Chapter 2: Into the Fire

Disclaimer: Written in 2001, this story was inspired by characters and situations created by a certain author who discourages fan fiction.

Writer Contacts: To contact Wiebke (and especially if you would like to link to this site or any of the stories), email wiebke@juno.com.

Eyes still closed, Marius shuddered at the first glimpse he had been allowed of his one-time confidant. The source of most of the pain was clear; there could be no mistake.

Lestat had been terribly wounded. There were scars criss-crossing every inch of his skin, scars of what could only have been a knife attack, and on top of these scars there were the scars of a fire. Marius recognized those all too well from his own experience and there was a visceral reaction within him as his body seemed to recall the fierceness of that pain. How his skin had become like paper, so fragile, and yet so tight he had felt trapped in his own body. There were other scars on Lestat’s body as well, these seemingly more recent, where bones had jutted out after being broken. What on earth had happened?

Marius opened his eyes and willed himself to examine the expression of his darkest fear. Lestat’s grey eyes were sad and hopeless as the blood tears flowed. His hands were held to his mouth, muffling the sobs that came almost silently and shook his fragile frame, a body that barely seemed capable of moving. Lestat was sitting as if crippled, and Marius knew that he truly was.

He saw the burning empty veins, stretched taut across the milky white hands and arms, and he knew that Lestat was barely able to feed himself. He was starving. And here in this dank hovel, he was not only passing the time, but hiding from a world that was too dangerous for a creature weak as himself.

Marius found his mind becoming a battlefield, with desperate conflicting emotions and desires fighting for position in his mind. He wanted to rush to Lestat immediately, hold him in his arms, and offer him his blood, but a the same time, he wanted to know above all things the answer to this question: What had happened to the invincible strong creature he had brought to his island sanctuary less than a century ago? And then, in addition to all these feelings, Marius feared the way Lestat might react to his presence. Would he be angry? Confused? Grateful? Would he even be capable of understanding anything?

He decided finally that before he proceeded further, he required more information. Laying out his mind like a blanket, he carefully, unobtrusively, let himself spread out in the chamber below to catch the thoughts of this creature who seemed too wounded to even notice.

The pain was there, roaring as it had before, but now that he knew it for what it was, Marius was ready to delve deeper and grasp specific thoughts. There were many threads, too many to grasp, but Marius knew without even sorting them that none of them were happy. Despair was what Lestat felt. Despair and utter hopelessness. A type of loneliness that was not even loneliness because Lestat lacked enough hope even to long for company, his need left gaping like an open wound.

Marius was in the process of deciding on which thought to follow when an image hit him so hard he was forced to close his eyes once more. Although it was only an image of the mind, Marius’ reflexes were still in place. There, in Lestat’s agonized mind, he had seen Amadeo. He had seen the ever-youthful face peering from the top of a tower and he knew that Lestat had been falling when he saw this face.

Armand, as Lestat called him, had pushed Lestat off that tower. He felt Lestat’s memory of hitting the ground, every bone snapping, so that to move even a few yards to escape the dawn must have been a torture.

But that was only one wound. Marius opened his eyes and he watched Lestat as he stared at his hands, fingering the scars distractedly. Silently, exerting only a slight power of suggestion, he asked Lestat to recall where those scars had come from.

Like a match set to a pool of oil, Lestat’s memory blazed with an image that nearly made Marius gasp. In the image a young blonde girl, no more than five or six, stood over Lestat, who was lying on the floor, and brought a great knife down into him again and again. Her blond curls and sweet face belied the fierce rage in her eyes.

Marius could see the face of girl and at once knew he had seen something even he had thought was unthinkable: a child vampire. Not a child in the manner of his Amadeo, but a true child. So this was the manner of creature who had delivered this act of vengeance!

Vengeance? As the word ran through his mind, Marius realized it had not been his word, but Lestat’s. The vampire child had been reaping her vengeance. But vengeance for what? He pressed Lestat’s mind just a little more. What had he done to deserve such an attack?

He suddenly saw another scene. Lestat in a richly decorated room and there, with him, the girl, pale and, Marius picked up from Lestat, newly come to the dark life. Beside her was another man, an adult as handsome in his own way as Lestat. Dark hair this one had, along with green eyes and a look that was a powerful mix of fury and despair. Lestat, it was clear, had made this defenseless creature, and he had made her with this dark-haired creature. I made them with love, Marius heard Lestat gasp in his mind, I made them in love, and what did it bring me? In the end, both of them hated me!

Truly it had come to the worst for Lestat. Marius knew he had warned him about the making of fledglings, but there was no accounting for this disaster. For whatever reason, whether through hatred or madness or sheer desperation, these dark children, Marius knew, had cut and burned their maker. But that was far away, perhaps New Orleans or somewhere else in the New World wilderness where Marius had sent him. How had Lestat come to Paris? Where did the other wounds come from? And why, oh, gods, why had Amadeo been so cruel?

Marius’ mind was filled with questions, but he maintained control and did not press Lestat any harder than was necessary. He opened his mind to catch flashes of other thoughts. Pain and hunger colored everything, but beyond that Marius found rejection, desperation, grief.

Grief. He saw a pile of ashes in the shape of a girl.

She was gone. The dark-haired one went on, he gathered from Lestat, but the girl was dead. He saw a yellow dress, spotted with blood. A coach pulled by horses up to a house on the outskirts of a city Marius knew was Paris. Amadeo living in that house, guiding Lestat up to the battlements. An argument had ensued. Amadeo would not help Lestat, he had only hatred. A hand flew out and then Lestat was falling...

Again, Marius felt the memory of those bones breaking.

Lestat was beginning to become a bit confused, agitated, he realized suddenly. His mind was not functioning on any rational level, but it seemed that, instinctively, he knew that there had been some sort of intrusion into his mind. Marius withdrew and wrapped a shield around his thoughts, diving back into the shadows lest Lestat glance up and see the face of his former savior appear in the window.