MEMNOCH: THE DEVIL (A SPECULATION STORY)
VOLUME 3
by Susan Kretschmer and Mick Colman, 1995
sxk29@po.CWRU.Edu  and  dr366@cleveland.Freenet.EDU


WARNING! PROBABLY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ALL VAMPIRE CHRONICLE BOOKS.


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SPEC: Memnoch the Devil - Vol. 3: Chapter 1  (AUTHOR: Susie)
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	David looked nervously after Lestat and Armand as they 
disappeared, taking flight from the hotel room window, then glanced 
equally nervously back at Marius, who did not look pleased at all.

	Lestat and Armand had not come back from scanning mortals the 
night before until right before sunrise. Armand had gone to his bed and 
fallen asleep the moment they came into the room, and Lestat had 
given only a short, "No," when Marius asked if they had found 
anything. Marius had tried again to raise the issue of the captive the 
Candombles were holding for them, the one who had recognized the 
symbol on the wall, but Lestat had simply turned his back and 
pretended to be asleep.

	Lestat's announcement, immediately on waking up, that he 
and Armand were going to go feed and continue to scan minds, did 
not sit well with Marius, who had explained one more time that he 
needed to talk to Lestat. Lestat had ignored him. David had tried 
gently to intervene, but Lestat had simply picked Armand up in his 
arms, Armand still blinking sleepily and wearing the clothes he had 
slept in, and left through the window.

	Marius was shaking his head, his face set. "I am not doing well 
at reasoning with him," he said, not really looking at David. 

	David was beginning to be seriously frustrated with everyone 
acting like he wasn't even in the room. And he was more than a little 
worried. Despite David's best efforts, Lestat was being impossible, 
Armand he did not even begin to understand, and Marius of the 
legendary patience was looking short-tempered.

	And Louis, of course, was still missing.

	David had dreamed, when he had slept, that Louis was dying. 
It was much like that image that had haunted him last night, the 
dream. He had seen mortals drinking Louis's blood while Louis lay 
helpless, he had seen Louis crying out, but no one heard him.

	But then, David had always been good at dreaming his worst 
fears.

	He shook his head to try to put the dream out of his mind, got 
up from the rickety chair he had been sitting in and looked again at 
Marius. Marius was unreadable, silent; he had let his face go statue-
like, and he looked completely unapproachable.

	David was a little more used to that now. He kept looking at 
Marius anyway, thinking that if Marius had been Lestat, he would 
have carefully suggested that he feed. There was that same edginess, 
the same translucence to the skin that David had learned to recognize 
in Lestat, and after Lestat had made him, in himself.

	On the other hand, Marius was two thousand years old, and 
he had probably gotten that figured out by now. And David had no 
idea whether Marius needed to hunt at all anymore, or what he 
usually looked like, although last night, in the little garden, he had 
seen color in Marius' face, all right.

	David tried to push that out of his mind as well, all of it, 
especially the kiss. Even the thought of it made him jumpy. He was 
shielding heavily, but he would have been mortally embarrassed if 
Marius had caught him thinking about it. Besides, there was no point 
at all in thinking about it because it wasn't going to happen again. It 
had been merely an accident of stress, of their worry about Louis.

	"Marius," David said finally, trying to break that stillness.

	Marius looked at him, shook his head. "I'm sorry, David." he 
said. "I don't mean to ignore you. I'm only trying to think what we 
should do."

	David tried to think of a decorous way to suggest that they 
hunt. "Maybe if Lestat feeds," he offered, feeling awkward, "it will 
help, a little. Calm him down."

	"That didn't really work last time," Marius said bluntly. "And I 
don't want to wait any longer. I don't think we have that much time. 
What Lestat's doing isn't useful. Finding out why that man can block 
us and where that power is coming from is."

	David frowned. He didn't like the position he'd been put in. 
"You and Armand couldn't read him," he said finally, "not either of 
you. But with Lestat maybe we could. Why don't we give him a little  
time right now? I think it would be faster if we had Lestat with us from 
the beginning.

	"And I..." David hated talking about hunting, it was still terribly 
awkward for him. He had not yet got used to the idea of explaining 
cheerfully that he needed to go kill a mortal and yes, he'd be right 
along, don't wait for him. He was also embarrassed that although he 
was very strong, something about being a newly made vampire 
seemed to demand more blood than a vampire of his strength would 
usually need, and so he had to hunt fairly often.

	"...I would like to hunt if we have time," he finished, having not 
come up with any other way to phrase it.

	Marius ran a hand through his hair; he had not tied it back 
tonight. He looked at David a little ruefully. "Lestat isn't," he said, with 
an irony that made it clear he was also referring to himself, "used to 
failing at things. Having so much power makes you forget what that's 
like.

	"I think you're right. We'll give him a little while. I will go out 
with you, if you don't mind."

	David breathed a inward sigh of relief, though he was still a 
little confused. Marius does feed then, he thought. It was a little 
reassuring that despite his age, he was not some distant 
contemplative creature no longer much like a vampire at all. David 
shrugged into his blazer and watched Marius do the same, watched 
the fall of pale hair across his shoulders.

	As they went out into the street, the carnival's fever pitch 
seemed to have hit a peak. The noise and music were frantic, 
overwhelming. It was the last day of the five-day Carnival, David 
realized, the last day of celebration before the streets would be left 
deserted and trash-filled.

	Louis had been gone since the second night.

	David shook his head again, and set his mind to looking for 
victims. He was apprehensive about hunting with Marius. Lestat was 
easy to hunt with. Lestat was always so obviously enjoying himself; 
he was seductive, uninhibited, unabashedly reveling in the pleasure 
of the kill. That made it easy for David.

	He had a much harder time imagining taking a mortal in front 
of the gentle, civilized Marius. Although, he thought, before he could 
stop himself, he did want to watch Marius kill, he was very curious 
what that would be like.

	But David did not get to do either thing, because they had 
barely gotten a few blocks from the hotel when Marius looked 
startled and said, "Lestat?"

	And David saw him then, the golden-haired furious figure that 
moved too quickly toward them through the crowd.

	"Where is he, Marius!" Lestat shouted, even before he reached 
them, apparently not caring if the mortals heard him. "Where's 
Armand?"

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SPEC: Memnoch the Devil - Vol. 3: Chapter 2  (AUTHOR: Mick)
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Armand made his escape on the pretext of feeding. It had proved 
surprisingly difficult to slip away from Lestat. The divulging of deep
dark secrets Armand had been doing recently had made Lestat 
uncharacteristicly solicitous and protective, and they had not had a 
single argument since Marius had come between them at the hotel.  
Armand knew that Lestat was displaying such concern mainly because it
gave him something other than Louis to think about. It wasn't 
possible that Lestat could really care for him that much.

He had agreed to go along with Lestat to keep him calm, knowing he
could slip away as soon as Lestat was absorbed in his first kill.
Lestat would undoubtedly search for Armand when he was done, but even
Lestat could not find Armand when he did not wish to be found.

They had made their way out to one of the main avenues where the
crowds were the thickest. A dark haired beauty squeezed past them on
the crowded street, giving Lestat the eye as she lightly brushed
against him. Lestat turned on his heel to watch the seductive sway of
her hips as she maneuvered her way through the crowd.

"Ah, Armand," he sighed. "This city must surely hold the most
beautiful women in all the world... and the men aren't bad either.
That swarthy sailor across the street there has been giving us the
eye, and thinking deliciously naughty thoughts. You can have him. I
want the girl."

And he was away. It had been that easy. Lestat would not think of him
again until he had claimed his victim, and Armand used the
opportunity to get away, leaving the sailor to wonder how the two
foreign beauties could have vanished so quickly from his sight.

Armand sped through the city, moving so quickly only the sound of
rushing air marked his passage. 

As he made his way through the darkened section of the *Campo de
Santana*, the old, exquisite park in the center of the city, he came
upon a small figure seated beneath a huge tree. Only his vampire eyes
allowed him to see her in the deep shadow.

It was a girl, very small but not as young as he'd first thought. He 
stopped suddenly, thinking he had put enough distance between himself
and Lestat to risk feeding. It was not his usual method, but when 
pressed, he was adaptable. Though she could not have heard him, she
raised her large dark eyes and looked directly at him.

"At last. You've come at last." And she smiled.

"You know me?"  Armand studied her carefully, his nerves screaming for
caution because of her manner. He knew he could not pass up such a 
opportunity to feed, but still he was hesitant. The look in her eyes
was causing a strange chill to pass over him.

"I know you," the girl continued. "You are Death, and you've come for
me. I've been waiting for you. I'm tired, and I want to leave now."

Armand approached her carefully, settling on his knees next to her.
Her long dark hair fell about her like a cloak, pooling in her lap,
covering her hands.

The air was redolent with the smell of blood, and he struggled to
maintain his calm. He could feel the steady beat of her heart, and it
surprised him when he realized she was not afraid. The rhythm of her
heart had not altered even a fraction as he settled beside her, nor
did she flinch or move away.

"Where do you think you will go?"  

She regarded him calmly, answering his question, "I will go to Hell,
to burn for all eternity. 

"I am unclean, you see. I am damned because I sell my body to any who
can give me money. No matter that I sent most of it to my family who
live in the tin and plywood shacks that surround this most beautiful
of cities. 

"My family, they spit on me and said that I profaned the church when I
tried to go to mass. But they take the money I earn.

And I don't go to mass anymore."

She smiled sweetly at Armand.

"Hell is the only place left for me, and you will show me the way. You
know how to get there. I can see it in your eyes."

Her words again brought a strange chill to Armand. Her soft voice
threatened him, threatened to unearth pain in him that had been
centuries buried. Old, old pain. He did not want that pain, could not
afford it, not now. 

But it was too late, she was speaking again and somehow he could not
shut her out.

"My sister came to me tonight. She wanted to "make money" too. I
killed her so she could go to Heaven. I would not see her in Hell. She
was a good girl, just thirteen. Her soul was still pure. God will make
her an angel now, because she comes to him with a clean soul."

Thirteen. The naming of the age rang in his mind. 

Thirteen. He had been about that age when Marius took him from the
brothel.

Thirteen, and he was already soiled beyond redemption, only vaguely
remembering a time when his own soul had been clean.

"I know your pain," he whispered, lost in memory. "Unclean."

"There's blood on my hands," she whispered back, bringing her hands
out from behind the curtain of her hair, showing them to him.

He took her hands, smaller even than his own, and covered them with
his so that neither of them had to see the bloody stains.

They were like two lost children, kneeling beneath the huge tree in
the deepening darkness. Two children abandoned in a fairy garden, the
kind of garden where monsters roamed at night.

But Armand knew that he was the monster in this garden.

The girl stared at him in awe as the tears began to roll down his
cheeks. 

"You weep for me. You must be a fallen angel, if you can weep for one
such as me. No one weeps for me. 

"Don't cry for me Beautiful Death. The hardest part of my life is
over. The rest is easy, as easy as closing my eyes."  She slid her
arms around his neck and kissed his cold, cold cheek.

As the first of her blood splashed hot against the roof of his mouth,
flowing over his tongue and down his throat, and the sordid history of
her life washed over him, he sobbed. Never pausing in the drink that
was life to him, he was crying as if he would never stop, as he had
not cried since the Rome coven had burned his human family, Marius'
apprentices who had been the first brothers he had ever know.

He cried for her and for himself, for the innocence they had both
lost, and because there was no one there to know that he cried.

When it was done, he cradled her lifeless body for a moment before
rising, touching her tranquil face with gentle fingers. 

He dried his tears and moved in his gliding way to lay her down in a
bed of fragrant flowers. He bent and pressed his now warm lips to her
cooling forehead.

"I will remember you."  His soft whisper could not have been heard by
any but the most skilled of his kind. And he, as always, was alone.

He gave one last look at the small form resting among the flowers
before resuming his rapid flight from the city. As his body raced
ahead, he tried desperately to lay to rest the ghosts that girl had
raised in him. He was strangely vulnerable to the memories of his time
in the brothels. Those memories had the power to hurt him as nothing
else in his long life could. He had walled them away from himself,
pretending they weren't there, pretending that his life began in
Marius' arms. But the girl had passed through the wall as if it wasn't
there and laid her bloody hand on his heart, he could feel it there
still as he cleared the edge of the park.

As the sounds of the metropolis faded he struggled to refocus his 
thoughts and decide how he would handle the fast approaching
confrontation. He had to gather his scattered wits. The encounter with
the girl was too much. Too unexpected. And Armand did not deal with
the unexpected very well. Too much had happened here in Rio, and too
quickly. He was losing the calm that was his anchor, the calm that had
for so long protected him from those more powerful than he was. His
ability to control himself, to mask all his feelings had allowed him
to survive for over five hundred years. Other's feared him because
they could not break that calm.

Juliano feared it, feared him because of it. And Juliano had Louis.
Armand was as sure of that as he had ever been of anything. And he was
stronger than Armand. He had always been stronger than Armand, though
it had never seemed to matter. Armand had always been able to control
him. He would need every ounce of calm and control to deal with
Juliano, to get Louis away from him.

He drove himself, moving faster than he had ever dreamed was possible
for him. Louis was in danger, that he did not doubt. Louis, who still
loved him a little even though he had done that awful thing in Paris
so long ago.

All of us did it, Louis told him after they had come together on the
Night Island, and Lestat was still locked in his room, writing his
book. He and Armand and Lestat shared in the blame of her death, and
it was fitting that she haunt them for the rest of their unnatural
lives. It was only what they deserved.

That was Louis' philosophy. Armand did not believe in it, though he
knew Louis believed he had seen her from time to time. He knew Lestat
saw her as well, though he had never once spoken to Armand about
Claudia.

He supposed she did haunt him in a way. She was the shadow that
clouded Louis' eyes every time he looked at him. It would pass
quickly, but it never failed to appear. Armand knew she would always
be there between them.

He did not know what Lestat thought about it, and he supposed he never
would. One thing of the best things about Lestat was that he didn't dwell
overmuch on the past. And a good thing it was too or Armand would surely
be a pile of ash by now. That might still be his fate if he did not reach
Louis before something terrible happened. The thought made him press
himself even harder. 

I am coming Louis. I will save you. I will take you back where you
belong. And he pushed himself even harder, as if the very hounds of
Hell were nipping at his heels.

______________________________________________________________________

SPEC: Memnoch the Devil - Vol. 3: Chapter 3  (AUTHOR: Susie)
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	"What do you mean?" Marius said very quietly when Lestat 
reached them. "What do you mean, 'Where's Armand?'"

	Lestat stopped. He seemed about to keep shouting, and then 
he only looked at Marius. "I can't..." he said, and then he didn't say 
anything else. He might have been speaking to Marius silently, David 
could not tell.

	"David, call him. Both of you, call him." Marius' voice was low 
and urgent.

	David felt fear in the pit of his stomach. But he did so, almost 
painfully, reaching out with all his power, holding Armand's image in 
his mind. Thinking of Armand, wanting to hear him, calling to him.

	Nothing. Silence, just as when they had tried to call Louis. No 
sense of him, anymore, no sense that Armand even still existed.

	He felt Marius' unspoken question, and shook his head 
reluctantly.

	Marius' body stiffened. He stared at Lestat, his face absolutely 
white, his light eyes suddenly cold. "Damn you Lestat, you left him 
alone, didn't you?"

	Lestat looked as if he'd been slapped. His expression, which 
had seemed rather lost despite all his shouting, hardened into an 
ironic mask, his mouth tightening. "Where were *you*, Marius? 
Where were both of you? Chasing after some stupid cult which you 
know very well has nothing to do with this and wasting time!"

	"Wasting time..." Marius stopped short, biting off whatever he 
had been about to say. His hand clamped down on Lestat's arm, and 
it was suddenly apparent to David that Marius was several inches 
taller than Lestat. "Lestat, I swear to you, I am through talking now! 
Armand is missing and that is entirely my affair. I have held my temper 
because Louis is your child, not mine, but you absolutely refuse to 
listen to what I have to say!"

	"What you have to say?" Lestat hissed. "What you have to say 
is nonsense. Why in God's name do you care about that cult when I 
*saw* who took Louis? I saw his face in the pension-keeper's mind, 
before I killed him!"

	He tore his arm violently out of Marius' grip, and Marius drew 
his hand back then as if it had been burned and said in a low 
expressionless tone, "You have no idea where to find that vampire, 
you don't even know where to begin to look. You are wasting time 
and they are both in danger."

	There were people staring at them now; Marius and Lestat 
were neither of them being particularly quiet, and they were both 
acting as if the jostling crowd was not even there. David was 
beginning to panic.

	"Marius," Lestat said, dangerously, "I don't remember asking 
you to come here. That was not my idea." His eyes flicked over at 
David for a moment, and David flinched, that expression was so 
cold, so empty.  "And *you* brought Armand here. You brought him 
into this! If he is in danger it is your fault; David told you what had 
happened." Lestat's lips were trembling, David could not tell if it was 
with fury or if he were about to cry again.

	"Armand makes his own choices," Marius said, his voice like 
ice. "His life is his own."

	"Oh, yes, that makes perfect sense, Marius. Is that what you 
told yourself when you let him think you were dead? When the 
Children of Darkness made him their slave for a century, when he 
existed in such misery that he did not care if he lived or died? What 
were you doing, Marius, while they were doing that to him? Where 
*were* you?"

	David thought Marius was going to come at Lestat then. 
Marius had backed slightly, and there was a terrible sense of power 
building around him. The mortals around them had instinctively 
reacted as any crowd does when a fight is about to break out in its 
midst, making a little space around Lestat and Marius, and most of 
them were now watching with open interest.

	Marius' hand flew up as if to strike, and then with a terrible 
effort he stopped it, staring directly into Lestat's eyes. It was as if each 
of them faced their own reflection, two furious and incredibly 
powerful blond demons, the set of their faces only making them look 
even more alike.

	Marius let his hand fall slowly, his gaze still locked on Lestat. 
"You don't have any idea what you are talking about," he said. "I 
nearly died. Or have you forgotten what that's like?"

	"You knew Armand was alive," Lestat cried. "I thought Louis 
was dead!" And his voice broke, finally, as he shouted, "How could 
you leave him that way?"

	"Stop it!" David cried. "Stop it, please! Don't you see everyone 
watching?" He caught Lestat's arm, and tried to pull him aside. "We 
can't do this here. Please, let's find somewhere quiet and just talk this 
out, all right?"

	Lestat turned on him. "David, let me go. Now. You've done 
quite enough already!" He shoved David away, and David almost 
lost his balance.

	Then Marius did move, and very quickly. He caught hold of 
Lestat by the shoulders and shook him, hard, without letting go. 
"Lestat, I swear it, the next time you lay a hand on one of us..."

	Lestat's features contorted in fury, and then suddenly his hand 
came up and he hit Marius across the face. Marius, taken completely 
by surprise, went down hard onto the pavement. He stayed down for 
a moment, one hand up in front of his face, so that David was afraid 
Lestat had actually hurt him.

	But Marius scrambled up easily, pushing a mortal or two out 
of his way. David saw a little blood on his face, but it was only 
smeared blood, no mark beneath it, and David realized that he had 
been hiding the healing cut from the crowd, that was why he had 
stayed down.

	Marius stared at Lestat, and Lestat looked back at him with an 
expression of absolute misery.

	David looked anxiously around them. To his dismay, he 
spotted two policemen walking quickly in their direction.

	Marius scrubbed ineffectively at the blood on his face, a quick, 
irritated motion. Then he said to Lestat, with only a little strain in his 
voice, "Armand and I found a mortal with incredible power, an old 
man, a sidewalk vendor. He recognized that symbol when we 
painted it on the wall. When we tried to find out what else he knew, 
we could not read his thoughts. He blocked us, both of us, which is 
practically impossible for a mortal to do. He blocked us even when 
we were drinking from him.

	"David sent us to the Candombles, and they held him during 
the day in one of their houses for us. I am going there to see what I 
can get out of him, and I am going now. "

	Lestat shook his head in frustration; but he seemed at last to 
realize that they were the center of attention. Marius did not wait for 
an answer from Lestat. He just started walking, quickly and away 
from the two policemen.

	To David's immense relief, Lestat finally did the same. David  
dared to breathe, for the first time in quite a little while, and followed 
them both.

	They moved with phantomlike speed through the crowded 
streets, Marius discarding some amount of caution in his haste. But it 
was not very far to the house where David had told Marius and 
Armand to take their captive the night before. Small, painted a pastel 
green, it was on a side street, and had an iron gate over the door and 
grilles on the windows, like any other house in the slightly shabby 
neighborhood.

	_Ramon?_ David called, and he heard an answer even before 
Marius rang the bell.

	_We are here, David. Enter, please._

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SPEC: Memnoch the Devil - Vol. 3: Chapter 4  (AUTHOR: Mick)
______________________________________________________________________

Armand slipped through the forest, quiet now as he approached the
temple.

He had come upon a few outlying sentries and used them to restore his
dwindling strength. That poor, nameless girl he had laid to rest among
the flowers had not been nearly enough, and he had exhausted himself
in his haste to reach the temple.

He had drunk his fill among the sentries though, and it was a good
thing because the despicable Esteban appeared suddenly, barring his
way as he made for Juliano's private entrance.

_Get out of my way, Man._ Armand made his thoughts as cold as an
arctic winter.

_You do not rule here, you little fiend._ Esteban sneered, trying to
overwhelm him with images of pain and terror. 

Armand laughed. Esteban, for all his prowess, was still a human.
Armand knew more about both pain *and* terror than Esteban ever would.
The fancy games they played here were nothing new to Armand. They were
as old as time itself. They had been seen before and would undoubtedly
be seen again.

One thing Armand had learned over the centuries was that there was
nothing new under the sun. Everything had happened before, and as the
wheel of life turned, everything would come 'round again.

He let these thoughts and his amusement at the attempt to frighten him
roll over Esteban.

To his surprise, Esteban laughed.

_Would that I had found you first. What a pair we would have made,
little one. We could have laid waste to the world._

_I am not a child, Esteban. You would do well to remember that._

_I know exactly what you are, little demon. And I also know what you
are not._

_And what might that be?_ Armand had no idea what Esteban was talking
about. He only wanted to get into the temple and find Louis.

Esteban stepped close to Armand and bent to whisper in his face.

"You are not, and never have been, an old man. You have never felt
that particular fear and desperation. And you never will." Esteban
looked at him with scorn. "You Children of Darkness with your
eternal youth and beauty--what do you truly know of life and death?
Most of you go into darkness having lived barely a score of years,
carrying with you all the follies of youth. You are no match for those
who have truly looked Death in the eye, those of us who have wrested
life away from his dark grasp by any means available."

Armand regarded him coolly. "It would appear we have a difference of
opinion on this subject."

Esteban bowed mockingly to him. "Then let's agree to disagree,
Armand."

A wave of anger crashed through Armand that he swiftly controlled. He
had never liked for this mortal to call him by his name, it offended
him deeply somehow. But he must maintain his calm at all cost. To show
anger or fear in this place would be beyond disaster. He could not
take any risks, not with Louis' safety in the hands of two madmen.

But oh, how he wanted to teach this mortal the ways of fear and pain,
and desperation.

Estaban was watching him closely, though he made no attempt to intrude
on his thoughts. He gathered to himself all his power, his uncanny
control and deep calm. He was the Coven Master now. The ruthless
leader, the merciless ruler, in centuries past, of killers the likes
of which the world had not seen since. Killers who would put these two
amateurs to shame.

He fixed Estaban with his cold basilisk's stare.

"I'm going in now. Step aside."

Esteban, unbelievably, smiled at him. He stepped aside and activated
the hidden latches for Armand. And as the section of stone swung
silently inward Armand heard Estaban's sending. _Juliano, my precious,
you have a visitor. Your little redheaded playmate has come to see
you._

Armand boiled with fury at having his presence announced in such a
fashion, and as he strode down the dark corridor Juliano appeared in
the lighted opening at its end. Armand noticed that Juliano had that
look about him, the look that he got when he'd been conducting one of
his "ceremonies". That look meant that he would be wound tighter than
usual, and that could work to Armand's advantage or disadvantage.
Either way, he would have to step lightly. He couldn't play his old
games with Juliano, not with Louis involved.

"Juliano, I want to have a word with you." Armand brushed past 
Juliano without looking at him, on his way to Juliano's chambers. To
his surprise, Juliano was suddenly in front of him again, directing
him down a side passage.

"I have a guest chamber all prepared for you," Juliano said smoothly. 

Armand said nothing. Juliano seemed to be highly agitated, even more
so that was usual for him. Armand forced himself to radiate a calm he
did not feel. He had to make Juliano relax a little, he would be
easier to deal with that way.

"All right, Juliano, I've seen your signal and I'm here. How did you
know I was in Rio? What do you want?" Armand let his eyes travel over
the contents of the room, as if Juliano's response held not the
slightest bit of interest for him.

"I didn't know you were in Rio. As a matter of fact, I knew you
weren't. But I *did* know you would show up sooner or later." Juliano
grinned at him, a wild, somewhat frightening grin. "And as for what I
want; I want what I've always wanted, Armand...you."

Juliano's smugly pleased tone was slightly disturbing, and not at all
the way he had addressed Armand over the 500 some odd years they'd
known each other. Armand, seeking an advantage, let his expression go
slightly colder. "I don't like your tone, Juliano."

Juliano's air of confidence and self satisfaction seemed to fade a
little. Armand moved to sit in a chair and arranged himself
gracefully, projecting the image of himself as Coven Master, seated on
a throne of stone, heaped round with the of bones of the dead. I am
Master of the Dead, he let his eyes say to Juliano. I am *your*
Master.

Juliano took another chair, averting his eyes and trying desperately
to avoid looking like a supplicant. He was trembling with that
feverish excitement, tinged with anxiety, that again whispered
caution to Armand.

Armand looked at Juliano, letting the minutes stretch, waiting for
Juliano to speak. "I've got your Louis." The words left Juliano in a
rush.

Armand quashed the surge of rage. Not a flicker of it made it to his
face. "Louis?" He let his voice go soft and quiet stressing the
question as if he was not sure who Juliano was referring to.

"You know who I mean!" Juliano shouted at him. "The love of your life,
Louis de Pointe du Lac! Remember him? You were in misery when he
chased you away. For months you moped around this temple like a lost
child! I..."

This was too much. He could not be allowed to say such things if
Armand was to remain in control of the situation. Armand rose from his
chair and leaned over Juliano, exuding menace. "What is this! What are
you saying to me?"

He could see that Juliano was trembling, but he had not backed down.

"You *dare* to say such things to ME." Armand let his voice rise
slightly at the end.

"I'm not afraid of you Armand," Juliano rasped, visibly struggling for
control.

"Then I have no use for you." Armand studied Juliano for a moment as
if he were some fascinating insect. "I won't be coming here again.
Goodnight." Armand headed for the door, waiting for Juliano to come
after him.

"Wait," Juliano cried, reaching out to grab Armand's arm.

Armand hid his smile of victory and turned outraged eyes on Juliano.
"Unhand me," he hissed. Juliano quickly released his grip on
Armand's arm.

"Don't you want him?" Juliano seemed puzzled by Armand's attempt to
leave. Good, Armand thought.

"If you do have him, I suggest you let him go," Armand said
nonchalantly. "You are borrowing more trouble than you know, you fool,
trouble the likes of which you cannot imagine--and I don't mean
trouble from me. Do you think I care what happens to Louis, after the
way he treated me."

He saw Juliano smile then. Disaster, his mind whispered. A mistake.
Somewhere he'd made a mistake.

"You don't care what happens to him? Really?" And Juliano gave him an
image of Louis. Louis, sprawled on the ground at Juliano's feet,
bleeding from at least a dozen wounds and barely conscious, his
beautiful hair straggling through pools of his own blood.

"Every night, Armand. I'll do that to him every night. Night, after
night, after night, until you give me what I want."

"And what is it that you want, Juliano." Armand was fighting for
control of his voice, fighting to suppress the wild cry that rose in
him as the image of a torn and bloody Louis seared itself into his
brain.

"You know. I want you to stay, and never leave me again." Juliano
laughed in triumph.

That laugh was the last straw. "I'll kill you first. I'll kill you for
what you've done." Armand's control, overloaded and stretched to the
breaking point after the emotional torment of the last few days, vanished.
He leaped at Juliano. And Juliano struck him to the ground. 

Armand lay in a heap at Juliano's feet, unconsciously mirroring Louis'
position of the night before. He was stunned, not physically, but
mentally. This was all wrong. This was not the way it was supposed to
happen. His killing rage had vanished with the blow, and now he knew
what he must do.

It was time for a change in tactics.

He raised his head slowly, his eyes wide and stunned. "You struck me,"
he whispered bitterly. "So, it has finally come." He dragged
himself to his feet, using the arm of the chair for support. "You will
hurt me now?" Armand stared at Juliano in disbelief. "I thought you
loved me. It was a lie, all this time it was a lie. You never loved
me, you were just waiting for your chance to hurt me. You swore you
would never hurt me, and now your word is broken."

"No, no!" Juliano moaned. "Armand!" Juliano reached out for Armand and
blanched as Armand flinched away from him. "I...I only want to love
you. Let me love you."

"Like this?" Armand's eyes filled with tears. He raised his had to his
mouth and gently touched the bruised flesh, the rapidly healing cut on
his lip a brilliant red gash plainly seen against the paleness. He
wiped at the blood that trickled down his chin with a visibly
trembling hand.

"Too many have loved me this way, Juliano. You know my past, you know
how it was in my youth. I trusted you. I thought you were different.
You used to be different."

Armand let the images of their past together flow from his mind,
flooding Juliano with them. There was Juliano, shadowing him in his
first days with the Rome coven, showing him all the secret passages in
and out, passages that meant a kind of freedom for Armand, places
where he could vanish when the new life threatened to overwhelm him. 

Juliano, viciously defending him when any of the other coven members
tried to subjugate him. 

Juliano, taking him in secret to the place where he'd hidden the books
he'd stolen from the underground vaults of the Vatican library,
risking his life should Santino discover the theft. He had no interest
in the books, he had taken them simply because he knew Armand pined
for the books lost in the burning of his home. And he had stood guard
for hours watching for the others so that Armand could read and not be
discovered and punished. 

Juliano, strong and proud, feared by the others of the coven, but ever
gentle with Armand, never raising his voice and certainly never his
hand. Juliano who had gone with him as his companion, his shield
against all harm when, finally, he had been allowed to travel. 

Juliano, who had taken him back to Venice, to show him the place were
he had secreted "The Temptation of Amadeo" that he had rescued from
Marius' villa simply because he had loved Armand the moment he set
eyes upon him and could not bear the thought of even his image
burning. 

Juliano who had wept when the Rome coven threw Armand into the
bonfire, and who had been one of the first to offer him comfort when
they dragged him out again.

"And now you would hurt me?" Armand let the blood tears roll down his
face, as he stared at Juliano, who was weeping as well. "Even when in
my anger and my pain I lashed out at you, you never gave me anything
but love in return. You are destroying what is left of my heart,
Juliano. Everyone I have ever loved has turned away from me, everyone
of them has hurt me in the name of love. I believed that you at least
would never hurt me, no matter what." And he turned his tear stained
face away from Juliano, as if he could no longer bear to look at him.

"Armand! Ragazzo, fanciullo, te adorate figlio mio," Juliano was
suddenly on his knees before Armand, clutching at him wildly, a stream
of endearments pouring from his lips.

Armand pulled away a little at first, but then he bent and took
Juliano's pleading face in his hands and pressed his own against it.
_Love me._ He let the words weave themselves into Juliano's thoughts.
_Love  me, love me, love me._ The words formed a soft singsong chant
that sought to fill every corner of Juliano's mind. As he trailed his
lips across Juliano's face, stopping now and again to lick at the
streaks of blood, tasting his own tears mingled with Juliano's, he
tried to ease past the barriers in Juliano's mind. He had never
concerned himself with them before; what were the Cult of Memnoch's
paltry secrets to Armand? But now they hid Louis from him, and he
would find his way through them...or Juliano would let him in.

"Do you love me?" Armand whispered against Juliano's lips.

"Yes!" came the tortured gasp.

"Then why do you hold back from me? How can I trust you when you shut
me out? How can I believe you won't hurt me again? I can't stay here
if I don't trust you. What would you do to make me believe you?"
Armand slid his hands into the thick glossy curls that framed the
muscular column of Juliano's throat, letting his teeth scrape against
the hot flesh.

"I would do anything, anything you want," Juliano groaned.

"Then give yourself to me," Armand whispered, covering Juliano's mouth
with his own.

_Love me. Let me in, let me trust you, let me in. Give yourself to me.
Be mine. I want you to love me. Let me in._ This time the words were
backed with a warm flood of emotion and the feel of Armand's devouring
mouth. Juliano was helpless before this onslaught and Armand felt the
barriers slowly dissolving, as Juliano abandoned himself totally to
Armand's desires.

The door to the chamber crashed back on its hinges.

"Juliano! What are you doing! Remember who you are, remember your
plan. Can't you see what he's doing? All he wants is that green-eyed
devil, and when he has him, he'll control you again. He already has
you on your knees!" Esteban was beside himself with fury, glaring at
Armand with hate filled eyes.

Juliano blinked and stared at the cold mask Armand's face had become
at Estaban's interruption.

"A trick? This is a trick, Armand?" Juliano pulled himself from
Armand's grasp, and Armand could not hold him.

"How you must be laughing at me. You were only trying to get Louis
back. I see that now. You don't love me and you never have. But you
will. I'll make you love me. You'll love me, or you'll never see your
Louis' face again. And I know you want him Armand, that ruse won't
work. I even understand why you want him." Juliano laughed, softly,
ruefully. "I want him myself!"

Those words chilled Armand to the roots of his being. "I warn you, if
you have..." Armand began.

"Basta! Enough! Don't you dare to threaten me!" Juliano roared. "I
won't have it, not anymore, not ever again!" He towered over Armand
but Armand held his ground, not flinching or showing the slightest
trace of fear. "I won't hurt you again ragazzo, but I am through
playing your game. Now we will play *my* game." 

Armand struggled to maintain his calm, to control his rage and his
fear as Juliano swept from the room.

Estaban remained for a moment, in the doorway.

_ Oh, by the way Armand, you can't leave. Just like your green-eyed
friend, you are trapped here now. And you'll stay here until Juliano
tires of you. I'd say that'd be just short of eternity, don't you
think?_  Amused by his own joke, Esteban gave a nasty chuckle. _And
you'd better do your level best to see that he doesn't tire of you,
because the day he does, forgive me, the *night* he does will be your
last. You see, *I* am not a fool. When he is done with you, I will not
leave you alive so that I must spend the rest of my days watching for
you in the shadows._

_I *will* kill you!_ Armand felt a rage such as he had never known.

_You can try._ Esteban smiled at him, and softly closed the door.

______________________________________________________________________

SPEC: Memnoch the Devil - Vol. 3: Chapter 5  (AUTHOR: Mick)
______________________________________________________________________

Louis' head came up as the door to his cell opened. In the aftermath
of the ruined Sabbat he had been moved to a small room reached through
a hidden door in Juliano's antechamber; a room with manacles and all
manner of restraints. He had been spared the more horrifying of these
devices and had merely been chained hand and foot to the wall. The
guards had doused him with buckets full of frigid water, sluicing the
blood from his hair and body. They left him dripping and chilled to
the marrow of his bones and he had gone down into the death-like sleep
hanging from the chains, passing the daylight hours that way.

A priest, one of the inner circle judging by the white robes he wore,
slipped into the room and eased the door shut behind him. He studied
Louis from that vantage point before quickly crossing to him.

With a trembling hand the man reached out to touch the slowly fading
wounds on Louis' chest and arms, avoiding the green gaze that tried to
pierce him.

"Who are you? What do you want of me?" Louis demanded harshly.

The priest did not seem to hear him. He reached out a finger to touch
a spot on Louis' left breast.

"Here, here is where I made my cut," the man whispered.

Louis drew away from the priest in a spasm of fear. The man was
obviously one of those who drank from him during the Sabbat. He was
most likely here to plunder him for more of his vampire blood while he
was chained and weak.

"That child," the priest whispered. Louis' eyes returned to the
man's face with a snap. "I wanted to save her, and the others before
her. I wanted to, but still I did nothing. You, a creature, a non-
human thing, felt enough for that child to brave a mass of humanity to
protect her when her own kind would not. You were prepared to die for
her. I saw your heart. I saw it through your blood."

"Are you mad, man? You should go. Run. Get away from this place if
your conscience has awakened. It will mean your death if your master
finds you here."

"I am already dead, Senor. I died when I abandoned God to join this
evil. I willingly put myself in this place of death and torture. I
surrendered my humanity to the Devil because God would not answer me.
And as for mad... we are all mad here."

The priest abandoned his cataloging of Louis' wounds to fix him with
a hard brown stare. "Tell me," he asked harshly, "what are you?"

Louis, knowing truth was required here returned the hard gaze and
answered simply, "I am a vampire."

The young priest gave a sharp nod, as if the announcement confirmed
something he already knew.

"Why are you here?" Louis snapped, the tantalizing human flesh so
close to him and yet out of his reach was maddening.

"Blood," the priest responded softly.

"You want more," Louis said in disgust.

"Yes. No." The priest shook his head as if to clear it, and wrapped
his arms tightly around himself. "I want to help you. I need to help
you. He has... *plans* for you. You've angered him greatly, and he
forgives nothing. You will need strength. Blood." His eyes were calm
now, serene. "I am here to give you mine."

"Why?" Louis asked suspiciously. "Why do you want to help me?"

"We have no time for this," the priest countered impatiently, slicing
the air with a sharp gesture. "Please. You must take what I offer you,
and quickly! He will be here soon."

"I will not take your life." As starved as he was, Louis knew it would
be almost impossible for him to drink from the priest now. He had
looked this man in the eye and shared words of pain and death with
him. "I cannot stop before death occurs. Only once in my life have I
been able to do so."

"I *want* you to kill me, I *need* you to." The priest grasped Louis'
shoulders, digging his fingers into the wounded flesh. "I cannot kill
myself. I am too much of a coward for that. And I cannot live like
this any longer."

The priest stepped back and pulled up the arms of his robes,
exposing the mottled, bruised flesh. "The Master was angry last night.
Very angry. He sent for me to help him...calm down."

Louis closed his eyes against what the man was saying to him.

"I was lucky," the priest continued. "He killed the first two. His
anger was mostly spent by the time he sent for me. None of my pleading
helped me last night, and my habitual resistance did not amuse him."
There was a haunted, pained look his eyes, old eyes in a still young
face. Louis judged the man to be no older than he was when Lestat
brought him into darkness.

The priest drew the ceremonial knife from his belt, the simple golden
hilt shone in the dim light and the bright blade gleamed as he raised
it to his throat. Louis shuddered at the sight of that knife, memory
bringing him the image of a dozen like it raised high in the
firelight.

"Drink from me", the priest whispered, pressing the tip of the knife
into the soft flesh of his own throat.

"I will not," Louis said harshly, in torment as the scent from the
rivulet of blood flowing from beneath the knife's point reached him.

"You need this so that you can kill him!" The priest hissed. "He must
die. He is not the Devil, but he is the Devil's child. You are of his
kind, you can defeat him. You are strong, stronger than you know."

"No." Louis shook his head. "I am weak. Chained and helpless. I can
not help you."

"You will! You must," the priest insisted, his voice shrill in his
anguish. "You cannot let another child die. I have seen it in your
heart. You will find the strength. God will be with you."

Louis turned his face away as the priest reached out again to grasp
his shoulder. "You think you are the Devil's child as well, but you
are not. One pledged to evil would not have rushed up those stairs to
save a nameless child. God shapes your heart and surrounds your soul.
No matter how you deny it, He will not give you up."

Louis shut his eyes and shook his head violently in denial. "God wants
no part of me."

"Will you do it, will you take my life?" Again the priest pressed him.

"I cannot." Louis wished nothing more than that this man would go away
and leave him to suffer in peace.

"Then I will somehow find the strength to cut my own throat and die at
your feet, spending my life's blood on the stone--wasting it." The
priest said quietly. "If I don't die now, by your hand or my own, the
next time he drinks from me he will know that I have been here. He
will know that I have plotted against him and if he does not kill me,
then surely he will do what I dread. I would rather compound my sins
by taking my own life, and be damned for all eternity, than let him do
it."

"Do what?" Louis whispered, dreading, knowing the answer.

"He will make me one of you."

A soft anguished, "No," escaped Louis.

"Now do you see?" The priest whispered to him desperately. "The Master
takes all of as he wills, without warning he springs from the shadows.
He likes the fear that brings. He says it sweetens the blood. He
drinks until we swim in bliss and then flings us to the ground. Some
lie at his feet, begging him to go on. He likes that too. But if he
takes you up again you are dead. I try never to beg him. Most times I
am successful. 

"He finds my pride amusing, endearing he says. I am a "pet" of his. He
has begun whispering to me that he will make me a demon, so that I
will never die. He tells me that when I am one with him the killing
will never trouble me again, that I will revel in it as he does."

The priest spat violently on the floor, and glared at Louis, clutching
the dagger in one white-knuckled fist.

"Never, I tell you! Never! I will die by my own hand before I let that
happen."

Louis stared at the priest open mouthed, stared at the naked anguish
of the man before him, his own mind swimming in a sea of pain and
memory.

"Tell me now! Our time is almost at an end. He will be here at any
moment. Will you do it!"

Louis bowed his head, hiding the pain it cost him to answer, "Yes."

The priest sighed in relief, releasing the pent up tension his body
had collected. Louis could feel gentle fingers in his hair, and the
man stepped closer to him.

"Let me drink from you as I die," he whispered against Louis' hair.

"Why?" Louis asked wearily, wanting it to be over, wanting it all to
be over.

"Don't you know?" the priest answered in a strangled whisper. "My
heart, my soul was a desert, baked and blasted by the evil of this
place and creature who calls himself the Devil. Your blood washed
through me like a gentle rain, awakening that which was dormant in my
heart. 

And I would bloom again before I leave this life."

Louis searched the man's eyes and read the torment there. He closed
his eyes briefly and nodded his assent.

The priest reached out a strong brown hand to smooth the tousled black
hair back from Louis' face. "You will save me," he murmured, "but who
will save you?"

Louis pushed away the image of Lestat racing to his rescue that had
leaped to mind at the man's words. "No one, I'm afraid."

"I would if I could," the priest responded. "Are you ready?" 

"Yes," Louis responded, harshly, hoarsely.

Louis' flesh ached at the nearness of the human feast as the priest
threaded one of his legs through Louis' chained one, and braced
himself with the other. The young priest whispered a small prayer to
the God he had abandoned and, making a swift cut on Louis' bared
throat, bent to drink. Louis could hear him moan as the vampire blood
filled his mouth and his arms came up and locked around Louis' neck,
his fingers knotting themselves in Louis' hair. The wound began to
close and the man tore at it with his teeth, savagely seeking the
blood that was so cruelly withdrawing from him. He pulled himself up
from the floor, wrapping his legs around Louis, hooking his heels
behind the strong thighs. 

Louis bent slightly to support the man's weight, straining against the
shackles that bound him as he tried to reach the maddening flesh and,
unable to hold off any longer, sank his teeth into the young priest's
neck. His back arched as the priest's blood flowed into him, his
groans mingling with that of his sacrifice. A shudder racked them
both, and the priest clutched him tighter still, as if he would press
his body through Louis'. Again Louis' hands strained to reach the
strong young form so tightly joined to him.

With the introduction of the blood, Louis' mind flooded with images of
the priest...a raven haired boy dressed in shabby white garments
staring in simple joy at a dark wooden cross on a whitewashed wall.
The same youth in the robes of a religious order, walking through dry
dusty soil and whistling happily in the searing heat. 

Next he saw a village where men dragged people from their homes
killing some, taking the others away, leaving children crying brokenly
for their lost Mamas and Papas. The young priest was spared, being
away at a distant hovel giving counsel to a grieving family who'd lost
a son to the same armed men. 

The young man returned to his village and stared in horror at the
fresh death surrounding him. What could he do? How could he help those
who had survived? He was just a boy really, no matter what robes he
wore. Why hadn't God helped them? They were good people. 

There he was again, in a small whitewashed chapel screaming at the
walls demanding an answer from God, "Why has this happened?" He fell 
asleep in tears and rage on the chapel floor and awakened to find a
beautiful being bending over him....

"No," Louis moaned against the man's throat, and again he is swept
away by the dying priest's memories.

..."Are you an angel?" the boy priest had asked in wonder. The
creature threw its head back and released a peal of laughter, in a
voice like liquid gold, it spoke to him. "Once," it said mockingly,
"but I was cast out. God didn't love me because I dared to question
Him. God is greedy, and selfish. He wants all that you can give, your
obedience, your heart, your life, and finally your soul, and what does
he give you in return? What did he give the people of your village?"
it had asked, lifting the chin of the young man, burning his soul with
eyes like fire. 

"Nothing," the boy had whispered. 

"That's right my young friend," the shining one had answered. "He
gives nothing but vague promises of better life after you die. I ask
the same things He asks from you, but I won't make you wait for your
reward. People won't die for no reason. Oh they will die, make no
mistake, but there will be reasons. My reasons. And you *will* know
why, for I will be with you. You can touch me and see me and hear my
voice, and I will give you reasons.

"I have need of you," it said, rising from where it knelt beside him
on the floor. "Will you come with me?" It had lifted the boy and
embraced him and soothed him. It was beautiful, this creature, so
beautiful. The boy who was barely a man was overcome. Here was a
manifestation of the Divine. Divine evil perhaps, but divine
nonetheless. If the Devil came for him and God still would not answer,
then so be it. He had nodded his assent, and quick as a flash the
Devil bore him away to the jungles of Brazil, to death...and
horror...and misery. 

And the young priest had found himself trapped in a evil he could not
escape. Five years he had served his dark lord, who from the very
beginning kept the young priest close, and he sank further and further
into despair...

Louis could feel the priest's body begin to slacken. He pressed back
hard to keep him from falling, crushing the man's hands and feet
between his body and the wall.

The priest's head lolled back, his face smeared with Louis' blood, his
eyes glazed over. He murmured, "Your beloved child. You lost her...in
fire and pain. So sorry. So sssah..."

Louis stilled for a moment, stunned by the pain the words caused him,
but the priest began to slump. The sudden weight caused the flesh to
tear and Louis desperately drew faster to take in as much as he could.

The upper half of the priest's body fell back, the weight pulling him
away from the grip of Louis' teeth, leaving Louis with only a mouthful
of flesh. Louis spit out the morsel in horror and stared at the gaping
wound in the man's throat, blood still pumping slowly, a creeping
stain spreading across the white cloth of his robes.
   
Louis could not reach for the man to pull him back, the departure of
the life was now forfeit. The priest's legs, rubbery and without
strength, released their hold and slid free. The man's head rolled
forward, like a flower with a wilted stem, and settled against Louis'
chest. 
   
The man's arms were still wrapped around Louis's neck like a lover's,
the strength of Louis' neck and shoulders the only thing holding him
upright. With a sigh Louis eased the pressure that held the man's
hands pinned to the wall and the priest slid slowly down the length of
his body, coming to rest in a tangled heap at his feet. Incredibly
the head turned and soft brown eyes the color of newly turned earth
gazed up at him, serene and calm.
   
"What is your name? I don't even know your name," Louis whispered to
the dying man.
   
"Luis," the man murmured, giving the name the inflection of his native
Mexico. The priest sighed, closing his eyes as he expelled his last
breath.    

Louis began to laugh. He was still laughing as the door opened and
Juliano entered the room.

__________________________________________________________________
SPEC: Memnoch the Devil - Vol. 3, Chapter 6 (Author: Mick)
_________________________________________________________________

Lestat watched Marius give the man who opened the door of the small
green house a polite nod. He was not so polite. He brushed past the
older man holding the door open without even a glance. His eyes
quickly scanned the plainly furnished room, searching for the
prisoner, but the room was empty.

He then scanned the house for the cult priest's presence but could not
find anyone in the house except the man who'd opened the door.

"He's not here." Lestat snapped. "There's no one here but this man,
who I assume, by your greeting, is not the one I'm here for."

"I have sent the others away. I thought it best that they not know how
many of your...family...are here in Rio. I am Ramon, and you would be
none other than the infamous Lestat."

"Infamous. Yes, I am," Lestat said impatiently. "Enough of this small
talk; where is he?" He loomed over Ramon, menacing in his anger.

David interposed himself between Ramon and Lestat. "Stop it Lestat.
How dare you intimidate this good man. He is my friend."

"I dare anything right now David." Lestat seethed at David's
intervention. "I dare anything and everything. I will find Louis! I am
done with waiting."

Ramon stepped out from behind David, pausing for a moment to speak
softly to him. "Be calm, my friend. I am not frightened or offended.
This is a stressful situation, and Senor Lestat is very upset." He
turned to Lestat, "The captive is indeed in this house, Senor. He has
been secured below. Allow me to escort you to him." 

With a small bow to Lestat, Ramon led them through the front room and 
into the kitchen. From there he moved to a narrow door. Taking a ring
of keys from atop the refrigerator he opened the series of locks
barring the door and indicated that they should follow him down.

They filed down the rickety flight of steps that led to the basement, 
which had been divided in two, a narrow corridor separating the
halves. To their left through an open door Lestat could see the normal
basement things, electrical boxes, shelves and a littering of junk. To
their right the long wall that extended the length of the basement
from end to end was broken by a single wooden door at the center.
Lestat brushed past Ramon and reached for the door.

"Stop!" Ramon's voice reverberated with the power of command. Lestat
stopped in surprise, and backed away as Ramon approached the door.
Ramon bowed his head and Lestat could feel the power gathering to him.
The door glowed bright green for a moment and then Ramon stepped away,
gesturing for Lestat to open it now.

Lestat turned the knob and pushed the door open so hard that it
rebounded from the wall, slamming back to catch him in the shoulder.
He never noticed. His attention was fixed on the man tied to a chair
at the far side of the room, his mouth sealed with shiny silver duct
tape. He felt his anger rise at the sight of this mortal, this man who
had defied the efforts of Marius and Armand.

Well, one thing was for certain, this mortal would not defy him.

The captive stared with growing agitation at the blond fury that was
Lestat. Ramon, followed by David, and then Marius, squeezed into the
room past Lestat who stood blocking the entrance.

"No. Get out, all of you." Lestat turned to usher them from the room.
"I will handle this alone." David took one look at Lestat and knew
that he was beyond persuasion. He took Ramon by the arm, and left
without a word. Marius, however, did not budge. 

Lestat was not in the mood to put up with Marius' cautioning and
pompous lecturing.

"Marius, if you don't leave this instant, I will pick you up and throw
you through that doorway. And right at this moment I don't
particularly care if you go through the wall behind it."

Just for a second Marius looked as if he was going to test Lestat. He
decided against it, which was a good thing because there would have
been another fight, and Lestat didn't have the time for that right
now. He had other things to attend to.

"Just don't kill him before you find out something useful." Marius
looked at him with something close to contempt in his face. It was
like an arrow in Lestat's heart, but he pushed that pain away, he
would deal with it later.

"Do you think you could manage that?" Marius continued.

Anger surged through Lestat at Marius' words. "Of course I can."

Marius' face was stone. He looked as if he'd never been human, like
he'd always been the creature of ice standing in front of Lestat. "I'm
not comfortable with leaving you alone with this man, Lestat. You
cannot be trusted to control yourself when necessary. And if he dies
before we find out what we need to know, it will be yet another thing
you've done that `I'm sorry' will just not fix."

It was too much. Faster than thought Lestat grabbed Marius and hurled
him through the opening, slamming the door shut behind him. He waited
to see if Marius would try to come back in, but the silence coming
from the other side of the door was like the silence of death. For a
moment it seemed like it was the death of the love they had felt for
each other since their first meeting. Perhaps it was, but Lestat
couldn't let that give him a moment's pause. Louis' fate might hang in
the balance of what was uncovered here.

Lestat turned back to face the captive, leaning back against the door
and fixing him with a baleful look.

"I'm sure you realize I that I just *threw* that extremely powerful
creature from this room, probably seriously injuring him in the
process. He couldn't do a thing to stop me." Lestat moved away from
the door, slowly crossing the room, inhumanly slow. In fact, his feet
were not touching the floor. The man took note, his eyes widening at
the sight. 

"Do you know how strong he is, my friend I just threw out the door?" 
Lestat asked conversationally. "Oh, pardone moi, you've had dealings 
with him already, haven't you?" Lestat smiled at the man. "Well, I
must tell you, he's rather a gentle creature when all is said and
done, a *good* creature."

"I, on the other hand, am not so good. What's more, goodness does not
concern me overmuch." Lestat noted with satisfaction that the man was
trembling violently. "I'll tell you another thing, just so you'll be
well informed when you die. Before arriving here, I had a fight with
my friend, over you, and he is very angry now and not so gentle. And 
still, he could do nothing to stop me. No one can."

Lestat gave the trembling mortal a full-toothed smile.

"I just hurt someone I love because he was interfering with what I
wanted to do with you. You I *don't* love. You have secrets that I
want. If you give them to me now, I promise you a swift death. If you
resist me, I will still have your secrets and your death will be as
painful as I can make it. 

And I can make it very painful indeed."

Lestat rose further in the air and let the power flow from him. The
duct tape was torn from the man's mouth as if by an unseen hand. All
the objects in the room began to shake and vibrate. Things fell from
the wall, and glass exploded here and there. The table, and the chair
the man was strapped to, skittered across the floor. The captured
priest was gibbering in fear.

Lestat could feel the hair standing out from his head like a fiery
gold corona. "TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW," he roared with all the power of
his preternatural voice. Blocks of stone in the basement wall
fractured, spewing a fine mist of powdered rock into the air. The man
was bleeding from the ears, deafened by the sound of Lestat's voice.
But that didn't matter, he didn't need to actually *hear*. Lestat was
going *in*, and no barrier ever devised was going to keep him out.

As his feet settled gently on the floor, Lestat shaped all his power
into a needle of thought, a bright, burning needle as hot as the heart
of the sun that had been lost to him, as hot as the molten core of the
earth on which he stood. He drove that needle straight into the
blackness that shrouded the man's mind.

The "impenetrable" barrier shattered like a pane of glass.

Lestat reached out and clasped the man's head in a crushing grip, and
leaned in, his eyes blazing blue fire. He mercilessly ransacked the
man's memories, searching for signs of Louis. The first connection he
found concerning their stay in Rio was the man's memory of watching
the burning pension that had once been their lodging. Lestat could see
himself and David standing in the middle of the fire lit street, and
David dragging him back into the shadows. The man, having marked their
presence, slipped away.

"You were there," Lestat whispered, his fingers flexing involuntarily.
The man emitted a faint, high-pitched scream, like a mouse caught in a
the jaws of a cat.

The next image was a daytime one. It was again the Avenida Grande. The
man was bending, a piece of charred wood in his hand, to mark a
gleaming white wall with a symbol--a circle with a inverted triangle
in its center. The man carefully inscribed strange writing inside the
circle speaking guttural words at each marking and, at the last, drew
a single character in the center of the triangle. That done he exhaled
softly on the symbol, which gleamed red for a split second before
returning to it's original charcoal black.

"You again. My, my--you've been a busy little mortal, haven't you?"
Lestat covered the man's eyes with his thumbs, pressing softly,
feeling them roll under the pressure he exerted. "But where's my
Louis? Surely you know who I mean. Black hair, green eyes...once
you've seen him, you can never forget him." He pressed harder, and
blood began to seep from beneath the closed lids. "Oh look! You weep
blood too, just like me. But my tears are not for myself, oh no. I
weep for my lost Louis. 

"I'm so afraid he might be hurt. He hasn't been hurt, has he? I
wouldn't like it if he's been hurt." Lestat paused for a moment,
waiting. "Answer me!" he exclaimed, rage replacing the calm that had
settled over him as he searched the man's mind. And when the man still
said nothing, he pressed harder, feeling the eyeballs squish beneath
his thumbs.

The man screamed in agony. 

"Ah! Now I feel foolish!" Lestat tisked softly, studying the man 
dispassionately. "Can you believe it? I'd forgotten that quickly that 
you can't hear anymore. You never heard my question at all did you?
Sorry about that little priest, it just that I'm upset right now. I
tend to forget little details when I'm upset. Let's start again."

_Show me where he is._ Lestat fed a image of Louis into the man's pain
addled brain. He got no response to the image, nothing. And at this
point there was nothing the man could hide from him. He simply had not
seen Louis. _But, you know something. I know you do. Why were you
watching us, why did you place that symbol? Give me what you know._ 

And the man gave him Armand.

"Armand?" Lestat whispered, momentarily stunned. The image of Armand 
he'd received wasn't one from the man's capture by Armand and Marius
the night before, the image the man showed him was of Armand lounging
in a fancy hotel room in clothes that were out of style by almost
twenty years.

_How do you know this one?_ Lestat asked the terror stricken man.

_He is beloved of my Master._ Came the man's feeble reply.

Lestat stilled. _Show me your Master, Man._ And there he was. Tall, as
tall as David, with thick dark curls falling around his shoulders, and
eyes that gleamed like newly minted coins...golden coins.

"So. It *is* you." It was the strange vampire; the one who had been
Louis' last visitor. And then Lestat remembered the strange look of
misery and fear on Armand's face as they stood before the symbol on
the wall, and again his upset at the tiny table in the hotel bar.

Armand had been agitated when he and Marius arrived, and he had been
trembling with anxiety when he flung his arms around Lestat's neck
after trying, and failing, to tell him something. They'd left together
to search for the "mysterious" vampire--a vampire Armand apparently
knew all along.

"Oh, Armand, Armand," Lestat breathed. "What have you done? I just may
have to kill you for this. I just may have to." He turned his
attention back to the dazed priest.

_Tell me, where is the Master's beloved now?_ Lestat released his grip
on the man's head and grabbed him by the shoulders. The man's head
flopped forward onto his chest as if he could no longer hold it
upright on his own.

_He must go to the temple, to see the Master. I was instructed to
place the symbol on the wall, so The Beloved would see it and know the
Master summoned him. But he didn't go. He helped the other demon, the
blond giant, to bring me here. He is a traitor._

_Yes. I certainly agree with you. He *is* a traitor. Now,_ Lestat sent
soothingly, _tell me where the temple is, how do I get there?_
_I don't know._

_Liar._ Lestat's voice in the man's mind was the sound of death.

_I don't know, I don't know_ The man was sobbing now, dry heaving
sobs. No tears could flow from the ruined eyes. _I don't go there. I
have never been. The city is my domain. I must serve here to best meet
the Master's needs. One day I will go to the temple, and I will
ascend to the upper ranks. I will wear the white robes and stand
before the faithful at my Master's side._

_I don't think so,_ Lestat sent, and he bent to sink his teeth into
the man's throat. As he consumed the blood, he searched again for
remembrances of Louis and of the whereabouts of the cult temple. But
the man had spoken the truth. He had never left the city, never been
to the temple. With a sigh, Lestat pulled away. He studied the man for
a moment, and then he rammed his hand into the man's chest and ripped
his heart out.

_Your master tore my heart from me, and I *will* return the favor,_ he
sent as the man's mind went dark and silent. He casually tossed the
still beating organ into a corner of the room, and wiped his hands on
the dead priest's robes. A small sound from the direction of the door
at his back brought him around fast.

Ramon stood in the door way, rage boiling in his eyes. David and
Marius stared at Lestat from behind him.

"You evil creature! What have you done here?" Ramon surged into the
room. "What horrors have you committed?" His eyes were locked on the
bloody heart that lay on the floor amid the wreckage. "I don't know if
we can ever cleanse this place of the terror and agony you have
unleashed here. Get out! Get out of this house at once!

"We will not help you again. David is our friend, and he is always
welcome here, as is his venerable companion, Senor Marius. But you,
you are as evil as the one you seek. It is beyond belief that Senor
Louis, that fine gentlemanly creature who accompanied David to the
Sanctum days ago, would have anything to do with one such as you!"

"You know something, Ramon," Lestat responded in a strained whisper,
"I've often had the self same thought." Lestat's face bent itself into
a parody of a smile. 

Ramon's expression instantly changed.

"Forgive me," Ramon whispered. And he did something completely
astonishing, he crossed to Lestat and embraced him. _You must guard
yourself better, young man._

Lestat looked at Ramon in amazement. This sudden reversal of attitude
left Lestat floundering, and so he asked him, _Do you have any idea
what I am, how old I am?_

_Of course I do. But you are still a young man here, and here._ Ramon
touched his index finger to Lestat's forehead, and then his heart. 
_You still don't realize do you?_ Ramon sent. Lestat shook his head,
bewildered. _When you berated yourself just now, all your barriers
were down. You almost overwhelmed me with the love you have for your
friend, and your anguish at his plight. But know this young one, I
tell you this because I know it to be true by the unnatural skills
that *I* possess. You must not lose yourself in the fight to regain
your friend. 

_You risk turning yourself into something worse than that which you
seek._ Ramon clasped Lestat's chin and gently forced Lestat's bowed
head up so that their eyes met. _Would your Louis love you then?_

_No, he wouldn't._ Lestat closed his eyes so Ramon would not see the
pain reflect in their depths. _It wouldn't matter one bit that I was
trying to save him. It would go against his principles to love me if I
committed atrocities coming to his rescue. You see, he would think I'd
really done it for my own sake._

Lestat gave a shaky laugh, "That would only be part of the truth," he 
continued aloud. "He would never see that I did it for him as well.
I've already run up against his unyielding moral code once, and for
both our sakes, I don't think I should test it again."

Lost in memory, Lestat had no idea of the stark anguish his face
betrayed to the others in the room.

With an emphatic nod, Ramon reached into his pocket and pulled out a
silver chain, from it dangled a small amulet. It was a *figa*, one of
the ubiquitous clench-fist symbols that could be found everywhere in
Rio. It was a charm against the evil eye and to ensure luck. Lestat
had the feeling that this particular charm had additional properties
as well.

Ramon reached up and fastened it around Lestat's neck. "I made this to
protect David," Ramon said, "but I think you are more in need of it."

"Uh, *gracias*, Ramon." Lestat didn't see how some Brazilian luck
charm was going to help him with what lay ahead. But when he looked up
from studying it, Ramon's eyes had changed. They seemed to be glowing,
if such a dark color can be said to glow. They shimmered. Ramon
shimmered--and when he spoke, his voice seemed to have an echo, as if
something was speaking with him, just a beat behind.

He spoke rapidly in a language Lestat didn't recognize. It wasn't
Portuguese. It seemed somehow older, darker, with an edge of power to
the syllables that made the hairs on Lestat's body raise. Then Ramon's
hands shot up, one covered the *figa* where it rested against Lestat's
breastbone, pressing it hard into the skin, the other struck against
his forehead with a force that would have rocked a normal man back on
his heels. 

Lestat felt a wallop as a wave of force rolled from Ramon's hands into
his body, causing his flesh to jump and wriggle. After a few seconds
it settled to a sort of vibrating hum before vanishing completely.

"What have you done?" Lestat whispered, a little frightened. Even
though he himself was a creature outside of nature, anything that
smacked of magic had always filled him with a little trepidation.

"The spirits have left me with the knowledge that you will be on the
forefront of this battle with evil. I have given you what protection I
can," Ramon answered simply. "I have added a little something extra to
the *figa*. It will help you to control your anger, Lestat. Your anger
burns like the fire in the heart of the volcano. It draws attention to
you, and you may have need of stealth." 

Ramon forestalled Lestat's protestation and brought him up short,
saying, "Do you want them to know you approach? What if they killed
your Louis before you can get to him? They would do that if they knew
you were coming. Would you risk it?"

Lestat shook his head, no. He would not think of that. It was too
horrible. Nothing would happen to Louis.

"It was a test as well," Ramon went on. "If you truly were as evil as
I had first thought you, it would have burned you like a live coal."
His tone offered no apology.

For a split second Lestat was angry. But then he realized that this
man had done everything he could to help them, and now he offered what
power and protection he could, even though Lestat had bought terror
and death into this house.

"Thank you Ramon, for everything you've done, and for your concern for
Louis. I'm sorry," Lestat couldn't help himself, his eyes flicked for
an instant to Marius' face, "I'm sorry for sullying this house."

"Sorry will not help, Lestat, though your regret is genuine. You have
incalculable power young one, and it rules you. If you want to repay
me for the damage you have done here, then promise me you will master
your strength."

"Some would tell you my promises are not trustworthy." Lestat wouldn't
look at David as he said this.

"I will trust your word if you give it. Besides," Ramon said, casting
a canny eye over Lestat, "I will know if you intend to keep it."

"I promise," Lestat responded. What Ramon didn't realize was that
Lestat always *intended* to keep his promises. Sometimes it just
didn't work out that way.

"Go with God, Lestat de Lioncourt," Ramon said soberly.

"Why Ramon," Lestat gave Ramon a careful smile. "I had no idea you
were a comedian on top of all your other skills." 
Ramon gave a surprised bark of laughter, and then looked at Lestat
narrowly, his lips fighting a smile. _I begin to see why they all love
you so much,_ he sent.

_Would *you* like to get to know me better, Ramon? I have a great
appreciation for the...wisdom...of older men,_ Lestat sent, looking
deep into his eyes. Ramon had been a little too confident with him,
and he couldn't let the opportunity to shake him slip by. Lestat
watched in satisfaction as the color began to creep up from the collar
of Ramon's shirt.

"Lestat," Ramon replied, and to Lestat's surprise, he did not break
the gaze, "it is my most fervent wish to never, ever, see you again."
But he smiled when he said it, and when Lestat offered his hand, Ramon
took it.

Lestat held Ramon's hand a moment longer, strangely reluctant to leave 
this unexpected island of calm. He sighed heavily, hating to bring up 
unpleasantness at this point, but it was necessary. He released
Ramon's hand, and asked quietly, nodding in the direction of the dead
priest, "Shall I remove him?"

Ramon shook his head. "A cleansing ritual must be performed. It will
go better if the body is still here. I will dispose of it after it is
done." He reached out and laid a firm hand on Lestat's shoulder.
"Remember, what I have told you."

Lestat nodded, and touched the *figa* gently, acknowledging the gift,
then turned to go. He had taken only a step when a thought struck him
like a blow.

"Ramon! Do *you* know where the cult's temple is? Louis and Armand are
there." He felt Marius jerk violently at his words. 

Lestat waited hopefully, only to have that hope dashed when Ramon
replied, "No. We have not been able to locate the temple, but we were
being very cautious. The time for caution has passed, I think.
Tomorrow, during the daylight hours, I will put all my resources to
the task. We will find *something* to guide us." 

Lestat impulsively reached out and embraced him. _Again, thank you,
Ramon. I am in your debt._ And then he made for the stairs, not
pausing to see if the others followed.

______________________________________________________________________
SPEC: Memnoch the Devil - Vol. 3, Chapter 7 (Author: Susie)         
______________________________________________________________________


	Lestat had not gotten more than a few yards out into the street, 
when he was seized from behind and slammed against a stucco wall. 
He felt the stone shatter as the back of his head struck it, and he slid 
to the ground amid a shower of broken plaster.

	Marius.

	Lestat fought for control, trying desperately to keep his reflexes 
from retaliating in kind before he could think better of it. Marius was 
on his knees on the ground in front of him. He had Lestat by the 
shoulders and seemed quite ready to slam Lestat against the wall 
again, although it wasn't really a wall now as much as a pile of 
broken rock.

	"What did you see?" Marius hissed. "I am not *asking* now, 
Lestat."

	"Louis and Armand are at the cult's temple. I told you," Lestat 
knew his voice was cold. But he had not even remembered Marius 
behind him. Or, perhaps, more truly, he had not wanted to deal with 
Marius behind him.

	"Did you see them there? How do you know that?"

	"That priest I killed was the one who drew the symbol on the 
wall at the pension. He watched it burn that night, and then when the 
sun rose, he drew it there. He was the slave of the vampire I saw in 
the pension-keeper's mind, the one who took Louis. The faces were 
the same. That vampire has Louis and Armand, and he has them at 
his temple."

	"Did you *see* Louis and Armand, Lestat?" Marius's face was 
absolutely without expression, and he had not let go of Lestat. "Are 
they all right?"

	"I saw Armand. Not Louis." The admission was painful.

	"*Show* me." Marius' voice was ice. "Show me what you 
saw."

	Lestat stared helplessly at Marius, at the blood still smeared 
across Marius's cheekbone where he had hit him. It gave Marius an 
over-the-edge look that Lestat had not really imagined possible.

	He couldn't tell Marius about Armand. He could not imagine 
saying that to him. He did not want to make it real by admitting it, by 
telling it to someone. He did not even really want to think about it.

	_Armand. How could you do it? What have you *done*?_

	"There's nothing useful, Marius." Lestat said. Again his voice 
was terrible in his own ears. "I told you all of it."

	"No," Marius said. "No. That is not all. Show me."

	"No," Lestat said. "It's not important. Now you are wasting 
time." His barriers were up; he had himself so shut off that he could 
not sense anything at all from Marius. He tried to shake off Marius's 
hold and get up.

	Marius refused to let go. And then Lestat felt the assault. No 
lectures from Marius, not even any more words. Just force.

	Marius was trying to break his shields.

	Marius *forcing* him. It was not unlike what Lestat had so 
recently done to the captive priest. Lestat shoved again at Marius, still 
a little incredulous, but it was as if the mental contact somehow 
strengthened the physical one, because Marius seemed immovable, 
his grip on Lestat tightening until it was painful.

	"Stop it," Lestat said, quietly.

	Marius did not even appear to have heard him; he was staring, 
unseeing, past Lestat. The force surrounding Lestat was building, the 
pressure increasing, as if he were being pushed more and more 
deeply under water.

	Lestat pushed back, carefully at first. It had no effect. Angry 
now, and a little frightened, he tried harder and harder to keep Marius 
out.

	Marius kept pushing.

	The fury was rising up in Lestat again; he felt himself terribly 
vulnerable. He knew Marius hated him now; that Marius would try to 
force him this way surely meant he didn't care any more.

	Lestat gathered his power, and straight-armed Marius back 
away from him with all the strength of his fury as he sprang to his feet. 
"No!" he cried out. "NO!"

	Marius' hold broke, and he went backwards through the air 
and landed flat on his back in the street. But even as Lestat heard his 
body hitting the pavement, the mental assault continued absolutely 
unabated, as if Marius no longer knew or cared where he was 
physically.

	And then David was in front of Lestat, David shaking his head 
and with tears in his eyes. Behind him, Marius had not tried to get up. 
Only the assault from him continued, battering at Lestat's shields.

	There was a warmth at Lestat's chest. His hand went to it, and 
he felt the small hard shape of the *figa* Ramon had given him. It was 
warm, almost hot to the touch, and Lestat's hand closed around it as 
if it were the only anchor he had in the world.

	_It will help you to control your anger._ He heard Ramon's 
voice in his head, and he looked miserably at David, who seemed 
furious and lost and frightened all at once, who stood as if he would 
try to take Lestat down himself if he had to. He saw Marius half-sitting 
now on the pavement, with his eyes closed as if to shut everything 
out but Lestat, and with dust from the street in his hair.

	And then Lestat realized he had let his shields drop again, just 
as he had with Ramon. Marius's eyes opened and his body went 
rigid with shock. _No, not Armand!_ he caught from Marius. _No, 
no, it can't be!_ And yet beneath it was a terrible sense of rightness. 
Marius had suspected, Lestat realized, that something was wrong 
with Armand.

	But Marius had not said anything to Lestat.

	Lestat threw it all at Marius then, angry. He sent all the images 
he had drawn from the priest mixed in with what Lestat had done to 
the man to get them, in a sharp, vindictive flood.

	Marius shook his head. He looked truly lost; he seemed as 
defeated and bitter as he had been when Akasha had killed Enkil and 
left him. He sat without moving on the pitted pavement of the empty 
alley. The noises of the Carnival's final night filtered from everywhere 
around them, but the alley they were in, behind the Candomble 
house, stayed empty.

	Lestat wondered if Ramon was watching them.

	David went down on his knees next to Marius. David knew 
too, now, no other reason for that kind of look on his face. And then 
David offered Marius a hand up, and finally Marius took it, getting 
stiffly to his feet.

	"Lestat," David said softly. "Lestat, come. Let's go back to the 
room, where it's quieter, all right?"

	Lestat stared at David, wanting to cry, wanting to tear the city 
apart for even the slightest trace of where the temple was, for even the 
slightest glimpse of Louis's face in someone's mind. He felt utterly 
betrayed. Marius almost certainly hated him now. Lestat had felt that 
awful silence when he had hurled Marius out of the room at the 
Candomble house. But even before that Marius had not told him 
things, had not told him about the captive until tonight, had not told 
him what he suspected about Armand.

	And David probably thought he'd be the next one Lestat threw 
across a room. Lestat wondered if he would ever see that love in 
David's eyes again, that deep, warm, and, he had thought, 
indestructible love. Love that had survived even what he had done to 
David by making him.

	And Armand had betrayed them all. Armand had betrayed 
them, and as a direct result, Louis was probably dead.

	_If he is dead, I *will* kill you,_ Lestat promised Armand 
silently. _I will do it, because I will not care about what Louis and 
Ramon call morality any more, if Louis is dead._

	_And if you have really done what it seems you have, I will kill 
you even if he lives._

	"Lestat," David said again. He held one hand out, as if he 
wanted to take Lestat's arm, but he did not get close enough to 
actually do it.

	Lestat supposed he did not blame him. "All right," he managed, 
tightly, and he followed David and Marius back to the hotel. He did 
not let go of the *figa* until they reached the front door.

______________________________________________________________________
SPEC: Memnoch the Devil - Vol. 3, Chapter 8 (Author: Mick) 
______________________________________________________________________

Juliano was rather surprised to find Louis in such good spirits when
he entered the room. Louis had seemed to be the morose type, and to
find him in the throes of laughter was not something Juliano had
expected.

"Laughter, Louis? Do you mind sharing the joke? I must admit I'm
curious as to what you find funny in your situation, though hearing
you laugh is nice--it shows you have some sense of humor. I must
confess, I didn't think you *had* one. You are a little stiff you
know..."

Juliano's steps slowed as he spied the crumpled form at Louis' feet.
He shot Louis a quick look and took note of the flushed skin and the
fading wounds.

He leaned against the edge of the heavy wooden table that stood in the
center of the room, and lifting a wicked looking blade from the
collection arrayed there, began paring his nails. He was feeling
supremely confident at the moment, his show of strength with Armand
after Esteban's arrival had been impressive. He felt none of the
strange trepidation of dealing with Louis that he had experienced
since Louis' arrival. If he could deal with Armand, then Louis
presented no problem whatsoever.

"So, we've helped ourselves to a little snack have we? Well, I really
can't be angry with you. You would be a little hungry after the amount
of blood you lost last night. And disobedience has its price I
suppose." Juliano cast a look of disdain at the crumpled form at
Louis' feet. "The fool. I specifically told them to stay away from
you. I am in your debt for this Louis. I simply don't have time to
deal with discipline problems right now, especially not after last
night's little fiasco. 

"I must say though, that really was rather rude of you. What happened
to your vaunted manners? Frankly Louis, if I'd known the child was
going to be a problem for you I'd have scheduled her for another
night. I so wanted you to enjoy the Sabbat. You did seem to be
enjoying it there at the beginning." Juliano smiled, remembering the
moment when their eyes met over the throng of followers. Oh yes, the
Sabbat had caught him up, Juliano had seen Louis' body sway in time to
the driving rhythm of the drums. The thought of Louis joining in with
the dancing acolytes had filled Juliano with a wild joy, even now
thinking of it made his pulse flicker. He was of the firm opinion that
a abandoned, dancing Louis would be something wondrous to behold.

"Don't be frightened, Louis," Juliano reassured him. "I'm not angry
with you anymore." And indeed, he wasn't. It was difficult to remain
angry with Louis, especially when one was looking at him. "I got over
being angry last night. I'll attribute your behavior to the fact that
you've never attended a Sabbat before. You'll know what to expect the
next time, and things will undoubtedly go more smoothly." 

As Louis seemed disinclined to talk, Juliano continued.

"You're a mess Louis, although you still manage to look appealing in a
forlorn, hopeless sort of way." He watched Louis from under the fringe
of his lashes as he fiddled with the knife. Dio mio, but this Louis
was a hard one to figure. After his initial outburst of laughter, he
seemed to have withdrawn into himself. He simply waited which,
actually, was not a simple thing at all. Juliano knew that from
experience, having spent no small portion of his life waiting for
Armand. He also knew that if he allowed it, this one would wait him
out, even if it took an eternity. 

Of course, he would not allow it.

"Not to worry," he continued, "you'll revive once you've had a nice
hot bath. And I've selected a lovely new garment for you. It's a deep
plum color, almost black. You'll be absolutely stunning. But then
again, I'm beginning to believe that you'd be stunning in just about
anything.

"I'll tell you something," Juliano leaned forward and whispered
conspiratorially, "though this just between you and I; you are even
more beautiful than Armand. And that, my green-eyed friend is quite an
accomplishment." Juliano laughed at his own words. "I don't think
Armand would appreciate my saying that. He can be rather vain and
possessive at times. Listen to me! Actually criticizing Armand! Upon
my soul, Louis, you are doing wonderful things for my confidence."

Juliano laid the knife he'd been playing with on the table and stepped
up to Louis, kicking the corpse to one side. He tilted Louis' head
back with a finger under the chin, "So beautiful, Louis. I can't wait
to see what that plum color does for your eyes..."

Juliano went suddenly still and the happy smile slid from his face.
Slowly he turned his head and his eyes recorded the identity of the
dead priest at their feet.

"Luis?" he gasped. In a flash he was beside the still form, gathering
it up in his arms.

"No, no, noooo," he moaned, smoothing the sable brown hair, stroking
the flesh, now as cold as his own. He rounded on Louis, dropping the
corpse to the ground. "I was *saving* him. He was MINE!"

He launched himself at Louis and, gripping him by the throat with both
hands, slammed his head against the wall again and again, until bloody 
splashes began to appear and Louis moaned in pain. 

"You bastard!" Juliano screamed. "You THIEF! Armand wasn't enough for
you? HOW DARE YOU TAKE THEM BOTH!" He whirled and snatched the
discarded blade from the table and turning back, plunged it through
Louis' shoulder, the blade skipping across the bone before it exited
from his back sending up a shower of stone chips as it met the wall.

He cut Louis' scream of pain short with a vicious blow. "SHUT UP!
JUST. YOU. SHUT. UP!"

"AND YOU!" he screamed, dragging the corpse of the dead priest up from
the floor, shaking it violently. "I spared you, many times; you with
your stiff-necked peasant's pride. Anyone else I would have killed. I
made you my favorite, gave you my special attention. AND THIS IS HOW
YOU REPAY ME?"

Juliano flung the body on the floor and kicked and stomped it
viciously, the flesh making a dull wet sound. All at once, he began
crying, sobbing hysterically. He collapsed against the edge of the
table, hugging himself, and whispered to the corpse brokenly, "How
could you leave me? Didn't I give you everything you wanted? Didn't I
give you something to believe in? I never hurt you. Not really. 

"How could you do it? I didn't tell you you could leave. YOU CAN'T
LEAVE UNLESS I SAY SO!!!" Juliano snatched up a small whip from the
table, the bits of metal braided and knotted in the strands flashing
in the light, whistling through the air as he swung on the corpse,
punctuating his shrieking, sobbing tirade with vicious, cutting blows.

"You can't leave, you CAN'T leave, YOU CAN'T LEAVE!"

He turned suddenly, whip rased high as if to land the next blow on
Louis, and stopped. Louis wasn't looking at him. He was staring at the
ceiling as if it would open up and bring deliverance. The deep green
eyes were enormous in the thin face. They seem to have grown, or
rather the rest of his body was somehow smaller, frailer, hanging from
the chains like a lifeless marionette.

"Now Louis, don't be like that," Juliano said, dropping the whip. He
tried to make his manner conciliatory. "It's not your fault. How could
you have known? As I said, you were probably just hungry. It's my
fault, really. I should never have let them drink from you last night.
It was all Esteban's idea, but I had to go along. You...you upset me
so, and you caused a big to-do that I just couldn't let go unanswered.
You understand, don't you?"

Juliano wiped a shaky hand across his tear streaked face,
unconsciously turning it into a red horror. "I want us to be friends,
I really do," he said stepping up to Louis. 

He pressed one hand firmly against Louis' collarbone, and with the
other ripped the knife free from his shoulder. The pain brought Louis'
eyes back into focus.

"Are you going to kill me now?" Louis asked him quietly.

"Of course not!" Juliano laughed, feigning good humor. "I'm sorry
about that little scene just now, but you have no idea what a trying
evening it's been already." Juliano watched Louis carefully, but
Louis' eyes were regaining that hazy, unfocused look. He didn't seem
to be paying attention at all.

"You understand, don't you, that I can't just let this go. That mess
last night and now this? If I don't do something, it will undermine my
authority.

"Oh! That reminds me, you can't have this." And he plunged the blade
into Louis's outstretched arm severing the artery. He twisted it back
and forth in the wound so that the blood gushed forth it in great
gouts. Juliano put a finger in his mouth, savoring the taste of Louis'
blood. Such a waste to let it poor out onto the floor. But it wouldn't
be wise to glut himself on Louis. Louis affected him enough as it was
without risking an addiction to that deliciously sweet blood. Armand
wouldn't like that one bit. 

But then again, Armand wasn't getting things all his own way anymore,
was he? Juliano smiled at that.

Juliano dragged his mind away from such distracting thoughts and
addressed Louis. "You must understand Louis, I don't like being harsh
with you, but you took Luis without my say so. I'm afraid that's not
allowed. *I* run things here. This is my little theater of the damned.
You can't have anything unless I say it's all right. 

"I'm surprised you don't know better. I think Armand must have spoiled
you a bit, not that I would blame him for that. I imagine it's very
hard *not* to spoil you." Juliano smiled at Louis, carefully judging
his color. 

"There," he said, turning his eye from Louis' face to the river of
blood at their feet, and back again. "That's it I think!"  And he
tugged the shattered blade from Louis' arm.

Juliano stepped back from Louis and looked down at himself. "God! I'm
a mess." He was soaked in blood, and little pieces of Luis' flesh
clung to him here and there. His eyes unfocused for a moment as he
sent out a summons to his priests.

He swept the remaining blades, rods and pincers from the top of the
battered table and, humming to himself, turned to strip away the
tattered trousers and soft leather boots, all that remained of Louis'
clothing from the night before, and unchained him. He gently lifted
Louis' long frail form, now gaunt from loss of blood, and placed him
on the table, carefully arranging his limbs.

The door flew open and three of his best priests tumbled into the
room. The fourth came more slowly, struggling with a large metal bowl
filled with fresh blood, the handle of a ladle poking him in the face.

"Juan, bring me the bowl. Pedro clean up the floor and the wall.
Miguel, Valentine, take Luis out of here," he said nodding at the
shredded mass of flesh and cloth that had once been a human being.
String him up on the right, no, *left* side of the alter. There was a
shocked, whispered, "Luis!" that was quickly silenced.

"Yes, Luis," Juliano said, freezing each of his priests with a cold
stare. "He decided to help himself to a little more of my guest. It
was a mistake. A bad mistake. One I hope none of *you* will make. Does
everyone understand me?" Juliano was pleased to note the hasty nods
all around. "Good. Now get busy!" He watched in satisfaction as the
priests leaped to do his bidding.

Juliano perched on the edge of the table and drew Louis' naked form up
onto his lap. He extended an imperious hand and the priest, Juan,
hurriedly put the ladle into it. 

"Open up Louis. You must drink, and quickly. It's getting cold." He
poured the blood into Louis's mouth, overflowing it, sending half the
precious liquid streaming out of the sides. "You see, I wasn't
planning to starve you. You should have waited.

"We'll get you nice and full, all cleaned and dressed and then I'll
hurry along to take care of my own toilette. Juan make yourself
useful. Get some hot water in here. After that draw me a fresh bath
and lay out my robes for this evening."

He turned his attention back to Louis, "Come Louis, you must take in a
little more, I'm afraid you're going to need it." Juliano heaved a
great sigh. "I really want to postpone tonight's special gathering,
but I'm afraid it's all planned. Frankly, Louis, you should have been
in better condition than this, but we won't go into that again. It's
over and done with. If you behave yourself, and things go well, we
won't have to repeat tonights ritual.

"I want you to know in advance, Louis, that I intend to make it up to
you for what will happen later tonight. Try to hold that thought in
your mind." Juliano, leaned down and whispered in Louis' ear, "After
everything is over, and you're feeling better, I'll have a surprise
for you." And he smiled, thinking of Armand, and how surprised Louis
would be to see him.

______________________________________________________________________

SPEC: Memnoch the Devil - Vol. 3, Chapter 9 (Author: Susie)         
______________________________________________________________________


	David shut the door to the hotel room nervously, eyeing both 
Marius and Lestat with some apprehension. Lestat sat down on the 
bed he and David had been sharing, his hair wild, his clothing ripped 
and covered in dust.

	Lestat did not seem to notice; he made no attempt to change 
clothes. He only sat and stared over at the other bed, where a pile of 
Armand's clothing lay discarded at the foot. And then without 
warning, he exploded. "Fiend! How dare you!" he shouted, and was 
on his feet in a shimmer of motion, sweeping Armand's belongings off 
the bed with a furious hand so that they flew in all directions.

	Marius, leaning against the little dresser, said nothing until 
Lestat's fury seemed to have burned itself out.

	"Are you quite through?" he asked Lestat then, the edge to his 
voice more than a little unpleasant.

	Lestat looked coldly at Marius and said nothing.

	"I don't want to hear any more words against Armand," Marius 
said. "Not one more word. I won't listen to it."

	Lestat snarled, "Is that because this is your fault? You don't care 
to be reminded of what you did wrong with him, so you don't have to 
take responsibility for this mess?"

	"No, it's because you're jumping to conclusions that are 
completely unfounded," Marius shot back. "It may be my fault," he 
added, flatly. "But as usual, Lestat, you can't look past yourself and 
what you want to try to help."

	"Oh," Lestat said nastily. "Is that why you and David kept your 
prisoner a secret from me, even when you couldn't break his shields 
yourselves? Is that why you waited an entire night to tell me, when 
God knows what could have been happening to Louis?" He didn't 
wait for Marius to answer, just stalked into the little bathroom and 
slammed the door.

	Marius glanced at the door, and shook his head. He started to 
put a hand to the back of his neck, then stopped halfway, as if it hurt 
to do it. He leaned hard on the edge of the dresser instead; David 
could see his face reflected in the mirror, still smudged with dirt and 
blood.

	Marius saw it, wiped inelegantly at his face with his shirt sleeve 
until he got it off. "David..." he began, then stopped.

	David was still standing in front of the door. "Yes?" he 
answered.

	Marius pushed himself away from the dresser and sat down 
stiffly on the edge of his bed. He leaned over, a little awkward, picked 
up a few of Armand's scattered things, then gave up.

	David went to sit on the other bed, and after a moment Marius 
said, "I'm sorry, David, about all that. I knew better."

	David said, "Tell me what I can do to help." He still wasn't 
certain Marius and Lestat were through fighting, but at least they were 
just shouting now. And they both looked a little too tired to throw 
each other at any more walls. David hadn't had any idea what to do; 
they were both stronger than he was. The only solution he'd been 
able to think of was to get in their way, which was not a very good 
solution, and one he hoped he didn't have to use again.

	David saw Marius look away quickly then, sensed that Marius 
was shielding. David wondered if he'd done anything wrong. He was 
trying to be so careful.

	"You are helping, David, just by being here. You had every 
right to leave us, after...all that."

	"I would never do that," David said. "But I couldn't think what I 
should do."

	"What you did," Marius said, not explaining. He looked over at 
the little pile of black clothes. "I don't understand," he said. "I don't 
understand how it could be, how Armand could..." and a little of his 
precarious calm slipped away.

	David bit his lip. There were times when words weren't helpful 
anymore, and this seemed to be one of them. Marius had put his head 
in his hands; David couldn't see his face. The space between the two 
beds might as well have been miles, as David thought of Marius' arms 
around him, of the warmth of that one kiss. He wanted nothing more 
than to go to Marius, to hold him, to offer wordless comfort in the only 
way he knew. But he did not dare.

	"Do you know," Marius said, still not looking up, "I don't even 
know Armand very well. Not anymore. The Armand I knew was a 
child, a fascinating, troubled child. But he's not that anymore. I don't 
know who he is."

	David only listened. He'd known Armand only the few days 
they'd been in Rio. Though it seemed an eternity now, he'd never 
seen past that angelic face. Not really.

	"And I can't even hear him," Marius continued. " I can't reach 
him even that way. I can't protect him now any better than I could 
then, when I made him. He hasn't forgiven me, not for making him, 
not for leaving him. I know he hasn't, and I don't blame him for it. But 
now I don't know him well enough to help him this time. I don't know 
what he's capable of. I don't know what he's done."

	Startled at this confidence, David shifted uncomfortably. He 
stood up and went to Marius, went down on his knees on the uneven 
wooden floor beside the bed. "We will find them, Marius, both of 
them. Ramon has people working even now, looking for the temple. 
Louis and Armand are at the temple, they have to be. I know Lestat 
didn't see them there, but I think he's right this time."

	Marius shoved his hair out of his face, turned a troubled look 
on David, and then the bathroom door opened. David hastily stood 
up.

	Lestat stared at them. His expression might have been anger, or 
scorn. Maybe it was only misery. David badly missed the way he'd  
been able to pick up resonances from Lestat when he was mortal; it 
bothered him that he could be surer of Marius' mood than Lestat's 
now, when he and Lestat should have been the ones to share a 
special bond.

	Lestat had not showered or changed while he had been 
sulking in the bathroom. Still ragged and dusty, he lay down fully 
clothed on his bed and ignored both Marius and David, shutting his 
eyes.

	David went to him. Behind him, he heard Marius disappear 
into the bathroom.

	"Lestat," he said gently. "Come on, those clothes are filthy. Why 
don't you change?"

	"Why should I?" Lestat answered bitterly, without opening his 
eyes. "What does it matter? Don't bother me, David, I am looking for 
that temple. I am looking for Armand. He can't shut me out forever. 
You're obviously not interested in helping, so leave me alone."

	David glanced over at the window; the sound of birds had 
grown raucous, and as he went to the window, he blinked at the faint 
light outside. He pulled the heavy curtains shut, changed clothes 
himself, and went back to stand near Lestat. 

	Lestat didn't move. David reached out and smoothed Lestat's 
tangled hair. And then Lestat was sitting up, his eyes blazing. "Stop it, 
David!" he shouted, his eyes wet with tears. "Don't lie to me any 
more."

	David backed away, hurt and a little frightened. And he 
realized Marius was in the doorway behind him, wrapped in the 
black robe, water streaming from his hair.

	"You can't sleep here tonight," Lestat threw the words at David. 
"Go sleep with Marius; the two of you seem to be gettting along *so* 
well. Leave me alone." He turned on his side, his back to them both.

	David flushed, frustrated. He seemed completely unable to do 
anything right with Lestat.

	Marius shook his head, sending a little spray of water through 
the air. His hair was so light that even wet it did not darken very much. 
He went back into the bathroom, and when he came out he looked 
composed, his hair combed back and no longer shedding water, his 
face gone all still and expressionless.

	"Come on, David," he said quietly, and lay down on the bed.

	David went awkwardly round the bed to the other side and sat 
down, trying to remain dispassionate. But he didn't know what to do. 
He didn't dare crawl under the sheet, though he hated sleeping 
uncovered. And he was running out of time, he felt the lethargy 
coming over him. He lay down finally on top of the sheet, glancing 
past Marius to see if Lestat was watching, but Lestat lay on his back 
and David couldn't tell.

	Marius had turned his back to David, at least. He seemed to be 
lying as near his side of the bed as he could manage. The wet hair had 
fallen away from his neck; David saw the dark stain of a bruise there, 
that continued down into the robe, and winced. He wondered if 
Lestat had similar marks, or if Marius' blows hadn't even done more 
than hold him still for a moment. Lestat, David suspected, mostly 
carried bruises no one could see.

	He curled up on his side, facing the wall and taking up as little 
space as he could, wound a hand in the edge of the sheet to make 
certain he wouldn't stray from his side of the bed by accident. 
Because, he admitted hazily to himself, he wanted nothing more than 
to do that. And they were neither of them small men, and the space 
between them in the bed was not all that great no matter how careful 
they were being.

	But it was dawn now; he was falling asleep. And then David 
found himself screaming, whether in reality or only in his dream, he 
did not know.

	Louis. Louis, chained and covered in blood. The vampire Lestat 
had seen in the dead priest's mind, standing over him. Louis crying 
out, his eyes shut tight in pain. And then David saw what they were 
going to do, and even in his dream he was chilled with horror.

	 _No!_ he cried out. _No!_ But there was only darkness.

__________________________________________________________

	" NO! NO! LOUIS!"

	Lestat, on the edge of sleep despite his misery, came instantly 
awake when he heard David's cry. He was out of bed and across the 
room in a second, falling to his knees at David's side, looking around 
wildly as if Louis might be in the room. But there was nothing.

	"David!" he cried, catching David's shoulders, trying to draw 
him back from the damnable sleep. "What did you see? Where is he? 
Did Louis call you? David, I have to know!"

	But there was no answer, no resistance in David's body 
despite Lestat's frantically shaking him.

	"Lestat, stop it! Stop it! You'll only hurt him!" Marius was 
behind him then, catching Lestat's arms from behind, trying to draw 
Lestat back away from the bed.

	"Marius, dammit, find out what he saw!" Lestat cried, cursing 
the forced silence between maker and fledgling for the thousandth 
time in the past few days. He tore himself out of Marius' hold, but he 
stayed back from the bed. He didn't want to hurt David. But he had 
to know if David had heard Louis, he had to.

	"He's only dreaming, Lestat." Marius remained between Lestat 
and the bed. "It's all he's thinking about, are you surprised he's 
dreaming about Louis?"

	"Marius, try, please! Maybe he wasn't. Maybe it was real."

	"I *can't*, Lestat, he's asleep!" But Marius looked over at 
David all the same, his face taking on an abstracted look, and he 
stood still a moment. Then he shook his head.

	"It's not..." he said, "I mean, there's only fear. Not anything I 
can see."

	"No! No, I have to know!" Lestat's fury was impotent, helpless; 
that was the worst of it. It was bright outside, behind the curtains, and 
he felt the lethargy seizing him, slowing him, confusing his thinking.

	Marius sank down on his own bed again, said hazily,
"There isn't time to do anything, Lestat, even if you did know. It's day 
for all of them now. Armand, Louis, the vampire you saw even." He 
lay down, looking over at David again briefly as he did so, but he 
kept watching Lestat.

	Lestat looked at the window, remembering when he had 
defied the dawn in the Gobi. It hadn't killed him. Maybe nothing 
could. He thought about going out the window anyway.

	But he didn't know where to go.

	He flung himself down on the bed, buried his face in the 
pillow. _Louis,_ he thought. _Louis..._

___________________________________________________________

	Lestat was outside in the warm, humid night, looking up at a 
lighted window on the second floor of the Pointe du Lac plantation 
house. Somewhere, dimly, he knew that he could not really be here; 
somewhere, he knew that this place had been consumed by flames, 
like everything he'd ever wanted. He went to the front door, and the 
sense of foreboding grew stronger.

	"Louis?" he called out, hesitantly, and knocked on the door.

	No answer. But locked doors were not a problem for Lestat. 
He dealt with it the way he'd seen Marius do not so long ago in the 
sanctum of Those Who Must Be Kept, and it swung open.

	The door opened into nothing but flames. The heat hit him as 
if he'd slammed into a wall. Burning.... 

	He knew how that felt, being burned, but he couldn't 
remember why just now. Instead it was cool night again around him, 
and Lestat was in the high-ceilinged, tall-windowed dining room of 
Pointe du Lac, that elegant room for which he and Louis had had no 
real need. The breeze was coming into the room, and Lestat rose 
from the long polished table.

	And Louis was with him. Louis, in the clothes that suited him 
best of all, perhaps, the long frock coat of the early nineteenth 
century. Louis, who he had just that night made a vampire, but who 
all the same kept his composure as Lestat strolled over to the spinet in 
the corner of the room.

	"Do you play?" Lestat asked, teasing, running his fingers over 
the satiny finish of the fine wood. And it was as if Lestat were 
watching himself from the outside then; he knew what Louis was 
going to tell him, and what he was going to say next. He wanted to 
change it, but he couldn't. He had said it already, and for all his 
incredible powers, he could not unsay it.

	"Don't touch it!" Louis' control broke for a moment; the green 
eyes flashed fire, and then he recovered. Still part mortal! Louis had 
not even finished dying, yet he tried so desperately for composure.

	Lestat laughed. "I'll touch it if I like! You don't know, for 
example, all the ways you can die. And dying now would be *such* 
a calamity, wouldn't it?"

	Louis backed away, the soft eyes hardening, his mouth set, his 
cheeks streaked with red though his face was pale. Ahhh, he still 
smelled mortal, even.

	And in that moment the Lestat who was watching knew he 
had already begun to lose Louis. He might have brought Louis to him 
then, and whispered softly to him one by one the secrets of what they 
were.

	But he hadn't. Instead, he had made Louis back away.

	Blink. Another place. This time it was the Rue Royale, and he 
had Claudia in his lap, and she was drinking from his wrist, her pull 
coursing through him, his blood afire with her need and with his 
triumph, with the thrill of having dared to see what would happen!

	A child vampire! And he, Lestat, had done it, it was his cold 
preternatural fire that burned in her blood. Faintly he was aware of 
Louis, Louis struggling to his feet from the bed where Claudia had 
been lying, Louis swaying in the doorway and looking at him, his 
eyes wide and horrified."Why, Lestat?" he cried. "What have you 
done? What have you *done*?"

	And Lestat snarled with the effort of holding Claudia away 
from him, her savage hunger absolutely primitive and almost enough 
to get past Lestat's strength. When her struggles waned, he tore 
himself loose from her, stood holding his wrist and leaning against 
the wall, waiting for the servant to answer the bell.

	Louis came toward him, called his name, but Lestat ignored 
him. "Why?" Louis kept asking, demanding that Lestat explain, and he 
tried to turn Lestat's face towards him, but he wasn't strong enough.
 
	Lestat brushed him aside. Louis caught at a chair to keep from 
falling and came back at him again, trying to keep him from opening 
the door. He surely knew what Lestat intended. Lestat hissed and hit 
him, sending him back against the wall with a crash, but Louis 
somehow kept from slipping all the way to the floor. He tried again 
for Lestat, though he was too far away to have any chance of actually 
getting him, and Lestat spun and dealt a blow that sent Louis 
sprawling onto the ornately carved chair, where he lay motionless.

	And when Lestat looked back, with Claudia safely feeding, 
Louis' eyes were open, but full of pain. Pain that vanished into a 
defensive lack of expression as soon as he realized Lestat saw him.

	_No!_ Lestat was crying from somewhere. _That wasn't what I 
wanted! It wasn't what I meant!_ But he knew that he had done all 
that, that it had happened just this way.

	The images came faster now, tumbling out of the darkness, 
and Lestat found himself in that dark and filthy warren under the 
Theatre des Vampires. He sat in a chair, his hands in front of him
 crisscrossed with fine scars, and he was holding the yellow dress,
Claudia's dress, and there was blood on it.

	"Where is she?" Louis was pleading with him, down on his 
knees in front of Lestat, his clothing torn and stained with his own 
blood, dust on him from the night he'd spent locked away behind the 
wall. Armand behind him was trying to hold onto him, to pull him 
back, and then Louis seemed to realize, seemed to understand it all at 
last. He tore the dress from Lestat's hands, holding it for a moment, 
touching the rips, the stains, and then he was gone, Armand a silent 
shadow behind him.

	Lestat could only look after them.

	That too, he had done.

	Lestat tried to shut his eyes; he couldn't tell where he was. He 
wasn't anywhere. I'm dreaming, he thought, and hoped that 
realization would tear apart the fabric of it all, would release him from 
what he was seeing, but it didn't. It was not real now, maybe, but it 
had been real. And it was not so easily escaped.

	He saw Louis in the ruined courtyard of the Rue Royale flat, 
where Lestat had sought him out, following him to New Orleans from 
the Night Island. Akasha's blood still burned prickly and new in 
Lestat's body. He stood before Louis, knowing he could destroy him 
with only a thought, and he said "Do you love me now?"

	And Louis, with that shy incandescent smile, answered, 
"Yes."

	Lestat had smiled then. He had kissed Louis, and dared him to 
come to London. He had looked down at Louis asleep in his arms as 
they flew and known, quite simply and completely, that he loved him. 
He had even written it down just that way in his book. But he had 
never told it to Louis. He had never said those words aloud.

	He was inside the St. Louis Cathedral, then. Slight smell of 
burnt wax and the dampness of very old wood, the feel of his 
immortal body belonging to him once more, the resurgence of all his 
delicious, awful power. He was the Vampire Lestat again. He was 
himself.

	And he was still terribly, terribly angry.

	Rain and darkness outside. The flicker of candlelight on Louis' 
face. And his anger, a blazing current through him, that had thrown 
David's body into a wall and killed it.

	"You smug, cynical, lying bastard!" he was crying to Louis. "I 
needed you and you turned me away! Out in the mortal night you 
locked me! You refused me. You turned your back!"

	Louis' face was absolutely still. "I deserve whatever you have to 
say," he said.

	Blink. Not so long ago, that, only a few painfully short weeks. 
Three weeks, maybe or four. Nothing, to an immortal. Lestat had lit a 
candle for himself, for knowing his own nature. And then he'd gone 
and proven it a thousand times over, with David.

	David, in his arms then, in the little house by the beach. David 
dying, all the strength and blood gone from him. Too weak to move at 
last, after all his fighting, his eyes half-closed, he whispered to Lestat, "I 
love you".

	"Yes, and I love you," Lestat answered.

	Blink. The hallway in the Rue Royale. Restored, the very 
imitation of its 18th century splendor. But all the same, a restoration. 
Louis' desk was there in the study where it had always been, but it 
was not Louis' desk, it only looked that way. It was only one very 
much like it.

	And Lestat stood there beside Louis' desk, touching the not-
well-enough worn wood, and wondering. He was reminded of what 
Marius had told him long ago, that in being vampires they were the 
imitation of a man. That if they tried their best, they could come very 
close to life.

	And in his dream-sight Lestat saw something that he had not 
before. There weren't enough papers on Louis' desk. It had always 
been piled so high with them you couldn't see the surface, books and 
papers all jumbled up together and every which way. But the disarray 
was sparse, almost halfhearted.

	He turned and Louis was there, at the other end of the room, 
standing in the doorway. He was looking at something, out in the 
hallway. Lestat started to go to him, then froze. The expression on 
Louis' face was heart-wrenching, a quiet pain and weariness such as 
Lestat had never seen there before, though he thought he'd seen Louis 
in the grip of every kind of sorrow.

	Or maybe it had been there before, and it was only that Lestat 
had never seen it. He went forward another step, and then he could 
see past Louis into the hallway and what he was looking at.

	David, and with David a blond man. Himself. Teasing, his 
hands wandering, David embarrrassed, that low proper voice too soft 
to hear. His own laughter.

	Lestat reached out for Louis, but his hand went through him as 
if he were a shadow, and it all dissolved, dissolved into flame. But not 
a fire, this time, Lestat realized, as the pain was searing him, paralyzing 
him, making his movements agonizingly slow.

	Not a fire. It was the sun.

______________________________________________________________________

SPEC: Memnoch the Devil - Vol. 3, Chapter 10 (Author: Susie)         
______________________________________________________________________


	Louis could hear the chanting through the walls of the
windowless room, and he was not surprised when the heavy door
opened. It was not Juliano this time, only two of his acolytes, two very
large mortal men. Mortal, maybe, but they did not look human; their
faces were like stone. Well-made faces, but so empty that one could
not call them beautiful. And the scent of their blood was oddly
tainted, so that it made Louis feel sick even as it tormented him in his
hunger.

	Drugged. That was the taint in their blood. Louis had realized 
that many of the mortals here were often in that state; it accounted for
quite a bit of the zeal of Juliano's worshipers. The zeal, the sheen of
sweat on their faces, and their seemingly inhuman strength.

	Only two of them. Louis took a deep, ragged breath, and
wondered if he could take them. He would try, but he was not
hopeful. A few days ago, they would have presented no difficulty; he
would have needed only a moment free of the chains to dispatch
them both. But he knew he was weakened now, his body painfully 
gaunt. The marks of Juliano's fury were still plain on his pale skin; 
without the blood he needed, they were fading only slowly.

	Louis shuddered; he had a terrible feeling that he was slipping, 
that a little at a time he was being ripped apart, that he was no longer 
quite in command even of his thoughts. That scared him more than 
anything else. He was desperately afraid, not that he would lose his 
life here, but that he would lose his mind.

	It was perhaps the most chilling of all his secret fears, that a
thing with his own shape would go on without him. That, puppet-
like, his body might become a tool without will, only power; that it 
might be used to make real all the evil he had ever seen or imagined 
in the course of his long existence, and that it would go by his name.

	Louis clung grimly to what sanity he could, with the tenacity 
that had kept him alive for two hundred years. And yet in the next 
moment, he would find himself wondering if there were any way to 
be sure that he would die.

	The bigger guard bent to unlock the chains, staying out of the
range of Louis' fangs. The lock came open, releasing the band around
Louis' wrist from the wall along with its short length of chain. Louis
waited until the key was turning in the lock on his other hand, and
then he moved, with all the preternatural speed left to him.

	It wasn't much, and it didn't get him very far. Louis had 
thought to move with such speed that he could whip the chain 
attached to his wrist through the air and use it as a weapon, and he 
heard one of them cry out, but then he felt something strike his own 
face. It hazed his vision, and he did not know where they were until 
they seized him, in a grip that seemed far too strong for any human, 
and dragged him to his feet.

	Louis stopped resisting; they had his hands chained together
now, chains he could not have broken even at his best. He had
surprised them, at least. There was a sticky warmth on his cheek, a
slow trickle that took much too long to stop. It should have healed
within seconds.

	Louis wondered strangely if he were even still a
vampire. Maybe he would become mortal, just before he died.
Maybe it had happened already. Maybe the Dark Gift had all run out
of him, just as his blood had run out and covered the steps of the
altar in Juliano's temple, just as it had stained the polished floor of the 
anteroom when Juliano had stabbed him. Louis had dreamed of a 
way to make that happen for two hundred years.

	But he could still smell the guards' blood.

	The two mortals took him across the courtyard he had come
to recognize, and up into the temple. The very sight of the place sent 
shudders through him. No bodies lay strewn across the steps 
anymore, nothing overturned, no sign of the little fires he had set in 
his rush up the pyramid to the altar. Instead it looked as it had when 
Juliano had first brought him there, the fires lit all around, the 
cavernous darkness filled with rustling, breathing, waiting 
worshipers, all of them eerily silent now. Too silent.

	Louis was pushed roughly forward, to stand at the bottom of 
the pyramid. High above at the altar stood Juliano, robed much as he 
had been the night before.

	Juliano began to speak, addressing the watching masses in 
Portuguese. Louis understood no more than a word here and there. 
He could only stand there, lost. He would not know what Juliano 
was saying until Juliano wanted him to; then he would hear it in his 
mind, and he would not be able to escape it.

	Flash of light on all those knife blades, the feel of all the 
sucking mouths....The vision assaulted him. Louis swayed, shut his 
eyes and shook his head to block it out. They were there again, 
waiting for him, Juliano's white-robed favorites...

	Except Luis. Not Luis, anymore, Luis had freed himself. Luis 
was dead, was no part of any death except his own, now.

	Louis only hoped he could find that kind of courage within 
himself.

	He was pushed again from behind, so that he staggered; they 
wanted him to go up the steps of the altar. The steps were very steep 
and narrow, and Louis only tried not to fall. Near the top, they were 
heavily stained, dark rivulets that had flowed downward and soaked 
deep into the stone.

	Blood, centuries of it; most recently his own. The steps were
revoltingly cold and sticky under his bare feet; he felt a convulsive
desire to vomit, but his preternatural body would not give him even
that relief.

	They pushed him to his knees in front of Juliano, down onto
the gore-smeared floor.

	Juliano smiled, and looking up into his amber eyes, Louis was
scared; he saw no sense there at all right now.

	_Louis._ Juliano reached out and caught up a strand of Louis'
long hair, played with it a moment. _Have you been thinking about
what you have done? Are you ready to repent of your sins against
Him?_ Louis heard the words in his mind, although Juliano was still
speaking Portuguese, his voice echoing through the massive temple.

	And Juliano gestured, and more acolytes brought out another 
little girl. She was Brazilian, and so tiny that she was only just 
walking. She clung to the hand of one of them, and she was crying 
softly, her dark eyes wet with tears.

	Louis wanted to be sick.

	"I will burn in hell first," was all he said, looking up at Juliano's
impassive face.

	Juliano slapped him, and then there was only blackness for a
moment. When Louis could see again, the guards were dragging him 
to his feet, and he looked up and saw Juliano's eyes burning with
fury.

	"Then you will," Juliano hissed. "You will."

___________________________________________________________

 	They dragged him to the middle of the courtyard, four of them,
and Juliano was shouting again in Portuguese. Ahead of them, 
someone had driven four stakes into the hard stony earth, and Louis 
shut his eyes then. He did not need to look to know that the sky was
brightening in the east. Like all vampires, he could sense the dawn.

	They tied Louis' wrists and ankles to the stakes, so that he was 
on his back and unable to shield himself at all. He was only tied with
rope, but he could not break it, fragile as it should have been against
his strength. Juliano bent down, and there was nothing but icy fury in
him now, as he ripped Louis' silk shirt off and pulled the rest
of the clothing from his body. He was not careful about it.

	And they left him there. Juliano had made the crowd back off,
but turning his head, Louis could see that they were still watching,
and he was ashamed that he would die there, naked, in front of all of
them, that his death after all this time would be without dignity or
reason.

	Or worse, that he would not die.

	There was a dull ache now, all over his body; he had felt it
before, the few times he had been too slow to find shelter. That had 
not happened in over a century. Louis never played games with the
daylight: it was too dangerous. It was not only the pain, it was that
with that ache came the creeping lethargy of vampiric sleep, a
numbing of mind and body, a sapping of will. It would become
harder and harder to move, and as the pain grew stronger, so would
the drowsiness, until the burning seemed almost seductive, and the
body became completely paralyzed. Louis had always thought it the 
most terrible way for a vampire to die, even before the vampires of the 
Theatre had done it to Claudia and Madeline.

	Louis turned his head with a terrible effort, and looked east,  
wincing at the brightness. He saw a color in the sky that he had not
seen in two hundred years; the horizon was not indigo or even a
paling blue, it was red as fire. And then his eyes had closed. He could
still feel the bare skin of his back hard against the rough ground, but
he could no longer move at all.

	_Lestat!_ Louis called out, desperate, pouring into it all the 
fading strength he could summon. He called the way he could 
sometimes call to David, though he had no skill at mind-reading; he 
called as if he knew it was the last thing he would ever be able to say.

	_Lestat! Is it that you can't find me, or is it that you will not 
come? I love you, Lestat, more than anything, don't you know that? I 
only wish I could tell you. I only wish I could see you. I would have 
that one wish, before I die, if I could have anything._

	And then he felt the burning.

___________________________________________________________

	Louis was kneeling in the cemetery before his brother's grave,
and before the stone with his own name on it, and it was not night or
even dawn, but bright mid-morning, and the sunlight was falling
gently on him like a caress. There was a sound behind him, and he
turned, and saw Lestat, standing with his arms crossed and his blond
hair pulled back, the set of his mouth cruel, his eyes expressionless.

	"No," Louis said suddenly, urgently. That was all wrong. "Go
back, Lestat, get out of the light, it will kill you!"

	Lestat shook his head, scornful. "Not here, Louis. Don't you
know that?"

	"Here... Where are we? Did you come...Are you here to help
me?" Louis looked around in sudden confusion, and he felt himself
trembling, because he had just remembered the burning.

	"No. " Lestat leaned back against one of the crypts, and looked
at him, a terrible satisfaction on his face. "Not this time."

	Louis stared at him, stricken. "Why?" he managed, finally.
"Only tell me why, please!"

	"You wanted me dead, Louis. You tried to kill me. I almost
died, and you could have helped me, but you didn't. You let them 
hurt me. And after the Body Thief, oh, how I needed you then. I came 
to you pleading for your help. But you wouldn't give it. You would 
have let me die."

	"No," Louis whispered. "No! I love you."

	Lestat shook his head. The sunlight on his bright hair was
blinding; he looked like an angel. That beautiful, that inhuman, that
immortal.

	"But why? Why did you stay with me? Why did you let me 
think..." Louis stumbled over the words, blinking tears from his eyes, 
"that maybe you loved me?"

	Lestat shrugged. "I do what I want," he said. "But now it's time
to end it. " He looked down at Louis for a long minute, and then
turned his back and walked away.

	And then it was no longer the cemetery around Louis, but an
unfamiliar and terrible place. The rock all about him was blackened,
and the sky above was dark and without stars, but far away there
glowed reddish light, and it fell on everything.

	Ahead of him, a small figure sat with its back to him on the
rocks. A child's figure, in a dress of white lace and satin, a white
ribbon in the golden ringlets that fell to her shoulders.

	"Claudia!" Louis ran to her, dropped to his knees beside her,
and looked up into her face. And it was his Claudia, just as he
remembered her, the seductive smile and the doll-like features, all
perfect, the way he saw her when he dreamed about her.

	She smiled. "You've come, Louis, " she said. "I've been waiting
for you."

	Louis blinked; there were still tears in his eyes. He put a hand
to his face, and it came away wet, but the tears were not bloody, they
were only mortal tears. He stared down in confusion, and then
looked back at Claudia; he wanted desperately to hold her but he
didn't dare. He was afraid she would vanish at his touch.

	But then she put out a hand and touched his cheek gently.
"Yes, Louis, you're dead. Didn't you know that?" Flash of pain then.
His skin was burning, drying and charring in peeling sheets, his eyes
were shut tight against the redness of the sky...

	He gasped, and it stopped.

	"Now you know what it was like for me." Her voice was very
quiet. It was not the voice of a child.

	"Oh, Claudia..." Louis said helplessly. The red light falling on
her white dress made it look bloodstained; her eyes reflected it as
well, and suddenly he did not recognize her in that still face.

	"Now see, Louis? " Claudia stood up then, and took his hand
in her tiny one. The little-girl lilt had returned. "You always wanted to
know; now I can show you. This is Hell." She tugged at him, and
then Louis was standing. "No, no, it can't be," he whispered. "Not
you too, no..."

	"Why do you think I shouldn't be here?" she asked.

	"Because you never chose any of it," Louis said miserably.
"You were too little. You couldn't possibly have known."

	"Oh!" she said. "But I'm here because of you, Louis, because
of what you did, you and Lestat. I'm damned for your sins. I thought
you knew that. You always seemed to."

	Louis only shuddered.

	"You knew we were evil, Louis. We're killers. Why else can't
we walk in the sunlight? That's _why_, didn't you ever think of that?
For us the fires of hell are never any farther away than the dawn.

	"Lestat called it immortality, but you and I knew it was only 
waiting. We died a long time ago, Louis, we died when we were
made. But now we can be together." She led him toward the source
of the light; it seemed to come up over the black horizon from
somewhere below. As they drew closer, he realized that the rocks
ended in a sheer cliff, and that the fiery red glow came from beyond
that sharp edge.

	Claudia led him right to it, and he saw that below the sheer
drop was a pit filled with fire, a pit like an open sea, so vast the other
side could not be seen. The heat from the flames came up from it,
oppressive on both their faces, and it hissed thunderously far below.

	"Oh God, no."

	Claudia smiled up at him, still holding his hand. "Do you see?"
she asked, above the roaring that came from it.  And then in horror 
Louis saw her burning in front of him, the way he had seen it in 
nightmares a thousand times; the white skin of her arms and her 
round cheeks reddening, melting until the fire had eaten into the flesh 
unevenly, and the white of bone showed beneath the black charring 
and the drifting of ashes...

	Then it was Claudia again.

	"You'll get used to it," she told Louis firmly. "I did." And she
took hold of him and pulled him closer to the edge, and she was far,
far stronger than he was, and he could not resist her at all.

	"No!" Louis cried, but she had him standing on the very edge
now, his back to the pit, and he looked behind him in horror at the
flames. And Claudia smiled, and reached out one tiny graceful hand,
and pushed him backwards into it.