A LEGACY OF DARKNESS: LESTAT'S DIARY by JoAnne Soper-Cook, 1995 bb106@FreeNet.Carleton.CA LESTAT'S DIARY: August 1, 1791: New Orleans, Louisiana... I saw him for the first time last night, walking aimlessly in the middle of the street, his arm festooned with one of those cheap roadside sluts... He is magnificent! And I have decided that I *must* have him. I've grown bored here, I see it clearly now: for all the deceptive hum and bustle of life, this place is nothing more than another bayou backwater, crammed and seething with great clots of humanity, all buzzing about like flies. Which would be fine, if my purpose here were merely to feed, but it is not! I came here to get...away from there, away from the cold and the snow and the damning gaze of the Auvergne mountains... I came here because... Never mind...it hardly matters now, does it? When everything I've lived up to and including this point pales in comparison with him... Brazen young rapscallion, him strutting down the muddy street, clinging drunkenly to that cheap tart as if she were the Mother of God... I passed him in darkness last night, and the sweet, skin-heated scent of him filled me with an aching lust... I must have him. He is so very beautiful, this one; he has the face of a defiant young god, every line etched in perfection... I want to press my mouth against his, I want to feel the sweet squeeze of his compact muscles and bones...I want to drink from the deep, red fountain of his life and then, turn my mouth quickly to his, give him the taste of himself. Have I mentioned how beautiful he is? A beauty that is not purely physical...I find it hard to describe, this unearthly quality, as if he were already Born to Darkness... His eyes are green, I think; yes, a dark green, like moist emerald forests...and his nose is fine and straight, sloping down to that delicious indentation in his top lip...God, those perfect lips, that petulant, sculpted mouth, a single glimpse of which finds me quite beside myself with lust... Hmmm...I seem to be getting rather... *carried away* as it were.... Have I mentioned the high oval of his pale forehead, the dark waves of his long, thick hair that falls unbound around his shoulders... I want to lie naked against this one.... I don't think he saw me last night; I passed him by so swiftly, and he was so very drunk, and leaning down, straining to hear the giggled nonsense spouting from his whore... I turned and stood for a long time in the middle of the street and watched him retreating with her, watched the smooth play of muscles underneath his shirt, the length of his legs, his exquisitely- shaped backside... Well! I never pretended to be subtle about my lusts now, did I? And I have always made it my business to be as bad as I can be, if that is to be my lot. There's something else about him... I'm not sure. LESTAT'S DIARY: August 3, 1791 Same place, same time, and it is, of course, night again... I spent my evening hunting near the waterfront, and was lucky enough to happen upon a delicious young sailor just after sunset. Lucky, because this left me plenty of time to go looking for *him*. I know where he lives now: a gracious old plantation house set amongst acres and acres...he must have a lot of money, he must be very well bred. (This last gave me a moment of shame, considering...but never mind! I have left Auvergne behind me!) But why is he out chasing whores? Why is he drinking himself into oblivion in these tawdry public houses? Why does he tempt Death each night by going again and again to the ramparts of the damned, the fools, the killers and the thieves? I watched him again tonight; standing unseen at the bar of an establishment he frequents...I watched him cheat at cards across the table from a one-eyed sailor and a swarthy Portugee... I watched him laugh when confronted--what a hollowness lies within those bewitching green eyes of his! Why? I almost laughed aloud when he bared his breast to the sailor's pistol: "Here, kill me! Go on!" If he so invites Death, then perhaps Death ought call on courtesy... Just a little visit. LESTAT'S DIARY: August 3, 1791 I've discovered that he mourns the recent death of a brother; some accident, a fall of some kind. He has a sister who is mad... Is this why the poor bastard drowns himself in cheap wine and street-side whores? Is this why his emerald eyes are hollow and empty... While I slept today, I dreamed of him: I dreamed that we were lovers, that I had raised him, immortal, and he was forever at my side. I dreamed that his emerald eyes smiled at me, and that he loved me. I so want him to love me...I'm so afraid he won't! Now, there, I've said it! But only here, upon these pages...only here. No one need ever know. I went into him...mmmmm, that delicious Biblical imagery! How poetic it is upon the tongue of the Devil, hmmm? Upon the tongue of the unbeliever, the reprobate, the demon lover who comes in darkness and leaves in death.... He has been ill, my sad young friend. This is why I haven't seen him in the streets at night; this is why his fine young whores cluster round the barstools wondering where is Louis? Where is young Pointe de Lac? Hmmmm...that's his name, Louis... I rolled it on my tongue, watched myself in my dressing-mirror, watched my lips shaping this word, this precious word: Louis. My darling... He was lying in bed when I went into the room, opened the French doors with a mere thought... They had draped his bed in mosquito netting, and he lay waiting for me, my bride, my soon- to-be immortal lover, my ancient friend. How delicious he looked! And they had stripped him, I saw, because of fever and the heat, and his naked shoulders, thrusting vulnerable out of the white linens, made me want to weep... I thought about biting him there: not to drink, but just to taste the sweet salt of his sweat upon my tongue... Darling Louis... come, take my hand; come, follow the Devil into Hell! I would do anything for you.... "What do you want?!" He half-raised himself off the pillows, and naked fear stood in his green eyes...he was afraid of me, afraid that I was some demon come for him, come drifting through the windows... "You are ill, mon ami..." I pressed my palms against the sheer netting that covered him, closed my eyes, inhaled the scent of his naked skin... delicious... Because of the heat, I wore no vest or frock coat, just pants and boots, a shirt open at the neck... I wondered if he could see the blood-sweat on me. Was that why he was afraid? Because a blond young man stood in his sickroom, sweating blood? The thought made me laugh aloud: I threw my head back and guffawed with sheer delight. "Who are you?! Get out, before I call the servants!" He'd mustered his strength and he sat up now, the sheets falling around his waist...I saw the pleasing contours of his naked chest, the tight flatness of his stomach, and lust bloomed in me, a wicked seed. "Come now, no need for a show of false bravado!" I was speaking to him now in French, and I had slid the netting aside, sat down softly on the side of the bed. His gaze met mine, unwavering... He had courage, this arrogant young aristocrat. "I noticed you walking with that whore, Yvette..." I lifted my hand and placed it, palm-down, upon the tender flesh, feeling the bone and sinews of his forearm...I let my fingers trail lazily over his flesh. "You are ill..." He swallowed; or rather, the muscles of his throat convulsed, rippled. I watched, mesmerised: he was so gorgeous, so *alive*! I thought about leaning slightly forward and tracing the sweet column of his throat with my lips and tongue...I thought about stripping naked and climbing into bed with him... Hmmm, I wonder what the servants would think about *that*? "I don't know you, Monsieur; I know nothing about you! I want you to leave!" He brushed my hand off his arm as if brushing off an insect; something stung me deep inside and I flinched. "You are looking for Death!" I spat at him, getting up off the bed. I had ripped the netting in my haste and it swirled about me as I moved like a tongue of mist.... "But Death has noticed you, Louis!" I leaned in, over the bed, letting the moonlight play fully upon the unnatural smoothness of my face, the sapphire brilliance of my immortal eyes. I drew back my top lip and let the very tips of my teeth slip slowly into view... "And Death would like a rendevous..." He paled, and moved a little, shifting in the bed...the silvery light did wonderful things to that naked torso! God! I had to have him...I ached to have him... But not now... I knew I'd have to wait. My rendevous with sweet Louis would come, only not now... I have learned that haste sometimes scares the prey away...you must be silent, you must wait in shadow, and take him when the moment is just right! Otherwise, you will lose him utterly... "Death---" I slipped onto the bed again, with all my immortal grace and kissed him, so swiftly! Just for an instant, the press of his lips and mine, the rapid flicker of my tongue against the soft insides of his lips... "---will come and visit you again...." He did not see me leave. From ljord02@emory.eduSat May 13 23:14:52 1995 Date: Sun, 14 May 1995 01:25:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Black Rose's Minion To: The Black Rose Subject: REPOST: A Legacy of Darkness, part 2 (fwd) Lisa Marie Jordan ---->--<@ Lady of the Garter *First Minion of Her Grace, The Black Rose* Sister to Meredith, Erin, Kim and David... cousin to the rest of the abar world! ljord02@emory.edu ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 15:46:09 GMT From: JoAnne Soper-Cook Newgroups: alt.books.anne-rice Subject: REPOST: A Legacy of Darkness, part 2 A Legacy of Darkness: Lestat's Diary (A Vampire Chronicles Speculative Story) By: J. Soper-Cook, 1995 LESTAT'S DIARY: August 7, 1791 It has been several nights now since I have gone to visit my darling...I left him languishing in his sickbed, vanishing out the window, disappearing into the night mists the very way I had come. Damned inconvenient, having to leave off my evening rendevous with him, but I needed to make provisions for the old man...after all, I'd had him holed up now for days in that stinking rat-hole of a rooming house, and the landlady was beginning to complain. "He is always shouting,the old man! Why do you bring him here, Monsieur? And he is blind, he needs care! What sort of a son are you, to treat your father this way?" This brief exchange had taken place on the rickety wooden steps leading up to my dubious "lodgings" near the waterfront. I am ashamed to admit that I could afford little else, having come here with nearly nothing...God knows, the old bastard saw to it that nothing was left of the estate by the time I reached manhood! I hope the Devil gets him... Anyway, I had to do something about the old man, people were beginning to talk, and that would never do! There were whispers, vague murmurings about how I left him alone all night, and where did I go? My father thought I was keeping some married woman... if only he knew! If only he knew that I was dallying round Pointe de Lac, pining for a glimpse of my darling Louis, that I was aching with unconsummated lust for my dark-haired, green-eyed darling... A woman! Indeed... Now there's a thought! "You come home finally, you come home and I've been here all alone!" He was whimpering before I even made it in the door... "Oh shut up, you crooked old bastard!" I tossed my coat onto a nearby chair; it was nearly dawn and I wanted sleep badly. Besides, I'd hung around Pointe de Lac all evening and no sign of Louis! I was quite disconsolate... "What kind of a son are you? I've had nothing to eat..." He shifted in his chair, sightless eyes probing for me...I appeared as nothing more than a vague shadow, I knew, a distant darkness in the immediate greyness of his world. "I told Madame Pontillier to feed you! Has she brought you nothing?" "Nothing, nothing..." He began to cry, and this irritated me to no end... What vengeful God has seen fit to saddle me with this paltry excuse for a father? Show me this God, I'll tear his eyes out! The old man had been nothing but pain to me, even in my mortal existence... He'd driven my mother away... I hope the Devil gets him. I rang for the landlady, Madame Pontillier, who came huffing up the stairs with some sort of breakfast rolls and half an orange. She had brought a pot of coffee with her, as well. "You have no right leaving the old man here alone all night! He wakes in his sleep--he cries!" Mrs. Pontillier left the coffee and retreated down the stairs. I set the tray on the table and cut up the roll and the orange in small pieces. I was vaguely tempted to leave the damned thing the way it was, and let him choke on it, but unsettled as I was at that moment, I let this impulse pass unheeded. I have larger matters to attend to; I must get the old man out of this filthy rooming house... I think the old bastard would be much more comfortable at Pointe De Lac... LESTAT'S DIARY: August 8, 1791 I went looking for him again, as soon as it was dark... I gave the old man a tincture of laudanum in his coffee, which laid him out like Death, and then I crept from the rooming house, down the stairs, into the street... What joy it is to be outside like this! In the clear night air, the bustle of the waterfront all around me... It gave wings to my feet; that, and the thought of my Louis. I sensed him as I drew near to the plantation...he was in an outbuilding, near the back of the main house. I crept closer, eager to be with him, and there he was! Seated inside this structure, on a wooden bench near the altar... Well, it was some sort of chapel or some such thing...I'm not sure...I don't give much thought to religion any more, ever since the Devil claimed me for his own... What God will save me now? I am the only God there is. He didn't hear me come in; either that, or he was entirely too immersed in his own musing to give a thought to me. I slipped inside and sat down next to him on the wooden bench. He seemed better than when I'd seen him previous, and this gladdened me... although it may seem no secret that I desired to ensconce myself and my father at Pointe de Lac, my motivations were mixed, at best. I do know that I was very eager to be near him. He was wearing a simple shirt and a pair of tight, dark trousers which clung to his slender legs like a glove...a pair of leather riding boots clasped his feet and calves in their smooth embrace, and his dark hair was caught back from his face in a black ribbon. The effect of all this beauty, taken at once, was... ...deeply affecting. "Louis," I whispered, leaning close to him, my breath stirring the errant strands of hair at the side of his face, "Death has come back for you." He turned slowly and for a long moment, gazed wordlessly into my eyes... The skin around his mouth and between his brows was creased, as if he were in pain, and there was nothing in his gaze that was even remotely akin to fear. It was as if he'd been waiting for me, all along....that's what I saw when I looked into those green eyes. Like he knew what I meant to do, like he saw through all of my intentions, as if I, in all my preternatural power, were absolutely transparent to him. I was very shaken... I'd never encountered this sort of gaze before! I passed through the world of mortals, caught their eyes, their gazes, as they slid over and around me... Sometimes there would be a moment of confusion, a question would appear deep within their eyes... Louis's emerald stare had stripped me naked, and I was very frightened. "I've been waiting for you," he said slowly, and turned away from me again. I felt as if I'd been held in some sort of mesmerising power, and that the current had been cut as soon as he'd turned his gaze from me... "That night, when you came into my bedroom." I moved to speak, but he was talking again, and so I kept my silence. Besides, it so pleased me to watch the artful flexing of his sensuous mouth as it shaped his words...quite lovely, really. "I know what you are." He looked at me again, with those brilliant, iridescent eyes... "I know what you want. I've been doing some reading." I felt the hair prickle on the back of my neck. "You know what I am?" I mocked. I got up from the bench abruptly, made for the door. "No--wait!" His voice rang out in the stillness. "Please, don't leave." I turned around. He was standing in the glow of moonlight that spilled in through the windows, and thus appeared haloed, holy... "Please--I don't even know your name...Monsieur." He held out his hand to me, indicated the bench. "I beg you, please: let us continue our discourse." He was silent until I had relented, and then he spoke again. "You're a vampire, aren't you?" His eyes were wide, listening, thoughtful. "Yes, I am." I waited a couple of thudding heartbeats. "That doesn't frighten you?" He shook his head, and the loose strands of inky hair swirled around his sculpted features. "No, it does not." He sat sideways, the better to examine me. "Might I---touch you?" "Touch me?" This struck me as absurd, and I laughed softly for a moment. "What do you mean, 'touch me'?" He flushed, a dark spilling of blood under his pale skin, and the lust in me shifted and moaned softly. "I assure you, Monsieur, I was a married man, I had a wife, I am not---" He swallowed hard, "possessed of *those* desires!" For a moment, I had no idea what he was talking about, and then it dawned on me, and I laughed until I thought I might well faint! "Lord God! I rather hoped you were!" I peered at him in the moonlight, and then I reached up and pressed the back of my fingers to his cheek....Mmmmm, warm and smooth, the faint prickle of gleaming-dark stubble... He flinched away from me for a second, but I gentled him with murmured words... "I'm not going to hurt you..." In a flicker, faster than he could possibly react, I leaned in and pressed my lips to the sweet plum of his cheek. "I would never hurt *you*, Louis..." I leaned my forehead against his, closed my eyes, breathed in the warm, human smell of him, his heated skin. "I killed him, you know." This was whispered, into my face, and he hadn't moved, his forehead pressed against mine. "My...egotism killed him. I should have believed him." I had no idea what he was talking about and I didn't care...we were still leaning together, and after a moment I reached up and cradled the back of his neck with the palm of my hand, slid my fingers into his dark hair and loosed the ribbon to let it fall around him. "Hmmm...much better," I whispered. He opened his green eyes and looked directly into mine. "I want to go away from here...I want to go...somewhere." He blinked, and twin globes of silvery tears burst gently on his long lashes, ran down his cheeks...as he sat staring at me, his eyes would fill up and spill over, unblinking...it was very eerie, and very, very beautiful. "My God..." My heart was thudding in my chest and suddenly the night air was so close, so thick! I couldn't breathe... I pressed the palm of my other hand to his cheek... ...and then, I kissed him. My eyelids flickered closed and I groped for him blindly in the dark, and then the sweet hotness of his mouth was open over mine, and I felt the warm quiver of his tongue, tracing the insides of my lips... He shifted on the bench and moved into my arms, and then the solid shape of him was *mine* and he was with me, and I with him, and this kiss went on and on... I felt his hands pulling at the ribbon in my hair, his fingers sliding warmly on my scalp, the hot tip of his tongue flicker against the sharp points of my fang teeth... His hands, kneading the muscles of my thighs; his hands, slipping into the front of my shirt; his hands on my arms, on me everywhere.... Now I know he can love me. LESTAT'S DIARY: August 10, 1791 I awoke this evening, thinking about that kiss, that soul- searing kiss I shared with Louis Pointe du Lac, last night... I closed my eyes and recalled all of it, in perfect detail: the soft whimper that had escaped him when I'd pressed my opened mouth to his, the feel of his long fingers on my thighs, in my hair, on my skin... I must do what he asked of me, offer him the Gift...if this is the only way that I can take him into eternity with me... Then I will make another one of us. And Louis, my darling Louis, will be my eternal fledgling... And I won't be alone anymore. I won't feel as if I'm standing at the edge of some vast ocean, listening to the waves crashing against my hollow soul... I will be loved by someone. "I cannot do this!" he'd cried last night, when our lips parted. His green eyes were anguished, confused. "I am a man, and you--" "I am a man, Louis." Bereft of the sweet caress of his warm mouth, I felt a little sadder, a little colder. "Different from you, in that this body--" I tapped the center of my chest "--has certain *attributes* that you do not, but..." I smiled at him. "A man, nonetheless." "My God!" He stared at me, aghast. "What kind of a fiend are you?" And more softly, as if to himself, "I've *kissed* another man! In this, a holy place!" He dropped his head into his hands, his long fingers tangled in his hair. A shudder ran through him, and I could easily pick the rampant images from his mind as they marched a silent parade of reproach: a pretty young wife, a son; both dead, both buried deep in earth... "Louis!" I said briskly, "Listen to me!" He raised his head. "Listen to *you*? I don't even know who you are, your name...." He stared at me, and then the tip of his pink tongue slid out to gingerly wet his lips...I suppressed a nearly-audible moan... "My name is Lestat de Lioncourt," I said, and I laid my hand on his arm. "I come from Auvergne, in the northern mountains of France... my brothers are dead, my mother is...*gone* and there is no one left to me now but my blind father." I tried to be as sincere as I could, but it was very difficult not to put a subtle gloss of pathos on it... I wanted him to sympathise with my situation, ensure my father and I a place at Pointe du Lac, but something deep inside wouldn't let me...mislead him. "But you're a *vampire*," he whispered, gazing closely at me with those incredible eyes. I felt something burst gently inside my chest, and for one fleeting moment, I was horrified that I would suddenly begin to weep! "Louis," I said, urgently, feeling the rush of tears in the back of my throat, "please, I beg you! I have no one, I have no family to turn to, I have no *friend* in this place!" I stopped speaking abruptly as my voice quavered, laden with emotion. I pressed my fist into my mouth, felt the tips of my fang teeth in the back of my knuckles... I felt inept and stupid, and horribly ashamed, all in one instant, and I damned my father, the old bastard, that he had left me with *nothing!* At least Magnus had made me immortal... He'd slid close to me then, and rested that silken head against my shoulder, and the dam inside me burst, and for the first time in a very long while, I was weeping... The comfort of him was so near, and so very blessed to me... He lifted my face gently with his fingers and pressed his mouth to mine... I felt his hands slide up my arms, clasp the points of my shoulders; I felt his warm, moist lips caressing mine eagerly, his hot tongue in my mouth... he shifted in my embrace and brought me closer to him, so that our bodies were pressed together, and I could feel the glorious heat of him, his mortal skin underneath his clothes... "I want you to make me what you are," he whispered, holding my face in his hands... "I want what you have." "Oh, Louis, why?" I would not force him... It would be his choice... I would have him on his own terms, not by coercion. I wanted him to come to me freely. "I want to be with you," he whispered, "Lestat." LESTAT'S DIARY: August 11, 1791 I decided that tonight will be the night for Louis to join me... I will give him what he so desperately desires, and I will do it tonight! This thought comforted me as I got up and got dressed. I even saw to it that Madame Pontellier brought the old man some soup, some bread and coffee, for his supper, and I sat beside him and talked quite amiably to him of nothing at all. "But you don't eat!" he complained, as I poured his coffee. "I never hear you eat anything---you will grow ill, my son!" *As if you would ever give a damn* I thought sourly, but quickly squashed the attendant anger, the resentment. I wanted nothing to spoil tonight. I felt as if I were getting married! Excited, shaky, unable to sit still or be quiet... I fed the old man his supper and had him settled in, and then I was out and away, a bird flying out a window, something set free. *I'm going to see Louis!* my mind sang, and I flew towards Pointe de Lac... He wasn't there. I questioned all the slaves, even that mulatto cook, Odette something-or-other... Monsieur Pointe du Lac had ridden out some hours ago, I was informed, to "take the air." No one knew where he'd gone, when he'd be back... A cold, hard fist of ice fastened around my heart, squeezing it painfully in my chest, and my throat closed together. I thanked the woman, pressed a coin into her palm, bowed myself out... I made it to the large cypress at the edge of the front lawn before the tears took me... Thankfully, it was dark, and so the rivulets of blood that slid down my face were undetectable... I could suffer here alone... I sank to my knees under the towering tree, my whole being shaken by sobs, sobs I muffled with my handkerchief. *Why, Louis, why?!* I cried this silently to the icy-cold stars, the velvet night... I felt as if my heart had broken open and was bleeding slowly into my chest... "Lestat." I looked up--he was here! He was here, standing right in front of me! "Oh, God, Louis!" "I'm sorry; I went riding, I should have told you, but I had no idea where to reach you...Odette said you had just gone..." His eyes widened when he saw the dark rivulets on my face. "Have you been weeping?" I rubbed my face into my sleeve... I had no idea what to say! "I...thought you...didn't want to see me...again," I said, clumsily. I was shaking all over; I *had* to take him into my arms! "Not here," he hissed, when I reached for him, and annoyed, I drew back. "Come into the oratory." I followed him in silence, not trusting myself to speak until we were inside the small building...Louis lit a taper, illuminating the cosy little room. He turned, was on me in a second, grabbing for me clumsily, his hands at the back of my head, tangled in my hair, his hot kiss melting his lips against my mouth... His caress was hard, brutal, insistent...I felt desire race crackling up the roots of my hair, along the ridge of my spine, cresting in my loins, rising into my belly... I heard myself whimper softly as his tongue slid into my mouth... "God, I've been thinking about you all day, Lestat!" He crushed his lips against mine, his mouth feverish, almost clumsy in its eagerness. "Towards dinner time, I had to get out of the house...the slaves, the accounts, business...everything...I had no time for it, I wanted you to come here again..." He paused, kissed me again, gentler this time, and his hands slid down to cup my buttocks in his palms... "Oh, Louis, don't! I'll---" I teased him with my tongue, drew away from him with an effort. "Please--sit down with me for a moment..." I indicated the bench. "I need to know---" "I still want it." He smoothed my cheek with the back of his fingers, watching me as he talked. "I went riding, thinking... I think you should do it now, tonight." His gaze was level, steady... "Are you sure?" I could hear my heart hammering in my own ears, and the air around me hummed with myriad possibilities... "I will not take you under any kind of duress..." His hands slipped free the buttons of my shirt, his palms burning against my chest. He buried his face, his lips, against my skin, traced the center of my breastbone with his tongue... "Take me!" I was galvanised by lust: I cupped the back of his head in my hand, exposing the long column of his throat, and then I drove the two hard shafts of my fangs into the tender vein that throbbed at his throat. The response was immediate: he bucked against me, his slender body rising off the bench, but I held him securely, taking draught after delicious draught of him, feeling the very essence of Louis gushing over my lips, my tongue, into my throat... If he was in any kind of pain, he said nothing...but I don't think he felt pain, not then! His mouth was slightly open, his breathing shallow and rapid, his eyes squeezed shut...the hard length of him pressed against me, all solid bone, sculpted muscle... "I have drained you to the point of death," I whispered, leaning over the oratory bench where he lay, spent. His eyes were staring at the ceiling; he seemed to be caught in the grip of some fantastical vision, and I was aware of the hard bulge in the front of his trousers... "I can let you die, if that is what you wish...or you can drink from me, and become what I am." I waited. "It is your choice." I had to bend over very close to hear the tortured whisper, torn from the depths of his being: "Give it to me!!!" I tore the flesh of my wrist, clumsy in my haste, and the front of his shirt was splattered with my blood...I pressed my wrist against his mouth, "Louis, drink!" I waited an interminable moment for some flicker of movement, terrified that I'd taken too much and he was dead-- --his mouth fastened onto my wrist and he was vigorously sucking, and the heated ball of lust in my belly bloomed upwards... I groaned aloud as this rocketing pleasure hissed through me, and Louis's mouth at my wrist was all that was in my world, the whole universe.... It was torment to pull away from him, press my handkerchief against the wound in my wrist... The moonlight illuminated the traces of my blood on his lips, the small trickle of it that escaped his mouth... He was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen...I'd done well with this one...he would make the perfect vampire. LESTAT'S DIARY: August 12, 1791 I've just told Louis about the coffin... I don't think he's very pleased, somehow... "You cannot be serious!" His beautiful face, already pale with my powerful blood, creased in consternation. "You will be lying with me, Louis..." I pressed my thumb against the very center of his lips...I could just make out the points of his new fang teeth.... "It's not that, I--" He broke off, crossed his arms on his chest. "Shhh..." I kissed him. "You will wake my father." We'd ensconced the old bugger in the next room, crowned him roundabout with the palatial splendor of Pointe du Lac...not that he would ever see or even notice... "I will get in and you get in on top of me--" I was growing tired, and very impatient with him, lovely though he was. "Look, Louis, in a few minutes the sun will be up---if it touches you, I assure you, you'll burn to a cinder!" I opened the lid of the coffin and stepped inside, lay down on the satin lining. "See--it's not so different from a bed." "An awfully *narrow* bed, with a lid, Lestat." He peered at me critically... I sighed. This was a side of him I'd not seen before. "Louis, *please*! Now, dearest!" He stepped over the side and lowered himself on top of me...we were now lying face-to-face, with the sweet weight of him on me, the scent of him in my nostrils... "Won't my weight squash you?" he asked. "No!" I pulled the lid closed, wrapped my arms around his waist. "You ought to be dead by tonight--go to sleep." He will be magnificent when he awakens! LESTAT'S DIARY: AUGUST 14, 1791 When I awoke this evening, Louis was gone... This scared me; frightened me quite badly, really, until I realised that he had just awakened before me, and was probably washing, dressing... We had spent the day wrapped in each others' arms (both of us are still sleeping in my coffin, as Louis has not acquired one of his own yet) so it is odd that I did not feel him disengaging himself from my embrace, slipping out of my arms, out of my coffin... I wonder if he kissed me before he got up? This thought comforted me; I pressed my own fingers to my lips, my nose... My hands smell like him. Oh, desire! I must find him immediately...perhaps I can persuade him to play "our game" before we must go out for the evening. He is talking to the old man...I've heard them just now, heard the mellifluous timbre of Louis's gentle voice, just beyond my bedroom... If I peer around the corner, I can see him in there, and he's seated at the old man's bedside, leaning over him, listening to the old man's meaningless babble about nothing! "I am so glad you listen, my son..." A cough, a cackling spurt of laughter, the old man is bent double...I'm watching this, hearing him cough, and my fingernails bite into my palms: *Die, you rotten old bastard!* I'm thinking... *I hope you rot in Hell!* All the old privations, the old miseries of my childhood came back to me in a rush, and I wanted to dash in there, slap Louis away, press a pillow into the old man's face until every breath had been smothered from his miserable, shriveled old body... And another part of me wants to go in there and press my face into his blankets, wait for the caress of his hand against my head, the caress that I *know* will never come--God knows, I've waited for years! I want to go in to him, like some recalcitrant son, wait for his blessing, wait for him to love me, dammit! I'm shaking...I must stop thinking these things! Impossible that such mingled love and hate can exist in one body, one being! When part of me would kill him, and part of me would love him...this is monstrous! I listened to what Louis was saying...like a shameless, common nothing, I eavesdropped on their conversation... Louis was feeding the old man his supper, ladling soup patiently out of a bowl, into the old man's mouth, that toothless, caved-in hole that has never so much as breathed a word of love or appreciation--- God *damn*! I bit down hard on my lips... I was starting to shake. I'd be crying like some damn fool in a minute... "I never understood what she wanted, with all those books," the old man said. I watched as Louis carefully scooped up another spoonful of soup, fed it to my father. "Mmmm-hmm..." Louis's dark head nodded, up and down. He'd dressed in pants, boots and shirt, and his hair was tied back in a ribbon. The young Master of Pointe de Lac, ladling out soup for his lover's blind father... An interesting picture. "She was always bringing those books to you, wasn't she?" The old man's sightless eyes rolled around in his head, seeking, looking but not seeing anything. "And you always wanted more, more books to read! We should have kept you at the monastery! I see that now, yes; I see that now." My father nodded, his words falling into silence, but I was gripped with an awful chill, as if taken with a fever, and I grabbed at the doorframe with my hand to steady myself. My father thought that Louis was *me*! And Louis was *allowing* him to think this! Louis, *my* Louis, my lover, my companion, my friend, was sitting at the side of my father's bed, ladling soup into his wretched mouth... And these confessions that my father was making?! This was monstrous! I watched them, saw, as if in a dream, my father's hand reaching out for Louis, until it fastened gropingly around his wrist. Watched the old man leaning closer towards the shadowy figure, the figure that was supposed to be me... Listened to the words coming out of his shriveled old mouth, his wizened, shrunken, small, cruel soul! "I never did right by you, Lestat. May God forgive me." The hand patted Louis's wrist, clutched at his forearm. "Do you think you can forgive me before I die?" His grey eyes, so like my own, shifted blindly in Louis's direction. I watched as Louis stiffened, dropped the spoon into the bowl with a soft clinking noise. And then slowly, turn around to see me standing in the doorway. "Can you forgive me?" The old man, obviously unaware of any change in the assembled tableau, repeated his obscene question. Forgive him? Forgive *him*? What sort of a fool did he--- My mouth opened of its own accord, and words tumbled out, words that were not mine, words that flew up out of my painfully contracted ribs, like uncaged birds. It was hard to force them through the swollen channel of my throat... "Of course, Father...I forgive you." If he caught the bitter spin, I didn't notice. I was going into the room on leaden feet, kneeling at his bed, and his hand descended to the back of my neck... "Such a good boy, always a good boy." His hand patted, withdrew. "I think I will sleep now," he said, his voice dwindling to a thready whisper. "I'm feeling quite tired, quite tired." I got up, stiff with outrage, and stormed downstairs, leaving Louis standing there, the soup bowl in his hand, an unfathomable expression in his eyes... ...I think he pitied me, at that moment. Damn him! I couldn't think; couldn't see straight! I was so *angry* but also, something else... I heard Louis come into the drawing room, turned my back on him, feigned interest in the swinging limbs of the cypress trees on the front lawn... The wind was coming up, it would be breezy outside tonight... "Lestat." He was standing right behind me. I still didn't turn around, the anger coursing through me, stiffening my posture, my limbs. I was so enraged, I couldn't see! But it was a rage coupled with an enormous grief, and a sorrow that had closed off my throat, sealed my voice inside me. "I know--" Louis faltered. I heard him clear his throat, start again. "I know you've waited a long time, a lifetime, to hear him say that to you, I know--" My rage erupted, blossoming into a cold, hard ball in the center of my chest, and I spun around to confront him, ready to rain curses on him for his folly... ...and oh, God, he was weeping! My darling was weeping: dark rivulets of blood, slipping slowly down his ivory cheeks, disappearing into the collar of his shirt... "I cannot know how much he hurt you..." This, slipping upwards into the air, out of his parted lips... Twin globules of blood splashed down on the rug between his feet, and he was shuddering, as if with a great chill, although the night was warm... "You don't," I whispered. "You don't know, Louis...you *cannot* know..." I felt my face smoothing out, my expression melting into tears, my eyes becoming huge and round as my pain spread itself across my features... "Please--tell me..." His hand wandered from his side and slid up my forearm, rested on my shoulder. I could feel the smoothness of his cool caress, even through my shirt, and I remembered waking this evening, with the scent of him, all over my hands, my fingers... "I can't," I whispered. I did not tell him why: I did not tell him that if I began to talk, I would weep; and weeping, would scream, and if I began to scream out this ancient pain, I would surely scream until time had wound down to its eternal end... "He hurt you." His fingers, on my face, my mouth...his fingers, catching my tears, his hands...the smell of him... My sorrow was a stone in my heart... "Why did you---?" "He was asking for you...I awakened early, and I heard him calling for you---" His fingers tightened on my shoulder. "He's a sick old man, Lestat." "I hope he burns in Hell!" I spat. I felt the shuddering come up from my bones, rattle my teeth, and the words were spilling out of me, tumbling down to splash upon the rug, like Louis's tears... "He--my mother, she--and he took away...*everything* I ever- -and she was *dying* in that cold, horrible place, and he-- nothing I did was ever enough, nothing I did was *right*! It was as if he was trying to drive me *away* and my mother, she--" I couldn't continue; the words caught in my throat and choked me. Louis tried to embrace me, but I suddenly felt as if I were smothering, pushed him away... "Tell me!" Louis urged, a whispered hiss. "The horrible *pain*, she--was dying, and how could he have let her rot up there, in that goddamned castle? How could he have taken from me everything I'd wanted, how could he have brought me home, in disgrace, in *shame*, Louis, taken me away from everything that I loved, and he---" I told him about Nicki...I told him about Paris, about the theatre, I told him about Gabrielle, dying, eaten slowly from the inside-out, and how I'd given It to her, just as I'd given it to him..." I caught his arm in my hand, urgently. "Every unhappiness in my life has been somehow connected to *him*!" I gestured sharply at the ceiling, where my father's bedroom was, over our heads. "Nothing but pain, and cold, and---" I stopped talking. It was enough. You miss her, my mind whispered, aching. She has disappeared into the deeps of this world, and you do not know where she has gone... Yes... "Lestat, I love you." Louis's hands were on my face, and he was still weeping, his green eyes very large, very sad. His words opened a torrent of tears inside me, and I leaned forward, further and further, until my face was buried in his lap, his hands in my hair. LESTAT'S DIARY: August 15, 1791 My father is dead. Louis came out of his bedroom just a hour ago, ushered me in silently, and I sat down upon the old man's--my father's--bed. "Is it you, Lestat?" His lungs creaked now like old bellows, there was barely breath there for him to force a whisper. I had to lean close to him to hear, and the smell of decay rose into my nostrils. "Forgive me..." He'd said it again, and again his hand went around the back of my neck, and he pressed me to his withered chest. "I could have done better, but I did not. God forgive me." Louis was watching me keenly, standing in the doorway, observing all this in his own quiet way. I was immeasurably glad that he was there, immeasurably glad! Shortly after, the old man died. It was over. "How do you feel?" Louis and I were seated, side-by-side on the front steps of Pointe de Lac, nothing stirring in the darkness, no sound except the whickering cry of a passing night- bird... "I don't know," I replied. What I was feeling was... I was glad to be here, with Louis, sitting quietly on the steps, talking like this. The stars hovered above us, and the milky light of the moon, its face obscured now and again by a passing wisp of cloud. I was happy, at last, I was happy! I was here with Louis, and he loved me, and... I had a home, now. I had a home with Louis. Louis loves me. I know my mother is out there, somewhere. I'll find her. I'll find her someday. "We ought to lay him out, now." Louis leaned over and kissed me softly, his palm brushing my cheek. I turned my face and pressed my lips into his palm, his fingers. We had to lay my father's body out, wash him, dress him in the burial clothes. He would go into the ground, my father. Ashes to ashes... But I will have Louis for eternity. THE END