And it's like a snipped thread, that sensation of Lestat's removing of his focus from Daniel's mind—an awareness of a presence Daniel had, perhaps, not been aware of until its absence.
There is no indication of whether this is in play, or some spark of temper lost, or some other thing—up ahead, Lestat laughs easy at something his prey says, and he has a hand on his shoulder as the human steers them all around to the building. In through a side street, up through winding stairs. The elevators aren't working, a look of apology back to Daniel, but none of them slow at the landing. Up and up. Lestat says, he lived somewhere like this in Paris, which includes the absence of elevators.
The apartment itself is not comedically tiny as one expects a New York living situation to be, but only barely holds the four adult lives that live there, and of course, is stifling compared to the luxury of their floor in their hotel. The roommate, who had been playing Elden Ring, greets them, gamely joins the ring of lazy social contract possessing the living room furniture.
Daniel is right about no one getting too high—or at least, Lestat does not seem intent on lingering longer to see if this clutch of humans imbibe anything stronger than the joints that start circling around. On the stereo, Tool is playing, which seems to occupy Lestat's focus a little more, going quieter as the conversation circles lazily. The man whose attention he had given the most is thinking about how to divert them back to his bedroom.
The music keeps getting louder, inexplicably. Someone comments on it, adjusts the volume back down. Scarcely half a minute later, it rises again. The mood is shifting. No one knows why.
is a joke just for Daniel. (And maybe Lestat, if he's not too deep in the Predator Zone.) He contemplates things as they socialize and smoke a little weed, which is of decent quality. One thing about the modern world is there's always going to be weed, and it's always going to have a weird strain name, and most of them taste like shit on a level worse than the way weed is supposed to taste like this. But this is fine, and he says so, which gets a laugh.
The music becomes more intense and the night feels heavier. Neighbors should be complaining by now. Daniel has been coaxed into a story about Quaaludes, and he indulges their new friends and impending victims with a tale that's edited only in that he's actually censoring a full third of the worst. It bears no resemblance to the nightmare week Lestat endured a rough chorus about, except for there being drugs, and poor decisions. (What else is a vampire.) He does this, and he thinks about what's being expected of him in this apartment. A re-assessment: how the turn tables, he is now fairly sure this is about whether or not Daniel is cool cool, and the cool is about what kind of life he's willing to take.
Something he's thought about. He has tried for those he sees evil in, or at least the capacity for arm. He has also wound himself around in spirals finding excuses. Anything. You look conservative. You frowned funny. It's fine, it's excusable, I don't have to feel bad. It's not like hamburgers and cows being sweet, but it's still fine, in its own way.
Difficult to hear the last bits of his story over the music. Junkie asks him if he wants any speed, which causes her partner to flinch. Old wounds. Daniel says Sure, and watches the guy, who still looks disapproving, though it changes to confusion as Daniel follows it up with, If he does some, too.
Lestat's attention flickers over. Amusement, perhaps approval crinkling his eyes, after his emoting had become a little void in the last several minutes. Enraptured by music, by thrumming heart beats, by his own rising appetite.
The partner agrees, and who knows why. Well, either vampire can read for themselves: he is a little drunk and a little stoned, and possesses some anxiety in him that to stop now would be to tumble to the wayside and not enjoy the landing. Historical precedence. Maybe he'll feel better if he does it, anyway. Maybe the night will feel better.
And the gamer they'd intruded on is stoned enough for everyone, passes on a half-hearted offer his way while he grabs the remote for the stereo, drags the volume back down.
On the sofa across the room, while the three on the other side vibe on this new influx of chemical stimulus, the man with Lestat says, "Do you want to—"
And stops speaking when Lestat leans over, brushes his mouth tenderly against his cheek, and then his jaw, and his throat, where he stays. A little gasp beneath the noise of everything but that's all, no screaming or struggle. Look over, and you can make out the way Lestat's exposed throat shifts around long, luxurious swallows, and he gently eases the man back against the arm of the couch as consciousness slowly pools out of him.
Dying, largely unnoticed, a hand gripping a sequined sleeve, a hand that loosens. And Tool cranks itself back up to max volume as it happens.
The stoner swears, and gets up. Moving for the wall, the power outlet. Lestat, without yet lifting his head, flexes his fingers where he has them braced against the couch arm, and the man immediately falls to a knee, gasping around some deep compression around his throat, blocking airways and arteries.
Lestat, finally, looking up. Eyes hooded, mouth wetly crimson, fangs only getting a little bit in the way when he tells him, somehow audible amongst the loud music, "I like this song."
Half-beneath him, a young man takes in his last breaths, eyes glassy.
Moving parts: a dying man, a choking stoner, a woman who feels suddenly unnerved who excuses herself to the bathroom, Daniel sniffing the remains of a bump off his knuckle, the man of the house (apartment) finding himself concerned.
Daniel knows right away this is cut heavily with expired and probably off-brand Adderall, which isn't bad, but there's parts relief (nobody needs to actually be cranked on amphetamines right now), and parts exasperation (oh come on, really). A half-distracted check confirms that the woman is doing proper lines in the bathroom, though, which is promising.
"You okay?" he goes to help the stuck-in-place gamer.
He thinks about morality. He can't know if he's for or against this kind of thing without doing it. Keenan's voice croons around perfectly arranged progressive post-metal chords. This kind of thing, with no consideration for who the people are beyond the hedonistic impulse. Not too different than plenty of other things he's done. Daniel blinks and it's the 1970s, blinks back, and he's thinking about what his eyes might look like, because the young man he's looking at is looking at him, terrified at the shift. He thinks of Armand, sitting across from him under a floating library and watching him. Daniel could never figure out what his eyes meant, then. Too dark a color, without the pupil dilation of anger.
He helps the extremely stoned, extremely confused resident up onto his feet and then onto a bar stool wedged near the small kitchen. Hands on his shoulders to steady him, as he starts to laugh. I'm way too high, he says around coughs from being briefly asphyxiated. Daniel touches him as though he's checking to make sure he's alright (and he is, that's what he's doing, until he isn't), before he leans in and sinks his teeth into the soft skin at his throat.
"Hey," says the man left behind on the couch. His voice is weak, brittle, strangled in fear. Seeing a blur, of the gamer's face going pale and grey over Daniel's shoulder, of the bright red blood dripping down Lestat's chin as he gets up off the other sofa, his blue eyes now nearly black. Looks at him.
Some primal, invisible thing, a message of silent warning transmitted between them about where exactly they relate to each other on the food chain. The mortal can't even think about his dead friend, his dying friend, or even his girlfriend in the bathroom. He can think of the front door, of Tool, and his own pounding heart, because he is very certain that the man moving towards him is no kind of man at all, but something else, something otherworldly.
He runs. Lestat moves faster than can be comprehended, and brings the elegant heel of his boot down in such a way that he snaps the ankle of the human, who falls with a loud thump, and gives a voiceless wheezing cry.
'The demoiselle is making herself a delightful cocktail,' tickles at the back of Daniel's mind. Vampire jokes. 'Shall we share?'
A strange experience, but one Daniel has had before already: the human caught on his teeth, dying in his arms, thinks Oh, finally, and relaxes into it. Arms loop around him, weak in death but managing to cling on. This guy is pretty high, though. It could mean nothing, his life flowing into Daniel in long drinks, muddled marijuana easing his nerves. He cradles his head and tells him silently, You did great, and death shuts his eyes peacefully.
Weird. Comforting? Is this unsettling, or is it how it's supposed to be. Lines in his mental notepad fill out. Behind him, Lestat does some old fashioned violence (opposed to whatever Daniel is doing, whatever he described Armand doing).
Hunger rises up. Young still (which is funny), when he starts it starts to call to him. Familiar like any addiction is familiar, but this is smoother— the pull of the tide tolerates no resistance, and going along is thrilling and it feels correct. Blood is as good as heroin and doesn't leave him hungover. He carefully shifts the victim he's drained onto the outcropping of kitchen bar counter. Awkward, but he'd fall if he tried to leave him on the stool. Unglamorous vampire details.
'Sure,' is a mental laugh, breathless. 'Should probably make sure she doesn't call anybody, too.'
The man on the floor stares up at them as he scrambles at the floor, trying to react. Daniel has a brief unpleasant feeling, a memory he should have had fifty years to process but hasn't. He puts it aside and squats down. Reaches out with one hand.
"Relax," he says, and the man relaxes. Daniel is a little surprised it works.
A step towards the bathroom pauses in time for a glance backwards, an assessing flick of ice-black eyes from the now calmly crumpled human and the young vampire crouched by him. The sound he makes, a little back of the throat scoff, is probably transparent: a recognisable signature style, from one death to another's impending doom.
He, personally, favours a struggle. Tonight, at least. They've been nearly too efficient, no desperate fights, no screams, no tears, no begging. But, ah, you can't perfectly choreograph these things, and he feels no disappointment for two dead bodies, a subdued third, and his prey waiting for him in the next room, his body flush with new blood, serenely calm with the drifting buzz of the smoke his meal had imbibed. His fangs, long in his mouth, demanding he part his lips.
Annoying, however, to think that Armand would approve in some small way.
Thump thump thump, from the other side of the ceiling from the neighbours upstairs. The universal sign for, turn down your fucking music.
Lestat ignores this, sauntering off down the hallway. Slams open the locked bathroom door with the flat of his hand, to the startled shriek of the woman within. A shriek that turns into angry swearing, that turns into a more terrified scream, and then muffled. Lestat could bid her to relax too, but he doesn't, just drags her back out under an arm, his hand closed around her mouth.
She won't be calling anyone, don't worry. Her little rabbit heart is beating fast from both the lines she's done as well as everything that's happening, her wide eyes darting to the crumpled form of her partner on the ground, the sight of slumped bodies.
(Armand would certainly not approve of eating four people with Lestat.)
Screams of terror aren't wholly new. Daniel has, so far, preferred to just kind of get it overwith, and so this production is interesting— Relax doesn't hold indefinitely, a little burst of inspired power isn't comparable to real finesse and 500 years of skill, no matter how directly inherited. The man of the house, Mr Relax, frantically pushed up and goes to his girlfriend, adrenaline (and just a little bit of amphetamine) helping him surge past the pain of a badly fucked up ankle.
But he's uneven. Unsteady. Daniel grabbing him by the back of the neck doesn't help. Hands fail, trying to go to her, trying to send a haymaker towards the stunningly strong grandpa who exerts no effort to pull him backwards and towards the sofa? Maybe not the one with his dead friend on it. Floor, maybe. They have a kitschy rug. It ties the room together.
I know the pieces fit, says the stereo. There's a couple stickers on it, practically an antique now, probably bought in 1995, retrofitted for the USB port. One sticker reads I DON'T OFTEN LISTEN TO RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE... BUT WHEN I DO, SO DO MY NEIGHBORS!
Relax is yelling something. Daniel can hear it, but he chooses not to really listen. He's given up trying to fight, instead just reaching for his girlfriend. Daniel shoves him down to his knees.
She, too, strains towards her partner, even addled with fear and chemical imbalances. Have they ever, in this moment, known how much they loved one another? Have they ever been so certain of it? Lestat doubts it. Most humans he has known and eaten feel so ordinary, so lacking in romance.
Over her head, Lestat's attention is fixed on Daniel. This isn't the first or second time they've shared a meal in this particular fashion, but this feels more to Lestat like a proper hunt, a proper reward, and he grins across at him, bloody fangs taking nothing from the way he can set this kind of look on someone, as if they are the most interesting and most beautiful creature he has ever seen. And don't they feel the same?
Her hair is already pinned up, a plastic clip purchased off a counter for less than a dollar, a riot of bobby pins pulled free in the panic, but not enough to get in the way. She is directed into a neat pirouette, and she is turned to face Lestat. He grips her with one hand, and reaches for Daniel's sleeve to draw him near.
She gives a whimper of terror for the spread of fangs Lestat shows her. He likes to do that. Make their heart go that little bit faster. He selects his side, and sinks a bite into her throat.
A horrifying, romantic death. Daniel watches it, experiences it both from up-close and participating — the way it smells, blood and panic, the pounding of her heartbeat, muffled sounds of pain that have become begging out of her boyfriend, the full force of that ecstatic, euphoric grin out of Lestat. That, too, is a drug. It peels the world away, knife-quick and brilliant.
And, because we said both, somewhere far off. Somewhere still mortal. Somewhere in an apartment in San Fransisco. He knows that heartbeat because it was his own. He knows those pathetic gasps and pleads. He knows what it's like to be on the floor and look up and see things that are miles past human. This reaction is why he's kept things quick, so far. Nervous about being caught, nervous about catching himself. Staring too long into himself.
He decides: This isn't more frightening than shooting up unfiltered heroin. This isn't more unsettling than looking at Louis, half-burned, and whispering I don't think your boyfriend is as cool with this as he seemed at the bar.
He can unpack it later, when he isn't starving for it in an ache that's difficult to put into words. Glasses pushed to the top of his head, blood on his mouth. He holds the girl by her shoulders, some fingers over Lestat's, lets himself be pulled. (Of course it's a girl? Is that strange. Another thing in the unpacking, at a later date. Oh, the gender of it all. Her boyfriend sobs.) Fangs sink in. He feels her gasp, rougher with the pain-then-not of two sets, tastes blood and something, a familiar silk-itch. He feels her, and him, her life spilling away, reeling. Bad decisions leave her, hurtling towards a light that's familiar. Should have called her mom. Should have done less acid in high school, more coke in college. I never finished watching Severance, or eating the apple pie in the fridge. Stronger than that: I love you, I love you, please hold my hand. Then nothing.
Her blood, her life, all that she is and was leave her mortal frame, and the empty shell tumbles between them as Lestat lets her crumble into his arms, lets her fall to the floor.
She had tasted sweet. Sweeter than the man on the couch. Something in the blood, no build to the transferred high—it simply was not there before, and now is, Lestat feeling his heart start to go, and a breath escapes him. It feels like euphoria, first, from the initial rush of blood drinking, and his hands go out to cradle Daniel's face in both hands, all affection.
A laugh leaving him, clear delight in the bend of his smile, black-smudged eyes. "You have a most ravenous hunger, mon ami," he says, quiet and breathless and still heard amongst the pounding music that suffuses the smokey air. "Enjoy it. This is your obligation."
A terrible keening from the ground. Lestat tips a look to the final victim, shivering and whining. "Do you want him?"
Directly into the blood stream. They're all blood, and it hits quick, instantaneous like injecting but without the chill running up his arm first. (Or other places he's— well, Lestat hasn't read his autobiography, no need to get into any of the kink nightmares.) Daniel feels buzzed off it, stimulants vs psychoactive, a nice spiral of sensation.
The dead woman has stumbled to the floor, and Daniel doesn't think much of it. He laughs a little and reaches out, touches Lestat's face and glances a thumb at the edge of some messy eyeliner. He really is stupidly pretty, no wonder Louis spent their entire estrangement up in knots. Drama and pain aside, it's easy to be preoccupied by someone with this magnetism. Possibly thoughts Lestat can hear. A fan of their relationship, despite the things he put down into the book. His bias towards Louis' own biases is considerable.
Hands fall away and he looks down, having forgotten all about the last human. Mr Relax is ignoring them entirely, fishhooked by the sight of his partner.
Too tragic to let him live. And Daniel is still hungry, the endless maw of youth (ha ha) still asking for more, more, more. He thinks he answers yes, but maybe he doesn't. Attention pulled down, and he goes with it, letting the last as-yet-survivor stay beside his girlfriend as he sinks his teeth into his throat. BANG BANG BANG from the upstairs neighbors.
Lestat's hands drift down with Daniel until he properly curls over his prey. Good, good, he might say, or doesn't say. The ceiling, thumping, a new shock through heightened senses, and Lestat glances to the stereo, which fritzes, sparks, dies. The silence pours back into the apartment like a great ocean that had been held at bay. No more thumping up above. Maybe the police haven't yet been called.
The sound of gasping, whimpering, swallowing, as Lestat drags la demoiselle to drape her corpse across the couch. His eyes are bright, black ink retracted to summer blue as he glances around the space. Working things out while he utterly fails to catch his breath or allow his heart rate to slow back down.
And as Daniel drinks in the last of his blood, there is the rapid patter of incomprehensible French as Lestat is speaking—to him, presumably, a few gesticulations, the sound of his heavy footsteps as he paces a circle around the living room.
Will it ever be enough? It seems impossible, a future where he has to consume less. Where he might not want enough to drown an appetite. Louis, calm and collected, spooning blood or chewing on small animals, never seems more alien than when Daniel is draining a mortal straight over the threshold into death. (Notes of respect, too. Daniel has never been any good at denying an indulgence.)
When will he stop drawing comparisons? Is it because he took Vampirism 101 for two weeks before a 500 year old demon slithered across a penthouse the second the door shut and bit him like a deranged alley cat?
Probably.
Daniel sways back up to his knees, looks down at the lovebirds, together forever. This is pretty fucked up, he thinks, but it feels far away. He touches his face and the blood there, savoring the last of it, its euphoria and chemical kick. The barest hint in Mr Relax, who had deliberately accepted the least amount he could get away with. Still. Enough to put a nice bow on the buzz in Daniel's system. He sighs, letting the feeling sweep over him, resting his hands on his head with fingers looped around his own wrist.
Finally, he clues in to the silence, punctuated by quick-paced French. He cocks his head, eyes shining, glinting.
Good news, Lestat is not having a psychotic break. (Grading on a curve.)
But he does say another thing in French, and pause, staring at Daniel for a long moment and then giving out a little flutter of a laugh. Glances away, thinking in silence, and then he points out objects in the room, "Rideaux. Lamp. Sofa. Corpse. Alright," which apparently restores something critical as far as rebooting his second language is concerned.
Rolls his hands on his wrists as he turns back to Daniel. Starting again. "We should hide the bodies by starting a fire," is probably a more succinct version than what he had been monologuing a moment ago. Blood dries in rivulets from his mouth to his chin, one trickle escaped down his neck, into his collar. His fangs have withdrawn.
Lestat looks crazy, which is its own kind of pretty. Daniel does not think about the drugs, because there was so little, and because the effect on his own system is so enjoyable. He thinks clearer courtesy of the amphetamines, which makes it even easier than usual to recall the building map he'd looked at on their way in. Taking notes for Future Daniel, who has now arrived.
"I can just go pull the drive off the security system," he says, "and the landlord will practically cover this thing up himself. This is a family-sized unit in Manhattan, it'll turn over in about ten minutes even if the corpses are still in here."
He's on his feet, only taking a moment with it, arms stretched out, feeling slightly floaty from blood and the buzz of it. Not really high. Barely-there, pleasant, he'd usually prefer more for a mild hit, but it's probably for the best that nobody get actually smashed.
Lestat had preached something about clean up, which probably likewise seems at odds with Louis' folklore account of the fever that had swept through New Orleans on his arrival, men and women with bite marks on their next. Six foot tall rats. Perhaps there is a certain amount of mischief and negligence one feels capable when they first hit town.
So. He tips his head, considering this likelihood, Daniel's comme ci comme ça certainty, the way he had sensed none of these people had the kind of strong external connections to evoke a mass outcry at their collective perishments. Among his reasons for choosing them. Others including, he had sensed Daniel would charm them well in his little outfit, his wit, the promise of a wealth of interesting experiences and stories, the promise of an anecdote never to be shared. And he was right.
Oh, and the guitar.
"Bien," he says, with a one-shouldered shrug. "Excusez-moi."
A normal step, and then he vanishes into a cartoon blur of motion. Another slamming open of a door. The sound of a bedroom getting carelessly ransacked.
Let's be real, they're going to get away with so much in this crowded metropolis, callously exploiting Covid and Monkeypox. People are dropping dead everywhere, having long given up on the inconvenience of masks. A rough time. No wonder it's dovetailing with the explosion of the vampire population.
"Are you—"
Still set on stealing a guitar? From the scene of a crime?? Well. Alright.
"Okay," he calls. "Entertain yourself for a minute."
Getting used to speeding around, still, but he's improving. Only little bits of the 'drunk in a roller rink' effect as he goes to run this vandalism errand. There's a thrilling edge to navigating it will buzzed, missing a neighbor, the sound of all the other neighbors (fuck, they cannot burn this building down, there are way too many people). The security room is also a maintenance closet and the locked doorknob crumbles under a twist. Early 2000s technology inside is an exciting sight. He doesn't even have to guess anything.
Surely everything is going to look very normal when he pops back upstairs!
Lestat has returned to the living room, kneeling on the ground over an opened guitar case, surrounded by corpses. Within, the guitar itself, a beautiful instrument with the hotly contested Johnny Cash signature scrawled on polished wood, tones of sunrise. Lestat has yet to take it out, very gently touching the strings with the tips of his fingers, setting them to little thrumming sounds.
He looks up as Daniel returns. "It needs tuning," he says, a judgmental slant in his voice that indicates this dead bitch never played it. He closes the case, snapping it locked, and gathers it into his arms, pleased him himself.
Flows to his feet, a preternatural quality to the way he goes from kneeling to standing.
"You can lead the hunt next time," generous, a flick of his hand, "but I think this suited us well, non?" He is definitely Frencher on speed. Why? Who knows. The quick patter of the language, maybe. "Will Louis be home now, do you think? And I still think a fire would be best but mais je m'en remets à votre jugement. If we are hunted down by the police you can explain the misunderstanding."
Pacing out into the hallway, bringing a hand up to smear aside some of the blood on his face.
Daniel's French is as 'a few funny words, asking for directions' on speed as it is normally, but he thinks he can follow what Lestat is on about. Context helps.
As does the mellow marijuana undercurrent beneath the eye-shining awareness of probably-mostly-Adderall. It's cool, whatever, his smile is lopsided and bizarrely fond as the elder vampire manages to skitter gracefully. It does, finally, occur to him that Lestat is perhaps feeling the drugs, which is—
Surprising, somehow? To be inspected later. He huffs a quiet laugh, done for a second, and when he's back in the hallway he has a damp hand town. "Come here, you're a mess." They can't walk out of here covered in blood. Even with the shitty CCTV disabled, somebody might see them. "Louis' probably around, I don't know if he even went anywhere. He brought the salad bar with him from the Emirates."
The police are a potential concern, especially with Lestat stealing a recognizable collector's item that probably exists prominently on this guy's social media. But he's pretty sure Louis knows guys, so uh, yeah, hopefully Louis is back by now, if indeed he was out elsewhere for long.
Lestat is summoned, reverses, pivots. An 'mmh' of comprehension, taking the towel, moving past Daniel as he wipes his face to check himself in the bathroom mirror. Scrubs away the worst of it, plucks at his clothing, but he has worn black, so there's nothing to see. Not so big of a mess as he could have made. He does, also, spend a moment to preen, fix his hair, admire his (slightly manic) reflection
and tip his head at that, and turns back on a heel, guitar swinging from the handle in his grip. "The Slavic prostitute and the refrigerator full of O negative, yes, I remember. He has become quite particular, hasn't he?"
A little amused, a little exasperated. What is Lestat to do?
He could feel worse about it, but not tonight. His command over time and space feels uniquely liquid, and Daniel thinks he is pretty and charming, and he has a new guitar that he can sense Daniel would prefer he leave behind, or at least thinks he probably should, but he will not.
"We won't be seen," Lestat says, landing a hand on Daniel's arm. "Trust your elders." Claps that hand, allons-y, out the door.
And yes, two flights down, a couple coming up the stairs, dog-tired at this hour. They freeze in place before Lestat veers the corner with his thumping footsteps, completely unseeing and practically frozen in time as he swans by, pivoting on a step to wink up at Daniel—see?—before he follows an impulse, levers himself over the railing, drops out of sight.
"The Slavic prostitute was decently personable for someone being chewed on," he says. What a memory. But that was in the book, too: the table, the looming religious painting, the full eye contact from both donors while getting sucked on. Daniel's retelling and his expression of its hallmark fucked-up-ness, and the funny dissection of the vampires thinking he called it fucked up purely for blood drinking, completely missing the full-tilt insanity of the formal place setting. White-knuckled determination to look normal in the deepest, loneliest circle of Absurd Hell.
Just eat somebody in the wild, Louis. You are gorgeous and charming, you could even leave them alive, and they'd think it was a horny, weird, but still horny, dream.
Anyway.
For a second, Daniel thinks he's about to be dragged like a cartoon character, but instead he finds himself bolting after a potentially cranked on speed (it wasn't that much speed) vampire hoisting a stolen guitar. He stops at the railing in the stairwell and looks down after his action movie escape, laughing despite himself.
"Okay," he calls, "but we can't jog all the way back and freeze people like it's a game of tag."
Maybe in rural Nebraska. There's like ten people there. Daniel thinks about it— oh, fuck, fine, it's not like it's going to hurt, is it? And hops up and over.
Daniel lands, and it doesn't hurt. Knees can take it. Vampires and their catlike instincts. He will find himself subject to an arm slung around his shoulders, a laugh close by his ear, swept into the momentum of Lestat steering him out from the lobby of the apartment building.
"Next time we'll take the rooftops," he proposes. "When I have less valuable trophies in my possession."
That would be fun. That would be fun right now, actually, burn off some energy by leaping from building to building. He feels his own heart leap after the idea, still fast in his chest. What all did that girl put in her bloodstream, anyway? It has entirely replaced the lethargic pleasantness of the first man's blood, and if he was any hungrier, he might propose a second spree.
But also, Louis is certainly back at the hotel, and in the confusion tangle of impulses, the true north lure of reuniting with him now that the hunt is over is the only stable point. So—
"A car, then?" he asks, as he propels them out into the late night/early, early morning street.
It doesn't hurt! He knew it wouldn't! He has done other stupid, impossible things with no downsides, and yet it remains unFUCKINGbelievable most of the time, a giddy, elated feeling, like finally being free, and he's laughing when Lestat collects him. Shit like this makes the guilt, the questioning, the grey-tinged existential horror melt away and seem so insignificant. Who gives a shit about a sad couple dying together on their apartment floor, his knees didn't explode after jumping straight down the center of a stairwell.
"Trophies?"
Plural? What else did you take??
"Car, yeah—" Easy enough to flag down a cab, even while looking completely hammered alongside a man with cumbersome luggage. There's a knack to pointed hailing, no vampire seduction required. "Though I don't know how well I float. Clouds are better on the internet." Ha ha, a joke, for him. Then the cab, and he leans against the side of it to ask through the window, "You're good with cash, right?"
This, Lestat is saying while already opening the trunk of the cab whether or not the driver is good with cash, storing the guitar case inside. He has long forgotten the details of their kill, the brush stubble on the cheek of the man who had been calculating the likelihood of a blowjob and whose thoughts had pivoted to some relief he won't have to contend with his credit card debt, the mournful thoughts of apple pie in the fridge. He remembers, though, that he will need to look up the artist they were listening to.
The driver is good with cash. Daniel, progressing into the backseat, and immediately Lestat must contend with the prospect of climbing in after him. Instead, the door snaps closed behind Daniel without Lestat following.
A quick little nudge of—well, mind gift, telekinesis, whatever, unlocking the driver's door and hauling it open, Lestat ducking down to pin the startled driver with a smile. Blood between his teeth, still. "Do you mind, dearest?" he asks, with an inelegant shove of willpower that has the driver making an ungainly climb from the driver's seat into the passenger's. Not frightened, just accommodating, forceful enough that the driver is fumbling to unlock the next door to get out of it.
Perhaps Daniel will decide whether they're just going on a joyride or wholesale stealing a car, Lestat distracted from the details as he climbs into the driver's seat, his priority the radio.
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And it's like a snipped thread, that sensation of Lestat's removing of his focus from Daniel's mind—an awareness of a presence Daniel had, perhaps, not been aware of until its absence.
There is no indication of whether this is in play, or some spark of temper lost, or some other thing—up ahead, Lestat laughs easy at something his prey says, and he has a hand on his shoulder as the human steers them all around to the building. In through a side street, up through winding stairs. The elevators aren't working, a look of apology back to Daniel, but none of them slow at the landing. Up and up. Lestat says, he lived somewhere like this in Paris, which includes the absence of elevators.
The apartment itself is not comedically tiny as one expects a New York living situation to be, but only barely holds the four adult lives that live there, and of course, is stifling compared to the luxury of their floor in their hotel. The roommate, who had been playing Elden Ring, greets them, gamely joins the ring of lazy social contract possessing the living room furniture.
Daniel is right about no one getting too high—or at least, Lestat does not seem intent on lingering longer to see if this clutch of humans imbibe anything stronger than the joints that start circling around. On the stereo, Tool is playing, which seems to occupy Lestat's focus a little more, going quieter as the conversation circles lazily. The man whose attention he had given the most is thinking about how to divert them back to his bedroom.
The music keeps getting louder, inexplicably. Someone comments on it, adjusts the volume back down. Scarcely half a minute later, it rises again. The mood is shifting. No one knows why.
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is a joke just for Daniel. (And maybe Lestat, if he's not too deep in the Predator Zone.) He contemplates things as they socialize and smoke a little weed, which is of decent quality. One thing about the modern world is there's always going to be weed, and it's always going to have a weird strain name, and most of them taste like shit on a level worse than the way weed is supposed to taste like this. But this is fine, and he says so, which gets a laugh.
The music becomes more intense and the night feels heavier. Neighbors should be complaining by now. Daniel has been coaxed into a story about Quaaludes, and he indulges their new friends and impending victims with a tale that's edited only in that he's actually censoring a full third of the worst. It bears no resemblance to the nightmare week Lestat endured a rough chorus about, except for there being drugs, and poor decisions. (What else is a vampire.) He does this, and he thinks about what's being expected of him in this apartment. A re-assessment: how the turn tables, he is now fairly sure this is about whether or not Daniel is cool cool, and the cool is about what kind of life he's willing to take.
Something he's thought about. He has tried for those he sees evil in, or at least the capacity for arm. He has also wound himself around in spirals finding excuses. Anything. You look conservative. You frowned funny. It's fine, it's excusable, I don't have to feel bad. It's not like hamburgers and cows being sweet, but it's still fine, in its own way.
Difficult to hear the last bits of his story over the music. Junkie asks him if he wants any speed, which causes her partner to flinch. Old wounds. Daniel says Sure, and watches the guy, who still looks disapproving, though it changes to confusion as Daniel follows it up with, If he does some, too.
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The partner agrees, and who knows why. Well, either vampire can read for themselves: he is a little drunk and a little stoned, and possesses some anxiety in him that to stop now would be to tumble to the wayside and not enjoy the landing. Historical precedence. Maybe he'll feel better if he does it, anyway. Maybe the night will feel better.
And the gamer they'd intruded on is stoned enough for everyone, passes on a half-hearted offer his way while he grabs the remote for the stereo, drags the volume back down.
On the sofa across the room, while the three on the other side vibe on this new influx of chemical stimulus, the man with Lestat says, "Do you want to—"
And stops speaking when Lestat leans over, brushes his mouth tenderly against his cheek, and then his jaw, and his throat, where he stays. A little gasp beneath the noise of everything but that's all, no screaming or struggle. Look over, and you can make out the way Lestat's exposed throat shifts around long, luxurious swallows, and he gently eases the man back against the arm of the couch as consciousness slowly pools out of him.
Dying, largely unnoticed, a hand gripping a sequined sleeve, a hand that loosens. And Tool cranks itself back up to max volume as it happens.
The stoner swears, and gets up. Moving for the wall, the power outlet. Lestat, without yet lifting his head, flexes his fingers where he has them braced against the couch arm, and the man immediately falls to a knee, gasping around some deep compression around his throat, blocking airways and arteries.
Lestat, finally, looking up. Eyes hooded, mouth wetly crimson, fangs only getting a little bit in the way when he tells him, somehow audible amongst the loud music, "I like this song."
Half-beneath him, a young man takes in his last breaths, eyes glassy.
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Daniel knows right away this is cut heavily with expired and probably off-brand Adderall, which isn't bad, but there's parts relief (nobody needs to actually be cranked on amphetamines right now), and parts exasperation (oh come on, really). A half-distracted check confirms that the woman is doing proper lines in the bathroom, though, which is promising.
"You okay?" he goes to help the stuck-in-place gamer.
He thinks about morality. He can't know if he's for or against this kind of thing without doing it. Keenan's voice croons around perfectly arranged progressive post-metal chords. This kind of thing, with no consideration for who the people are beyond the hedonistic impulse. Not too different than plenty of other things he's done. Daniel blinks and it's the 1970s, blinks back, and he's thinking about what his eyes might look like, because the young man he's looking at is looking at him, terrified at the shift. He thinks of Armand, sitting across from him under a floating library and watching him. Daniel could never figure out what his eyes meant, then. Too dark a color, without the pupil dilation of anger.
He helps the extremely stoned, extremely confused resident up onto his feet and then onto a bar stool wedged near the small kitchen. Hands on his shoulders to steady him, as he starts to laugh. I'm way too high, he says around coughs from being briefly asphyxiated. Daniel touches him as though he's checking to make sure he's alright (and he is, that's what he's doing, until he isn't), before he leans in and sinks his teeth into the soft skin at his throat.
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Some primal, invisible thing, a message of silent warning transmitted between them about where exactly they relate to each other on the food chain. The mortal can't even think about his dead friend, his dying friend, or even his girlfriend in the bathroom. He can think of the front door, of Tool, and his own pounding heart, because he is very certain that the man moving towards him is no kind of man at all, but something else, something otherworldly.
He runs. Lestat moves faster than can be comprehended, and brings the elegant heel of his boot down in such a way that he snaps the ankle of the human, who falls with a loud thump, and gives a voiceless wheezing cry.
'The demoiselle is making herself a delightful cocktail,' tickles at the back of Daniel's mind. Vampire jokes. 'Shall we share?'
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Weird. Comforting? Is this unsettling, or is it how it's supposed to be. Lines in his mental notepad fill out. Behind him, Lestat does some old fashioned violence (opposed to whatever Daniel is doing, whatever he described Armand doing).
Hunger rises up. Young still (which is funny), when he starts it starts to call to him. Familiar like any addiction is familiar, but this is smoother— the pull of the tide tolerates no resistance, and going along is thrilling and it feels correct. Blood is as good as heroin and doesn't leave him hungover. He carefully shifts the victim he's drained onto the outcropping of kitchen bar counter. Awkward, but he'd fall if he tried to leave him on the stool. Unglamorous vampire details.
'Sure,' is a mental laugh, breathless. 'Should probably make sure she doesn't call anybody, too.'
The man on the floor stares up at them as he scrambles at the floor, trying to react. Daniel has a brief unpleasant feeling, a memory he should have had fifty years to process but hasn't. He puts it aside and squats down. Reaches out with one hand.
"Relax," he says, and the man relaxes. Daniel is a little surprised it works.
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A step towards the bathroom pauses in time for a glance backwards, an assessing flick of ice-black eyes from the now calmly crumpled human and the young vampire crouched by him. The sound he makes, a little back of the throat scoff, is probably transparent: a recognisable signature style, from one death to another's impending doom.
He, personally, favours a struggle. Tonight, at least. They've been nearly too efficient, no desperate fights, no screams, no tears, no begging. But, ah, you can't perfectly choreograph these things, and he feels no disappointment for two dead bodies, a subdued third, and his prey waiting for him in the next room, his body flush with new blood, serenely calm with the drifting buzz of the smoke his meal had imbibed. His fangs, long in his mouth, demanding he part his lips.
Annoying, however, to think that Armand would approve in some small way.
Thump thump thump, from the other side of the ceiling from the neighbours upstairs. The universal sign for, turn down your fucking music.
Lestat ignores this, sauntering off down the hallway. Slams open the locked bathroom door with the flat of his hand, to the startled shriek of the woman within. A shriek that turns into angry swearing, that turns into a more terrified scream, and then muffled. Lestat could bid her to relax too, but he doesn't, just drags her back out under an arm, his hand closed around her mouth.
She won't be calling anyone, don't worry. Her little rabbit heart is beating fast from both the lines she's done as well as everything that's happening, her wide eyes darting to the crumpled form of her partner on the ground, the sight of slumped bodies.
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Screams of terror aren't wholly new. Daniel has, so far, preferred to just kind of get it overwith, and so this production is interesting— Relax doesn't hold indefinitely, a little burst of inspired power isn't comparable to real finesse and 500 years of skill, no matter how directly inherited. The man of the house, Mr Relax, frantically pushed up and goes to his girlfriend, adrenaline (and just a little bit of amphetamine) helping him surge past the pain of a badly fucked up ankle.
But he's uneven. Unsteady. Daniel grabbing him by the back of the neck doesn't help. Hands fail, trying to go to her, trying to send a haymaker towards the stunningly strong grandpa who exerts no effort to pull him backwards and towards the sofa? Maybe not the one with his dead friend on it. Floor, maybe. They have a kitschy rug. It ties the room together.
I know the pieces fit, says the stereo. There's a couple stickers on it, practically an antique now, probably bought in 1995, retrofitted for the USB port. One sticker reads I DON'T OFTEN LISTEN TO RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE... BUT WHEN I DO, SO DO MY NEIGHBORS!
Relax is yelling something. Daniel can hear it, but he chooses not to really listen. He's given up trying to fight, instead just reaching for his girlfriend. Daniel shoves him down to his knees.
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Over her head, Lestat's attention is fixed on Daniel. This isn't the first or second time they've shared a meal in this particular fashion, but this feels more to Lestat like a proper hunt, a proper reward, and he grins across at him, bloody fangs taking nothing from the way he can set this kind of look on someone, as if they are the most interesting and most beautiful creature he has ever seen. And don't they feel the same?
Her hair is already pinned up, a plastic clip purchased off a counter for less than a dollar, a riot of bobby pins pulled free in the panic, but not enough to get in the way. She is directed into a neat pirouette, and she is turned to face Lestat. He grips her with one hand, and reaches for Daniel's sleeve to draw him near.
She gives a whimper of terror for the spread of fangs Lestat shows her. He likes to do that. Make their heart go that little bit faster. He selects his side, and sinks a bite into her throat.
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And, because we said both, somewhere far off. Somewhere still mortal. Somewhere in an apartment in San Fransisco. He knows that heartbeat because it was his own. He knows those pathetic gasps and pleads. He knows what it's like to be on the floor and look up and see things that are miles past human. This reaction is why he's kept things quick, so far. Nervous about being caught, nervous about catching himself. Staring too long into himself.
He decides: This isn't more frightening than shooting up unfiltered heroin. This isn't more unsettling than looking at Louis, half-burned, and whispering I don't think your boyfriend is as cool with this as he seemed at the bar.
He can unpack it later, when he isn't starving for it in an ache that's difficult to put into words. Glasses pushed to the top of his head, blood on his mouth. He holds the girl by her shoulders, some fingers over Lestat's, lets himself be pulled. (Of course it's a girl? Is that strange. Another thing in the unpacking, at a later date. Oh, the gender of it all. Her boyfriend sobs.) Fangs sink in. He feels her gasp, rougher with the pain-then-not of two sets, tastes blood and something, a familiar silk-itch. He feels her, and him, her life spilling away, reeling. Bad decisions leave her, hurtling towards a light that's familiar. Should have called her mom. Should have done less acid in high school, more coke in college. I never finished watching Severance, or eating the apple pie in the fridge. Stronger than that: I love you, I love you, please hold my hand. Then nothing.
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She had tasted sweet. Sweeter than the man on the couch. Something in the blood, no build to the transferred high—it simply was not there before, and now is, Lestat feeling his heart start to go, and a breath escapes him. It feels like euphoria, first, from the initial rush of blood drinking, and his hands go out to cradle Daniel's face in both hands, all affection.
A laugh leaving him, clear delight in the bend of his smile, black-smudged eyes. "You have a most ravenous hunger, mon ami," he says, quiet and breathless and still heard amongst the pounding music that suffuses the smokey air. "Enjoy it. This is your obligation."
A terrible keening from the ground. Lestat tips a look to the final victim, shivering and whining. "Do you want him?"
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The dead woman has stumbled to the floor, and Daniel doesn't think much of it. He laughs a little and reaches out, touches Lestat's face and glances a thumb at the edge of some messy eyeliner. He really is stupidly pretty, no wonder Louis spent their entire estrangement up in knots. Drama and pain aside, it's easy to be preoccupied by someone with this magnetism. Possibly thoughts Lestat can hear. A fan of their relationship, despite the things he put down into the book. His bias towards Louis' own biases is considerable.
Hands fall away and he looks down, having forgotten all about the last human. Mr Relax is ignoring them entirely, fishhooked by the sight of his partner.
Too tragic to let him live. And Daniel is still hungry, the endless maw of youth (ha ha) still asking for more, more, more. He thinks he answers yes, but maybe he doesn't. Attention pulled down, and he goes with it, letting the last as-yet-survivor stay beside his girlfriend as he sinks his teeth into his throat. BANG BANG BANG from the upstairs neighbors.
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The sound of gasping, whimpering, swallowing, as Lestat drags la demoiselle to drape her corpse across the couch. His eyes are bright, black ink retracted to summer blue as he glances around the space. Working things out while he utterly fails to catch his breath or allow his heart rate to slow back down.
And as Daniel drinks in the last of his blood, there is the rapid patter of incomprehensible French as Lestat is speaking—to him, presumably, a few gesticulations, the sound of his heavy footsteps as he paces a circle around the living room.
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When will he stop drawing comparisons? Is it because he took Vampirism 101 for two weeks before a 500 year old demon slithered across a penthouse the second the door shut and bit him like a deranged alley cat?
Probably.
Daniel sways back up to his knees, looks down at the lovebirds, together forever. This is pretty fucked up, he thinks, but it feels far away. He touches his face and the blood there, savoring the last of it, its euphoria and chemical kick. The barest hint in Mr Relax, who had deliberately accepted the least amount he could get away with. Still. Enough to put a nice bow on the buzz in Daniel's system. He sighs, letting the feeling sweep over him, resting his hands on his head with fingers looped around his own wrist.
Finally, he clues in to the silence, punctuated by quick-paced French. He cocks his head, eyes shining, glinting.
"All good?"
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But he does say another thing in French, and pause, staring at Daniel for a long moment and then giving out a little flutter of a laugh. Glances away, thinking in silence, and then he points out objects in the room, "Rideaux. Lamp. Sofa. Corpse. Alright," which apparently restores something critical as far as rebooting his second language is concerned.
Rolls his hands on his wrists as he turns back to Daniel. Starting again. "We should hide the bodies by starting a fire," is probably a more succinct version than what he had been monologuing a moment ago. Blood dries in rivulets from his mouth to his chin, one trickle escaped down his neck, into his collar. His fangs have withdrawn.
"Make it appear as an accident. Bad wiring."
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Lestat looks crazy, which is its own kind of pretty. Daniel does not think about the drugs, because there was so little, and because the effect on his own system is so enjoyable. He thinks clearer courtesy of the amphetamines, which makes it even easier than usual to recall the building map he'd looked at on their way in. Taking notes for Future Daniel, who has now arrived.
"I can just go pull the drive off the security system," he says, "and the landlord will practically cover this thing up himself. This is a family-sized unit in Manhattan, it'll turn over in about ten minutes even if the corpses are still in here."
He's on his feet, only taking a moment with it, arms stretched out, feeling slightly floaty from blood and the buzz of it. Not really high. Barely-there, pleasant, he'd usually prefer more for a mild hit, but it's probably for the best that nobody get actually smashed.
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So. He tips his head, considering this likelihood, Daniel's comme ci comme ça certainty, the way he had sensed none of these people had the kind of strong external connections to evoke a mass outcry at their collective perishments. Among his reasons for choosing them. Others including, he had sensed Daniel would charm them well in his little outfit, his wit, the promise of a wealth of interesting experiences and stories, the promise of an anecdote never to be shared. And he was right.
Oh, and the guitar.
"Bien," he says, with a one-shouldered shrug. "Excusez-moi."
A normal step, and then he vanishes into a cartoon blur of motion. Another slamming open of a door. The sound of a bedroom getting carelessly ransacked.
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"Are you—"
Still set on stealing a guitar? From the scene of a crime?? Well. Alright.
"Okay," he calls. "Entertain yourself for a minute."
Getting used to speeding around, still, but he's improving. Only little bits of the 'drunk in a roller rink' effect as he goes to run this vandalism errand. There's a thrilling edge to navigating it will buzzed, missing a neighbor, the sound of all the other neighbors (fuck, they cannot burn this building down, there are way too many people). The security room is also a maintenance closet and the locked doorknob crumbles under a twist. Early 2000s technology inside is an exciting sight. He doesn't even have to guess anything.
Surely everything is going to look very normal when he pops back upstairs!
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Lestat has returned to the living room, kneeling on the ground over an opened guitar case, surrounded by corpses. Within, the guitar itself, a beautiful instrument with the hotly contested Johnny Cash signature scrawled on polished wood, tones of sunrise. Lestat has yet to take it out, very gently touching the strings with the tips of his fingers, setting them to little thrumming sounds.
He looks up as Daniel returns. "It needs tuning," he says, a judgmental slant in his voice that indicates this dead bitch never played it. He closes the case, snapping it locked, and gathers it into his arms, pleased him himself.
Flows to his feet, a preternatural quality to the way he goes from kneeling to standing.
"You can lead the hunt next time," generous, a flick of his hand, "but I think this suited us well, non?" He is definitely Frencher on speed. Why? Who knows. The quick patter of the language, maybe. "Will Louis be home now, do you think? And I still think a fire would be best but mais je m'en remets à votre jugement. If we are hunted down by the police you can explain the misunderstanding."
Pacing out into the hallway, bringing a hand up to smear aside some of the blood on his face.
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As does the mellow marijuana undercurrent beneath the eye-shining awareness of probably-mostly-Adderall. It's cool, whatever, his smile is lopsided and bizarrely fond as the elder vampire manages to skitter gracefully. It does, finally, occur to him that Lestat is perhaps feeling the drugs, which is—
Surprising, somehow? To be inspected later. He huffs a quiet laugh, done for a second, and when he's back in the hallway he has a damp hand town. "Come here, you're a mess." They can't walk out of here covered in blood. Even with the shitty CCTV disabled, somebody might see them. "Louis' probably around, I don't know if he even went anywhere. He brought the salad bar with him from the Emirates."
The police are a potential concern, especially with Lestat stealing a recognizable collector's item that probably exists prominently on this guy's social media. But he's pretty sure Louis knows guys, so uh, yeah, hopefully Louis is back by now, if indeed he was out elsewhere for long.
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and tip his head at that, and turns back on a heel, guitar swinging from the handle in his grip. "The Slavic prostitute and the refrigerator full of O negative, yes, I remember. He has become quite particular, hasn't he?"
A little amused, a little exasperated. What is Lestat to do?
He could feel worse about it, but not tonight. His command over time and space feels uniquely liquid, and Daniel thinks he is pretty and charming, and he has a new guitar that he can sense Daniel would prefer he leave behind, or at least thinks he probably should, but he will not.
"We won't be seen," Lestat says, landing a hand on Daniel's arm. "Trust your elders." Claps that hand, allons-y, out the door.
And yes, two flights down, a couple coming up the stairs, dog-tired at this hour. They freeze in place before Lestat veers the corner with his thumping footsteps, completely unseeing and practically frozen in time as he swans by, pivoting on a step to wink up at Daniel—see?—before he follows an impulse, levers himself over the railing, drops out of sight.
A loud thump of a landing below.
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Just eat somebody in the wild, Louis. You are gorgeous and charming, you could even leave them alive, and they'd think it was a horny, weird, but still horny, dream.
Anyway.
For a second, Daniel thinks he's about to be dragged like a cartoon character, but instead he finds himself bolting after a potentially cranked on speed (it wasn't that much speed) vampire hoisting a stolen guitar. He stops at the railing in the stairwell and looks down after his action movie escape, laughing despite himself.
"Okay," he calls, "but we can't jog all the way back and freeze people like it's a game of tag."
Maybe in rural Nebraska. There's like ten people there. Daniel thinks about it— oh, fuck, fine, it's not like it's going to hurt, is it? And hops up and over.
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"Next time we'll take the rooftops," he proposes. "When I have less valuable trophies in my possession."
That would be fun. That would be fun right now, actually, burn off some energy by leaping from building to building. He feels his own heart leap after the idea, still fast in his chest. What all did that girl put in her bloodstream, anyway? It has entirely replaced the lethargic pleasantness of the first man's blood, and if he was any hungrier, he might propose a second spree.
But also, Louis is certainly back at the hotel, and in the confusion tangle of impulses, the true north lure of reuniting with him now that the hunt is over is the only stable point. So—
"A car, then?" he asks, as he propels them out into the late night/early, early morning street.
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"Trophies?"
Plural? What else did you take??
"Car, yeah—" Easy enough to flag down a cab, even while looking completely hammered alongside a man with cumbersome luggage. There's a knack to pointed hailing, no vampire seduction required. "Though I don't know how well I float. Clouds are better on the internet." Ha ha, a joke, for him. Then the cab, and he leans against the side of it to ask through the window, "You're good with cash, right?"
Everybody says 'Right', unless they're Uber. Fucking Uber.
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This, Lestat is saying while already opening the trunk of the cab whether or not the driver is good with cash, storing the guitar case inside. He has long forgotten the details of their kill, the brush stubble on the cheek of the man who had been calculating the likelihood of a blowjob and whose thoughts had pivoted to some relief he won't have to contend with his credit card debt, the mournful thoughts of apple pie in the fridge. He remembers, though, that he will need to look up the artist they were listening to.
The driver is good with cash. Daniel, progressing into the backseat, and immediately Lestat must contend with the prospect of climbing in after him. Instead, the door snaps closed behind Daniel without Lestat following.
A quick little nudge of—well, mind gift, telekinesis, whatever, unlocking the driver's door and hauling it open, Lestat ducking down to pin the startled driver with a smile. Blood between his teeth, still. "Do you mind, dearest?" he asks, with an inelegant shove of willpower that has the driver making an ungainly climb from the driver's seat into the passenger's. Not frightened, just accommodating, forceful enough that the driver is fumbling to unlock the next door to get out of it.
Perhaps Daniel will decide whether they're just going on a joyride or wholesale stealing a car, Lestat distracted from the details as he climbs into the driver's seat, his priority the radio.
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i hope he has a keytar in s3
theremin
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