"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.
The latter part isn't important. Just follow him, get him back. Daniel isn't stupid enough to try and talk to Louis directly, but he reaches out with his mind anyway, aware he'll probably run into a tangle of that woman elder's abilities but needing to try to get a sense of where he is regardless.
His Talamasca contact picks up almost as soon as Daniel has tapped the call button.
"Keep eyes on that van," he says, confident he'll be understood by the squawking answer of 'MOLLOY WHAT THE FUCK', "Don't approach it, just track it, and forward it to me, and where's your nearest fucking car? Right now?"
He stomps on the struggling vampire's ragged neck until the head comes off, and then he runs to the edge of the building. The building, the fucking Met, and looks down at the street—
'Brown sedan.'
"Got it."
Ends the call, jumps down - at least he can do this, at least he's been practicing running around like a fucking idiot - and a heartbeat later hears the squeal of tires as said sedan speeds towards him only to slam on the brakes. Daniel hurls himself into the passenger side. His double-take at least doesn't stun him for long when he sees the grim-faced driver, but Agent Real Rashid does still peel out before he's got the door properly closed.
"You're shitting me."
"They thought I might convince you to maintain open communication."
With the kind of deranged determination of some starving predator, Lestat follows that scent first, leaping up onto the bulkhead, disappearing from view, moving, looking down over the edge at the empty street. Reckless, lashing out with psychic fury to find a direction—no ability to pinpoint Louis' presence, but there, a fast moving gaggle of vampiric youths, a growling engine,
and a kind of dark spot in the midst of it, her, this elder, that he cannot look at closely, not without being drawn into that crushing gravity. It spills out into the minds of her little followers, threatens to notice him. Draws back. Feels less like fear, finally, as it does going still so as not to attract the attention of quarry.
It's quiet, too, when he ascends into the sky, high enough that the city below takes on an abstract quality of lights, lines, blotches of shadow. His heart beating heavier, pumping blood through him that all at once feels richer, thicker. Tastes it on his tongue, feelings it vibrating beneath his skin. Feels the animal he had been a moment ago, panicked and rageful, draw itself behind this other thing he is, which steps forward. The wind is cold, bracing, clarifying. It takes less effort than it did before to once again feel the presences within the vehicle, the direction of the vehicle.
Wills himself towards it, and flies like a steady, controlled plummet.
Daniel's right hand is still blood-soaked as he scrambles for the laptop in the back seat - still open from observation, whoever bailed out so that Rashid could take over hadn't had the time to so much as log out - and he gets sticky, red fingerprints on it before hurriedly pawing at his jeans and the car seat to clean enough to function.
"Do you know who she is?"
Rashid doesn't, not off the top of his head. It all happened too fast. So Daniel begins searching while they follow the van, cutting several traffic violations very close. A tense lack of conversation, but no silence, the sound of the car being pushed to its mechanical limits, honking horns from other drivers, ambient chaos, Daniel's pulse hammering anxiously in his ears.
Why take him? Why? Why not just try to kill all three of them? Either there's a plan for Louis, or it's some fucked up coven policy, like the Parisians offering a poisoned welcome to Madeleine. Louis, marked as the criminal alone. Or, she doesn't fancy getting into a brawl with more than one of them at the same time.
Daniel keeps Louis in the forefront of his focus. A hand clutching the back of his shirt in a crowd. Don't you fucking lose me.
Less several young ones, unlucky enough to be standing too close to Louis in the split second between landing on the sidewalk and being led into the truck. A trio of young vampires go shrieking down the street, eaten up in columns of flame. (Somewhere, baffled New Yorkers upload videos to Instagram, speculate as to what might be filming. Has anyone noticed permits posted?) The remainder surround Louis in a near-crushing mob, wrestling him up and into the back of the truck. They suffer for it, scorches and torn flesh, shrieks the whole way through. A minor inconvenience for his host, judging by her reaction. Veers more towards annoyance than sincere loss.
In the end, she exerts herself to expedite their departure. Drives a spike into Louis' mind, twists it viciously. Louis loses some time. Returns to himself with the cuffs already fastened, chains cinched securely across his chest, the paralytic working its way through his veins. She is crouched beside him, hand in his hair, studying him too intently for the gesture to be mistaken for even the coldest of comforts. Louis' lips peel back off his teeth, fangs still dropped, still bloody. She drags a clawed fingertip across them, soft click of contact, then vanishing as Louis' jaws snap down.
There are so many who have been waiting to meet you, She tells him, threat implicit in the words. You've been difficult to find.
"I laid out the red carpet for you to trip over," Louis reminds. "Not so good at following directions?"
The woman smiles. Her power flexes once more, a second twist of power dug in at the base of his spine, entire body spasming in agony. His vision swims gray around the edges. She digs fingers into his hair.
I'd try to recover some manners before our arrival, comes dispassionately, at odds with the eager gleam in her eyes. It might save your lovely face.
Louis snarls wordlessly back at her, and she smiles, tells him, Here. Let us practice, and digs the talons of her power deeper into his mind, plunging them both into inky darkness.
The gentle drifting around that vampires have demonstrated, as far as flight capability goes, does not promise any particular ability to keep up with a moving vehicle. The fact that this moving vehicle is in the middle of a dense city helps, but all the same, neither Armand in Dubai or Santiago in Paris demonstrated a faster pace than walking speed, maybe a light jog. Not like Superman, Louis had asserted.
Only technically flight, maybe, at this point, or a kind of precise, well-aimed falling, as Real Rashid peels around a corner to tail after the van in time to see a figure drop from the sky like a stone.
Within the van, possibly too muffled by pain and psychic torment for Louis to register, it sounds like a shotgun going off when impact is made. Splintered glass, dented metal, and a metallic shriek as this landing brings with it a sword blade piercing through the roof of the cab, down to split between shoulder and clavicle of the driver.
Doesn't kill him right away, but his hands spasm, and the van swerves violently, sends a civilian vehicle panicky swerving out of the way and crashing into a signpost. Vampires inside, rattled.
The van lurches. Goes faster. Someone in the passenger seat lunging to course correct. Above, crouching, Lestat twists the hilt. It produces some gurgling sounds from the driver.
'Her name is Eimear,' Daniel says to Lestat, not long after he lands like a volleyball being spiked from fucking outer space, paradoxically calm-sounding despite his expression and posture from the vantage point of the careening sedan. 'Three hundred and eightyish. List of fledglings is half a mile long.'
Other details are in there, like an expulsion from the British Isles region for beefing with the established coven there and a blip-on-the-radar appearance in Toronto, but Daniel can't focus on them. Feeling panic strangle him about Louis, and the way he feels so muffled. This seems like the most vital information. Potential power range, experience, how diluted her attention and her presence might be. Is that the right shit to convey?
Has to be.
Fuck.
A block ahead, a young woman plows a limousine in past an intersection and begins a tire-squealing three point turn to block as many lanes as possible, before throwing the parking brake and diving out of the vehicle. A mortal, all she can do is book it as fast as possible in the other direction, and pray. Her handlers are arguing blisteringly furious in her earpiece, and she's pretty sure one of them is Raglan, who is actually laughing.
Now-named Eimear rides Louis down into the dark. Her fingers catching him by the chin, almost a caress, as she roots through his head. Twisting, tweaking. Pain is in the mind, and she can evoke agony beyond anything Louis has experienced here, inside his head.
He can feel her glee. They are mingled so close; this is an intimate kind of torture, invasive. Delicate. Bypassing memory and touching nerves and senses, setting them aflame.
And then the whole truck jolts. Swerves erratically. A distraction, twitching Eimear's attention for a split second. Just time enough for Louis to gather all his fury and rage and use it to propel her away, expelling her, clawing out of the dark in her wake.
Her expression is dark with anger, brows drawn together as she hisses. The truck is going too fast, and the two of them are sliding, Louis' chains clanking, clattering, against the floor. He snarls at her, she twists her fingers harder in his hair. She drags him upright, spiking him to the wall of the truck just as Louis expends a last push of strength outward.
Eimear catches abruptly on fire, flame licking up her body, catching in her hair. A wild gamble in an enclosed space, but the one hand Louis has to play.
The ensuing scream carries, magnified and echoing, underscored by the grind of sword-split metal from the cab.
Outside a bodega, a cluster of college students are holding up their phones as the truck speeds by, chattering confused at the spectacle.
Swearing and hissing in the cab as the impaled driver bleeds hot and fast, and his pal is trying to steer, trying to coax his foot off the gas, considers if it would actually be more useful if the driver was simply proper dead, but here we are.
The sword is left behind. Which co-pilot can tell, because it remains there, wedged in metal, and he can hear something moving above.
Eimear, who has over a century on him, who has her own gifts, he's sure. Lestat climbs his way across the roof, hand over hand, claws digging in for stability, eyes black and hair everywhere and this will probably make a good album cover too. It is not actually useful information for Daniel in particular when Lestat replies with, 'She burns', serene in delivery despite the objective chaos he is experiencing and causing.
Reaches over the side, grasping the handle of the sliding door. Within the van, the sound of locks being psychically forced into giving way, which only benefits Lestat in that he can open it enough to get his fingers in and then heave, snapping the door off and away with more strength than expected, careening off somewhere to cause some property damage they all zoom past.
A flare of fire whips out of the open space. Lestat, moving with a vaguely arachnid agility to climb in, reaching to grasp scorched flesh and burning hair.
As if flung from an airlock, Louis will see the burning vampiress hauled backwards, and then up (up and away).
Rashid says something so vulgar that Daniel thinks he hallucinates it. Weird, honestly, which thing he's currently experiencing that he assumes is a hallucination.
Sure, he thinks, watching Lestat abduct an on-fire vampire.
'Car's gonna hit something in ten seconds,' he sends to Louis, and says it out loud at the same time, which prompts Rashid to start trying to slow down. Daniel thinks please hear me please be awake please let the fire be a sign you are awake and not dying from whatever was in there, is that a fucking chain, what the fuck—
A door handle smacks into the windshield, sending a spiderweb crack through it, but it holds. Is this a Toyota?
The van doesn't stop, and though it begins to lose speed as dead weight is finally lifted off the gas pedal, it's not soon enough. Daniel is off, it's more like twelve seconds, but the van does collide with the limo, no squeal of tires, no attempt at braking, BAM, a bomb-like noise of the hit and shattered glass everywhere. The t-boned vehicles skid further down the road for a few meters and grind to a halt, and Daniel hears sirens before Rashid will be able to, and he repeats the extremely vulgar thing.
Not for long. Up, out, to the ruined mangle of van-limo-hybrid creature.
"Louis?!"
There are still two guys in the front. The limo driver (technically, the limo thief) is still going at a dead sprint, though she's starting to feel very lightheaded.
Alert, for the moment, entire body singing with adrenaline and flayed raw by Eimear's tinkering with his nervous system, Louis has a brief glimpse of Lestat, and then he is abruptly alone in the back of the van. Dangling from the side of the box truck's interior, Louis lets himself sag, exhausted, right up until—
A voice. Daniel.
Ten seconds isn't not good information to have. Louis is only lacking much ability to act on it. The paralytic is burning out of his system, but not fast enough that Louis can meaningfully brace for impact.
The impact must coincide with whatever success Lestat is having. Louis is flung forward, cratering into the divider between the interior of the truck and the cab. Has movement enough to kick himself free of the debris. Can hear pained groans from beneath the crumpled metal, and takes some vicious satisfaction in it.
I'm okay. projected into Daniel's head, words like a hand pressing to Daniel's cheek, moments before Louis realizes he can see Daniel looking at him from the gap left by the missing door. Had banked, maybe, on a few minutes to assess how presentable he looked, but here they are, apparently.
"There's two still alive," Louis reports, from within the mangle of the truck's interior. "One only just. Where's Lestat?"
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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. ]
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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.
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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—
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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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The latter part isn't important. Just follow him, get him back. Daniel isn't stupid enough to try and talk to Louis directly, but he reaches out with his mind anyway, aware he'll probably run into a tangle of that woman elder's abilities but needing to try to get a sense of where he is regardless.
His Talamasca contact picks up almost as soon as Daniel has tapped the call button.
"Keep eyes on that van," he says, confident he'll be understood by the squawking answer of 'MOLLOY WHAT THE FUCK', "Don't approach it, just track it, and forward it to me, and where's your nearest fucking car? Right now?"
He stomps on the struggling vampire's ragged neck until the head comes off, and then he runs to the edge of the building. The building, the fucking Met, and looks down at the street—
'Brown sedan.'
"Got it."
Ends the call, jumps down - at least he can do this, at least he's been practicing running around like a fucking idiot - and a heartbeat later hears the squeal of tires as said sedan speeds towards him only to slam on the brakes. Daniel hurls himself into the passenger side. His double-take at least doesn't stun him for long when he sees the grim-faced driver, but Agent Real Rashid does still peel out before he's got the door properly closed.
"You're shitting me."
"They thought I might convince you to maintain open communication."
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and a kind of dark spot in the midst of it, her, this elder, that he cannot look at closely, not without being drawn into that crushing gravity. It spills out into the minds of her little followers, threatens to notice him. Draws back. Feels less like fear, finally, as it does going still so as not to attract the attention of quarry.
It's quiet, too, when he ascends into the sky, high enough that the city below takes on an abstract quality of lights, lines, blotches of shadow. His heart beating heavier, pumping blood through him that all at once feels richer, thicker. Tastes it on his tongue, feelings it vibrating beneath his skin. Feels the animal he had been a moment ago, panicked and rageful, draw itself behind this other thing he is, which steps forward. The wind is cold, bracing, clarifying. It takes less effort than it did before to once again feel the presences within the vehicle, the direction of the vehicle.
Wills himself towards it, and flies like a steady, controlled plummet.
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"Do you know who she is?"
Rashid doesn't, not off the top of his head. It all happened too fast. So Daniel begins searching while they follow the van, cutting several traffic violations very close. A tense lack of conversation, but no silence, the sound of the car being pushed to its mechanical limits, honking horns from other drivers, ambient chaos, Daniel's pulse hammering anxiously in his ears.
Why take him? Why? Why not just try to kill all three of them? Either there's a plan for Louis, or it's some fucked up coven policy, like the Parisians offering a poisoned welcome to Madeleine. Louis, marked as the criminal alone. Or, she doesn't fancy getting into a brawl with more than one of them at the same time.
Daniel keeps Louis in the forefront of his focus. A hand clutching the back of his shirt in a crowd. Don't you fucking lose me.
ldpdl update.
In the end, she exerts herself to expedite their departure. Drives a spike into Louis' mind, twists it viciously. Louis loses some time. Returns to himself with the cuffs already fastened, chains cinched securely across his chest, the paralytic working its way through his veins. She is crouched beside him, hand in his hair, studying him too intently for the gesture to be mistaken for even the coldest of comforts. Louis' lips peel back off his teeth, fangs still dropped, still bloody. She drags a clawed fingertip across them, soft click of contact, then vanishing as Louis' jaws snap down.
There are so many who have been waiting to meet you, She tells him, threat implicit in the words. You've been difficult to find.
"I laid out the red carpet for you to trip over," Louis reminds. "Not so good at following directions?"
The woman smiles. Her power flexes once more, a second twist of power dug in at the base of his spine, entire body spasming in agony. His vision swims gray around the edges. She digs fingers into his hair.
I'd try to recover some manners before our arrival, comes dispassionately, at odds with the eager gleam in her eyes. It might save your lovely face.
Louis snarls wordlessly back at her, and she smiles, tells him, Here. Let us practice, and digs the talons of her power deeper into his mind, plunging them both into inky darkness.
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Only technically flight, maybe, at this point, or a kind of precise, well-aimed falling, as Real Rashid peels around a corner to tail after the van in time to see a figure drop from the sky like a stone.
Within the van, possibly too muffled by pain and psychic torment for Louis to register, it sounds like a shotgun going off when impact is made. Splintered glass, dented metal, and a metallic shriek as this landing brings with it a sword blade piercing through the roof of the cab, down to split between shoulder and clavicle of the driver.
Doesn't kill him right away, but his hands spasm, and the van swerves violently, sends a civilian vehicle panicky swerving out of the way and crashing into a signpost. Vampires inside, rattled.
The van lurches. Goes faster. Someone in the passenger seat lunging to course correct. Above, crouching, Lestat twists the hilt. It produces some gurgling sounds from the driver.
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Other details are in there, like an expulsion from the British Isles region for beefing with the established coven there and a blip-on-the-radar appearance in Toronto, but Daniel can't focus on them. Feeling panic strangle him about Louis, and the way he feels so muffled. This seems like the most vital information. Potential power range, experience, how diluted her attention and her presence might be. Is that the right shit to convey?
Has to be.
Fuck.
A block ahead, a young woman plows a limousine in past an intersection and begins a tire-squealing three point turn to block as many lanes as possible, before throwing the parking brake and diving out of the vehicle. A mortal, all she can do is book it as fast as possible in the other direction, and pray. Her handlers are arguing blisteringly furious in her earpiece, and she's pretty sure one of them is Raglan, who is actually laughing.
Unless somebody slams on the brakes in the van—
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He can feel her glee. They are mingled so close; this is an intimate kind of torture, invasive. Delicate. Bypassing memory and touching nerves and senses, setting them aflame.
And then the whole truck jolts. Swerves erratically. A distraction, twitching Eimear's attention for a split second. Just time enough for Louis to gather all his fury and rage and use it to propel her away, expelling her, clawing out of the dark in her wake.
Her expression is dark with anger, brows drawn together as she hisses. The truck is going too fast, and the two of them are sliding, Louis' chains clanking, clattering, against the floor. He snarls at her, she twists her fingers harder in his hair. She drags him upright, spiking him to the wall of the truck just as Louis expends a last push of strength outward.
Eimear catches abruptly on fire, flame licking up her body, catching in her hair. A wild gamble in an enclosed space, but the one hand Louis has to play.
The ensuing scream carries, magnified and echoing, underscored by the grind of sword-split metal from the cab.
Outside a bodega, a cluster of college students are holding up their phones as the truck speeds by, chattering confused at the spectacle.
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The sword is left behind. Which co-pilot can tell, because it remains there, wedged in metal, and he can hear something moving above.
Eimear, who has over a century on him, who has her own gifts, he's sure. Lestat climbs his way across the roof, hand over hand, claws digging in for stability, eyes black and hair everywhere and this will probably make a good album cover too. It is not actually useful information for Daniel in particular when Lestat replies with, 'She burns', serene in delivery despite the objective chaos he is experiencing and causing.
Reaches over the side, grasping the handle of the sliding door. Within the van, the sound of locks being psychically forced into giving way, which only benefits Lestat in that he can open it enough to get his fingers in and then heave, snapping the door off and away with more strength than expected, careening off somewhere to cause some property damage they all zoom past.
A flare of fire whips out of the open space. Lestat, moving with a vaguely arachnid agility to climb in, reaching to grasp scorched flesh and burning hair.
As if flung from an airlock, Louis will see the burning vampiress hauled backwards, and then up (up and away).
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Sure, he thinks, watching Lestat abduct an on-fire vampire.
'Car's gonna hit something in ten seconds,' he sends to Louis, and says it out loud at the same time, which prompts Rashid to start trying to slow down. Daniel thinks please hear me please be awake please let the fire be a sign you are awake and not dying from whatever was in there, is that a fucking chain, what the fuck—
A door handle smacks into the windshield, sending a spiderweb crack through it, but it holds. Is this a Toyota?
The van doesn't stop, and though it begins to lose speed as dead weight is finally lifted off the gas pedal, it's not soon enough. Daniel is off, it's more like twelve seconds, but the van does collide with the limo, no squeal of tires, no attempt at braking, BAM, a bomb-like noise of the hit and shattered glass everywhere. The t-boned vehicles skid further down the road for a few meters and grind to a halt, and Daniel hears sirens before Rashid will be able to, and he repeats the extremely vulgar thing.
Not for long. Up, out, to the ruined mangle of van-limo-hybrid creature.
"Louis?!"
There are still two guys in the front. The limo driver (technically, the limo thief) is still going at a dead sprint, though she's starting to feel very lightheaded.
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A voice. Daniel.
Ten seconds isn't not good information to have. Louis is only lacking much ability to act on it. The paralytic is burning out of his system, but not fast enough that Louis can meaningfully brace for impact.
The impact must coincide with whatever success Lestat is having. Louis is flung forward, cratering into the divider between the interior of the truck and the cab. Has movement enough to kick himself free of the debris. Can hear pained groans from beneath the crumpled metal, and takes some vicious satisfaction in it.
I'm okay. projected into Daniel's head, words like a hand pressing to Daniel's cheek, moments before Louis realizes he can see Daniel looking at him from the gap left by the missing door. Had banked, maybe, on a few minutes to assess how presentable he looked, but here they are, apparently.
"There's two still alive," Louis reports, from within the mangle of the truck's interior. "One only just. Where's Lestat?"
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bow??
🎀