"And I can't even test you, because you could make anything up and I wouldn't know."
Daniel is also more than capable of lighting his own cigarette ('thanks', at Lestat, as he frees one), because he has a lighter. Behold, the miracle of fire. And because of tag turn order, despite the reluctance to engage in any meta cuddling due to not being quite oblivious enough tonight, he gets to engage in some incidentally sexually coded visual language. Clickclack, easy, a Zippo that looks as old as he is, leaning over with it and its tiny flame for Louis' cigarette.
Lights his own after. Nice to not worry about lung disease, with these. A wonder he didn't die of cancer or literal brain rot or a million other things years ago.
A quick scope of the seats to check they're not full of rainwater and filth before Lestat sits down, kicking his feet up, all elegance in spite of the surroundings.
"So we should never go sailing," a sigh, like it was a possibility, "or else spend eternity hopelessly adrift, drinking the blood of porpoises and sea turtles."
Terrible fate. He tips his head to consider the current subject of conversation.
"Two centuries," he says, "and I think I am used to it, but only because I don't remember seeing how it was before." Indicates with a loose gesture, the night sky rendered in phosphorescent galactic colours that only vampiric eyes can see. As pretty and as wildly abstract as any painting beneath their feet. "But those first nights, I remember clearly. When the horror lifts its veil, and everything is beautiful beneath."
A little flick of a glance to Louis, as if to assess whether or not he agrees, but a shift to Daniel. "Has the charm worn off yet, fledgling?"
Louis, inhaling a deep drag off his cigarette, circling to lean against the ledge. Watch Lestat. Watch Daniel.
Let his own thoughts wander to that first night. The descriptions he'd given to Daniel, a heady rush through experience after experience after experience. Lestat's face, silhouetted against the moon, impossibly beautiful. He'd glowed, Louis recalls. They'd been laughing, Louis stumbing, Lestat's hands steadying him as Louis tripped through the night.
Warmth in his expression, a reserved smile, but the silence maintains. It's for Daniel to answer. Louis flicks ash. Blows a ring of smoke. Waits.
Kind of amused, kind of eyerolling. Weirdest terminology, though he supposes they're as un-insulting as it can get.
"I'm kind of fucked if it has, right?"
No take-backs. He is stuck this way, unless he opens the curtains at high noon. Uninterested in romanticizing his experience, he has no words, even fake ones, for his first nights, and for whatever moment he was supposed to have realizing the world looked difference and being entranced by it. Daniel had other things to worry about at the time.
With no irony: it's fine. He figured it out. He likes this better than dying of Parkinson's. He likes this better than a lot of things.
"I have plenty of time to get bored of it all, eventually. Not in a hurry to get there."
A beat, a head tip, a miscalculation? Maybe? Not that Lestat was fishing for an answer in specific so much as he had anticipated a different one and finds what he gets instead differently interesting as a result—an evasion, of kinds, even as he confirms that the charm continues. Agreement, but held in reservation.
Is it because of Louis, standing here, rather than them alone? Some other thing? He could beam these queries or an impression of them into Daniel's head, past the constant veil he has pulled over his own mind, but perhaps there will be a better time to draw it out of him.
Very gently works the filtered end of his cigarette between his teeth with the quirk of a smile. "We can all keep each other entertained," Lestat says, "I'm sure."
Louis is looking at Daniel, recalling Dubai, his balcony, the profession: The vampire is bored.
Louis had been speaking of the collective.
Louis had been speaking of himself.
Daniel is omitting. Louis searches his face, but he too does not press. Does not reach after whatever it was Daniel found when he opened his eyes that first time.
"Daniel still intends a sequel, I assume," Louis offers. "So yes, I imagine we will keep each other busy for some time to the come."
Maybe Daniel still banks on the possibility that Louis likes him, likes talking to him. That perhaps a second book follows the first because Louis is starting fires, picking fights. Because the first book had been edited and a second book may not be.
You were still in the building, reminds Armand's voice in Louis' head. He flicks ash into the dark. Tucks this too away deep in his chest.
Dramatic old people. Daniel is fine, and he did mean both micro and macro, anyway. (It's not that it's traumatic, it's that it's his business, is all.) Having fun not dying, and having fun hanging out.
"Oh, I'm definitely putting out a purely fictionalized one as a sequel," he says, even though this is not true, because Daniel would explode and die, he cannot let any little obfuscation go, the most annoying kind of investigator, "just to confuse all the very angry vampires further."
In sentiment, Lestat is only as sincere as Daniel's proposition to get into YA vampire romance, but also: what is he, chopped liver, you guys. He is the most interesting girl in the world, sitting right here.
"Perhaps Broadway. Or an MTV special." Leans to tap ash, respectfully, into one of the touristy ashtrays available. "Vampires on ice."
A familiar, mirrored look reflected back to Daniel: You're so annoying, but deeply fond. Affectionate.
"I'd have thought you'd prefer a concept album."
As Louis straightens gracefully from his slanting lean to cross the space between the three of them. Settle in the chair alongside Lestat. Look up at Daniel expectantly.
The most interesting girl in the world who doesn't want a book, what the hell is Daniel supposed to do with Lestat on Ice. You can't interview somebody during their interpretive ice dance.
MTV special has merit, though.
"Rock musicals are a thing," he notes. "Talk us through your Act I. An illustrious birth? In medias res, decades into your adventures?"
Alright, alright, he sits.
(Meanwhile: a few blocks away, perhaps near the liquor store they can't easily reach, something observes three vampires dicking around on a museum roof.)
"That too," breezily, at Louis' suggestion. An artful splay of his fingers, cigarette still caught securely as Lestat explains, "But I require a visual medium as accompaniment."
Otherwise, what a travesty.
A thoughtful hum after the concept of a rock musical, blowing a stream of smoke skywards as he considers. "What was the first song for Jesus Christ Superstar?" That he looks to Louis is perhaps the wrong direction. "That one begins mid-adventures, skips the Christmas era. And anyway," a shrug, "a vampire's story only properly begins when they are made."
(Triangulation. Another pair wait in a car a block in another direction, and at a psychic summon, they slither out from it, silent compared to the slam of metal doors which is, anyway, lost in a city that does not sleep.)
"Pyrotechnics," thinking out loud. A little morbid, but he's allowed.
A flex of a smile, even if the memory itself is now complicated. All good memories of the past seventy-seven years are now, cast in uncertainty or mired in the magnitude of the foundational lie from which seventy-seven years of companionship had risen.
Still, a memory: tickets tucked into the breast pocket of Louis' coat, joining a crowd, leaning forward at the overture in spite of himself. The twitch of smile on Armand's face, though Louis isn't certain now if it had been approval of some stage direction or something else, some private amusement.
Lestat says Pyrotechnics and Louis' smile widens slightly, gives a shake of his head. Yes, morbid. Doubtful that Lestat will be dissuaded from the concept if it truly appeals, so—
"Heaven on Their Minds," Louis supplies, a quiet side contribution to a conversation that feels to be winding to a specific topic.
Daniel, interviewing Lestat. Louis has not thought about it at length, but has the sense he should remove himself from any earnest discussions of the prospect. Lestat deserves his odyssey without the weight of Louis in the room, interfere even in that small way.
(They will scale the sides of this building, force their way inside, and paint the walls with his blood, Armand had said. Louis had not contradicted him.
Here and now, the walls of the Met are infinitely scale-able, architecture lending itself to the ambitious. ]
"I've seen that one, but I don't remember it," Daniel says gamely. "I think I've seen it, anyway. I was out of my mind. Could have been Godspell."
Or, like, literally anything. There are whole books he doesn't remember writing. Cocaine, man. Meanwhile, Lestat sidewinding his way into a comparison to Jesus is pretty funny.
"Both of them got shit for not featuring the resurrection of Christ, though, right? There's a vampire joke in there somewhere."
Speaking of pyrotechnics. Clickclick, from not too far away, but far further than a human could hear. A failed attempt. Another clickclick, and a tiny sound, fire catching to cloth. A tiny thing, but possibly enough of a tell; a barely-there warning, before the Molotov is sailing through the air. (Missing pieces of this would-be narrative. A vodka bottle.) Again, from further away than a human would be able to throw it. Giving this prong of the pincer breathing room so that they themselves are not in immediate dangers of singed fingers. An athletic hurl up, up, with enough force that it gains unreasonable speed on the downward curve aimed directly at the trio of trespassing undead.
Lestat has pivoted a look to Louis, meanwhile, amusement clear in his expression as he assesses the likelihood of Louis developing a love for musical theatre and how well this can be exploited. It's a good thing, too, because otherwise he would not have caught the sight of a streak of flame hurtling past the edge of the rooftop. If he had to rely on his ears alone, he might not have caught it in time.
His expression empties out, tense, a baffled look upwards. Instinct, next, something like raising his matchlock towards the quail spooked out of hiding from the brush, save that the only thing that moves is a finger before the Molotov explodes into a fireball high above. Glass rains down in all directions, some stinging spatters of flame, but the most of it more powerfully vaporised than the shred of burning fabric would have induced.
Lestat is standing already when the sound of scrabbling claws and boots nears them from the opposite side of the building, drawing his focus before a second flaming bottle chases the last.
Dubai was so, so quiet. (Quiet for Louis, from his high perch.) New York is noise and life and movement. Louis does not hear the bottle. He sees Lestat's expression change, and something in his body comes alert, bright and hot, sharpening everything around them as Lestat's hand lifts.
Glass clatters to the rooftop. Catches in Louis' hair as he pivots, already in motion, moving towards the scrabbling sound of claws. A brief moment in time as Louis turns reveals bared fangs, the hiss of fury lost as he blurs across the space.
No need for anyone to exert themselves. Louis can so kindly assist with a hand up. Whether the limb remains attached after, however—
All of it, so fast. An explosion overhead, Louis bolting. Hissing and the sound of collision and sudden smells of blood and kerosene. Daniel backs up from the shrapnel, further when he realizes another projectile is on its way — stars, pretty and interesting, but he's used to looking at those; he is less used to having to track things moving like this, even though he's capable, now. A flash of disorienting compensation as his brain accepts it and questions it at once.
Weird!
Behind him, THUNKCRACK, and Daniel turns to see a vampire, fangs out and eyes sulfur-yellow, having leapt from whence the bottles came.
"Tibor Halilovic," he says, recognizing the guy from his tracking after getting into the phone he confiscated from his would-be assailant back in Atlanta. It makes the vampire pause, an obvious mental stutter - why the fuck does the writer know who he is, why is he saying so, what the hell - and Daniel moves away, lightning-fast. Because what else is he going to do? A couple bar fights that were just the cost of doing business back in the day, a few punches thrown on principle here and there. As noted early in the evening, I think I'd have just fallen over and died from any expectation of martial prowess.
He tells himself not to get cornered. Tries to do a headcount. Four? Two sets of two. He casts about mentally, searching for more.
Things to consider: is there a difference, between the circumstances of this attack and the one that came before? There are three of them now rather than when there had thought only to be Daniel, so they must know. Are numbers on their side? Is there about to be a swarming coven flooding the rooftop? Some other thing, some other unknown advantage?
All very interesting.
No time to form conclusions. No time to even think out these questions in full, spark bright synapse firings alone as Lestat grasps and throws Monsieur Halilovic into the concrete wall of the bulkhead. An exchange of hissing. Claws, digging in, and Lestat's jaws closing around the man's voicebox like a lion on a gazelle, tearing flesh and arteries and muscle until only gasping, gurgling gore is left behind.
Just a sampling taste. This one is young, closer to Daniel than Louis. He suspects most of them will be, with the latest boom of turnings. But a hair raising presence of something else, a flex of power.
Distractions. That is the difference. These ones on the rooftop with them are distractions.
But effective distractions, and knowing this, being sure of it, doesn't make them less distracting. Two more on top of the four, and—Lestat laughs, actually, because they are holding swords, and that's adorable, and funnier still for tonight's conversations. Perhaps they knew! Anyway, Lestat takes one, admires it as the vampire screams in pain from the way his elbow has been rent into spaghetti.
'I think this is a precursor,' casual, in Daniel's mind.
On the far side of the roof, Louis is entertaining.
One of the pair is long gone, screaming through the air, a perfect arc of blood spurting from where an arm had once been. Alive, perhaps, upon landing, but with a different set of problems. The arm flops to the rooftop, discarded as Louis grapples with the second of the two.
Aware of Lestat, of Daniel. The clang of metal prickles at the edge of his awareness, but single-minded focus maintains as Louis snarls into the face.
A child, something in the back of his head supplies. Louis can be surprised by it later, the easy flex of power in that comparison.
He gets holds of this vampire by the lapels, swinging him up and up off his feet into the air. Sends a blast of fire after him. Vampiric skeet-shooting.
'Lestat thinks something bigger is coming', Daniel passes on to Louis, a quick affirmative back to Lestat at the same time. (Good thing he's feeling better.) (probably) (lol Armand)
None of this is great, and it's all horrifying, and it's one thing being saved in a dark alley like a thriller movie but this. Fire and limbs and fountains of blood from screaming monsters. Daniel is stunned where he is, by the door, as he watches an armless vampire scramble with one set of claws back up the fire escape, shrieking and bleeding everywhere, less intent on fighting as he is on getting to the severed limb.
Something, not speech, a feeling—?
A cold phantom caress up his spine into his head. A sickly thing, and Daniel experiences a surreal moment where he remembers a conversation that he knows never happened, a pale-eyed woman with long, dark hair looking at him and saying I see, they did turn you. Irish, worn down? Way north, Donegal maybe.
'Yep,' is what he says to Lestat, while trying to follow the awful feeling.
Lestat takes the head off a vampire with a cleaving overhand of his new sword. He is certain no fencing masters advise that maneuver, but it does the task.
Hears snarling and tearing, smells fire and scorching flesh, takes a moment to glance towards the ferocious and beautiful display of Louis' present bloodbath, the arc of a ragdolled figure immolating in the air and disappearing, screaming and trailing smoke, over the side and to the street below. That was good, very extravagant. They should make out, perhaps.
Except there is something bigger coming, and Daniel's confirmation draws his attention, sharp, fangs coated red and at their full hunting length, eyes black.
Two more of them on this side. The other sword-wielder is making a run for Louis, the other circling around for Daniel, not yet closing in. The first seems a little to Lestat like a moth insisting on immolating itself on a candleflame, and so begins for the second—and stops, looks up, following instinct like hairs prickling at the back of his neck.
Up on the bulkhead, a woman, crouching calmly as if she'd been there the whole time. Long dark hair, pale eyes, claws grasping the concrete edge in front of her, and considering Lestat who considers her back. He takes a step forward, and a minor flex of her fingers sends a flex of telekinetic force his way, knocking him off his feet and pinning him to the floor, like an invisible stake rammed through his back. Claws rake white stripes across the ground in a fury.
She looks towards Louis, next. 'Come with me,' a murmur in his mind, mild, nearly bored in affect. Effort exerted to keep a snarling Lestat down, her eyes vibrating in their sockets. 'Or I'll burn the fledgling.'
Daniel will feel it, then, like a little ember nesting in his chest, warming up.
The sword-wielder goes up in flame before he reaches Louis, pragmatism winning out over Louis' need for spectacle, for a bloodbath so extravagant that it would deter any further attempts. A shrieking, billowing pillar of flame, thrashing into ash on the rooftop as Louis bends to fling the severed limb over the edge of the roof. Tidy.
And then: something bigger.
Something bigger exudes a familiar calm. Calm that comes, perhaps, from the certainty that any inconvenience can simply be rendered into ash with a thought. Louis thinks, briefly, of Armand. Of San Francisco. Of a closed door.
Louis straightens. His palms burn. There is blood streaked down one side of his face, cheek and chin slick with gore. He is looking back at her as she touches his mind, makes her offer. Her promise. Louis' eyes flick to Lestat, pinned to the roof. Looks to Daniel, knowing already what Daniel will say and discarding it.
Daniel has to live. Lestat has to live.
Louis should have stayed in Dubai. A more defensible position, less immediate threat to those he loves most in this world. Takes the running leap to deposit himself gracefully alongside her, to leave Daniel and Lestat on the rooftop behind.
Don't keep me waiting, Louis prompts, less for her and more a ward against whatever Daniel is about to do, whatever Lestat is about to attempt. Call off your dogs, and go.
"You fucking asshole," is immediate, impassioned, furious. His voice almost cracks with it, ripped out of him like a gunshot. He's not talking to the mysterious elder vampire, he's talking to Louis. Understanding in an instant.
In his head—
It had hurt when he pushed Armand away from Louis' mind, might have crippled him if it hadn't been an incident akin to a cat toying with a prey animal, and he doesn't want to end up cripple. Better than being immolated, better than Louis being taken, Louis doing this stupid, suicidal thing, and Daniel doesn't even believe he's just doing it to agree to a goddamn ransom— he knows Louis has been spoiling for a fight, restless and desperate for it, and now he's veering off alone at the first opportunity You asshole you asshole you asshole.
The vampire making his way towards him stumbles like his knees have given out. Daniel has bad aim. The shove to push the flaw-finding spark inside of him out is like a brick dropped into a bathtub, backlash spraying over the both of them.
The smallest flinch from the woman. Startled by the interruption, her attention swivels to Daniel and into his head, and Daniel wants to fucking know but flinches back internally, unable to control the force of his instinctive recoil. Her curiosity is slippery and cold and he feels the shape of a word in his mouth, Heresy, and he realizes something the same moment she realizes something (not the same something), and she tips her head, long hair sweeping over her side, before she stands. An elegant hand lays on Louis' arm, and she tugs him away.
Nearly Louis' name, the thing Lestat bellows in anguished protest, not quite enough air in his lungs to form it. His nails make frantic marks on the concrete beneath him in whining scrapes, gathering white dust beneath his claws. The pleasant sadism of some casual violence against those weaker than they (most of they) has vanished as he applies muscle and fury against the power keeping him pinned, which feels as much like physical force as it does a trick in his mind.
He can't see well from this angle, but he can sense their departure. Fury increases tenfold, another tear of sound past bared, bloodied fangs. He gets a shoulder up, an elbow against the ground. But something in him has been told to stay down, and it is as far as he can get.
(She hooks an arm around Louis with all the matter of fact ease of the long lived, and leaps. A waiting truck below. Titanium chains and paralytics. Young ones below, wary and spooked and exuberant.)
It might take a second, for Lestat to become more useful than a wild animal lashing at the end of an invisible chain.
One left, the guy who'd stumbled, staring after his leader with a perplexed expression at being left behind. Daniel throws a hand out, catches him in the throat, claws going in first. Skin and sinew split and blood gushes out, he makes a fist around the windpipe and pulls, yanking out the fleshy cartilage tube and strips of muscle. The vampire makes a horrendous sound and falls to the ground, wracked with spasms from a wound that, while not fatal, is not going to heal enough to make him functional anytime in the next several months.
Good enough for now. Daniel is otherwise preoccupied with Lestat, feeling the block on his brain and—
Gonna hurt. He reaches in anyway, into the psychic tangle, grabs Lestat's proverbial hand, come on, just shrug it off, you can, you can—
"I only have one emergency contact, get the fuck up."
A threat to call Armand has to work.
And then!
Daniel realizes he has more than one emergency contact, swears, and fumbles with bloody hands for his phone.
It feels like Daniel is levering open a bear trap, just as ready to snap back and crush if it slips. This is not true, probably, but the command shivers, tense, as it's drawn back.
Enough braincells align on Lestat's end of things, not not induced by the threat of an Armand summoning, and there is the sense for Daniel of clawing hands climbing up his arm as he assists in his own rescue. Up on all fours, one foot sliding out and a knee striking concrete as if operating under heavy gravity, but here, he is fine, eyes wild with rageful blood tears and fangs long enough in his mouth that it distorts his words as he says—
"I'm going," informative, as assuring as words through gritted teeth can be, and maybe as much to himself as to Daniel. The hilt of the sword is snatched at, metal scraping along as he works on getting his feet under him. No idea what's happening with the phone, who could possibly help in this moment, shoved aside as irrelevant as the last of that odd sense of gravity is shaken loose.
He had heard a revved engine, a sliding metal door. He can scent the elder vampire on the wind, and Louis, through the smells of blood and scorched vampire flesh, and it won't last. But it's a start.
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Daniel is also more than capable of lighting his own cigarette ('thanks', at Lestat, as he frees one), because he has a lighter. Behold, the miracle of fire. And because of tag turn order, despite the reluctance to engage in any meta cuddling due to not being quite oblivious enough tonight, he gets to engage in some incidentally sexually coded visual language. Clickclack, easy, a Zippo that looks as old as he is, leaning over with it and its tiny flame for Louis' cigarette.
Lights his own after. Nice to not worry about lung disease, with these. A wonder he didn't die of cancer or literal brain rot or a million other things years ago.
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"So we should never go sailing," a sigh, like it was a possibility, "or else spend eternity hopelessly adrift, drinking the blood of porpoises and sea turtles."
Terrible fate. He tips his head to consider the current subject of conversation.
"Two centuries," he says, "and I think I am used to it, but only because I don't remember seeing how it was before." Indicates with a loose gesture, the night sky rendered in phosphorescent galactic colours that only vampiric eyes can see. As pretty and as wildly abstract as any painting beneath their feet. "But those first nights, I remember clearly. When the horror lifts its veil, and everything is beautiful beneath."
A little flick of a glance to Louis, as if to assess whether or not he agrees, but a shift to Daniel. "Has the charm worn off yet, fledgling?"
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Louis, inhaling a deep drag off his cigarette, circling to lean against the ledge. Watch Lestat. Watch Daniel.
Let his own thoughts wander to that first night. The descriptions he'd given to Daniel, a heady rush through experience after experience after experience. Lestat's face, silhouetted against the moon, impossibly beautiful. He'd glowed, Louis recalls. They'd been laughing, Louis stumbing, Lestat's hands steadying him as Louis tripped through the night.
Warmth in his expression, a reserved smile, but the silence maintains. It's for Daniel to answer. Louis flicks ash. Blows a ring of smoke. Waits.
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Kind of amused, kind of eyerolling. Weirdest terminology, though he supposes they're as un-insulting as it can get.
"I'm kind of fucked if it has, right?"
No take-backs. He is stuck this way, unless he opens the curtains at high noon. Uninterested in romanticizing his experience, he has no words, even fake ones, for his first nights, and for whatever moment he was supposed to have realizing the world looked difference and being entranced by it. Daniel had other things to worry about at the time.
With no irony: it's fine. He figured it out. He likes this better than dying of Parkinson's. He likes this better than a lot of things.
"I have plenty of time to get bored of it all, eventually. Not in a hurry to get there."
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Is it because of Louis, standing here, rather than them alone? Some other thing? He could beam these queries or an impression of them into Daniel's head, past the constant veil he has pulled over his own mind, but perhaps there will be a better time to draw it out of him.
Very gently works the filtered end of his cigarette between his teeth with the quirk of a smile. "We can all keep each other entertained," Lestat says, "I'm sure."
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Louis had been speaking of the collective.
Louis had been speaking of himself.
Daniel is omitting. Louis searches his face, but he too does not press. Does not reach after whatever it was Daniel found when he opened his eyes that first time.
"Daniel still intends a sequel, I assume," Louis offers. "So yes, I imagine we will keep each other busy for some time to the come."
Maybe Daniel still banks on the possibility that Louis likes him, likes talking to him. That perhaps a second book follows the first because Louis is starting fires, picking fights. Because the first book had been edited and a second book may not be.
You were still in the building, reminds Armand's voice in Louis' head. He flicks ash into the dark. Tucks this too away deep in his chest.
no subject
"Oh, I'm definitely putting out a purely fictionalized one as a sequel," he says, even though this is not true, because Daniel would explode and die, he cannot let any little obfuscation go, the most annoying kind of investigator, "just to confuse all the very angry vampires further."
It'd be funny, though.
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In sentiment, Lestat is only as sincere as Daniel's proposition to get into YA vampire romance, but also: what is he, chopped liver, you guys. He is the most interesting girl in the world, sitting right here.
"Perhaps Broadway. Or an MTV special." Leans to tap ash, respectfully, into one of the touristy ashtrays available. "Vampires on ice."
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"I'd have thought you'd prefer a concept album."
As Louis straightens gracefully from his slanting lean to cross the space between the three of them. Settle in the chair alongside Lestat. Look up at Daniel expectantly.
Well? Sit.
no subject
MTV special has merit, though.
"Rock musicals are a thing," he notes. "Talk us through your Act I. An illustrious birth? In medias res, decades into your adventures?"
Alright, alright, he sits.
(Meanwhile: a few blocks away, perhaps near the liquor store they can't easily reach, something observes three vampires dicking around on a museum roof.)
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Otherwise, what a travesty.
A thoughtful hum after the concept of a rock musical, blowing a stream of smoke skywards as he considers. "What was the first song for Jesus Christ Superstar?" That he looks to Louis is perhaps the wrong direction. "That one begins mid-adventures, skips the Christmas era. And anyway," a shrug, "a vampire's story only properly begins when they are made."
(Triangulation. Another pair wait in a car a block in another direction, and at a psychic summon, they slither out from it, silent compared to the slam of metal doors which is, anyway, lost in a city that does not sleep.)
"Pyrotechnics," thinking out loud. A little morbid, but he's allowed.
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Still, a memory: tickets tucked into the breast pocket of Louis' coat, joining a crowd, leaning forward at the overture in spite of himself. The twitch of smile on Armand's face, though Louis isn't certain now if it had been approval of some stage direction or something else, some private amusement.
Lestat says Pyrotechnics and Louis' smile widens slightly, gives a shake of his head. Yes, morbid. Doubtful that Lestat will be dissuaded from the concept if it truly appeals, so—
"Heaven on Their Minds," Louis supplies, a quiet side contribution to a conversation that feels to be winding to a specific topic.
Daniel, interviewing Lestat. Louis has not thought about it at length, but has the sense he should remove himself from any earnest discussions of the prospect. Lestat deserves his odyssey without the weight of Louis in the room, interfere even in that small way.
(They will scale the sides of this building, force their way inside, and paint the walls with his blood, Armand had said. Louis had not contradicted him.
Here and now, the walls of the Met are infinitely scale-able, architecture lending itself to the ambitious. ]
no subject
Or, like, literally anything. There are whole books he doesn't remember writing. Cocaine, man. Meanwhile, Lestat sidewinding his way into a comparison to Jesus is pretty funny.
"Both of them got shit for not featuring the resurrection of Christ, though, right? There's a vampire joke in there somewhere."
Speaking of pyrotechnics. Clickclick, from not too far away, but far further than a human could hear. A failed attempt. Another clickclick, and a tiny sound, fire catching to cloth. A tiny thing, but possibly enough of a tell; a barely-there warning, before the Molotov is sailing through the air. (Missing pieces of this would-be narrative. A vodka bottle.) Again, from further away than a human would be able to throw it. Giving this prong of the pincer breathing room so that they themselves are not in immediate dangers of singed fingers. An athletic hurl up, up, with enough force that it gains unreasonable speed on the downward curve aimed directly at the trio of trespassing undead.
no subject
His expression empties out, tense, a baffled look upwards. Instinct, next, something like raising his matchlock towards the quail spooked out of hiding from the brush, save that the only thing that moves is a finger before the Molotov explodes into a fireball high above. Glass rains down in all directions, some stinging spatters of flame, but the most of it more powerfully vaporised than the shred of burning fabric would have induced.
Lestat is standing already when the sound of scrabbling claws and boots nears them from the opposite side of the building, drawing his focus before a second flaming bottle chases the last.
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Glass clatters to the rooftop. Catches in Louis' hair as he pivots, already in motion, moving towards the scrabbling sound of claws. A brief moment in time as Louis turns reveals bared fangs, the hiss of fury lost as he blurs across the space.
No need for anyone to exert themselves. Louis can so kindly assist with a hand up. Whether the limb remains attached after, however—
no subject
Weird!
Behind him, THUNKCRACK, and Daniel turns to see a vampire, fangs out and eyes sulfur-yellow, having leapt from whence the bottles came.
"Tibor Halilovic," he says, recognizing the guy from his tracking after getting into the phone he confiscated from his would-be assailant back in Atlanta. It makes the vampire pause, an obvious mental stutter - why the fuck does the writer know who he is, why is he saying so, what the hell - and Daniel moves away, lightning-fast. Because what else is he going to do? A couple bar fights that were just the cost of doing business back in the day, a few punches thrown on principle here and there. As noted early in the evening, I think I'd have just fallen over and died from any expectation of martial prowess.
He tells himself not to get cornered. Tries to do a headcount. Four? Two sets of two. He casts about mentally, searching for more.
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All very interesting.
No time to form conclusions. No time to even think out these questions in full, spark bright synapse firings alone as Lestat grasps and throws Monsieur Halilovic into the concrete wall of the bulkhead. An exchange of hissing. Claws, digging in, and Lestat's jaws closing around the man's voicebox like a lion on a gazelle, tearing flesh and arteries and muscle until only gasping, gurgling gore is left behind.
Just a sampling taste. This one is young, closer to Daniel than Louis. He suspects most of them will be, with the latest boom of turnings. But a hair raising presence of something else, a flex of power.
Distractions. That is the difference. These ones on the rooftop with them are distractions.
But effective distractions, and knowing this, being sure of it, doesn't make them less distracting. Two more on top of the four, and—Lestat laughs, actually, because they are holding swords, and that's adorable, and funnier still for tonight's conversations. Perhaps they knew! Anyway, Lestat takes one, admires it as the vampire screams in pain from the way his elbow has been rent into spaghetti.
'I think this is a precursor,' casual, in Daniel's mind.
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One of the pair is long gone, screaming through the air, a perfect arc of blood spurting from where an arm had once been. Alive, perhaps, upon landing, but with a different set of problems. The arm flops to the rooftop, discarded as Louis grapples with the second of the two.
Aware of Lestat, of Daniel. The clang of metal prickles at the edge of his awareness, but single-minded focus maintains as Louis snarls into the face.
A child, something in the back of his head supplies. Louis can be surprised by it later, the easy flex of power in that comparison.
He gets holds of this vampire by the lapels, swinging him up and up off his feet into the air. Sends a blast of fire after him. Vampiric skeet-shooting.
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None of this is great, and it's all horrifying, and it's one thing being saved in a dark alley like a thriller movie but this. Fire and limbs and fountains of blood from screaming monsters. Daniel is stunned where he is, by the door, as he watches an armless vampire scramble with one set of claws back up the fire escape, shrieking and bleeding everywhere, less intent on fighting as he is on getting to the severed limb.
Something, not speech, a feeling—?
A cold phantom caress up his spine into his head. A sickly thing, and Daniel experiences a surreal moment where he remembers a conversation that he knows never happened, a pale-eyed woman with long, dark hair looking at him and saying I see, they did turn you. Irish, worn down? Way north, Donegal maybe.
'Yep,' is what he says to Lestat, while trying to follow the awful feeling.
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Hears snarling and tearing, smells fire and scorching flesh, takes a moment to glance towards the ferocious and beautiful display of Louis' present bloodbath, the arc of a ragdolled figure immolating in the air and disappearing, screaming and trailing smoke, over the side and to the street below. That was good, very extravagant. They should make out, perhaps.
Except there is something bigger coming, and Daniel's confirmation draws his attention, sharp, fangs coated red and at their full hunting length, eyes black.
Two more of them on this side. The other sword-wielder is making a run for Louis, the other circling around for Daniel, not yet closing in. The first seems a little to Lestat like a moth insisting on immolating itself on a candleflame, and so begins for the second—and stops, looks up, following instinct like hairs prickling at the back of his neck.
Up on the bulkhead, a woman, crouching calmly as if she'd been there the whole time. Long dark hair, pale eyes, claws grasping the concrete edge in front of her, and considering Lestat who considers her back. He takes a step forward, and a minor flex of her fingers sends a flex of telekinetic force his way, knocking him off his feet and pinning him to the floor, like an invisible stake rammed through his back. Claws rake white stripes across the ground in a fury.
She looks towards Louis, next. 'Come with me,' a murmur in his mind, mild, nearly bored in affect. Effort exerted to keep a snarling Lestat down, her eyes vibrating in their sockets. 'Or I'll burn the fledgling.'
Daniel will feel it, then, like a little ember nesting in his chest, warming up.
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And then: something bigger.
Something bigger exudes a familiar calm. Calm that comes, perhaps, from the certainty that any inconvenience can simply be rendered into ash with a thought. Louis thinks, briefly, of Armand. Of San Francisco. Of a closed door.
Louis straightens. His palms burn. There is blood streaked down one side of his face, cheek and chin slick with gore. He is looking back at her as she touches his mind, makes her offer. Her promise. Louis' eyes flick to Lestat, pinned to the roof. Looks to Daniel, knowing already what Daniel will say and discarding it.
Daniel has to live. Lestat has to live.
Louis should have stayed in Dubai. A more defensible position, less immediate threat to those he loves most in this world. Takes the running leap to deposit himself gracefully alongside her, to leave Daniel and Lestat on the rooftop behind.
Don't keep me waiting, Louis prompts, less for her and more a ward against whatever Daniel is about to do, whatever Lestat is about to attempt. Call off your dogs, and go.
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In his head—
It had hurt when he pushed Armand away from Louis' mind, might have crippled him if it hadn't been an incident akin to a cat toying with a prey animal, and he doesn't want to end up cripple. Better than being immolated, better than Louis being taken, Louis doing this stupid, suicidal thing, and Daniel doesn't even believe he's just doing it to agree to a goddamn ransom— he knows Louis has been spoiling for a fight, restless and desperate for it, and now he's veering off alone at the first opportunity You asshole you asshole you asshole.
The vampire making his way towards him stumbles like his knees have given out. Daniel has bad aim. The shove to push the flaw-finding spark inside of him out is like a brick dropped into a bathtub, backlash spraying over the both of them.
The smallest flinch from the woman. Startled by the interruption, her attention swivels to Daniel and into his head, and Daniel wants to fucking know but flinches back internally, unable to control the force of his instinctive recoil. Her curiosity is slippery and cold and he feels the shape of a word in his mouth, Heresy, and he realizes something the same moment she realizes something (not the same something), and she tips her head, long hair sweeping over her side, before she stands. An elegant hand lays on Louis' arm, and she tugs him away.
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Nearly Louis' name, the thing Lestat bellows in anguished protest, not quite enough air in his lungs to form it. His nails make frantic marks on the concrete beneath him in whining scrapes, gathering white dust beneath his claws. The pleasant sadism of some casual violence against those weaker than they (most of they) has vanished as he applies muscle and fury against the power keeping him pinned, which feels as much like physical force as it does a trick in his mind.
He can't see well from this angle, but he can sense their departure. Fury increases tenfold, another tear of sound past bared, bloodied fangs. He gets a shoulder up, an elbow against the ground. But something in him has been told to stay down, and it is as far as he can get.
(She hooks an arm around Louis with all the matter of fact ease of the long lived, and leaps. A waiting truck below. Titanium chains and paralytics. Young ones below, wary and spooked and exuberant.)
It might take a second, for Lestat to become more useful than a wild animal lashing at the end of an invisible chain.
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Good enough for now. Daniel is otherwise preoccupied with Lestat, feeling the block on his brain and—
Gonna hurt. He reaches in anyway, into the psychic tangle, grabs Lestat's proverbial hand, come on, just shrug it off, you can, you can—
"I only have one emergency contact, get the fuck up."
A threat to call Armand has to work.
And then!
Daniel realizes he has more than one emergency contact, swears, and fumbles with bloody hands for his phone.
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Enough braincells align on Lestat's end of things, not not induced by the threat of an Armand summoning, and there is the sense for Daniel of clawing hands climbing up his arm as he assists in his own rescue. Up on all fours, one foot sliding out and a knee striking concrete as if operating under heavy gravity, but here, he is fine, eyes wild with rageful blood tears and fangs long enough in his mouth that it distorts his words as he says—
"I'm going," informative, as assuring as words through gritted teeth can be, and maybe as much to himself as to Daniel. The hilt of the sword is snatched at, metal scraping along as he works on getting his feet under him. No idea what's happening with the phone, who could possibly help in this moment, shoved aside as irrelevant as the last of that odd sense of gravity is shaken loose.
He had heard a revved engine, a sliding metal door. He can scent the elder vampire on the wind, and Louis, through the smells of blood and scorched vampire flesh, and it won't last. But it's a start.
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ldpdl update.
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bow??
🎀