And so Louis is in the room after all, trailed a few steps inside the doorway to stand sentinel. Presses knuckles to his mouth, watching Lestat make his way forward. Watching how his steps steady, strengthen.

Louis can hear them too. Rapid heartbeats, harsh breathing. They reek of fear. He can't identify the emotion in his own body immediately, but eventually:

Relief. An absence of anything else. Slow, delayed for that absence.

Lestat makes it very quick. There are no screams.

The gravity of what Louis had offered in that same backseat has not occurred to him at all, only in the sense that Lestat did not take enough, that it was insufficient. This will be enough. Two, and then sleep, and Armand's handiwork will be erased.

More or less.