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[damnedest]

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[damnedest]

A new single drops just before the tour. Unconventional timing, perhaps, but the Vampire Lestat is not a conventional band.

Beginning with a vaguely terroristic hostage situation of a live late night studio to perform without the knowledge of the host or the crew, even the crew who found themselves assisting during the performance, followed by a dozen or so similar instances at various venues. VL obtaining a record deal felt a little like someone leashing a wild animal, forcing a proper album distribution, scheduled appearances, exclusive performances and interviews, and a social media landscape ravaged by one particularly annoying blonde man who appears bound and determined to convince the world he is a vampire.

On the same day that 'Long Face' is let loose on the Internet, Louis receives a gift. A record that does not appear to be available for purchase anywhere, the cover a glossy black with the band's logo in bright violet in the centre. The song pressed in vinyl is the same that is currently trending, but Louis will have to search himself for the accompanying music video. (A chaotic affair, a mix of various candid backstage and recording studio footage interspersed with elaborate sets, dancers, costumes, glitter and gore, and Lestat himself, a fanged and bedazzled constant in the ever shifting landscape.)

It's not the only thing he receives. An envelope contains with it some official documentation of a VIP backstage pass that encompasses the entirety of the tour, every American location, and then an invitation that welcomes the recipient to a private party in the heart of Auvergne, France.

The printed card (cream and gold) is signed personally, with a bespoke little message in black ink: surprise me by coming.

[divorcing]

So, Louis meets the band. Larry and Alex, a handful of others Lestat has collected into his ensemble. Touches their minds, just to be check. Mingles, briefly, independent of Lestat. As promised, Cookie has answered very frankly to anyone who had expressed curiosity about the beautiful man sequestered in his VIP section, led out of the room by the hand by Lestat.

The vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac. From the book.

A little murmur that follows, even when Louis excuses himself from the party before the festivities turn wild enough to tempt Louis into recklessness.

(Before jealousy prompts him into some real foolishness. All their established boundaries can't fully keep Louis from losing his mind seeing Lestat so well-admired.)

So Lestat is on tour. Louis is fighting vampires. Louis is avoiding overzealous children wielding iPhones. Louis is running a thriving business, managing his assets and expanding his portfolio. He is making money. He is alone, more or less, for the first time in his entire life.

(Gutted periodically by the ways in which he finds himself missing phantoms. Missing Armand. Missing Lestat.)

Rashid has meticulously incorporated tour dates into Louis' calendar. Between his efforts and Rachida's, Louis can attend whichever location appeals to him, all the difficulty of travel already ironed out. Louis has not been so subtle in his comings and goings, but he intends to be as discreet as he can be when inviting himself to one of Lestat's concerts. Lestat is unmistakable, is flirting with the transgressions Louis has already committed, but Louis isn't eager to discover whether or not he'd be spared the consequences this time as he was once before.

Thinking of the trial is no good. Not for him, not for them. To whatever extent Them existed in the present moment.

The long fight (twenty hours, give or take) from Dubai to Las Vegas is sufficient time to put the ghosts of Paris aside. Louis had always intended to attend the first stop on Lestat's tour. He is packed. The hotel is arranged. A car service secured. A plane takes him from Dubai across ocean and continents to deposit him in Vegas, where Louis can feel Daniel among the many, and alongside him—

Lestat, thudding in his consciousness from the moment Louis disembarks.

It is as it was in Auvergne: ushered through the line, through the crowd, towards some designated luxury while a nervous little man with a clipboard chirps, The Vampire Lestat will be notified of your arrival. This time, Louis yields the luxury of the space to Rachida, so he might bled in among the concergoers and enjoy a closer vantage point within the churn of dancing and singing and screaming on the floor in front of the stage. Their enthusiasm is deafening when Lestat takes the stage, begins to sing.

The crowd demands two encores, roars for a third. Louis is already extricating himself, glowing with sweat, flush with adrenaline. Rachida is muttering at the state of him, hasty attempt to assist in making Louis flawlessly, coolly, presentable once more when their clipboard wielding host reappears.

If you'll accompany me backstage, is theoretically something Louis can refuse. But he does not refuse. He goes, following along the aisle as Lestat reappears once more. As they lock eyes, look at each other. As Louis is guided onto the edge of the stage and behind the curtain, perfect vantage point from which to watch this last performance. Perfect place to greet Lestat when he emerges from the stage.

[damnedest]

The tour begins and continues in a predictable blur. Sold out venues, a scattering of fans with a souvenir in the form of bite marks on their throats. Pictures of the latter circulating social media, internet sleuthing to discern the forgeries from the real thing. Hot takes about the entitlement of celebrities, of psychopaths and public delusional behaviour being enabled by record labels, of passionate claims that vampirism is real. Noise gathering, brewing.

A different kind of noise to the amassing of vampire threats still leveled at Louis, public enemy number one, but a new current now. Is the flashy human masquerading as one of their kind the real thing? Has anyone gotten close enough to know? Do any of them dare say it?

Lestat has enough to deal with. Screaming matches with Cookie about a new arrangement, making it up to her in the dark room on the bus. Arguments with Christine about an endless calendar of radio interviews and podcasts. Snarling at Larry for being too quiet, at Alex for being too chatty.

So it goes. They're all getting paid for living out their dreams. It keeps a band together.

And there is Louis, in between, showing up, sometimes in the audience and sometimes backstage. Always time to speak, before a performance or after. Lestat has recovered well from his minor meltdown that first evening. They speak of art, they speak of music, of travel. They don't speak of vampire threats.

It is his second night in Dallas. A party the previous night had continued well into the next, a small group invited to his room with its heavyduty blackout curtains. Cocaine, vodka, and several eager fans that includes a young man in a cowboy hat that Lestat enjoyed stealing after he drank from his thick neck. His name is Noah and Lestat is in love with him, he thinks, falling asleep on his six pack just as Cookie is pounding on his hotel room door to tell him the car is here to take them to the venue.

Hopefully a twenty second nap will suit him. He asks Noah if he wants to come. Noah says yes.

[damnedest]

Maybe Louis sees the photoshoot first before Lestat's gift arrives in his penthouse in Dubai. It makes a social media splash, a racy photoshoot between the Vampire Lestat and another rising star, a female popstar of similar inclination towards glitter and spectacle. Black and white images with deliberate harsh lighting and flash photography, a tangle of rockstar messiness and, notably, blood rendered in tones of steely black. Pale skin decorated in accessories, framed in what is more lingerie than clothing, some more dressed than others.

Specifically a photograph of Lestat's fangs in the meat of her thigh, her head thrown back as liquid trickles around and down between her legs. Blood smeared in the next, across his face, across her thigh. Later, the starlet posts some images on her Instagram, a full colour version showing dark red blood, and her own picture of bruised, marked up skin, a little vampire emoji, a lyric from a song, and chaos in her comment section.

And then Louis receives a package. Merch, first: a poster, a few different styles of T-shirts, tending towards black and purple. A keychain, a bumper sticker. More intriguing, a folder without a note, and several printed photographs within.

Ones that didn't make publication, for obvious reasons. A handful of images of just Lestat, still wearing bracelets of leather, a metal spiked collar, but only those things. It is the kind of shoot that is a love affair with the photographer, unabashed and shameless, gazing down the camera as if it were the object of his own desire. If there is cut material of his musician friend, it only shows up in one of the images, where she is standing out of frame save for her bare leg, and Lestat is licking clean a rivulet of blood.

Louis is a photographer, isn't he? Certainly, he should appreciate these insights.

[damnedest]

The show goes on. The tour continues. Inching ever closer to the last place he called home this century.

It is a whirlwind, some of it splashed on social media. Cookie and Alex's Instagrams are full of dazzling pictures, heartfelt messages to the cities they tour. Their lead singer and drummer are both elusive creatures, but present. Candid images and posed selfies both, glitter and sweat and smiles. A backstage image fresh after their last performance in Oklahoma, a shirtless Lestat with the glow of the stage just behind him, blood streaking from a fanged, grinning mouth.

Other images circulate from concert goers, including an infamous series of high definition photos of his drinking from the neck of a female fan, an older woman than the masses of zillennials his band tends to attract. This one, a lifelong goth swooning happily under his fangs, and then moments later gathered up in his arms. Blood streaks and stains rendered sharp and clear. The debate continues, criticism and enthusiasm in equal parts for what must be a publicity stunt, but also, more and more believers that what they are seeing is real.

And then they arrive in New Orleans.

This was the first of all the announced shows that sold out, and promises to be a success. By all accounts, it is. The next day, when Lestat arrives hours late for the first in a long series of interviews, bloodied and bloodless, Daniel Molloy tells him it was great. Lestat thanks him by choking him out. An auspicious beginning.

Forty-three minutes of preliminary argument, of unhelpful wandering description about his childhood. Lestat briefly thinks about remembering what advice Louis had given him, but can't bring himself to try. The footage is probably useless by the time they are done. Christine Clare is unapologetic to Mr. Molloy, but can feel a new migraine beginning to form.

It's that same day, a few hours later, that Rachida, Louis' state-side contact, is messaged, requesting confirmation that Mr. du Lac is going to be attending the New Orleans shows.

[damnedest]

The interviews between Daniel Molloy and Lestat de Lioncourt have a very different tenor to what Louis will recall of his own. A studio is a far cry from the expensive privacy of a sky-high penthouse in Dubai, to begin with, and a camera is a different sort of observer than a laptop's audio recording. There are no long languid hours to spend together, but tightly controlled blocks of time parcelled out with room for hair and makeup beforehand.

And then there is the interview. Daniel is himself, but treats Lestat like a particularly fussy celebrity with a strict schedule, something impersonal to the tone they set. Lestat is resistant in the ways one might predict him to be, waving away questions he doesn't want to answer, insisting on tangents he prefers, as if Daniel is as much a passive part of the apparatus as the light fixtures, the boom mic.

But, and perhaps noticeable from Louis' place of privilege off to the side, there are cracks starting to form, and a long game being played—at least, on Daniel's side. Some quest for the vulnerable thing that shivering beneath the surface. Certainly, it would give purpose to this gaudy spectacle beyond popular demand for a sequel.

Today, they speak of his turning. Lestat is already bristling, some sensitive nerve about the way his story was already delivered to the world. Daniel, making space for the do over.

It's a different conversation to the way Lestat had obliged Louis and Claudia, long ago—a list of facts, a touch of flippancy, a little sincerity. Here, there is texture. There are the sweat-warm sheets of his shared bed with Nicolas and alcohol on his lover's sleeping breath. There is the monster, the pale-faced grinning man who had been following him, suddenly there in his room, half-melted into the corner shadows and gripping his wolf fur cloak. There is the panic and anger, the gun pulled from under his bed, yanked from his hands before he can fire. There is the feeling of red velvet on his bare skin as the monster wraps him in his own cloak, lifts him from the floor, and flies with him out the window, into a blizzard. A scene on a snowy rooftop, and somehow, in all the chaos of the revelation that vampires are real and Lestat has been taken by one, the most occupying and painful thing had been how cold the snow had felt against his bare feet.

They are a minute past the forty-five that Ms. Clare had allotted for this interview, but no interruption comes. Lestat, in his chair, sits with his chin in his hand, eyes somewhere else, and Daniel is afforded a moment to consider his line of questioning.

[divorcing]

The crowd had demanded two encores tonight. Louis had been summoned already from the crush of dancing mortals in the pit, and watched the roars and cheers from just off stage.

Sweating, strung with a handful of cheap plastic beads, Louis is there to receive Lestat when he finally parts with the crowd. The band behind him, raucous and snarking and affectionate, all of them satisfied with their night's work.

There is an after party. Christine had told Rachida who had warned Louis, who now is dutifully surprised when Lestat describes the waiting festivities to him. Louis would like to take Lestat back to a hotel room, rinse the paint and glitter off, dance a little, talk a little. But Louis says, Yes. Lestat invites him, and Louis will go. They can celebrate. It's not a hardship to be caught up in their jubilation.

Louis touches his face, brushes fingers along sweat-damp skin. Says, I'll see you there.

They part. Lestat, to the obligation of a meet and greet. Louis, to a private car.

It shouldn't touch Lestat, Louis' little war. His provocations. His skirmishes. It is Louis' business. If he kites irate vampires away from Lestat's stage, it is only good business. (He feels alive. In control. Sure of himself.) He had cleared out the apiring batch before the show, Louis had thought. He had gossiped quietly about it to Daniel, who had argued about it, but hadn't quite asked him to stop. Maybe he was saving that fight for another state, another city.

Louis arrives first, because no one is seeking Louis' autograph. He is on the list, swept into the club and lead upwards to a private balcony. Arrayed in gold and leather tonight, a harness of oxblood leather over a sheer black tank, straps running from throat to waist where loops cinch from rib to hip. Gold on his fingers, capping his fangs, cuffing his ear, circling his wrists. Heavy soled loafers raising his height by an inch. Leather trousers slung low on his hips. The gifted plastic beads swing, clack softly, not yet discarded.

These beaded necklaces break instantly when a clawed hand grabs hold of them, and yanks. Louis is already turning, hissing, as the cheap little beads scatter across the concrete floor, clink down onto the glass table.

[damnedest]

Louis receives some news directly into his brain, courtesy of Daniel. Lestat has pulled the plug on the documentary, spoken in tones of someone who has become accustomed to dealing with a diva. Can Louis talk to him? Get it back on track? It was just starting to get good.

Oh, yeah, and did you hear—?

Well, no, Louis did not, but he might have marked the ripple effect when a message went out along the lines of:

I am the vampire Lestat, and mine is a fame that will carry my voice to the remotest parts of the world. And do you know what I will tell them? Everything.

And it happens during a live studio performance on a late night TV show that was not even remotely planned, crew commandeered, host sent into a dizzy coma, and cameras broadcasting a very special one-song performance by the Vampire Lestat and his band. It a blistering few minutes, a deep voice echoing through a hijacked sound system, bare chested and gleaming in sweat, blood spatters, glitter, and at least one instance of the lens of a camera being shown a blurry close up of long white fangs and a panting, fogging breath.

The tour goes on, and suddenly it is more chaotic than ever as the band and its lead are dosed with an extra hit of celebrity. Pictures surfacing, a blurry, low-resolution nightclub shot of a woman with a stunned, if delighted expression on face as Lestat bites her shoulder, where a dark dribble of blood runs over her tan skin. News of a cancelled gig, and then back to form the next night. News of a limo driving off the pavement and hitting a streetlamp. News of a blackout at a nightclub, witnesses with outlandish stories about dismembered arms, but only blood found on the scene.

And so on. The tour goes on. The documentary does not.