THE VISIONS OF THE DREAMER
by JoAnne Soper-Cook
jsoperco@morgan.ucs.mun.ca
sequal to The Farthest Side of Night

Oh night that was my guide! Oh night! More loving than the rising
sun; oh night, the joy of lover to the beloved one, transforming
each of them into the Other.... (St. John of the Cross)

     Lestat de Lioncourt was dreaming:  lucidly, frantically,
entirely immersed in the streaking visions that played themselves
out behind his eyelids.  His muscular body jerked once in some
phantom spasm, and his wide, sensuous mouth opened slightly, as
if to cry out, but he was silent....  This is what he saw:

     In his dream, Lestat is standing on a rocky bluff
overlooking the ocean.  The weather is cruel: great, sucking
swells push rudely at the granite cliffs, shouldering the rock
aside; great, thundering waves crash resoundingly as keening sea-
birds wheel in circles, the shrieking ocean's harpies.  A
northeasterly wind has swirled down from the flat and featureless
Arctic and the cold of it runs keenly along the vampire's tender
skin as he stands, a lone sentinel, outlined against a dark and
lowering sky.  
     He is standing, braced against the wind, gazing down at
something he holds in the palm of his hand; there, nestled
against the smooth folds of his pallid flesh are two silver
lockets! Cunning things, they are each carved of a single block
of the lustrous metal, hinged to open, and secreted inside is a
clever mechanism, that causes each of these two silver hearts to
beat, as if a living thing!  
     Lestat opens the first one, then the second, and lays them
both side by side upon his palm.  The wind whips his wavy hair
into a reluctant halo around his head; his white shirt billows
like a sail...he is a maritime god, carved out of this very
granite.
     Inside the first heart, he sees that the very centre of it
is marked in white; the second, black.  He does not know why this
is so, when there is no other difference, when each heart beats
as precisely as the other....
     A woman is whispering...incredibly, over the screeching
tumult of the gale, she is whispering in his ear, her hands,
invisible, tug at his hardened shoulders, her hair whips against
his naked face, tormented by the wind:  "You must find my
locket...you must find my heart."
     Inexplicably, Lestat closes his hand around both lockets,
crushing the tender metal against the hardness of his fist. 
Drawing his arm back to the farthest point of an arc, he flings
the lockets away.
     The hungry sea swallows them without discernable trace.
     Now, this woman-shade is upon him, he is possessed by her
unseen, grasping fingers, which pick and pluck at him, urging
him, beseeching him....
     You must retrieve my locket, my heart, you must!
     Up out of the face of the ocean comes a great, keening wail:
the mourning of a thousand swallowed souls, rising up the granite
cliff-face, carried on the wings of sea-birds, borne upon the
tides....
     "Ah!" Lestat sat bolt upright, shuddering; the blankets had
come down, he was cold.  He groped in uncertainty for an instant,
seeking to orient himself to time and place.  There was Louis, in
the bed beside him.  The window was securely closed, draped and
shuttered.  He was safe.  There was no icy wind, no salty spume,
no thundering waves crashing over great towering cliffs.... He
was safe.  He took a deep in-breath, let it out slowly, clasped
his cold hands in his armpits.  God, what a horrible dream...
     You must retrieve my locket, my heart....
     What in hell did that mean?
     Lestat slid down in the bed beside the sleeping Louis,
pulling the dishevelled covers over them both.  Louis was in
exactly the same position he'd been in when they'd gone to bed:
lying on his side, one arm under the pillow, his knees up.  A
smile curved Lestat's mouth as he gazed at Louis...beautiful
Louis.
     Lestat pushed a lock of Louis's dark hair back out of his
face and regarded his lover fondly.  Unlike Lestat, Louis could
not rise at dusk to savour the dying rays of sunset; he must stay
safely sheltered until the night had come.
     It had been Louis's idea, surprisingly enough, that they
abandon their requisite coffins for a bed.  If the windows were
carefully shuttered, Louis explained, there would be no danger.
     "Is this something you picked up in that awful New York
motel?" Lestat had asked, smirking.  He was secretly pleased that
Louis wanted to sleep with him.
     "It does make perfect sense, Lestat.  Besides..."  Louis had
suddenly become acutely interested in the floor.  "I...enjoy
sleeping next to you."  His green eyes had flickered up, his gaze
fixing Lestat's for just an instant, before retreating behind the
hanging veil of his long hair.
     "You enjoy it? Well, that's a moral revolution, for
certain!"  Lestat had said.  "I'd have thought you far too
restrained to indulge in such enjoyment, Louis!"
     But he had readily and enthusiastically agreed to the idea,
and he'd had to admit, sleeping cosily together was far superior
to being isolated in their respective coffins. 
     Lestat watched Louis as he slowly awakened now...ah, such a
pleasure to watch sweet Louis climb up from the depths of his
sleep!  First the low, throaty murmur as his mind rose again to
consciousness, then the shifting of his limbs, the realignment of
his physicality in the bed.  His smooth, unlined face would form
some vague expression, his eyes still closed, the lush dark
lashes resting against his cheeks.
     "Louis...."  Lestat leaned close, pressed his mouth to
Louis's forehead.  "Wake up, Louis."  His mouth travelled,
pressing kisses to Louis's closed eyelids, the sweet plum of his
cheek, the corners of his mouth.  Louis's wide mouth slipped open
as his lips fastened onto Lestat's, one languid arm going around
the other man.  Lestat heard him whimper, softly, as the sleepy
kiss deepened.
     Lestat drew closer, pressing his body next to Louis's in the
bed, his hands clasping Louis's face.  His tongue slipped
teasingly between Louis's lips, flickering briefly, then
withdrew.
     "Stop teasing me," Louis's voice, still enmeshed in a web of
sleep, was a husky whisper.  He drew Lestat on top of him and
kissed him, hard; his hands holding the points of Lestat's firm 
shoulders, Louis's long fingers splayed against his lover's skin.
     "I love you," Lestat whispered, drawing the back of his hand
along the sweet curve of Louis's face.
     "Mmmm...."  Louis smiled sleepily, as twin sparks of desire
kindled in his green eyes.  "Come love me, then...."
     Lestat moaned softly as Louis's fang-teeth broke the tender
skin of his neck, just under the earlobe.  Already, the cruel
cold of the dream was retreating as he was wrapped in delicious,
erotic lassitude at the hands of his lover.  He closed his
sapphire eyes against the visions that still burned there.


     Far away, on a densely-treed island in the middle of the
Adriatic sea, Armand was awakening, climbing up through cold,
hard stages to inevitable reality, and his pounding thirst.  He'd
gone to bed that morning without feeding, allowing the thirst to
build in order to savour more fully the ecstasy when he finally
succumbed to the kill.
     Armand was like that, he enjoyed small deprivations, viewed
his satisfaction's delay with a hollow-eyed intensity, a predator
groaning quietly while the prey prances before him.  In this way,
he was not unlike those mortals who pay huge sums in order that a
leather-clad dominatrix might whip them for their pleasure. 
     Armand was a pervert.  
     He arose slowly this evening, climbing out of his hidden
vault, deep beneath the floor of his dwelling, and walked in
something of a trance to his huge, marbled bath.  Like those
mortals who so delight in being dominated, Armand preferred to
equip himself completely for his first encounter.
     He twisted the elegant brass taps and watched in silence as
the hot, foaming water poured into the tub.  Going to a shelf
near the bath, he selected one of innumerable glass bottles, and
poured some small quantity of a scented oil into the water.
     Armand was glad to rid himself of his dusty clothing, and he
slipped out of the nondescript pants-and-shirt quickly, leaving
them in a pile on the floor of the bath.  The rising steam veiled
his nude form in mystery, as he turned slowly in front of the
large bathroom mirrors, eyeing himself.
     His auburn hair was curly, the full, bubbly curls of an
early Botticelli, spilling down around his hard, white shoulders
and his naked chest, whose poreless skin was like alabaster. 
Armand's face was the face of some nameless medieval urchin,
whose bland mien had been somehow glorified by the brush of a
master, glowing from within.  His brown eyes, moist and
reflective, were enormous, set in his wan face like chunks of
onyx; deep and fathomless.  In those eyes nothing was reflected,
but rather was absorbed into the eternal depths of Armand's
uncharted soul.
     He smiled at himself, the slight motion raising his finely-
etched brows and spreading his mouth wide.  Armand had the mouth
of a pouting castrati, which might at any moment curl into a
Pierrot moue, or shriek obscenities, or arch into a soundless "O"
of wonder....  Indeed, the sum of his character might have been
compacted down into that petulant, full-lipped mouth.
     The steaming bath was ready, and Armand skipped across the
tiled floor on dancer's feet, all lithe grace and muscular limbs. 
He sank without murmur into the scented water and laid his auburn
curls back against the tub.
     The dream...damn the dream! It came back again, all so real,
the awful sleeping vision which had torn him from his rest....
     This is what Armand saw:

     Armand was standing alone, on a distant, sea-bound vista, an
outcropping of lethal rock that was thrust defiantly into the
screeching ocean.  Far out over the roiling, inky waves, he could
discern a dim and distant figure, flattened against the stormy
backdrop, white shirt billowing in the Arctic chill.
     As Armand watched, the figure lifted an arm, hurled
something far out to sea, something small that caught the last
dying rays of light before flashing, drowning, into the ocean. 
The figure was outlined sharply, the edges of the image crisp,
the detail perfect.  Armand's dream-self watched in wonder as a
stray gust caught the other being's thick blond hair, bent it
into an unwilling halo....
     "You must retrieve my locket, my heart...."  The woman's
voice was a wail of despair, each whispered plea a plucking
finger, tearing at his uneasy sleep, destroying his rest.  "You
must retrieve my heart..."
     Armand's eyes flashed open, and he sat up, slopping water
over the sides of the bath.  The blood-lust, so long denied, was
a keen, lancing hunger, sawing at his nerves.  It was time to
hunt.
     Damn the invisible woman and her tiny plucking fingers.  He
was Armand the vampire.  Tonight the tranquil Adriatic beckoned. 
Armand's pouting mouth shaped itself into a pleased moue, and
like those mortals who delight in receiving measured pain, he
gave himself willingly to his hunger's aching lust.


     Armand was slipping silently through the trees, invisible in
the blackness of the Adriatic night, his lithe feet dancing over
the mossy ground in a measured tread.  The hunger which he had
purposely denied now raked at him, keen silver knives ripping at
his insides, scraping him raw.  It was all he could do not to
sing with the pain.
     He entered the square of the village, a hidden wraith, and
slipped in shadows, unsubstantial.  A certain perverted glee
sparked twin lights in the empty pools of his eyes; the alabaster
column of his throat rippled as he swallowed.
     There! An ancient washer-woman, a wizened crone bearing her
bundle upon her back, was creeping along the dirt path through
the village, her swollen feet shuffling heedlessly.  Her gaze was
on the ground, and her soft, wet mouth lisped some fragment of a
song, whistling through the gaps between her crumbling teeth. 
Armand watched her, lingering awhile, letting the lust scamper
along his skin, up the tendrils of his auburn hair.  He shivered
as the trajectory of her shuffle brought her very near to where
he was hidden; he could smell the blood in her: old, and rich,
and strong.
     He was like a panther when he leapt upon her, snapping her
neck in his haste, and with a great, throbbing gluttony he fed on
her, gulping the crimson blood from the pulsing font of her
broken neck, heedless to the viscous liquid that wasted, trickled
down his chest.  So good, this scarlet tide, rising to fill him,
smoothing out the hollows in his bones.  He rode the beating tide
of ecstasy, timing his swallows to the slowing beat of the old
woman's dying heart, his body lurching against hers in a
grotesque parody of sex.  
     He let her drop to his feet, his chest sticky with her
spilled blood.  His white hands came up, plucked at his shirt-
front idly, then dropped back against his sides.  
     You must retrieve my locket, my heart...
     Ah, God! Would it never stop?! Armand pressed his sticky
palms against his ears, willing the woman's prating voice to be
quiet.  
     One more now, and then home to his pet...his pet would be
hungry by now, unaccustomed to going so long without the blood,
chained as she was under his house.  His pet must be appeased. 
Armand grinned, a flash of white in the darkness.  One more, and
then home.... The grin widened. Perhaps he would bring his pet a
treat....

     The chained figure struggled weakly against her restraining
bonds, her small grubby fingers tangled in the links, trying to
force the metal to part.  It was futile: she was weakened by many
days without nourishment, without blood, and the chains which she
might normally have broken very easily now held her securely.
     The figure slumped back against the cold stone of the wall,
enclosed in this subterranean crypt.  Her special senses informed
her that the earth had again spun round to night, that it was
time for the hunt, and that her captor had gone to seek
refreshment, probably from the feckless inhabitants of the nearby
Slavic village.  She moaned weakly, almost able to taste the
sweet gush of fresh blood that so sustained her kind.... damn
him! She laughed bitterly, a low chuckle.  Damn her for going
with him, she knew better, she knew what he was, the varied and
inventive types of cruelties of which he was capable...damn!
     She hummed a little, as she so often did of late, to comfort
herself and to fill in the gaping silence which surrounded her. 
Tonight it was an old folktune, one that her mother had sung to
her, long ago when she was a child, of a mother who searched high
and low for her missing jewels...
     "Find me my locket, my heart...find me my locket, my heart;
the one of the white and the one of the black--"
     Hell! He was back!  The chained woman flattened herself
against the stone wall, making her diminuative form as small as
possible.  Another futility, she thought bitterly: his senses,
always superior to her own, would find her now as he had so
unerringly found her then, hidden in the crypt under the
Theatre...
     "I've come, my pet...with something for you."  His voice was
falsely-cheerful, ringing off the stone walls.  The woman didn't
move, closing even her brilliant blue eyes lest they reveal her.
     "Oh, come now, precious one! Hiding from Armand, your
master?" A powerful white hand shot out and yanked her upright,
her bonds being designed for a certain amount of motion.  He
scrutinised her for a long moment, with that permanent smirk of
his that seemed to be etched onto his full, pouty lips.  "God,
you stink!"  He thrust her away from him.  "Are you hungry?"
     She could smell fresh blood, but couldn't see where it was
coming from...it was somewhere in here, with her, he'd brought it
in here with him, and the smell of it was maddening.  "Give it to
me, you bastard! I'm starving!"
     He backhanded her brutally, the slap sending her delicate
skull lashing over to one side.  "Mustn't talk so to the master
now, must we?" He laughed.  "Are you hungry?"
     "Please, Armand, let me have some...just a little taste,
please, I'll behave, I promise you..."  She reached out for him,
as far as her chains would allow, one small, dirty hand tangling
in his rich, red hair.  "I'm so hungry...."
     "You must ask nicely, and perhaps....no, I don't think I'll
let you feed tonight...."  He turned on his heel and made for the
stairs leading to the rest of the house.
     "Armand! You son of a bitch!" She screamed at him, her
hunger clawing at her insides.  "I curse you! Rot in hell,
demon!"
     He was back at her side, springing lithely across the space
that separated them, and as he did so, she could see where the
blood smell had come from.  He was carrying a baby in his arms,
little more than an infant, really, and it lay, wide-eyed and
silent, in his grasp.  "Wouldn't you like to have this? Hmmm? A
pleasing repast, since I know you're so very hungry...."
     He had beaten her, yet again, and they both knew it.  She
would acquiese to him, as she had done since he'd first brought
her here, many months ago.  "Please, let me have it, I'm so
hungry...."  Tears sprang to her eyes as he placed the infant
tenderly into her arms, the gesture a benediction.  
     Her body trembled as she took the child into her embrace
and, in a travesty of nurturance, tore its little throat with her
teeth, draining the small body in one draught.
     Armand watched her with great pleasure...the veneer of
civility had come off of her quite easily, he reflected, and
she'd been reduced to the very same creature she'd always been. 
It was so exciting to watch her feed, though; the barely-
restrained savagery with which she tore into her victims....
Perhaps he would pleasure himself with her tonight.  It was so
enjoyable to hear her begging him for mercy as he used her; so
very arousing to take her over and over, draining her to a great,
essential weakness, which kept her docile.  Yes, he would have
her tonight....
     Armand took the key from his pocket and swiftly unclasped
her bonds.  He held out his hand to her, as if inviting her to
dance.  "Come, my dear; let us go upstairs.  I fancy a little
dalliance with you tonight, I believe."
     Her blue eyes flamed fear at him in the darkness.  She knew
what he'd done to her before, knew the heights of his demented
perversion.  She also knew that the small drink she'd taken from
the baby was not nearly enough to restore her strength to the
point where she might defeat him...and he knew it, too.
     "You really must wash first, though--you quite reek, I'm
afraid."  His onyx eyes studied her for a long moment, and
something dark and evil moved in those velvet depths.  Then he
threw back his head and laughed.  
     Bronwyn, bereft of any true choice, went with him.


     Lestat lay with his head on Louis's shoulder, his arm around
Louis's waist.  Louis's hand was tangled in Lestat's long blond
hair, letting the silken locks ripple through his fingers,
cherishing the soft weight of it. 
     "Tell me about Bronwyn, Louis."  Lestat pulled the blankets
over them both.
     "I thought you were hungry," Louis replied.
     Lestat sat up on one elbow, a frown creasing his smooth
forehead.  "You don't want to tell me?"
     "Of course I do...."  Louis smiled.  "It's very odd that you
should ask, though, since I've been thinking about her...."
     Lestat nodded slowly.  "Yes."  He ran the palm of his hand
down Louis's chest, his flat stomach.
     "What do you want to know about her?"
     Lestat considered this for a moment, his eyes thoughtful. 
"Whatever you would like to tell me, Louis."  His dream of the
woman and the twin lockets hadn't entirely been banished by their
lovemaking, and Lestat wanted something which would take the
dream from his immediate consciousness.
     "She's such a puzzle, really, Lestat; a true condundrum in
every sense of the word---" Louis broke off suddenly, sat
straight up as if pulled by a string, his green eyes widening
into huge, emerald pools.
     "Louis!" Lestat touched his lover on the shoulder,
perplexed.  "What's wrong? Louis, tell me---"  Lestat shook Louis
slightly.  "Tell me--oh, Lord God!" Lestat felt it, too, a mental
disturbance, a slight rippling in the immediate atmosphere. 
"It's her, isn't it?!"
     Louis nodded, staring as if caught in a nightmare.  "Yes,"
he whispered, "he's got her, and he's hurting her...oh, God---"
He gasped, a sharp in-breath that dissolved into a sob.
     "Shh, Louis--" Lestat squeezed his arm. "Who's got her, what
do you mean?"
     Louis gasped again, his eyes wide, as if seeing something
terrible, some horrible vision unfolding inside his mind. 
"Armand!"
     Lestat went cold all over, suddenly.


     
     Bronwyn stood under the shower, an insensate figure,
allowing the hot water to pour over her without interruption. 
Her gaze was fixed straight ahead, seeing nothing.
     "Well, wash yourself!" Armand's petulant voice sliced the
air around her.  "You're filthy." A bar of soap bounced off of
her legs; she let it drop into the pool of water near her feet.
     Armand hissed, "Wash yourself, I said!"
     Bronwyn ignored him, immured in her own imaginings, the
daydreams her only refuge from Armand and his perverse desires. 
He'd begun using her about a week after they'd arrived here, any
pretense of wanting to "engage her in discourse" very quickly
dispensed with, in favour of his larger schemes.  He'd chained
her in the basement that first day, affixing her to the wall with
heavy iron chains.  Bronwyn had laughed in his face.  "You think
this will keep me here? I'm just as strong as you are!"  She
hadn't counted on the conjurings of his diabolical mind: he'd
begun starving her soon after he'd imprisoned her in his
underground crypt, depriving her of the blood she so needed for
her survival, weakening her by degrees, and when he'd decided she
was submissive enough, he'd started taking her upstairs at night,
so that he might use her.
     Bronwyn had never known such all-consuming terror as she
knew that first night, when he'd taken her into his bedroom, to
the huge, canopied coffin where he slept, and commanded her to
strip.  His brown eyes had been flat and expressionless, the eyes
of a marble statue, as he'd held her down and ripped her clothing
from her, his hands and body as hard as alabaster.
     "Stop this, stop!" Bronwyn had struggled against him,
pushing at his chest with the heels of her hands, but in her
weakened state, she'd been too strong for him.  She'd screamed in
fury and thwarted resistence when his sharp teeth broke the skin
on her breast, his petulant mouth closing greedily around the
wound.  He'd liked to take her blood from different areas of the
body, starting a wound in one place, then opening another, then
another, then another...if she resisted, he would beat her
savagely.  Armand liked this the best; the action of inflicting
punishment on another of his kind awakened a kind of savage
arousal in him, heightened his lust to a fever pitch, so that he
became an unrecognisable parody of himself, whipping her
frenziedly, his lower lip caught between his teeth, his eyes
glazed.
     "You are being a very bad girl," Armand had come into the
shower with her, had picked up the soap in his hand. His naked
body gleamed like polished marble as he approached her.  "Such a
bad pet, must be punished---" He grabbed he face in an iron grip
and bit her bottom lip savagely, his fang teeth cutting her
flesh.  Bronwyn screamed.  "Who do you think is going to hear
you, my pet?" Armand sneered.  "Nobody cares about you, nobody is
going to help you now!"  He laughed heartily.  "You belong to me
now!"
     Bronwyn touched her cut lip, felt the sting where his sharp
teeth had sliced through her skin.  Her tongue slid out, tasting
her own blood, withdrew into her mouth.  Her vision slowly
clouded with a red, pulsing rage, and then her hand shot out and
caught Armand high up on the cheek, almost near the temple,
slammed him back against the tiled wall.  The small amount of
blood she'd taken from the baby had strengthened her enough to
strike out at him.  "You bastard!"  She felt her cut lip gingerly
with her fingertips, shaking with repressed rage.  "Don't you
ever touch me aga---" 
     Her diatribe was cut short as Armand rebounded and pinned
her against the wall, his dark eyes flashing.  He grabbed her
slender wrists and pinned them behind her, so that she was unable
to move and bent her body over, her head between her ankles.  "I
thought we'd try something delightfully...*mortal* this evening,
my dear," he hissed, his hard body moving against her. 
"Something I have little opportunity for these days, but which
pleases me immensely, nonetheless---" The last sentence ended in
a grunt as he buried his erection inside her, pounding into her
savagely. 
     Bronwyn's consciousness filled with her own useless screams
as her immediate reality melted into nothingness.  
     There was no escape for her now...he owned her utterly, body
and soul, and there would be no merciful exit, no fortuitous
escape through underground passages and into the safety of the
streets.  Armand was her keeper, and he was determined to extract
his ancient payment from her, one way or another....


     Lestat gazed at his own face in the mirror as he drew on a
casual sweater, smoothed the clingy wool around his arms and
chest.  His blue eyes stared back at him, revealing nothing, and
the smooth surface of his unblemished face was as it had always
been.  His wide mouth was immobile, silent.
     Lestat sighed, ran a hand through his blond hair.  He could
hear Louis walking softly throughout the house, could discern the
subtle squeak of the floorboards as they compressed underneath
Louis's step.  This thing with Bronwyn was damned awful, to be
sure, but what could they do about it? There wasn't even the
beginnings of a clue as to where Armand might have taken her;
that was the damnedest thing: not knowing where to look.  Their
hands, his and Louis's, were tied.
     Lestat looked up to see Louis leaning against the door
frame.  "I heard you pacing in there."
     Louis shrugged, one slender shoulder rising underneath his
shirt.  "I am...concerned."  He came into the bathroom, stood
just behind Lestat, his green eyes watching them both in the
mirror.
     "God, we look good, though, don't we?" Lestat grinned,
attempting to lighten the mood.
     Louis turned abruptly. 
     "Louis, wait--" Lestat caught his arm and turned him around. 
"I'm sorry...."
     "I can't stop wondering what he's doing with her, where he's
taken her.... it's my fault, I should never have let her go with
him!"
     "Lord God! It isn't your fault! There you go again, heaping
more blame upon yourself---good God, Louis, you didn't own her!
And besides, she's a helluva lot older and stronger than you are-
-if she had it in her mind to go, there's not much you could have
done about it!"  Lestat felt the old irritation rising to the
surface, could feel a corresponding tension growing within Louis,
knew that this could turn into another explosive confrontation.
     "Stop telling me how to feel! I'm worried! You certainly
don't understand that sort of thing, because you've never been in
this position!" Louis's eyes were blazing emeralds, his face
twisted in anguish.
     Lestat felt something burst inside his chest with a small
pop.  "Oh, come off it, Louis! Do you think I sat around
listening to Mozart and playing backgammon with David when you so
very cavalierly decided to take your leave?" His sapphire gaze
impaled Louis on twin points of blue light. "You nearly tore my
guts out when you left! I almost lost my mind!"
     Louis spun on his heel and stalked into the hallway, his
boot heels echoing loudly on the wooden floors.  Lestat swung out
of the room, one hand on the door frame.  "Louis! Louis, don't
you walk away from me! Louis?!" He stomped his foot, hard;
leaving the indentation of his boot heel in the polished oak
floor board.  There was silence from the rest of the house; Louis
had walked out on him.  "God damn!" Lestat slammed the bathroom
door and went after him.


     Armand rolled over on the sumptuous linen sheets and smiled
a catlike smile, the expression drawing the corners of his
cherub's mouth up into a bow.  He reached out and pulled
Bronwyn's prone body nearer, wrapping one arm sinuously around
her waist.  "Wake up, my pretty--not daylight yet! Are you
sleeping already?"  When she did not respond, he grabbed a
handful of her long hair and yanked on it.
     "Ow! Jesus!" Bronwyn slapped at his hand, was rewarded with
the sound of Armand's hollow laughter.  
     "So you are awake, hmmmm?" His hands cupped her small
breasts, squeezed them cruelly.  "You really are a tasty piece,
you know...I do enjoy you so..." He tilted her face up in his
hand and gazed into her eyes, fixing her with his barren stare. 
"Such a pretty thing...and to think I missed you, all these
years." The sphinx smile returned to his square, white face,
then, Armand did a surprising thing: he bent near and kissed her
tenderly, gently, his mouth roving over hers skilfully, his
tongue slipping between her lips teasingly.
     "What are you....?" 
     "Shhh...." He silenced her, pressing a finger against her
lips, then his mouth was again devouring hers in a long,
strangely-sensuous kiss, a caress devoid of his usual cruelty. 
He shifted a little on the bed and took her carefully into his
arms, rolling onto his back with her, holding her face in his
hands while his lips gently caressed her.  Bronwyn felt his
strong arms go around her waist, one hand sliding up her back to
slip into her hair, holding the nape of her neck.
     "What are you doing? I don't understand...." Bronwyn stared
at him: why was he behaving so gently with her, and where had his
cruelty suddenly gone? 
     "You know...you always know...."  Armand caught her mouth in
another searing kiss.  "That's why I chose you, sweet
Gypsy....You know what to do."  His velvety dark eyes were blank,
filled with the otherworldly visions of medieval saints and
mystics.
     "What...? What am I supposed to do?" Bronwyn felt herself,
oddly, responding to this strange new Armand, and of its own
accord, her hand came up and stroked his soft auburn curls,
rubbing the satiny hair between her fingers.
     "You know..." Armand whispered, his hands playing over her
skin, ravishing her with delightful caresses... "...love me. You
have to love me."  His voice was pitched low, and vibrated with
some budding delusion; his gaze, although fixed on her, wasn't
seeing her.  Bronwyn claimed no special knowledge of Armand's
inner mental workings, but speculated that he was reenacting some
earlier scenario, some hidden chapter of his mortal life that
hadn't been entirely subsumed into his vampiric existence.  If
that were the case, it could mean only one thing...
     Armand was insane.  Some ancient pain, inflicted long ago,
had been all this time festering in the secret vaults of his
mind, growing ever larger and more malevolent, engulfing him. 
Yes! This new truth struck her hard, between the ribs, and stuck
there like a wound.  
     "My God...who did this to you?" Bronwyn held his face
between her hands, gazed deep into his unseeing eyes.  "Who hurt
you? Tell me!"
     Armand clutched her against his body, his all-consuming
desire racing through him, spilling into every part of him, until
it filled him completely. "You must love me, please...." He
sounded like a small boy asking for a favour.  "Please love
me...and then I can sleep."
     Bronwyn parted her slender legs on either side of him,
gasping when the white-hot thrust of him impaled her.  But
something urged her on, and she found herself caught up in his
rampant delusion, riding him furiously as his body hammered up
into her.  She felt the digging pressure of his fingers when his
release was finally wrung out of him, flinging him back,
exhausted against the bed. 
     Bronwyn folded herself forward, her head against his chest,
her long brown hair spilling over him like a cloak, her arms
wrapped around him.  She realised that the game had changed: that
if she were ever going to escape from him, she must first assist
him out of his madness, or he would never let her go.
     "Sleep now, my beautiful one," she whispered, still lying on
top of him, his body still joined with hers.  "Dream of me." 
Bronwyn waited until Armand's death-sleep had claimed him, before
gently disentangling herself from him.  But where she had been
previously defeated, now she felt the first stirrings of hope. 
The key to her escape from here was Armand's questionable sanity. 
     And Bronwyn would turn that key as hard as she could.



     Armand sunk into sleep like a diver takes to the water;
dropping silently, like a cast stone, into the depths.  He
allowed the oblivion to close over him, cocooning him in its
nascent safety, drawing him into dreams.
     Armand is standing on an outcropping of rock, a hard fist of
granite thrust defiantly into the ocean.  The wind is screaming
around him; his auburn curls are swept into a fiery halo, and his
shirt billows around him like a sail.
     On the palm of his hand, nestled into his smooth white flesh
are two silver lockets--cunning things, each is carved out of a
solid block of silver, and is equipped with a mechanism that
causes each simulated heart to beat!  Armand has never seen
anything like this; he bends closer over the hearts that he holds
in his hand, examining them, defying the shrieking winds that
urge him to shelter.
     But wait! Someone is standing behind him, someone is
watching him, someone whose wavy blond hair is swept into a wind-
raked halo, and whose white silk shirt billows about him like a
sail--Lestat! Armand tries to close his fist around the lockets,
but Lestat is faster, and his nimble fingers pick them out of
Armand's palm.  "See here!" Lestat says, opening first one heart,
then the other, "One is black inside, the other one is white!
Which belongs to you, Armand?"
     Armand tries to answer, but the wailing winds steal the
words from him, pluck his rejoinder from his lips, and he is
mute.  He can only stare, mesmerised, into Lestat's blue eyes
dumbly, until Lestat draws back his arm and flings the lockets
into the hungry maw of the ocean.  Turning, Lestat vanishes into
the mists and Armand is crying, without making a sound.
     The scene changes suddenly: the howling waves are replaced
by stout medieval walls, a fortress rising out of sturdy, ancient
battlements, a monastery fitted out for war.  Armand is wandering
through these halls, lingering in front of the huge tapestries
which underline the long, tapering windows.  From somewhere deep
within the building, a group of men is singing: a sonorous chant
in Latin, the harmonies mingling perfectly.
     "You would be fitted to sing with them?" 
     Armand turns to see a tall figure in a monk's cowl,
faceless, and carrying a staff.  He cannot speak--this transient
silence seems to have followed his dream-self, even here, and he
is again as mute as he was by the sea.
     "You would be fitted to sing as one of God's own angels!"
The cowled figure is leading him somewhere, and Armand is
relieved to see that the hand on his shoulder is a normal, human
hand, not the skeletal fingers he had so feared.  He is guided by
this kindly monk through myriad corridors, moving towards the
haunting singing which nevertheless seems to elude him at every
turn. 
     They turn a corner, Armand and the monk, and he is abruptly
there! But not in that hallowed spot which held the singing
voices---Armand knows this place, and his dream-self, tethered to
his sleeping body, is consumed with an incipient dread; he knows
this place, this awful place, oh God, is there no escape?
     "You would be fitted to sing with them?" The monk draws back
his cowl to reveal his face, and it is Decius, Armand's primeval
tormentor, the wellspring of his madness.  The facade of the
monastery falls away, and Armand sees them, the angelic singers
whose voices had so drawn him.  He falls back, horrified,
cringing away from the ethereal voices, these aberrant, eternal
boys...
     "They sing like God's own angels!" And Armand is back in
Decius's room, his stout-walled monk's cell, from which no cries
for help would ever be heard, and Decius is bending him over the
narrow bed, pulling up his monk's robe, and Armand's adolescent
flesh is ripped by the endless, searing pain....
     "They sing like God's own angels!"  The voices of the
ageless boys rise, a chorus of praise, and Armand slumps,
bleeding profusely, over Brother Decius's bed.  The voices rise
around him, a hymn to the God eternal, and Armand is consumed
by his own shame.  He would sing, he would be one of them, one of
these angelic voices.... He would offer up
his mortal flesh; like Christ crucified, he would give himself
for his redemption....
     Armand's dream-self, caught in the throes of his deathly
sleep, began screaming, his hoarse cries rising above the
floating chorus of singing angels, until he drifted into
silence.

     
      Bronwyn's eyes blinked open in darkness.  She lay for a
long moment trying to discern what the sound was that she heard,
and then realised that she'd fallen asleep against Armand's
chest.  His heart thumped against her ear, measuring out the
steady beat in counterpoint to his breathing.  She could not
comprehend what had awakened her, except that she'd been jolted
suddenly out of her sleep.
     She sat up on one elbow and regarded her captor in the milky
moonlight that spilled into the bedroom.  That silver
illumination showed Armand to best advantage, tracing the strong
curve of his jaw, the straight line of his slightly-upturned
nose, the relaxed mouth with its full lower lip.  His curly
auburn hair had fallen over his forehead, shadowing his high
forehead, and giving him the true appearence of a teenaged boy. 
He couldn't have been more than nineteen when he'd been made,
Bronwyn mused, if he'd been that, and he'd retained the luminous
beauty of youth.  His face was without mark or blemish, save for
two vertical lines between his exquisitely etched brows, a
reminder of some mortal anguish.
     She lifted her hand and traced his cheek, drawing hesitant
fingers down his jaw, pressing her palm against the long, white
column of his muscled throat.  He was...ravishingly beautiful,
Michaelangelo's "David" created in flesh.  The seed of cruelty in
him was so aberrant, so unlikely.... 
     Bronwyn's questing fingers had found the resilent cord of a
vein in Armand's marbled throat and leaning close to him, she
sank her fang teeth swiftly into him, moaned softly when his rich
blood gushed over her tongue and into her mouth.
     "Bronwyn...what are you...?" Armand's hands clutched the
creamy points of her shoulders, allowing her to feed off him,
holding her lithe body to his as she drained him in long,
arousing pulls.  He gave himself up to the beating ecstasy that
she had created in him, and punctured the sweet flesh of her neck
gladly, holding her pressed tightly against him, feeding off her. 
He savoured the warm weight of her soft little body, it kept the
demon dreams at bay.  Her delectable body would save him.  Armand
believed this.


          Brownyn sank into her sleep as easily as she always
had, sliding down into it with delicious abandon, as into a vat
of warm liquid, allowing it slowly to enclose around and about
her, holding her in its womb-like comfort.  It was always the
same way for her: at first, the tugging heaviness would begin in
her solar plexus, and she would feel her self begin to draw
inwards.  Her interest in her surroundings would wane, take on
the trance-like unreality that characterised this, and the beat
of her strong heart would slow, thudding solemnly within the bony
cage of her chest.  Her arms and legs would grow heavy, and it
was only with great effort that she would drag herself to her
sleeping place, arrange herself there...  The dragging heaviness
within her would expand outward, become a sucking vortex of
oblivion that pulled her down into its dark depths, drawing her
into that vivid sleep-world, where she would dwell until the next
sunrise....
     She was in a vault.  This much was apparent by the seeping
moisture that limned the grey-brick walls, dripped down to the
unseen floor, spattered away...  Very high above her, there was 
a casement cut into the stone, unshuttered, decorated with a
glorious leaded window through which daylight streamed in
variegated shades of red, yellow, deep blue.  It was quite
beautiful.
     It appeared to Bronwyn's dream-self that she was alone in
this place, but not alone; from high above her somewhere came the
sound of singing, very faint, but very beautiful.  She felt the
subtle harmonies shudder along her skin, drifting to her from
some unknown place...  As beautiful as they were, the voices
seemed to be infused with some elusive malice, like Lucifer
singing... She shivered.
     "Ah, God, stop...make it stop...."
     This was a different voice, coming from somewhere behind
her, a voice that was vaguely familiar, although in what specific
way, she wasn't sure...
     "Make it stop...make it stop!"  The sentence ended in a sob,
a ragged in-breath steeped in some immense, ancient horror.
     The voices rose in volume, filled Bronwyn's head with a
vast, elemental roaring that seemed like nothing so much as the
sound of creation....
     "Bronwyn, help me! Make it stop!"
     Bronwyn's dream-self turned around and there was Armand! He
was dressed as he'd been the night in New York when she'd first
gone with him:  dark brown corduroy pants, a loose white shirt,
boots.  His hair was dishevelled, his eyes wild.  He rushed
towards her, grabbed her shoulders, and Bronwyn saw that his
palms left bloody prints.  "You have to help me! You have to make
it stop! I keep hearing them, they won't stop singing!"
     Bronwyn tried to grab his arm but her hand went through him,
and when she opened her mouth to speak, no sound came out.  The
appalling sound of singing seemed to fill the chamber where they
were, going on and on into eternity, until there was nothing in
the universe but that awful singing and Armand's pleading,
anguished eyes...
     "Wha..!" Bronwyn's body leapt out of sleep, her eyes
snapping open to darkness.  She lay still for a long moment,
listening to her blood rushing in her ears, the slow thunder of
her heartbeat.  She pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, pressed
the scream back into her throat. 
     Now, she knew.


     Many miles away, in the living-room of a neat terrace house
in New Orleans, Lestat and Louis sat together on the couch
watching one of the few television programs that Louis liked. 
Louis was lying back against the arm of the couch and Lestat was
lying in the circle of Louis's bent legs, his head resting on
Louis's chest.  Every now and then, Lestat would squeeze Louis's
hand where the other man's fingers lay entwined with his, or
Louis would gently rub the back of his hand along Lestat's lean
jaw.
     "You haven't said much all night."  Lestat presented this
fact for Louis's ostensible inspection, but the silence in the
house was deafening.
     Louis stirred underneath him, and Lestat heard him draw in a
deep breath.  "I'm watching this program--or trying to, if you
would only be quiet for once."  Louis softened this imprecation
with one of his brilliant smiles.
     "That's not it and we both know it."  Lestat shifted on the
couch so that he was half-facing Louis. He patted Louis's denim-
clad leg, which was now around his waist.  "You're worried about
her."
     Louis's eyes filled with dark blood-tears, as if Lestat's
words had thrown some inner switch.  "It's not just that," he
whispered, "I think Armand's insane!"  Louis's expression
dissolved as he pressed his fist to his mouth.  
     Lestat's blue eyes darkened with some unspoken fear. "Armand
might be a lot of things, but he's not---"
     "Yes! He is!"  Louis disentangled himself from Lestat's
embrace and rose from the couch with catlike grace.  "I can hear
him, too, Lestat! I've been listening to his mind, and I'm
telling you, he's insane!"
     Lestat got up, flicked off the television set, and tossed
the remote onto the empty couch.  "Louis, Armand has been through
a hell of a lot in his time---you're just hearing echoes of
that."
     "No, I'm not!"  Louis grabbed Lestat's forearms, looked deep
into his eyes.  "Do you want to know what I hear when I listen to
Armand's mind, Lestat?"  He shook Lestat for emphasis. "Do you? I
hear this...godawful, diabolical singing, this...chanting, going
on and on, and it never stops!"  Louis gasped, a sharp breath
that slid into bitter laughter.  "Neither of us knows what they
really did to him, those monks!"
     "I do," Lestat said flatly.
     Louis stopped his tirade, peered at Lestat oddly.  "What did
you say?"
     Lestat sighed, shoved his hands into his pockets.  "I said:
I know what they did to him."  His slender shoulders hunched for
a moment under his shirt, his physical attitude a reflection of
his thoughts.
     "What did they do?"  Louis probed.
     Lestat met his gaze, held it.  "Really horrible things," he
whispered.  His gaze slid sideways, away from Louis, and then he
wheeled around, going over to the couch and sitting down again. 
"They raped him, repeatedly--"
     Louis stared at him.  "You mean, they sodomized him---"
     "Oh, not *just* sodomy, Louis! Although they did that to him
until they nearly tore him apart inside...."  Lestat rubbed a
hand over his face, shook his head slowly.  "They beat him--
whipped him, flayed him, really--until the skin just..."  Lestat
swallowed hard, looked at Louis, who sat across from him with an
expression of horror.  "...hung in strips...they---Christ, Louis,
I can't recite this as if it were unimportant! This is Armand!"
     "Lord God..."  Louis nodded slowly.  "This all makes sense
now..."  He raised his head slowly to probe Lestat with a
quizzical glance.  "But---what about Bronwyn?"
     Lestat shrugged.  "I really don't know what to tell you,
Louis.  I wish I did, but I don't---"
     The two men sat in silence for some time.


            
     When Armand clawed his screaming way up out of sleep,
Bronwyn was ready for him.  He bolted upright in the bed, his
mouth open on a shriek that had begun in the depths of sleep, his
body slicked with a faint sheen of blood-sweat.
     Brownyn caught him in her arms as if stopping a runner, and
held onto him.  The tremors of his nightmare vibrated through
them both, since she had experienced it as vividly as he, but
they were both safe now, in the velvety darkness....
     "You're all right, you're with me."  Bronwyn kissed his
sweaty forehead, brushed the damp auburn curls back from his wet
skin.  
     "It was horrible---"  Armand's dark eyes darted back and
forth, as if seeking the denizens of his ordeal to be lurking in
the darkened corners of the room.
     "It's over, you're safe."  Bronwyn cradled him as she would
a frightened child.
     Armand peered at her oddly.  "Why are you being kind to me?" 
He pushed himself a little away from her.  "What is it you want?" 
A note of fear, of suspicion, had crept into his voice again, and
Brownyn thought she had better act quickly to allay this new
apprehension before it translated into action.  "Come with me,"
she said, taking him by the hand.
     She had filled the huge marble bath with hot water, scented
it with a luxurious oil, and had lowered the lights in the room. 
The entire scene was cosy, safe, and indeed, Bronwyn had planned
it that way.  She stepped into the large tub and stood there,
knee-deep in the sudsy water, and held out her hands to Armand. 
"Come join me."
     "You wish this?" His dark eyes were puzzled; he stared at
her, uncomprehending.
     "Yes! Come, it's lovely and hot."  She slid down into the
water and pillowed her head on the slanted back piece, allowing
the hot water to close around her.  
     Armand stepped into the tub, one hand on the rim to steady
himself, his eyes on Bronwyn's face.  His usual expression had
been stolen by his nightmare, and in its place was naked fear. 
His body was tense, held ready to flee, or to fight.  Dream-
images swam up through Bronwyn's mind, unbidden.  *Make it
stop...make it stop*  She shuddered.
     She clasped her legs around Armand's waist and drew the back
of his head down to rest between her breasts.  The hot water
soaked his hair, turning it a dark auburn, and it clung to her
soft, white skin like trails of blood.  His muscular body rested
invitingly against her own.
     "You deserve to hurt me.  You ought to hurt me."  This was
wrung out of him, forced up out of his constricted throat, his
voice clotted with unshed tears.
     "Yes, I do."  Bronwyn let that settle for a moment before
continuing.  "And I'm strong enough now to do you some serious
damage, buster."  She raised one little hand.  Armand flinched. 
Bronwyn stroked the hard planes of his chest, her fingers
lingering around his flat, male nipples.  "But I'm not going to."
Her mouth fastened onto the side of his neck and he arched back
against her, raising his taut body out of the water.
     "Why not?" he whispered.
     "Because I am like you, Armand!" Bronwyn was whispering in
his ear while her busy hands went to work on him, under the
water, stroking his hard body, coaxing a response out of him.  "I
understand you---perhaps better than anyone you have ever
known..."  Her mouth closed around his earlobe, bit down gently. 
Armand whimpered, his eyes pressed shut, dark lashes making
shadows on his pale cheeks where none existed....
     After a time, she led him out of the tub and into the
bedroom again.  Armand stood mutely as Bronwyn gently towelled
the moisture from his skin, then had him lie on the bed. 
Armand's rigid body gleamed in the dim light, stretched on the
bed, awaiting whatever she might choose to mete out to him.
     She started with his strong, elegant feet, her oiled hands
sliding on his skin, rubbing, kneading, pressing, her naked body
bent over him, her long hair brushing his skin.  On and on her
busy hands continued, up the compact muscles of his calves, into
the silky hollows behind his knees.  She exerted a tiny pressure
with the very tips of his fingers on his flat abdomen, and a
flaming seed of raw lust flickered into being.  Armand closed his
eyes and gave himself to her, allowed whatever she might do to
him, and was not afraid.
     "I'm in the mood for something delightfully...*mortal* this
evening," Bronwyn purred, and Armand's eyes snapped open, a
sudden fear coursing through him.  "Of course, turnabout *is*
fair play, after all, and I *always* play fair...." 
     "What are you going to do?" Armand whispered, terrified.
     "Shhhh...."  Bronwyn came close to him and pressed her soft,
warm mouth to his forehead, slid down his body and took his
erection into her mouth, swallowing him entirely down her throat. 
Armand recognised this act as one he'd been repeatedly forced to
perform, and it had disgusted him....
     The seed of lust bloomed in his belly and he arched up
against her busy mouth.  Bright patterns of light and shadow
chased themselves across the insides of his eyelids as her action
settled into a distinct rhythm and the beating lust inside him
built to a roaring crescendo.
     She slid up to lie next to him, and Armand clutched her in
his arms, pressing his hot, opened mouth to hers.  His tongue
slid between her parted lips, dancing around the tip of hers,
teasing, withdrawing.  The lust was a definite ache, infusing him
to the very roots of his hair, and he forced himself in his haste
to be gentle with her as his sharp teeth sank into her delectable
flesh.  He felt the corresponding pressure when her own fangs
broke the surface of his skin, and then they were clutched
together in a blissful tangle of limbs.
     "I want---"  Bronwyn took her mouth from his flesh, "--you
inside me--please."  She parted her slender legs and clasped them
around his waist, gasped when he slid inside her smoothly.  Her
hot, wet mouth fastened onto his neck again, pulling deliciously
at the fountain of his blood, drawing his life into her.  His
taut, muscled body was buried inside her, and her warm flesh
surrounded him.
     He felt safe.
     And in safety, allowed her to take him into ecstasy....


     Lestat and Louis arrived in the clearing a few moments after
midnight, still limned with a fine coating of ice that their high
flight above the earth had created.  Lestat set Louis down gently
and Louis patted the ice from his face with his handkerchief.
     "He is in there," Lestat affirmed, nodding towards the small
stone structure half-hidden in the trees.  "And your little Gypsy
is with him."
     Louis nodded.  "Yes."  He gazed at Lestat for a long moment. 
"What should we do?"
     Lestat stared at Louis in amazement, then burst into
laughter.  "This *was* your idea---have you no plan in place?"
     Louis shuffled his feet.  "Well--we can't just charge in
there like the cavalry now, can we?"
     Lestat laughed harder, holding his stomach.  "Now *there's*
a mental picture!"  He saw that Louis was clearly unamused.  "How
about if we walk up and knock on the door?"
     Louis stepped back a pace or two, regarded Lestat oddly. 
"What? No leaping through the window, shattering glass, charging
to the rescue?"
     "Nobody needs to rescue Armand...he already has it in his
power to rescue himself."  Lestat took Louis's arm.  "Come
on...let's go."

     Bronwyn lay awake next to Armand, who was dozing lightly in
the bed.  The proximity of two other vampires sparked some small
awareness in her mind, and she sat up, fine-tuning her special
senses to a keen point...her Louis, it was her own Pointe de
Lac...and the one he loved, that golden-haired Brat Prince,
Lestat...they were here already.  A dream-image swam into her
mind, of Lestat, standing on a briny outcropping of rock, a hard,
granite fist thrust into the sea, clasping two silver lockets in
his hand...*Give me my locket, my heart...*
     Armand awoke beside her, his large, dark eyes snapping open
without preamble, his lithe body immediately tensed.  "It's him."
His voice was a hard whisper, a hiss forced out of him.
     The front door of the house had swung open, and the silvery
moonlight fell in an elongated rectangle onto the wooden floor, a
thin tongue of light that probed the darkened corners of the
structure.  
     "Armand?"
     Lestat's voice.
     "Armand?"
     And Louis.
     Armand leapt out of bed, his naked body eerily illuminated
in the milky moonlight.  His head was thrust slightly forward, as
if listening for something, but he stood absolutely still and
made no effort to cover himself.
     The voices were silent.
     "Armand, it's Lestat---" The voice dropped away into
silence, and Lestat was standing in the room.  His eyes flickered
from Armand's naked figure to Bronwyn, lying on her stomach in
the bed and watching him.  "Armand..."
     Louis stepped into the room, standing a little behind
Lestat.  His gaze went to Bronwyn in the bed, and his mind leapt
to hers--
     :My friend! Thank God you're safe:
     And hers, to his,
     :You again, Pointe de Lac?:  A mental grin...
     "What's going on here?" Lestat asked.  He ventured a little
farther, moving closer to Armand, who still stood watching him.
     :Don't touch me: This, from Armand to Lestat.  His huge
brown eyes were like inky pools, chunks of onyx set into his
square, white face.  :You won't touch me.:
     :I'm not going to hurt you:  Lestat reached out with one
hand, let it hang in the air for a moment, then allowed it to
descend until it was resting lightly on Armand's bare shoulder. 
Armand's naked skin was warm and slightly damp, and the clean
scent of him rose pleasingly into Lestat's nostrils. He opened
his mind and allowed his concern for Armand to flow freely into
the other vampire's mind.  :We were very distressed.:
     Armand continued to stare at Lestat, his eyes huge, and as
he did so, the lower rims filled slowly with dark blood-tears. 
The corners of his sculpted mouth quivered, but his gaze did not
waver from Lestat's face. :The voices...:
     :I know.:
     :The echoes of it...I remembered, and the madness...: 
Armand's huge eyes seemed to swallow Lestat's consciousness.
     :You have a choice.  There are two sides, Armand, the black
and the white---which would you have?:
     :You know...you know me well enough...:
     Lestat nodded, although he had not spoken aloud.  Louis and
Bronwyn watched this silent tableau tensely, not sure what to
expect.  Louis, of course, couldn't "hear" Lestat, and thus
received only half of the exchange.  :The madness has overtaken
you, Armand.:  Lestat's hand contracted on Armand's shoulder,
squeezing gently, and this action caused the dark tears in
Armand's eyes to slip silently down his alabaster cheeks.
     :I am damned, as damned as I was then.:
     :No. Stop this! You can stop this, Armand! You are strong
enough to stop it.:  Lestat's other hand slid slowly up Armand's
sinewy forearm and both hands linked behind Armand's neck. 
     :It has devoured me...:  Armand's anguish leapt into
Lestat's mind, :and has led me to such...damage...:
     His mind filled with the dream, of standing on that rocky
outcropping, perilously close to the hungry maw of the ocean,
those two lockets in his palm.  One black, the other white...
     :Which would you choose, Armand?: Lestat's hands slid down
from the back of Armand's neck and cradled the other man's face
in his hands, tilting Armand's head up so that Lestat could look
at him.  :We wish you restored:
     Armand nodded mutely, then took a step forward into Lestat's
embrace, his sobs smothered in Lestat's long hair.  
     Louis moved towards Bronwyn on the bed, sat hesitantly on
the very edge.  "Are you...I mean, did he--"
     Bronwyn's blue eyes narrowed at him like an angry cat. 
"What are you saying, Pointe de Lac? Think I can't look after
myself? Is that it?"  She hissed a disgusted sigh at him, rolled
over onto her back so that he was upside-down in her field of
vision.  "Hey, I'm made of sterner stuff than that!"
     Louis felt a reluctant smile tugging at the corners of his
lips.  "I suppose you now believe yourself to be indestructible?"
     Bronwyn nodded.  "Perhaps I am."
     Louis's brows met in the center.  "Hmmm...yes, no doubt." 
His hand reached out and brushed her soft, rounded cheek. 
Bronwyn's eyes closed reflexively, and she pressed his palm to
her skin, clearly enjoying the caress.  He mentally asked her
about Armand, but was unceremoniously pushed out.  Bronwyn's
mental shields were very strong.
     :None of your damned business!: This, accompanied by a
boisterous mental chuckle.  :Will you always come charging to my
rescue, Pointe de Lac?:
     Louis leaned forward until he was hanging over her, his face
reversed over her own.  :Will you let me?:
     :I might.:  Bronwyn pulled Louis's face down and gave him a
quick, upside-down kiss.  Her blue eyes regarded him solemnly
when she at last pulled away. :Thank you.:
     Louis grinned. :And the Brat Prince?:
     :Oh yeah...thank him, too.:

     Lestat cradled Armand to him, feeling the strong beat of the
other vampire's heart against his own.  :This can be remedied, my
friend...:
     Armand nodded mutely, clutching Lestat to him.  His naked
skin registered the rough, but not unpleasant feeling of Lestat's
clothing, the subtle scent of Lestat's cologne.  Armand took a
deep breath, banished the nightmare images, the voices, the
roaring sea.
     It would be all right.
     Or, as right as it had ever been....

                         The End