this call from the apartment.
He heard the quick crisp clicking of a woman's heels on the marble floor behind him. They were approaching him, he thought suddenly.
He picked up the receiver. Quickly he mentally ran over the sequence of numbers, international, country code, area code, and the rest. His senses tingled; it was a warning and he ignored it. In the stainless steel frame of the payphone he saw his own eyes reflected, wide; dark blue.
"Adrien!"
He knew what was happening and yet he still started, gripping the receiver hard. He turned.
A woman and a man stood before him now, both looking at him. The man looked plainly relieved to see him, the woman seemed to be considering something. Both carefully groomed with a discreet taste. He knew them. They had been friends; but when he spoke he kept his voice hard.
"What do you want?"
Joan Michaelson spoke first. "Adrien, please, we - " she was faintly out of breath "We only want to talk to you. Please."
"I don't want to talk." He said.
The tall man tried. "Just for a minute, only a minute!"
"No. I'm leaving. I know what you're going to say and I won't hear it."
Joan stepped forward smoothly. Her professional confidence always had enabled her to disguise her anxiety in a way that her companion could not. Her long coat was of a dark green wool, and underneath it Adrien knew she was wearing a tailored suit of the same color. He also knew, without looking, that her dark hair was held in place by a little tortoise shell clip. She held up a gloved hand, placatingly.
"Please, come back with us to our hotel. We can discuss this reasonably, rationally."
Paul Kors, her earnest companion, nodded. "Only talk to us. There are things you don't know."
Adrien steeled himself. "I'm not going anywhere with you. I've made my choice already."
Paul's open, wide face registered anxiety. His large and gentle hands hung uselessly at his sides.
"At least tell us if you're alright?" he asked, almost helplessly. "We feared for you - we thought you might - "
"It's him you're afraid of," Adrien interrupted flatly, coldly. "What are you really here for?"
Ignoring the second question, Joan swallowed and said, in cautious, sympathetic tones, "He is not David Talbot now. The man we knew is lost to us. We must accept this."
"You needn't console me, Joan. I'm not grieving for the dead." He snapped, "And neither are you."
"At least hear us out, listen! You can't know what they're like, what these creatures are capable of- " Paul put in.
"You call him that!" he snarled loudly. "You call him Îa creature'!"
Heads turned towards them. Joan's small mouth tightened and she stepped towards him again, her hand still raised as though trying to quiet him, as though he were hysterical, he thought furiously.
"So this is where Talamasca loyalty stops," he said before she could say anything. "This is where brotherhood ends, right? How quickly we forget each other!" He was full of contempt. Paul looked guilty, miserable.
"Do you want to know where it is?" Adrien sneered, "Is that what you're really here for?"
"No. Listen. Paul is right. We don't care about that - we've come to find you. Help you. You don't understand," she said, her voice low, "the danger of the situation you're in."
"Leave me alone. Go home and forget me, too."
"No, no!" cried Paul, full of anguish and seemingly unable to check himself. "What are you saying?"
Adrien bit back his regrets at the sound of Paul's gentle, fatherly fear. He had to remain unbending in this, last touch with his old life.
"It isn't too late, what's done can't be undone," soothed Joan. "You can still come back to us."
He felt the calming wave of her authority; it washed over him, and he felt terrified that he would lose this confrontation. It was so easy to believe her, to go back. Even though he knew their motivations went beyond just his recovery.
"Stop it," he said weakly. "You aren't going to save me. Go home."
She came closer. Her usually impassive, cool face was soft. "It's alright," she said. "You can come with us. Just come home with us, Adrien. All together, we'll go."
He felt another wave of dizziness. He thought of home, of Amsterdam; he saw his room. The small artifacts of his life.
He heard Paul say, Please come, come back, come back. The plane left tomorrow, they had his ticket. It was all arranged. Safe.
Joan approached; she laid a hand on his wrist. The gentle, warm pressure shot straight through him, touching a well inside. He bowed his head, eyes burning, blinking rapidly. He felt suspended, hearing only his own breath.
Suddenly she looked stricken. She'd spotted the fresh bruise on his neck, he realized. "Adrien, no," she cried softly. "Oh, no!"
His head snapped up, his color rising to his face in a deep and painful blush. Her hand closed around his wrist and he tensed in sudden terror.
"Don't!" he yelled shrilly. He yanked his arm away, stumbling back.
They both stepped forward and Joan cried out, "Adrien wait!"
He kept backing up, faster and faster. "Stay away!" he shouted, frantic, his voice breaking. "Stay away from me! You already know how this story ends!"
He turned, almost falling, and ran.
Part Three:
The car neared the townhouse in the hours just before dawn. I thanked the chauffeur and slid out of the warm leather interior after Louis into the achingly cold predawn hush. Louis stood close to me, regarding the little courtyard patiently as I fumbled with the security codes, muttering. The tiny rose garden surrounding the dormant fountain was stubby and brown, cut back in preparation for the winter. The house loomed shadowy in the grayish light, a bulky three storey affair.
Inside, we shed our coats and boots in the little mudroom off the front hall. I lit lamps as I went into the first floor lounge, noting to myself that the great hearth needed more wood delivered. Things were as I had left them, yesterday's Times lay in an untidy heap on the little reading table; the flower arrangements were still fresh. Yellow roses. My own garden was barren now, but I couldn't resist the gold of the blooms when they glowed out at me from a florist's window.
I came out, pausing to look up the wide sweep of the stairway that led to the second floor library and spare rooms, and to the third floor master bedroom and bathroom, and my private study. I watched Louis pad silently upstairs, thoughtfully unwinding the scarf from about his neck, his white hand flashing for a moment on the mahogany of the banister. I felt a rush of anticipation to be alone with him.
The only other sound was the ticking of the clocks. I followed him.
He was patiently feeding a little fire in the bedroom's fireplace, his wind-disheveled hair falling forward over his face, as I stood in the doorway watching him. At last he leaned back and stretched his feet out towards the flames, moving his toes absently and watching the blaze. I realized his feet were bare.
"Where are your socks?" I demanded. He turned his head sleepily, looking sheepish.
"I forgot them back at the flat."
I headed for the closet, chuckling, thinking of him going for four weeks with no socks. He certainly wouldn't think of borrowing some from David.
"If your feet are cold, you can think again about sleeping with me tonight," I informed him from inside the closet.
Fishing a pair of thick winter socks out I knelt down in front of the divan on the floor before him. Cupping my hand behind his heel I slipped one on, relishing the chance to touch him again, as the flickering light made shadows on his face. I caught a sudden memory.
"Do you remember, once I came to visit you in your little house? And you were sitting there, mending a sock by the moonlight. Your hands looked so small. And I thought, He's living like a little mouse - no electricity, sewing in the dark."
"What's that," he laughed at me, "a mouse? A vampire mouse? Lestat, has anyone ever told you how awfully clever you are?" He lifted his foot in a graceful movement and put it against my shoulder, giving me a playful shove back. Resisting the silly indignity of having me fuss over him.
"Alright then, Pointe du Lac. Put your own socks on."
"Why should I? Cold feet are the mouse's only defense against the lion."
His eyes sparkled at me in rare audacity and he did not move to pick up the other sock. We stared at each other. My hunger was slowly growing from that delicious spark of seeing him again. I lifted my hand back to his foot, still propped against my shoulder. Slipping down the sock and gently tracing the bone of his ankle with my index finger, I saw him swallow, his eyes dark; veiled by lashes. I turned my head and kissed the soft, exposed skin; he flushed, the high color rising to his cheeks, making him look so warm and touchable.
I didn't speak of the rest of the memory - that I'd been returning to him after a fight between us. That I'd drawn him outside by the hand, and laid him on the earth and made love. That in a bed of vines and cool, long, wet grasses I'd peeled off his clothes like the skin off a ripe fruit and taken him in near silence, fuelled by my contrition to scorching desire, awed by the pale moth-wing touch of him beneath me, enveloping me. That to me, at the moment he lay, wet, his hair twining with the leaves of grass, and his eyes limitlessly dark surfaces, he'd seemed the purest thing that I'd ever touched, or that I'd ever tasted.
I was musing on this, stroking his skin with the side of my thumb, my lips, and seeing his eyes close in feline contentment, I let mine close too. The weight of my limbs heralded the sun's approach. Moved with a concern for him, I stirred him.
Hoping I didn't look too lascivious, I said, "Let's go to bed."
Once in bed I couldn't restrain a groan of delight as he slid in beside me, and I felt the sweet silky touch of him. Skin and skin and skin. He lay on his side and I pressed myself against his back, hungry, my face in his hair. He found my hand and drew my arm around his waist like a blanket in the dark.
"What did you do while I was away?"
"Nothing... I drove upstate to look at some properties I'd forgotten about."
I told him about checking in on my proteges, poverty-stricken artists mostly, who enjoyed my handsome patronage. I was particularly proud of advancing the career of a young actress. I had decided to make her a great success, and it was working - yesterday I had read a profile on her in the Times. Arranged by me, of course. Mostly, though, I had been lonely. The city seemed to swallow me up this time, and I felt it, diminutive and solitary. I was eager to be home, and away from this biting cold.
"Oh..." he said when he heard this, gently. He drew my hand up, and placed a kiss in the center of my palm. A small benediction.
"I can never stand it very long when you're away," I told him, grumbling a little. "I wonder how David can stand to live alone - doesn't he get lonely?"
"David's not lonely anymore," Louis said. Then he said, quickly, "Sing me something before I fall asleep." And then he moved with malicious slowness against me, feeling my belly and groin hot against his back, knowing it would bring my thoughts to a screeching halt. I groaned heartily. It killed me when he made me wait.
"Heartless tease. I know the song for you," I said when I was coherent again.
"Mmm. I hope it isn't one of yours."
"Cheeky." I bit the back of his neck playfully, not hard enough to draw blood. He gave a little cry and then laughed. He curled into me.
I hummed a melody, and I sang low into his ear:
"Rien de dormier cette nuit
Je veux de toi
Jusque'a` ce que je sois sec
Mais nos corps sont tout mouille's
Comple'tement couvert de sueur
Nous nous noyons dans la mare'e
Je n'ai aucun de'sir
Tu as ravage' mon coeur
Et moi, j'ai bu ton sang
Mais non pouvons faire ce que nous voulons
J'aurais toujours faim de toi
Mais non pouvons faire ce que nous voulons
J'aurais toujours faim de toi
Tout le monde est a` moi
Je l'ai gagne' dans un jeu de cartes
Et maintenant je m'en fous
C'e'tait gagne' trop facilement
Ca y est alors mon beau traitre
Il faut que je brule de jalousie
Tu as ravage' mon coeur
Et moi, j'ai bu ton sang
Mais non pouvons faire ce que nous voulons
J'aurais toujours faim de toi
Mais non pouvons faire ce que nous voulons
J'aurais toujours faim de toi." [see note below}
The fire, dying, popped and snapped. Louis gave an amused, sleepy murmur. I could feel a fleeting blush cloud his cheek, and to feel its brief, tender heat, I kissed him there. I could feel the simultaneous approach of the sun and Louis' descent into stillness, the one following the other in an endless chase. It always ended in him being pulled away from me, down into unconsciousness, while I, still awake, felt the change come over him. Coldness crept over his body and stole into mine, as I lay next to him. New York turned its bitter, wintry face to the sun's orange eye, which in seconds would be staring across its horizon. A morning in November. I was thinking in thick, sleep-heavy incoherence about things Louis had said tonight. I was pushing myself towards something, towards a question - what? What? Nothing came, and I felt myself falling inwards, becoming still. I slept.
I dreamed.
I knew this room; I had been here before. The bed, the solid oak desk, with its neat folders stacked on top, the bookcase with a few leather-bound volumes. These were his favorites. I knew. I had asked him.
I had been hearing the sound for some time, hearing it and still unable to understand it. I had the sudden feeling that I had been hearing it for so long, so long, so long. I looked at the bed and there he was, there was David, sitting with a stiff tiredness belonging to the old and the exhausted. It was he who was making that awful sound, weeping with the bitterness of an old man.
I felt a sting on my cheek and looked - the window was open, snowy wind was whipping the curtains about with a strange slowness. David continued to cry. His gray head bent in defeat.
The slow violence of the curtains seemed horrible to me; the movement was all wrong. Sluggish and yet uncontrollable. I stepped towards them, and felt something else, something that was there in the room and was filling it up like a scent carried invisibly in the air.
My gaze moved away from the window; I had the knowledge suddenly that I hadn't moved at all, I hadn't stepped forward just now, I was still there. I was against the door. I felt its knob pushing into my back.
But there was something else, something - I knew, what? What? My thoughts re-echoing back again from my waking self. Someone else was in the room. Yes. But there was no one there!
The curtains blew again, but there was no wind. Had there ever been? I felt certain there had been cold wind moments ago. Now they seemed to move themselves. David wept and wept.
He was blind to me and I was looking around the room, my insides crawling. Around and around I looked. Nothing, nothing. No. There was something.
He was standing right there. Had I not seen him? David was there. No, David was on the bed. The body was standing there, against the wall. The stolen vessel. My stomach contracted, I felt sick. Look at him, Lestat. Look. Its golden skin gleamed dully in the strange, sourceless light. My hand was clawing behind me for the doorknob. Get out, get out.
A mannequin, a statue. This little room was a stage, and all of us actors - none of us supposed to see each other. David cried on the bed - the thing stood expressionless, blank against the wall. But I could see, I could see both of them, and the creeping motion of the curtains. Where was the wind, the snow? I had come to him in winter, hadn't I? I couldn't remember it now. Coming into the Motherhouse like a brazen thief from another world, divorced from time or season, or human sympathy.
I was looking for the answer and it was there: he was there on the bed, weeping inconsolably, he was there standing against the wall, unblinking. I wished I could cry, too, and had no voice. If I cried now it would be with David's voice; aged, broken. My throat constricted. I scratched again for the handle of the door. Now. Get out now. Now!
I awoke suddenly.
Part Four:
When he woke up with a start he realized it was long past sunset. He had been sleeping more and more lately, though it was something he had expected to happen. Something in the space of the room felt off and he realized he was on the wrong side of the bed. He remembered, dimly, crawling over the tangle of clean-laundered clothes and towels that had been dumped on his customary side, sometime after six o'clock this morning, when it was still dark and the city was grinding to a start again, pushing off the night's coating of ice and grit.
The lights from the street filtered in, blue and orange neon, making the stacks of books on the table by his bed seem strange and Cubist, leaning towers silhouetted in colored light. He looked at them sleepily, without trying to remember which books they were, or if he had put them there, or when. He felt shaken, shaken to the bone by what had happened yesterday afternoon. What was worse, though, was that he was utterly at a loss as to what to do.
The door slipped open, opening for a polite crack first. Adrien made a movement from under the quilt, cumbered and uncoordinated by heavy warmth of it. He watched blinking, as David came around the bed. For a second the blue and orange light caught his face, and Adrien thought he was beautiful; modern, effortless. David's pale golden skin almost shone with a soft, suffused light in the dark room; his face and hands glowed like a dimly metallic surface from where they emerged from the charcoal wool of his sweater. Adrien almost laughed with wonder, like a child who sees a cloud of fireflies, each one a miracle in the night.
The doctors in Amsterdam had predicted " a gradual increase of fatigue, accompanied by a loss of appetite." They'd encouraged him to drink plenty of fluids, as his time wore on and he became weaker. That had been over four months ago, he thought. He felt hungry now.
David came close to him, squatting down gracefully beside the bed. Adrien regarded him sleepily, sideways, his face still embedded in the pillow. "Hullo," he said.
"Did you sleep well? How do you feel?"
Adrien made a slow, uncoordinated grab for his glasses on the table. David's smooth gold hand picked them up gently and handed them over. Adrien heaved himself up on an elbow, yawned, looked at the clock, and lay back down. "Oh. Alright. Uhm. Was I...I've been sleeping for fourteen hours?"
The smooth exoticism of David's face was tender as he touched the glossy fall of chestnut hair on the pillow, brushing strands out of the youth's eyes. The wail of a police siren sounded outside, travelling uptown. "Do you want the light on?"
"No, I'm getting up."
"There are coffee and scones in the kitchen. Fresh. Could I interest you?"
"You could interest me," Adrien replied, grinning a little shyly, still sleepy. "Hand me a shirt there, would you?"
David hid a smile in his shoulder as he turned and fished out a well-worn gray sweatshirt from the unruly pile. He could sense Adrien watching him, those deep blue eyes very dark and still behind his smart, silver framed glasses. David cleared his throat; an old habit.
Adrien sat up, slipping into the shirt. David had a glimpse of slender curved shoulder, a collarbone, and the hint of a young, pink nipple before the shirt descended. He checked himself, recalling his purpose, and spoke:
"There's something else. I've had word from Louis - they'll be coming tonight." He exhaled a trifle anxiously, looking at the young man opposite him. His mind was cycling through the same predictions, the same doubts all over again. Had he been human he'd have a headache from all this worry, he knew.
Adrien straightened. "Both of them?"
David nodded. "About twelve."
"Well." Adrien said it without trepidation or demand; a calm summation of facts. David felt a surge of affection. He was still sleep-rumpled and soft, endeavoring to look serious. He saw a half smile catch a corner of Adrien's mouth as he said:
"Then, the famous Lestat arrives. Finally, the proper excuse I've been waiting for to tidy up in here." Adrien waved a hand experimentally about the papers carpeting the desk, the leaning towers of books, the ever-spreading laundry pile, coaxing a laugh out of David.
Emboldened, Adrien leaned forward, pressing David's lips with a soft kiss. He saw the black, almond eyes flicker with emotion. There was a ghost of a blush on the nearly iridescent cheeks.
"Well." David said finally. He smiled. "Well."
Part Five:
I caught Louis eyeing me surreptitiously as the car crawled to a smooth stop outside the apartment building and the doorman came forward to us. The air was sharp again tonight. The thick clouds, pregnant with unreleased snow, had apparently moved on and left the sky clear and the cold was punishing. The doorman opened my door and I slipped out, Louis behind me. Across the street, the emptiness of Central Park loomed in its chilly silence of trees and lamplights. The foot traffic was thick despite the cold as we stepped up beneath the awning towards the entrance.
"Michel Lennox and Jean Mirot for David Gibson," I told the uniformed man.
"Of course, sir. You're expected. Both gentlemen are at home this evening."
I swung around. "Both gentlemen...?"
Louis caught my arm.
We were steps away from the smooth revolutions of the revolving doors, and the lobby beyond it.
"Yes, sir. Good evening."
I found myself moving quickly - Louis was steering me inside with a grip not to be trifled with, his face set. The lobby was a blur of soft lighting and cream-colored marble as we sped to the elevator. I allowed myself to be led this far.
"Louis, what on earth are you - both gentlemen!" I echoed again. "Who are we going to see tonight?" I demanded.
Louis sighed quietly and removed his small black winter cap, his mouth drawn into an oddly thin line. Why hadn't I noticed his tenseness in the car? I wondered. He smoothed his hair with a slow hand. He looked extremely resigned for someone who had just locked my arm in a grip of iron and half-dragged me across the foyer. I had been so engrossed in my own thoughts about my dreams of last night I hadn't seen the tightness in the line of his shoulders, or the hardness in his delicate jaw -
"Lestat," he began, and the crease between his eyebrows should have told me all I needed to know. "Get in the elevator. Please."
Still I persisted. What the hell was going on? "Who else is up there with David?"
"Please," he said again. And again came that imploring, almost sad expression.
In seconds we were gliding upward. Louis was staring straight ahead, silent, holding his cap in one hand. I fidgeted.
We moved down the hall soundlessly, and I didn't dare look at him. Only as we reached the door and I extended my arm to knock did I glance at him once more. His face was full of love and worry, the expression so familiar and beloved to me that I dropped my hand and leaned in to him suddenly, surprising us both, catching him in a hungry kiss.
"Lestat," he whispered to me against my open mouth. He seemed lost. I bit his lower lip, violent in my impetuosity. I inhaled, stealing his breath from his mouth. My hand felt his hip through his clothing and I devoured his mouth for one perilous moment more. His lips were soft but not pliant; and I recalled the grave but steely look he'd worn downstairs; the determined grip of his hand.
You always show your power so unexpectedly, I thought of him, drawing back, the sweetness of him all over my mouth and tongue. The insane idea of taking him in the hallway, against a wall, seized me hotly for a few seconds before I let it go. I wanted him, but felt wary; David's door stood before us, a silent reminder of his sudden secrecy. I wanted him, yes, but now I wanted an answer.
I brought my knuckles down on the door in a sharp rap.
The door opened. To say I was discomposed by the appearance of a young mortal on the other side is putting it mildly; to say I was a little surprised when he, after a brief pause, gave a polite greeting and rather bravely extended his hand to me would be an outright lie.
"Good evening. Lestat, isn't it?"
I stared at him. Quite frankly I was brutally combing his appearance inch by inch in utter astonishment.
Several things happened at once.
I heard a minute stir in the room beyond, and a movement just beyond my periphery glided toward us.
I felt Louis touch me, giving me an invisible prompt, just a gentle pressure between my shoulders.
I collected myself enough to mumble "Hello" and shake his hand; the heat of his skin surprised me.
And David slipped into view, coming up to stand behind the young man.
Things were rapidly falling into place. There was something in the way David stood behind him, an attitude of deep protectiveness which his whole body conveyed, though he wasn't so much as touching the boy. And what was this boy doing in David's apartment? There was no longer any such question.
This boy was David's.
"It's Adrien," the young man was saying calmly. "Good evening, Louis," he said to the one behind me.
Even as the realization formed, I fought against it. David's? Impossible.
David stood composed, his black eyes unreadable. He nodded a little to me. "Lestat."
"Hello, David." We stood a few seconds more regarding each other. The other two were equally silent. At last David seemed to bend; he softened minutely, extending a hand inside.
"Please," he said. I saw he and Louis exchange a glance.
We stepped inside together.
Part Six:
After the door closed behind them, David and I sat there a moment in silence. Almost immediately I wished again for Louis' calm presence at my side. I turned to my companion. My fledgling. I felt a pang - I never considered David in that way. Once, there had been a time when I had tried to, but David had been born fully formed, stepping like an Athena out of the foolish whirlwind of my impulse, my pride. I was then, as now, bewildered by the strange beauty of him, his strength and unbearable self-sufficency.
I was the hapless father; I deserved no honor for making this golden, black-eyed marvel. David had never needed me.
Was it my refusal to accept this fact, the subsequent pain and confusion caused by our duel for dominance, which split us into discord? I don't know.
I turned to him expecting to struggle again to withstand the calm, slightly diffident gaze. But David was still looking abstractedly yet with considerable anxiety at the door.
"You know he'll be quite safe," I offered, by way of collecting his attention. Something in the way he strained toward the departed pair made me want to soothe him, despite the unhappy distance between us. "Louis will be with him."
I knew Louis, the very mention of him, had tremendous influence over David. That the two of them had found a comfortable and profoundly respectful mutual footing, while I remained at an uncertain and estranged distance from David, had never ceased to pain me. I knew they shared a regard I could not be included in; it was the admiration of two gentle scholarly minds for each other, an intimacy where my flamboyance and recklessness simply had no place. Whatever disapprobation Louis felt at my abduction of David - and his chaotic birth - it didn't effect the high esteem he held him in; David, for his part, looked on Louis as a trusted friend and confidante.
He exhaled tightly, slightly chagrined at his own anxiety in my presence. "Yes, of course, I know. It's only that some things have...happened, lately."
I raised my eyebrows at him and he coughed slightly.
"You may have felt it - the presence of the Talamasca." He sat back a little into his chair, his body still betraying the signs of tenseness.
"Here? In New York?"
"Yes. Adrien was recently - I've forgotten how to say it, in proper Talamascan parlance - he had an Îencounter' with two members. Here in Manhattan."
"What on earth do they want with him? Or do they know of your relationship and hope to gain access to you?"
He shook his head patiently.
I tried again. "Is it this manuscript you've gotten ahold of?"
"The manuscript is only part of it," David said slowly. He sat forward in the chair again, restless, elbows resting on his knees. The lamp by his side cast its light over his high, slanted cheekbones, making sharp shadows. "It's not the only thing they want."
"It is you, isn't it?" I said, shaking my head. "They want to study you - poke you with needles and watch you heal? Is that it?"
"Me! God, no." David looked aghast at the suggestion. "Such an idea is unimaginable. They're terrified of me, completely terrified."
He looked down at his open palms for a moment, sober. "They'll never come near me again."
"What then?" I pushed on.
"Adrien, Adrien's the one they want."
"Him!" I stared.
David looked at me resignedly. "Lestat, he's Talamasca."
"God, David!" It was all I could say for a minute. I could think of only one explanation. "When did you find out?"
He shook his head, looking at his hands again. "He didn't keep it as a secret from me, if that's what you mean," he said, guessing my assumption easily enough.
"You knew?" It was my turn to start forwards in my seat. I couldn't believe him. David, whose commitment to the appropriate throughout his mortal life had followed him beyond it into his preternatural existence; David, whose sensibilities gave him as much respect for duty and reserve as anyone I'd known.
He nodded, enduring my shocked outbursts in silence.
"You knew he belonged to the Order and yet you still engaged in this..." I groped for the appropriate word - how to describe that tempting, desperate congress between vampires and mortals? - "this liaison with him?"
Again he nodded, his head still bent, looking so defeated that I was at a loss.
I slumped back into my chair, deflated by his strange posture, his manner as he admitted to this trespass of his. "I'm sorry, I - " I began a little helplessly, "My surprise must be plain enough to you, I know. It's only that I never expected something...like this - from you."
Again I was moved to soothe him, but lacked the ability. The obstacle of my pride seemed forever to stop me from reaching him as an equal, a friend, when his habitual reserve kept me at arm's length.
David stood up abruptly, passing a tired hand through the curls of his glossy dark hair. He began to walk about behind the chair, agitation warring with resignation in his face. "But you don't understand," he said, "I've tried to make him go back, I've even pleaded with him to forget me - all of this -" he waved a hand around with vague urgency "- to just go home and live the life he was meant."
His pale gold hand, long-fingered and smooth, glided and jumped along the back of the chair nervously as he gripped it, moving back and forth. I nodded, privately doubting if I had ever seen him this way before.
"He won't go." I surmised.
"He won't!" David cried, his voice thick, as he turned around again on his heel. "I've tried everything, short of physical force - " His expression showed how impossible that idea was to him, how repugnant. "But worse, worse than that is how despicable I've been to him - " His smooth features threatened to collapse in his building misery and self-condemnation.
"You?" I gasped, but truthfully more alarmed at his new strangely lovelorn grief than at the notion of him being "despicable" to anyone, even me. He seemed so unlike himself, almost wild.
"Hypocritical and - deceptive," he stammered out. "I beg him to go but the truth of it is that I cannot let him. I can't."
"You love him," I said. "It's plain enough."
He nodded miserably.
A brief pause followed. I regarded him; his torso knotted up, hunching both shoulders as he leaned forward with both arms on the back of the chair, head bowed. To me the solution to his consternation was more than evident; but David, I knew, could not see it. Not as I did. I resolved that I must try anyway.
"David," I began, "You cannot possibly protect him - not while the Talamasca hounds him. Not while he is mortal."
David's head snapped upwards, frozen. I felt the tingling of a warning, but plowed on: "Even though you may resist it, even you must see what has to be done. If he won't go - if you can't do without him - then you must protect him. Keep him." I sat forward, boring my eyes into his. "Make him."
He must have known it was coming, expected it even, but still my words seemed to strike him like a blow. He turned away. I had just allowed myself to believe that I had reached him with the truth, and perhaps my expression showed it, when suddenly he turned again and looked at me. His eyes were full of an old pain.
"You always look at me like that," he said. "Whenever we meet."
"Like what?" I demanded, disarmed by the sudden change in him. It was like another person speaking through him.
"It's the same expression. A mixture of guilt and pride."
"What do you mean?" I snapped, stung.
"Is that what you feel? When you think of that night you made me?"
I stood abruptly, furious. Did he ask me here for this, after all? I felt suddenly that I had been tricked.
I sneered at him, "Better that than cowardice. When I made you, I saved the one I loved. But I wonder - will you? Will you be able to do it, when the time comes? And make no mistake, David," I told him, full of malicious portent, stepping toward him in a predatory posture, "that it will come. Sooner or later."
He stood silent, shaking under the burden of his anger and hurt. "How dare you?" he whispered.
Careless of him I pushed again, narrowing my eyes to cold slits. The implicit accusation behind his words had terrified me. I struck. "Maybe you'll lose Adrien rather than face the truth like I did. I braved your opposition," I hissed, "because I knew the truth of what you wanted, what you hid at the bottom of your heart, what you wouldn't admit even to yourself. You're lying still, I see."
I could see something had fractured in him; his face was blazing with new harsh angles of outrage, beneath it a deep wound. His lips drew back and I was shocked by his expression - had I ever seen him show his rage as only a vampire can? There was not even the ghost of the old man I had known, no trace of him remained in the too-smooth features of the young man before me.
"You call me a coward," he snarled, fangs bared, "because I pause to consider the consequences of Îsaving' him! Your true cowardice is your shame, Lestat, afraid to think of anything but your own wants. How dare you," he cried, breaking. "What did you know of what was in my heart!" I saw tears shining hotly in his black eyes. "Nothing!"
"I did what I had to do to save you!" I raged back at him, frozen inside with some unnamable, damning guilt at the sight of his unshed tears. I cried, furious at him for it, "Why do you still hate me?"
"Save me! You couldn't let me die. You had to kill me first. You had to be the one to decide."
"No!" I cried uselessly. "I loved you."
"That was love of your own triumph," he said, and his voice was full of grief. "The trust I'd given you meant nothing when your infatuation with mortality faded. What love was there, when you couldn't honor my own fate to die a mortal death?"
I shut my eyes, willing him to stop. The nausea of my own unspoken words choked my throat, drying up ash-like in my mouth. The echoes of my dream were all around me, flooding my senses with a sickening ring of truth to them.
"Why do I hate you?" he echoed, in incredulous pain, "It was you who hated me. In an ecstasy of loathing for mortal life you ripped me out of mine. Reborn into immortality you dragged me with you - yours was a baptism of fire, Lestat, and it scorched everyone in your way."
I could bear it no longer. The impulse to hurt him warred with the dull thickness of guilt, and I trembled between them.
With a roar I charged past him to the door and yanked it open, his voice in my ears. I slammed it shut on his accusation behind me and fled.
Part Seven:
In the bleak little hour before dawn I heard Louis mounting the stairs of the third floor. As the door opened I didn't move from my pose in front of the fire, my back propped up against the sofa, my legs stretched out towards the flames, crossed at the ankle. I heard him moving quietly behind me until he rounded the sofa and knelt softly down beside me. His silky hair spilled down over his shoulders as he regarded me with a patient look.
I cleared my throat preemptively. My gaze fixed on the fire, I said, "I'm leaving New York tomorrow."
He said nothing and when I gathered myself enough to look at him I saw he was staring at the rug. I put my hand on his knee. I wanted to touch him, feel something solid. He smelled of the cold, the outdoors.
"I can't go with you," he finally replied.
"Why not?" I cried, uselessly, grasping him tighter. He allowed me to do this but gave no answer. "Come with me," I told him, entreating, half-commanding.
"Don't go yet, Lestat. Not in this way." He looked at me tenderly. That I deserved a single tender look from him after the scene I'd made that night, after the scratches of malice I'd given to David, was preposterous. Yet I drank them up, wishing he would embrace me and somehow deliver the absolution I craved for all my many black deeds.
What a contradictory marvel he was to me. The provocation of his beauty pushed and teased at the edges of my desire; yet his modest ways were my continual source of wordless instruction.
The patient look he always wore whenever I forgot myself, behaved disgracefully, or tried the limits of propriety - it reproved and chastened me more than a thousand sermons of disapproval would have done. His reserve never cooled my hunger for him, but it was ever teaching me, gently, schooling me in what was right and mindful - virtues neglected by me again and again.
My Louis. My guide.
His expression was alternately soft, and then sadly remote, and I knew he was thinking about the fledgling I'd left tonight. Was he thinking of David's creation? Exhaustion was throbbing in my brain and in my chest, tight and dull. Impossible to face it. I loathed this weakness, this wrestling shame that coiled in my stomach.
"You don't understand," I choked out thickly. "I tried."
His cool hand swept up over my forehead, cupping my jaw in his gentle fingers, and I turned towards his touch, pressing my mouth into his palm. Astonished to feel a few hot tears escape my eyes, I gasped.
"I tried," I said again.
Louis' face loomed next to mine, sweetly, generously luminescent, and I felt his breath on my wet cheek as he said softly, "Well, there it is, then."
Gently he kissed me.
Part Eight A:
When they reached the corner, he asked Louis politely to let him continue on alone. He felt a surge of nervousness as he did it, but the vampire seemed to have expected him to ask as much. With a kind parting word, he moved on and as Adrien watched, melted into the crowd on the street. In seconds there was no sign of him and Adrien was alone as if he'd always been.
He set his shoulders. Alright then. Inside his coat pockets, he curled his hands into tight fists, taking in a few last draughts of cold nighttime air. Across the street came the smells of Thai food, car exhaust, and garbage. The little caf» was lit from within, but he couldn't see the one he was looking for from where he stood, outside, still mustering himself.
A few moments more and he was at the door, moving inside. The tables were scattered loosely about. Adrien saw him soon enough. Two waitresses, standing together at the back and conferring together, ignored him as he made his way. As he had expected, the tallness, not to mention the rather flamboyant blondness, stood out in any crowd.
Adrien approached; slowly, unsure exactly how to go about this. Step after step, he was searching for some sort of appropriate direction. His racing pulse was not yet under control when the vampire's head turned suddenly around.
Adrien endeavored not to stare, but for an instant he was confronted with an altogether different creature than the one he'd met standing in David's doorway. It was the same face, yet altered; smooth and blank in a stolen moment of thoughtful repose, its broad masculine lines softer, the long mouth relaxed. Most striking were the eyes, Adrien thought. How cold they'd been last night, raking him up and down with an animal challenge behind them. Clear and reflective as a cat's, strange, unreadably gray.
Yet now, when Lestat turned to him, they were twin-shining beacons of color, turbulent and arrestingly blue. Even as he observed this, Adrien realized, they were changing, clouding back into their opaque paleness.
Lestat started up. His body, caught in an instant of stillness, had snapped back into his attitude of last night, standing expectant, poised in that uniquely masculine confidence of grace, his strength coiled behind his deceptively sanguine pose in a way that seemed to Adrien undeniably sexual.
But what really made him nervous were those eyes. He thought he'd been dreaming last night, but closer inspection proved he was right: the pupils were slightly oblong, and now he watched, fascinated and repelled, as Lestat's eyes widened and the pupils distended, becoming even more ovoid.
With a great effort he found his voice. "Please - " he made a staying motion with one hand, hoping he didn't sound frantic, "No, please don't get up."
It was crucial that he master himself; he was fighting not to recoil from those eyes, menacing in their very quality of inhumanity, as he was fighting not to betray his attraction to that careless provocation Lestat's body aroused, graceful as he was, and potently male.
By way of explanation he stammered out, "Please excuse me. Louis said I might find you here." It was close enough to the truth, and Lestat seemed to accept it. He offered Adrien the chair opposite him in the voice he'd remembered from last night, low, inflected with French. He seemed to speak with a rhythm more modern than Louis', he thought.
"Let me get you a drink," said Lestat, as if taking it upon himself to delineate priorities. "Something warm? Yes? Good."
Adrien began to demur politely but Lestat had already made a little motion to the two waitresses who were standing across the floor, alternately staring at him and whispering to each other. Both leapt forward, but the brunette blessed with longer legs outdistanced her rival colleague and reached her goal. A good deal of her zealous attentiveness vanished once Adrien began to speak up to ask for coffee, but she delivered it quickly enough for a reward from Lestat, in the form of three twenty-dollar bills pressed into her hand and a an electric, easy, lopsided smile.
Adrien felt himself blushing into his cup at the entire rather shameless display. What he had been unable to predict, however, was the little flip his own stomach made at the sight of that smile, the spell of charisma which sailed out across the table towards him as he watched the creature flirt carelessly. It was like staring into a bright light; disorienting yet hotly magnetic.
"The service here is certainly...prompt," Adrien remarked when she had gone.
Lestat shot him a wry glance. He seemed amused - his eyes were warming to a bluer shade, hardly as strange and colorless as before. But Adrien had no time to reflect -
"Now," Lestat turned his eyes on him and he swallowed involuntarily.
"I do apologize," Adrien began, collecting himself.
"You don't have to," Lestat interrupted. He was looking at Adrien keenly.
Adrien took one last deep, steadying breath, and spoke:
"It's only that I wanted - we did barely have a chance to meet last night, and I thought it might make things easier - " he stopped, wondering if he had a right to say it, "between you and David, if you understood how this - situation - came about."
Lestat's face darkened into a frown. "Things between David and I have never been easy. Repairing them will hardly depend on your part," he said abruptly.
Adrien would have taken this as the rebuff that it was, and fled, apologizing, if he hadn't been rooted to his chair, in something like fascinated terror.
For moment the traces of several expressions seemed to chase each other across the vampire's handsome face before he shifted in his chair slightly, cocking his head to the side. "But I would still like to hear what you have to say," he offered.
Was this reassurance? He could not be certain. Adrien was beginning to doubt the wisdom of this endeavor once again. He could not predict the reactions of this mercurial being sitting opposite him - what made him believe he could communicate with Lestat in the way he could with David? What made him believe he could understand these creatures at all?
He remembered suddenly what a friend and teacher had told him once, together in the comfort of the Motherhouse, of old stories sailors had told, centuries ago, sightings of monsters from the depths where light never shone, no human eye had ever seen. White and horned whales, dead men who called out with voices of friends, luring the foolish overboard, maidens with scales covering their skin, great eyeless things with long, tentacled arms. What need have we of sea creatures of myth when things much stranger walk the land? His friend had asked, laughing, with a tired shake of his head.
ÎThings much stranger.' Adrien had had his share of that with the Order. He looked at the predator across the table, his hair, strange eyes, and teeth shining. He suppressed a shudder, then felt ashamed. He would not be such a hypocrite.
He was beginning to realize that what David had yet told him about Lestat - while all of it true and faithful, down to the last detail - could in no way have prepared him for the creature he now was confronted with.
"Please," Lestat prompted. His confidence seemed to permeate everything about him, even his voice. There was the steel of command behind even his requests, Adrien thought. There was certainly no way out of this now.
"As a practical point, I wonder sometimes what became of those dictionaries which I so laboriously completed, working months on end without stopping except to collapse for a few hours of sleep or send out for food."
- Ash, in Taltos (p. 373)
Part Eight B:
Pulled from his thoughts, Adrien realized he must have been silent for a few moments.
"You joined the Order when you were young?" Lestat was asking him.
Adrien cleared his throat, deciding. "Yes, very young," he said finally. "I showed a mild telepathic ability, which made it easy for the Order to take me under their roof. My real ability lay in another direction. I began speaking at a young age, but within two months I had learned Dutch, and then German. In the months which followed, French, Italian, Danish and Belgian were all likewise learnt."
"How old were you?"
"About one year. I began to read at two years old, and from there my linguistic acquisition grew very rapidly. My parents both died when I was nearly four, and I was taken in by the Order. It's highly unusual for them to take someone so young, but I lived in the Motherhouse in Amsterdam and continued school as any other child might. The greatest benefit was that in the Motherhouse I was surrounded by as international a crowd as one could hope to find at a major airport - I was able to meet and talk to native speakers of Korean, Greek, Russian, and so on. It was also there that I learned to control and develop my telepathic ability, small as it was."
Lestat was considering him thoughtfully. "What did you do, in the Talamasca?"
Adrien was watching Lestat carefully. He seemed genuinely curious. "You know that the Order devotes itself to the observation of phenomena, the supernatural or mystic, or the preternatural," he said.
Lestat made a little motion for him to continue. Yes, he knew all this. One could very well chatter on about preternatural phenomena while drinking coffee with a vampire, Adrien was thinking. But now was not the time to ruminate on the perfect absurdity of his situation.
"There is a long history of the Order's involvement with an old race of beings - Taltos - who lived alongside humans for hundreds of years, sometimes openly revered for their alien nature, sometimes killed for it, sometimes disguising themselves."
Lestat's eyebrows lifted a fraction. "Taltos," he said, trying out the strange word. "What are they?"
Adrien adjusted his glasses. "The question is, more like, what haven't they been, at one time or another? If we're to believe what's been written, they were innocents in their own pre-lapsarian paradise. Immigrants, refugees, tribesmen, the builders of the Celtic monolithic monuments, saints and finally, martyrs."
"It is, I know," said Adrien, seeing his listener's expression, "awfully far-fetched. A fantastic story."
"Is it true?"
"Yes. We believe it is."
"You've seen them?"
Adrien paused. Instead of answering, he said, "Scattered across Britain, mostly in the highlands of Scotland, there are monuments, crudely fashioned of stones, with symbols of an unknown language on them that have been almost obliterated by later tribes, and by Christian invasion. Even today, their origin and meaning are lost to archaeologists. It is assumed that they are the symbols of the Picts - that this is the sole evidence of a Pictish language."
He smiled almost fondly into his cup at this ancient feat of invented identity. "What no one knows is that the Picts themselves were Taltos. A made-up tribe of northern peoples. An ancient, protective subterfuge which has lasted even until today. And it will last longer," he mused.
He looked out at the street. "I have been many times, up to the highlands. Down on my hands and knees looking at those arcane scratchings."
He could almost smell the bitter-smelling orange lichen that covered them, which crusted off on his careless fingers.
"The Talamasca has in its possession two dictionaries - huge things - written by a Taltos, of this so-called Pictish tongue. It's called Ogham. My life with the Order was devoted to their study. I slowly began to interpret them, piece by piece. The most complicated language I'd ever learned by far,"he smiled.
Lestat was looking at him quite intently. His eyes were now a clear and electric blue.
"Two years ago," said Adrien, "a new Taltos appeared. He was the first new born in a hundred years. Maybe more. He came from New Orleans."
Lestat was shocked, Adrien could tell. More than that. Alarmed, perhaps outraged. There was a territorial sensibility in some vampires that one couldn't account for, Adrien was discovering.
"There are no more Taltos in New Orleans," he said, quickly. He had no idea how to pacify the tides of mood that seemed to move through Lestat, as unpredictable and sudden and alarming as a flood.
"He was spotted in the highlands, haunting the area which had been a tribal stronghold for the Taltos as the Picts. Two experienced members from London were sent to watch him, or it, and to ascertain that it really was a live Taltos. I was only twenty at the time, a novice to real fieldwork, but I begged to be taken."
Lestat moved forward a fraction, eyes narrow. The caf» lights rippled softly over his hair. "You saw it then?"
"I did. But more importantly, I heard it. He was speaking to himself, speaking Ogham, in the inhuman rapidity that only Taltos are capable of. It sounds like humming, or buzzing. His appearance was very, very strange," said the young man thoughtfully, " but almost human. What was so alien was the sound of it, his speech...like a huge child singing to itself in great perturbation. He seemed confused - the humming became like a furious whine, syllables at an unimaginable frequency."
"It died very soon afterwards." Adrien stopped, thinking. "I mean that it was killed."
"Until then the dictionaries were the only written testament known of the Taltos. But soon another manuscript was discovered, in the crypts of the London Motherhouse. This one was truly extraordinary. The whole history of the Taltos had been written out, in the formula of the Four Gospels, illustrated and illuminated in gold. The most beautiful work I'd ever seen. The Latin was perfect and lyrical, yet the language had been used in a completely unique system. Mathematical almost."
He paused again, feeling suddenly tired. The dictionaries, the magnificent book. He would never see those things again.
"I never met the man who found it. Stuart Gordon. But then, after - the book disappeared. He died...shortly after that. I don't know how."
They both fell silent for a time. Adrien was thinking with a vague sadness of his home, though wishing he could stop himself. Lestat seemed to be considering all he'd been told.
"Your position is quite extraordinary," Lestat remarked. "You have had dealings now with two species of non-human creatures. How many can claim that?" he cocked his head to one side again, scrutinizing the young mortal. "You said the thing - the Taltos - his appearance was almost human?" he asked eagerly.
Adrien nodded.
"I suppose vampires are rather different then, aren't we?" He smiled, showing some perfect teeth.
They were like the teeth of a young lion, Adrien thought. He laughed tiredly, wondering all the same if he was treading dangerous ground now. "Fatally different," he said.
Lestat laughed, showing even more rather alarming teeth, his voice richly low, the rhythm of his laughter sensual. He seemed amused. His expression was still charmingly agreeable as he leaned back into his chair. Adrien was trying very hard to keep on his guard.
He was seeing perhaps for the first time the evidence of eternity in these creatures - and he saw it where he least expected to - in the features and the manner of the vampire Lestat. The face looking back at him across the table top was the one he remembered from the summer of his 17th year, when it had winked at him from the cover of a glossy LP, in a record store, and seduced him with all its hotly, swaggeringly sexual charisma from a television screen playing his American music videos.
He saw now - almost against his own comprehension - how time had grasped Lestat, trapped him into an eternal summer, forever in the laughing capriciousness and arrogance of 25, unchanged by centuries. There was no way to voice this realization, or make it known - he had no guarantee of a positive reception to this observation.
"How did you meet David?" Lestat asked. His manner was becoming more relaxed, generous.
Adrien should have been expecting this question. Instead he was wondering distractedly, how Louis managed to keep such a composed exterior all the time. Watching the light caressing and sliding all over his skin like water, Adrien couldn't imagine what it might be like to live in a presence like Lestat's. The mercurial, changeable face, even the catlike and slightly terrifying eyes - it was beauty of a different breed.
The young man averted his gaze momentarily. It was far too easy to forget one's purpose, looking at Lestat. He recollected himself, clearing his throat a little. He took a sip of coffee.
"I met David once, in London. I was seventeen, I think. He took an interest in what I was doing - I had begun to help with the Ogham dictionaries by then, with my mentor - and he asked me about it. He was very kind to me, I remember," Adrien felt himself blush a little.
"That was the only time you saw him? As a mortal?"
"Yes."
"What happened then?"
Adrien didn't know how to speak of it. He wondered helplessly, what could he possibly say? Finally:
"I was visiting a friend," he said softly, "in London. A painting was going up for auction at Christies', a portrait. The Order had an interest. I had never been to a sale before and I tagged along. David was there."
"That was only four months ago," Lestat said unexpectedly.
Adrien started. "Yes," he said. "My friend recognized him - he'd seen a photograph of what David looked like, his new body." The words sounded strange even to his ears. What he couldn't explain was the rush of vertigo that had seized him when he'd seen David's black, beautifully shaped eyes across the room, seen the intelligence and the gravity shining out from them. Everything fell away and he'd wondered if he were still sitting down, as perspective seemed to desert him. But there was still the eyes, the pale goldness of his body, the gentle grace of him. David.
He looked away, out the window. He looked absently at his own reflection in the glass, and at the reflection of the man who sat opposite him, at his strong, high profile.
He saw neither. He was thinking of the moment that changed everything. At times it was difficult to breathe when he remembered the agonizing moments that ticked by while he stared and stared at the creature across the room, watching everything move on, like a film, while he stood just outside the frame. He was aware now of Lestat watching him.
"I didn't think," Adrien said finally, slowly, "I couldn't think until much later. It was as everything just stopped, all around me."
Lestat considered him somewhat somberly. "When did you make your choice?"
Adrien shook his head. "There was no choice to make. It was something I simply knew, a realization given to me from somewhere else. No choice," he said again.
Lestat was looking at him with an expression of concern. He nodded slowly twice, leaning forwards towards him. "You're tired," he said, his voice gently intimate.
Adrien couldn't argue. Not against persuasion like that. And he was tired, awfully tired, he felt.
"It's late. Let me take you back to David's," urged the vampire. He made a soft encouraging sound in his throat.
Adrien acquiesced. Lestat looked pleased. To Adrien's tired brain things seemed to drift slowly and peacefully back to the apartment building's lobby, and he found himself standing there, suddenly, not entirely sure how he'd gotten back.
Lestat was standing before him, the soft glow of the pale marble behind him making him seem a strange kind of messenger. Lestat was talking, Adrien was trying to listen, but tiredness was overcoming him. Lestat's blond locks slid and whispered against each other, distracting him. Lestat was guiding him onto the elevator, holding his hand between two of his own, and Adrien repressed a shudder, either of arousal or revulsion, he wasn't sure.
Lestat's eyes were large and blue, their elliptical pupils floating in impossible color. "Please tell David I will see him tomorrow, that I would like to see him..." He was saying.
Adrien was nodding sleepily. And then he was shooting upwards silently, back to David, relieved, exhausted from the thrill, and inexpressibly glad it was over.
Note: This portion is the reason this Spec is rated R. I feel obliged to tell anyone who is offended by m/m sexual content, hide your eyes and skip to Part 10.
(For Spoilers and Disclaimers, see Part One.)
Part Nine:
At sunset I awoke suddenly; becoming conscious in the moment of a heartbeat. My head was buzzing with thoughts. I sat up, wanting to spring out of bed. But I felt the depression made by the one lying next to me and checked myself. Eager as I was, I loved to watch him emerge from sleep, coming in stages to the surface of wakefulness.
He warmed, becoming more pliant in his limbs, settling into the bed in a human posture of unconscious softness. I listened to his breath, the little stirrings he made as he struggled upward out of sleep; loving the tender valley between slim hipbone and ribcage, the long serpentine line of his spine as he lay on his side, the relaxed pale hands looking open and defenseless on the pillow by his face.
I started when I realized he was looking at me, blinking slowly. I realized suddenly that he had been in my dreams. I had been protecting him from a tall, wild-looking man who was running after us and whistling at a shrill, piercing frequency. The thing had waved its arms, crazily, almost falling, and I had bared my fangs and cried "Taltos! Taltos!" as I tried to drive it away.
I almost jumped when Louis touched me. I shuddered. Louis hadn't moved.
"Are you going to see him tonight?" he asked.
I nodded in the darkness of the room. He inched a little closer to me, and the movement of his hips made my mouth dry with a sudden need. Without a word I bent over him, slid my arm beneath his shoulders and lifted him up, sleep-heavy and languid, wanting his whole body pressed tight against mine.
There would be none of my cruelty to pain him, none of my violence to shake him, none of my impulsiveness to cause his regret and mine. In the bath of his devotion to me, his forgiveness would lead me out of the maze of hurt and repentance I lost myself in, every time I saw David, saw what he was, and saw his grief at what I'd done.
The softness of his lips, the cold prick of his teeth would deliver me; his touch was like a whisper, voiceless, ÎTe absolvo...'
"Come here," I whispered fiercely.
His breath felt suddenly hot against my neck as he murmured something, the muscles of his back were tight and smooth under my hand. I felt the warm, wet, electric shock of his tongue on my neck as he gave me a little catlike lick, like a hunting creature getting its first taste of prey.
In one motion I eased us both back down on the bed, wanting nothing but the taste and smell of him to drown in. I was painfully hard against him, as my hand grasped his hip, slipped down to cup his buttock, my thumb and forefinger delving down into that soft crevice, and he gasped into my shoulder.
"Ah, ah," he breathed. His hair was in my mouth as I let my fingers slip inside, playing, insistent and hungry.
"Come on," I crooned low in my throat, wanting to hear his sweet capitulation into my arms, "give me a little, just a little..."
He writhed afresh, helpless. I rejoiced as he seemed to cleave to me, offering himself, his honey in my mouth and on my fingers, and it was music to my ears as he said my name.
"Too long, it's been too long," he moaned, lips and tongue making burning marks over my shoulder, undulating with my sliding touch inside him.
I let my hands roam a little longer, loving the friction, the need and anticipation uncoiling between us. I took my time with him. He was right, it had been far too long.
******
Finally, when we were entwined in a contented sprawl together, did Louis speak what was on his mind. His head in the crook of my shoulder, I was blissful and relaxed, for a moment not thinking about David, about guilt, about Adrien and his story of Taltos monsters, or about anything.
Louis raised his head, tucking his hair behind his ears in an effort to groom himself. He looked deliciously tousled. Surveying the stained wreckage of the bedclothes with an embarrassed smile, he asked, "Mercy, what happened here?"
"We made a mess," I replied happily, giving him a sloppy kiss on his cheek. He laughed shyly.
"It's impossible for you do anything in a modest, tidy kind of way, isn't it?"
"Oui," I agreed, "Impossible. Don't you know," I growled, leaning down and taking the tender skin of his neck between my teeth for a playful nip, "that I was merely trying to impress you?" I nuzzled, him, inhaling his scent. He was starting to intoxicate me again. "I suppose I got a little carried away."
Again he laughed and swatted me when I tried to tickle him. I was grinning, trying to calculate if there was time to make love again before I met David.
He sat up. Slowly he sobered under my gaze. I touched his cheek, brushing it with my knuckles.
In the intimate silence of the moment I was coming to some kind of inward resolution as I looked at his calm face, and thought about the words I would pass with David tonight. I looked at him - the lover - who slept in my bed with me and yielded to my sudden and demanding touches; and yet for all his sweet giving also held me in wordless expectation.
I knew that Louis would always have me try and do what was good, and right, and in truth, for all my impetuosity and rebelliousness, I did strive to live up to this.
I had failed him; I had failed him miserably and even with vicious intent in the past, but I never forgot the noble standard he endeavored to teach me. I knew Louis; I knew that he saw my attempts, my fits and starts, my reachings for self-betterment before he saw my horrible missteps; and I knew he loved me perhaps in spite of his better judgement.
That I come so close to blows with David last night, so close to striking out in my shame and defensiveness, mortified me now. To think of it - to think of the words I'd spoken! - with the quiet, thoughtful Louis beside me, was intolerably shameful.
But I am not a creature made for the burden of regret - I would not be guilt-ridden. In the turmoil of my thoughts, Louis sat still, and his presence was a reforming influence beyond measure than he even knew. The ballast in the vessel of my self - the counterweight to steady me, a sail which held the blast of my energy as I threatened to fly into one of my passions. When I was with him like this there was no way to think of what I would be without his presence - no way to conceive of the wretchedness the loss of him would bring.
While I thought silently, Louis was collecting himself, about to speak. Slowly he came around to it.
"And what do you think about Adrien?"
I paused for a moment, folding my elbows behind my head. Finally I said, "I like him."
Louis gave me an expectant look.
"But," I admitted with a little shrug, "I think he's hiding something."
My lover shook his head. "Wait until you go to David,"he said. "Then you will know everything."
I took his hand in mine and held it. Would he say more? He leaned to one side, his hair pooling darkly against one naked shoulder.
"Lestat," he said. "Be kind tonight."
And with that I had to be contented, as I readied myself to go.
Part Ten A:
I was standing outside the door, steadying myself, when David's voice, slightly faint, called me inside. I found the livingroom of the apartment empty, and looked up, curious, to see David's tall silhouette standing on the balcony. He made no motion as I reached him, staring down motionless at the street below. An unsteady, chill wind blew upwards, stirring his hair. I peered downwards, and saw Adrien, and Louis behind him, climbing into my car.
It crawled from the curb, David watching it like a golden hawk from his perch. We were silent for a long moment.
"I dreamed about you," I said to him, at last.
"What did you dream, Lestat?" he asked distantly. He had the resigned tone of one who expects a terribly long, self-involved answer.
My throat tightened. "I saw the wrong I'd done you," I whispered, "perhaps for the first time. I was terrified. Terrified by what I'd done."
I couldn't look at him.
He turned his head slowly to look at me. "I'm sorry," I whispered. My words were almost lost in the street's dull thunder. But he heard me.
He looked away, back out over the uneven vista of the trees in the Park, and beyond it, the glittering skyline. A minute ticked by, then another. I despaired; every crashing note of the words I'd spoken to him the last time we met hammered in my chest, their shocking venom raw and exposed. Behind those words lay the dried, bloody stains of our long feud; the rages, the accusations and denials. All of it. In my misery I felt a surge of violence; I wanted nothing better than to fly away at that instant, to shoot upwards into the night's cold clouds like a comet and lose myself somewhere up above.
"There's something you must understand," he said slowly, still staring straight ahead. "It took me a long time to forgive you for what you've done." He bowed his head suddenly. "I've been very bitter. I'm ashamed at how long I nurtured my feelings of betrayal against you."
When he looked at me again, his eyes were sad. "My friend," he said. I made as if to speak but he stopped me with a polite motion. "Yet forgiveness came when understanding did not. I pardoned you. But I never knew the Îwhy' of what you'd done. Until Adrien - until I loved him - I never understood why you snatched me back from death." I saw the glitter of tears, unshed, in his eyes. I could hear him fight to keep his voice controlled. "He has taught me possessiveness, taught me a loathing of death."
He bowed his head again. His cheeks were wet, gleaming in the faraway lights of the street below.
"I used to think chance was the same for all our fates, impartial, random," he gave a choked laugh, his shoulders shaking painfully, "now I despise it with all my being. Chance is cruel, merciless. It kills the innocent."
"What do you mean?" I asked, hushed.
"Don't you see it?" he cried, in a hollow tone. "Don't you see he's dying?"
I was staring at him, unable to speak.
"Slowly, slowly. He's slipping away from me. He never had more than a year. My blood," he wept bitterly, "is keeping him alive."
"David!" I said.
"And here I stand, crying my crocodile tears for him," he went on, full of self-disgust. "He's dying and I mourn for him, afraid to save him and take his life away."
"You're afraid to do to him what I've done to you," I said tonelessly. He would not look at me. I knew I'd spoken the truth. The realization was brutal, yet having said it, I welcomed it.
The night air stung my lungs as I took it in, full, searching for the guide that would push me on, before shame or cowardice drew me away from him for good. How easy it would be, I realized, for us to lose the precious foothold we'd fashioned against the twin onslaughts of my vanity, and his keen sense of betrayal. At length I made myself speak again:
"Each vampire's creation is different, and terrible in its own way. But we can become more than the sum of the petty motivations behind our births," I said, with difficulty.
I thought of each of my fledglings in turn, saw the blinding moments of their creations in a succession of perilous and dizzying flashes, the darkness which yawned just on the other side. I thought of Nikki, whom I had loved, and who had wanted to die so badly that nothing I could do could change him; of Claudia, pawned and perverted by my reckless scheming. Gabrielle, perhaps the only other fledgling who never needed me besides David, lost to me indefinitely. And I thought of Louis.
Made in the chaos of lust, of a searing need to have him, forever. There was the love for him I felt that awed me just to look at him; the first and only love of its kind I had ever felt, grown out of the seeds of my impulse, my greed, all my faults, into something beyond both of us.
And I saw as an onlooker the gentle dance that David and Adrien were joined in, this slow, pained yet tender negotiation between Adrien's fast approaching and inevitable death and David's vow to protect him from harm. I felt the final realization for both of them - that David loved him; yet being what he was, for vampires to love meant only one of two things for them both in the end. Which would David choose?
"I have made many fledglings with impure, thoughtless motives at heart," I said to him, "But, if I deserve any consolation, surely I find it in you, David - you surpass my failings. You have surpassed the wrong I have done to you."
It was enough; I could go no further; I ducked my head to hide my tears. There was a long instant of suspension, we hung in the balance side by side, the wind rushing past us, in the overcast, cloudy night.
There was no warning, only something like a gentle sigh on his side, and he embraced me tightly. I wept; I think perhaps in the end it was he who comforted me. My true relief came when he released me and I saw it was more than just sad forbearance on his face; it was forgiveness.
In his embrace I was no father to him; I was the errant son, who has sinned against the elder. Forsaking in my aggression the deference due to the wiser, the older, the gentler teacher. I could not have anticipated this feeling; yet as it flooded me I felt a profound relief, I relinquished my position of animosity, I let down the defense I had held so long against him as a rival. David was no opponent of mine. Had I lived in a haze of guilty defensiveness this long to be blinded so? How long had I run, sword raised, at the enemy only to look into his eyes and find my benevolent mentor?
In the silence something dropped away from my self, and the shock of its departure was superceded only by the tired and grateful sensation of release.
We stood another long moment together quietly, simply listening to the sounds of the street. My thoughts returned to Adrien, following him as he moved through the city with Louis at his side.
I turned to David. "What are you going to do?" I asked quietly.
He shook his head. "I don't know," he whispered, "I don't know."
"There has been no further danger?"
"No; none." He made a slight grimace. "I had no idea," he said, "thoughtless as I was; thinking only to make him happy, when I bought that manuscript. I never thought it would endanger him." He shook his head again, sadly. "That they would come after him like that...! The Talamasca has changed."
This subject I knew must be painful to him. I didn't press it. To watch him fighting with anxiety over this, and to know that in his place I probably would have killed anyone who dared stand in my path or threaten those I loved, was humbling. To stand with him again in companionable silence was precious in itself; after so long spent in adversarial deadlock. That we could meet again as friends - the joy overwhelmed me. David, restored to me.
There was still so much more I longed to say - I wanted to beg him to do it, for Adrien's sake - but on this too I must be silent. As David revealed his lover's secret fragility, my instincts prompted me to fly into action - save him at once, Lestat! - and with difficulty I checked myself, and checked myself again; my trust would be to their love. Though I was silenced by David's apparent anguish, I would have given anything to leave him, with my heart secure in the knowledge of the outcome I believed would be their mutual salvation.
The gray cloudy streaks of the predawn were painting the eastern sky when I bid my farewell, and left him.
Part Ten B:
It was early evening and the streets were full, tides of people slowly heaving past me as I made my way to the appointed place. The air was windless and close; the night thick and cloudy. I reached David's building first, and paused, for a moment, looking up at the little balcony, now deserted. The window was lit from within.
I stood for a long moment before I felt it. I should not have been surprised - I had been warned, after all, hadn't I? - but I had a moment of shock before I turned around.
It was unmistakable, the presence of a keenly inquisitive mind, and it was watching me: Talamasca.
I stood stock still, searching the street. The crowds jostled around me, pushing and pulling themselves up and down the sidewalk. I didn't move. I saw him. There was a man in a parked car opposite me, across the street.
That he saw me, there could be no question. We regarded each other, both motionless, for a long moment - something flitted past me in the corner of my eye and I looked suddenly. It had begun to snow. At first lightly and sparsely, then softly, thickly, blanketing the avenue in a pale curtain. More and more poured from the cloud-heavy sky, obscuring my sight, gathering on my shoulders quickly as I stood there, unmoving on the concrete.
It was beautiful; and strange. I grinned suddenly, uncaring who should see me, feeling a rush of delight. I felt slightly wicked.
Through the snow and behind the glass I saw his face blanch, quickly, and seized by something - I shouldn't say what - I strode forwards off the sidewalk and onto the pavement.
I began slipping and weaving my way easily through the traffic, coming closer, closer, when I heard a panicked roar and the car's engine came to life. Almost instantaneously, and with a dull scrape, the car lurched away from the curb and cut into the lane.
I stood for a minute, watching the red tail-lights drawing away in the thickening snow. I was still smiling.
****
In a moment I had entered the Park, leaving footprints black on the thin white carpet. All around me, the snow fell with a slow, dream-like movement, and in this instant, as I searched for him, it seemed the snow was cloaking my lover behind a soft screen of white.
There he stood, under a lamp, in a little circle of snowlight that was almost blue. I reached him and saw the flakes collected like shining feathers in his hair, dappling him in little crystals of ice.
There was a great hush all around, it seemed. We were hidden from the world.
Before he could turn around I had him about the waist, tight and warm. I kissed the little wisps of black around his small pale ear.
"Where is your cap?" I asked him quietly.
"I lost it."
I found myself laughing, full-throated, low and warm. Contented.
He turned around, eyes shining at me. The slim length of him against me made me inexpressibly tender.
"Is everything alright?" he asked. I nodded.
"I want to go home, now," he sighed.
I kissed his cheek and he turned his face to me, glowing in the lamplight, his cold nose pressed against my chin. I gathered him to me.
"Are you ready then?"
"Yes."
I let my concentration slip, and very slowly I lifted us both, rising upward, as snow drifted down around us in thick clouds. I took to the sky.
End.
*NOTE on Song Lyrics
Lestat's song is really a snappy little song by the Police, written by Sting, "Hungry for You (j'aurais toujours faim de toi)." A favourite of mine. In English, it goes:
"Can't get to sleep tonight
I want you until I am dry
But our bodies are all wet
Completely covered in sweat
We drown ourselves in the tide
I have no desire
You have ravished my heart
And I have drunk your blood
But we can do what we want
I would always be hungry for you
But we can do what we want
I would always be hungry for you
The whole world is mine
I won it in a card game
And now I don't give a f***
It was won too easily
This is it, then, my beautiful traitor
I have to burn from jealousy
You have ravished my heart
And I have drunk your blood
But we can do what we want
I would always be hungry for you
But we can do what we want
I would always be hungry for you
But we can do what we want
I would always be hungry for you
But we can do what we want
I would always be hungry for you
No matter what I do
I'm still hungry for you
No matter what I do
I'm still hungry for you."