The hunger isn't gone, only momentarily abated, a slavering thing in Louis' hind brain with all too much influence. It scents the blood in the air, the torn mess of Lesat's forearm. It's fed by Louis' rage, fed by Louis' grief. It demands more. (Do they sleep upstairs? Santiago, Armand. The coven. Did Lestat have a coffin there among them?)
One thing at a time, Lestat had cautioned. There are stones in the folds of his clothing, closed into his flesh at the heels. Louis' chin and throat are slick with blood. His eyes are dark when he finally looks fully at Lestat. Swaying on his feet in a casket full of stones, heartbeat accelerating, chest heaving deep, unsteady breaths.
"Help me," is a furious, bewildered rasp. "Help me?"
Claudia is dead.
Louis hand closes in on itself, a feeble preservation of that last moment, of Claudia's hand in his own before he'd been ripped from his seat.
The word comes out—barely. A sound, a hiss, quiet in his throat.
Standing, and his hands out, and his arms out, like they could embrace if Louis allowed it, if he stumbled from his coffin and if Lestat could catch him.
But there is no romance to this, not in Lestat's expression, where wonderous relief has given away to (a dark flicker) a tense wariness, a focus. The knowledge that there is simply no room or space to feel the thing he can see in Louis' face, hear in his voice. Beholding a burning corridor, wondering if there is a least painful way through.
"Louis, you have to come with me now," voice thick. "Quietly, away from here."
How can he go? (Claudia is dead. Claudia is dead.) How can he leave her?
"Nah," is ground glass. Agony. "I'm gonna kill them. I gotta kill them."
Fury crystalizing, hardening, even as Louis begins the clumsy, clambering process of spilling out of the coffin. Weakly wrenching his feet from the rocks, overbalancing, Lestat's outstretched hands the only thing that keeps him from falling to the floor.
Lestat catches him. Lestat hauls him further away from the coffin, and wraps a completely unyielding arm around him, pinning them together.
This, too, lacks romance.
(Lacks romance? Holding him closely while Louis is consumed by his rage, his own wounded heart leaping in his chest to match it.)
"You cannot," is a furious near-whisper in Louis' ear. "You mistake your hunger for strength, Louis. Your anger for efficacy." The hold he has on him can only emphasise this fact, should Louis try to struggle. It won't work. "They will tear you to shreds and I will not allow it, do you hear me?"
There is no weeping to herald the flooding red in his eyes, just an upswell of deep feeling, impossible to name as one thing.
Somewhere, a theatre full of vampires and drunkards. Now is not the moment.
A last scattering of stone as Louis comes free of the coffin. He thrashes in Lestat's grip, furious, desperate.
Claudia is dead.
"Fuck you," Louis spits, strangled, panicked. A thrash of movement that takes him nowhere, weakened as he is. Spits again, through a mouthful of fangs: "Fuck you."
Because it is the truth, what Lestat is saying. They would tear him to shreds. Armand would allow it. And Claudia—
A flash of memory: Burlap, wrapped around his head.
A flash of memory: Claudia, screaming as they forced her in among the rats.
A flash of memory: Hands restraining him, dragging him, silencing him.
Above them, laughter. Applause. The patter of music and performance. Below, Louis' hatred turning over in his chest.
"Fuck you," flattening out, Louis' knuckles digging in beneath Lestat's ribs. The fight waning, at least for the moment.
Lestat holds fast. Barely feels the strikes to his torso, hard knuckles to muscle. Words, more piercing, but he can take them too, rageful and and scarcely coherent. And slowly, Louis weakens, and he doesn't think it's so bad of him to bury his face against Louis' shoulder while he has him locked in like this, a brief crumpling hidden there.
The hold shifts. As Louis weakens, the grip gentles—a relative thing. Still holding him tightly, but that assertion of deep, supernatural strength abates, and Louis finds he is being held by another man rather than an unyielding statue of iron.
And he can break free of it, but Lestat doesn't let go, not yet. Waiting.
Louis doesn't break free of him. All the fury and panic and hunger, it doesn't vanish. It only smolders, banked and heavy in his chest. His head falls forward, blood-smeared mouth pressed in against Lestat's throat. Hungry like digging claws in his belly, fangs sharp in his mouth but kept free of Lestat's neck.
Claudia is dead. A constant, endless refrain. Louis' thoughts snag, stuck, coming endlessly back to her screams.
Slowly, like rising smoke, guilt. Deepening even as he takes this small comfort, hand closing slowly in the back of Lestat's vest.
The threat of sharp teeth at his throat, the ambiguity of the hand closing at the back of his vest. Doesn't matter. Lestat holds Louis to him, because Louis is alive, rescued, and if he has done nothing else in his cursed life, it is this.
And maybe he will never hold him again. Something he knows as he loosens his arms and grips Louis by the shoulders, Lestat drawing back. That waxy look, now, of a vampire well drained, bringing up the smear of blood tears a little brighter, but his eyeline is steady as he meets Louis' eye.
"Come with me now," he says. "Whatever you do next, do this one thing first."
It's in his mind now, a plan that surely ends in his own death:
Ascend the stairs. Sink his fangs into the first vampire he comes across. Repeat until there are none left, or until he is dead too.
Louis can't bring his fangs back in, can't reign himself back in. Lestat has him by the shoulders. His eyes are glossy, red traces of tears there. Looking at him, Louis feels some distant, dull stirring of feeling in his chest. An awareness of what had kindled during the trial, the breathless flutter of anticipation at his coming, the love Louis carried for him glowing like a coal in his chest even as Lestat damned him and Claudia both.
"I hate you."
Even this is not enough of anything. Not enough of a condemnation.
But it is assent. Louis leaves the certainty of his own death, and gives over to Lestat's plea.
A ripple of feeling through that intent and steady stare, a twitch at the mouth, absurd hurt flashing plainer behind focused, blood-rimmed blue. There is no surprise in it. A knife that twists and finds no resistance at all.
But it is assent. Lestat lets him go, banished, but expectant of being followed. The way out is easier, with the theatre's bowels tangled with the Parisian sewer system, and Lestat moves as efficiently as a night predator, caring only about making distance between them and the coven, only about Louis following along.
A manhole cover scraping aside. Crawling out onto a quiet street. The gleam of the river nearby. Lestat, first, and then turning to pull Louis out behind him.
It echoes in his mind, over and over and over. They trek through the sewers in near silence, Louis' palm on the slick stone to keep himself upright and moving. His breath is a scraping rasp of sound, a wounded creature tugged along only by its own pain. Hunger gnaws at him, the stopgap of Lestat's blood waning as they flee.
And his anger, his anger is a refuge. If he disappears into it, then the excruciating pain of his grief diminishes. He is thinking already of how he'll repay them. How he will make them regret what they'd done.
Lestat pulls him out. Louis remains briefly on hands and knees in the street, panting, before he pushes back. Looks up at Lestat from his heels, eyes dark. Fangs catching the waning moonlight. His breath comes faster, looking at him. Hurt. Why blooming in his expression.
"Is this where you leave me?" is the question posed instead, tone an inscrutable thing. Syllables scraped across gravel, thick with misery. One question from the many, the most immediate. How far does Lestat's benevolence stretch in this moment?
Lestat is standing, the cuffs of his trousers damp from the water and a sleeve now red with blood, staining white cloth, paler for blood loss—but much as he was during the trial, strong and poised and deliberate as he gazes down at Louis. Not cold, here. None of the sharp accusation he'd projected, when the script had demanded it of him.
The question, then, takes him off-guard. His hands form fists at his sides.
"You need blood," finally, tone flat, but lacking in edge. "And a coffin, when the dawn comes."
He would like to shatter into a million pieces. Fall to his knees in front of Louis, grasp him, explain everything, a tempting outpouring of hysterics, as if he believed Louis would hear it, would want it, would need it. Lestat would like it, at least, and he doesn't. Because Claudia is dead.
"Come with me. Hunt, sleep. See what revenge looks like then."
A crumbling sort of pain at the edges of Louis' expression.
He cannot return to the little apartment he and Claudia had shared. That is closed to him, he who will surely be hunted. Armand will look, Louis knows. The rest, upon finding the empty coffin, will seek to complete the verdict, to banish Louis from this world.
It is tempting to remain here. Kneeling in the street.
He would melt away in the dawn. It would be over.
It should be over. Claudia is dead. What else is there now?
(If he reaches for the comfort Lestat could offer, he will shatter. He cannot shatter.)
"I know what it looks like," roughly, stubborn. The grate is closed, prevents the impulse to simply turn to see it done now.
It is a labor, getting to his feet. But rise Louis does, propelled by the compulsion of hunting, of blood. (Of Lestat, inescapable and tangible, Louis' heart erratic over the continued presence of him.) He straightens slowly, runs his tongue across his fangs.
One hand turns, like the instinct is to go to Louis again, help him to his feet. Lestat can imagine doing so, and can imagine being shoved away. A stumble turns into something worse. Turns into Louis realising he can simply leave, turns into Louis leaving him.
And—voices. Foot steps.
Walking the river's edge, the smell of alcohol almost as vibrant as the clap of the woman's drunken laughter. She is wobbling on the arm of the man she is with, and he is moving them with intent. Lestat does not seem surprised, does not even look, as if maybe this manhole had more to do with the sound of easy prey up above than the nearest location of whatever he's managed to procure himself.
Louis is as Lestat has never seen him, not really. Pieces of it. Fury, bloodlust, hatred. But a proper hunt between them, they'd never quite managed. Always Lestat's hunts, and Louis in attendance. Always Louis' fumbles, and Lestat looking aside.
Now, he says, "Go on," and, "I'll keep watch," and expects Louis to do as a vampire should.
Later, maybe Louis will hate him for this too, even as he recognizes the reprieve couched in the temptation laid out before him. The man's intention. The woman, unsteady on her feet but more than capable of fleeing the thing Louis becomes in this moment. Straightening. Scenting them on the air. Hearing the pulse of blood.
And for a moment, thinks of Claudia. Not her absence. Not her death. Thinks of her, aglow with the joy of her kills, French spilling out of her mouth.
I never want to hunt alone again.
The sound Louis makes then, halfway between a snarl and a sob, startles the man. The woman's laugh goes high, a shrill cackle at what sounds nonsensical to her. What must look nonsensical, in the shadows. Is not identifiable, until it is too late. Louis is older than he had been in New Orleans, faster now than he was then.
This man is already dead. He is already dead when he begins to shout. He is already dead when the woman begins to scream, when Louis flings her away from her companion without looking to see where she lands or if he has left her only to Lestat's mercies. He hasn't chosen her.
Louis tears this man's throat out. Blood spills down his chin, down his chest. The scream turns to a wet gurgle. It is not enough. It will not be enough. His hunger and his anger are one thing. They are a wildfire. This man is only kindling. Louis hears bone snap as he slams the body against the bridge rail, and abruptly the struggling ceases.
There is no chance at all that Louis will hear the shuddered intake of breath in the moment he launches himself away, Lestat tipping a stare up at the sky as the animal sounds of the attack echo down the low walkway. It would have been the same, rescuing Nicki—an immediate and hateful thought. Vitriol, madness. But this is different. He has always determined that Louis would be different.
And so it is. Blood spatters. The panicky scrape of a drunk woman trying to get up and run, one of the heels of her shoe broken. Lestat looks over, evaluating the progress. Louis, tearing his victims to shreds.
He is there in an instant.
Not to stop Louis, or interrupt the meal he is now quietly indulging in. Further off. He takes the woman by the throat and snaps her neck, and she is dead, and without looking, he hauls her aside to drop into the river. A waste, he knows. He had intended to feed.
A little penance.
Turns on a heel, evaluating Louis, the curve of his back. Ready to intercede, should he decide to drink too deeply.
There is some distant awareness of a pulse suddenly stopping, of the splash that follows. That he is starving still. That he can still taste Lestat in the back of his throat, even as blood flows forth from the mangled man pinned up against the side of the bridge.
Not so much flow as sluggish spurts, but there is still the promise of more.
And then after, what next? Another, and another after.
More, until he is no longer weak. Until he is no longer a fool. (More, and more, because the world is quiet while he is so occupied, because the oppressive reality of Claudia's death is no longer crushing him beneath its truth.)
The sound of a dwindling heart beat, the deep gulping down of blood, weak breathing. Lestat, standing, waiting, nails digging into his palms.
Then, a step forwards, and another.
"Chéri."
The endearment comes without thought, pure reflex, as if its been no time at all since the last time he said it. When he follows the next instinct, it's with more trepidation, a hand going out to touch high on Louis' back, to go and take his shoulder in hand and encourage him away from his prey.
A whole body shudder underneath Lestat's hand. A moment where his teeth dig in harder, pushing a last weak whimper from his prey.
Chéri wedging under his skin, finding that deep, intrinsic part of him that Louis has never been able to sever.
His jaws release. The man falls. Louis' breathing too hard, too heavily. Something near to shock setting in, vision blurring, narrowing to the corpse at his feet. The hand at his shoulder an anchor point as he sways back a step further.
He has never had to consider whether a vampire can overeat. Has never asked what happens to a vampire nearly starved, and then animated once more.
Shrouding himself in his anger, going rigid in its grasp, this is the only thing keeping Louis from collapsing too. (And Lestat, the hand at his shoulder, the touch he almost sways to if not for his rage. His rage cannot yield.)
"No," has nothing to do with this moment, a moaned misplace of a word.
(He'd screamed it, over and over. It had done nothing.)
"I need more, I need..."
Claudia. The coven reduced to ash. To climb back into that coffin among the stones. His mind spins between these things, flinches away from Armand among the wreckage of them.
Unbidden memory: Claudia dropping to her knees, whining that she wanted more. Is that how vampires die? From starvation?
And Louis doesn't shrug off his hand, so Lestat keeps it there, and brings another in to touch his arm. Two solid points, steadying, easing him back away from the corpse. One full adult is enough to sate a vampire, and one who has already drunk another vampire deep enough to fell a mortal.
They could hunt more. There is plenty of night left and Lestat finds he cares very little for the laws that prohibit the kinds of excess that might betray them, given the antics of this coven in particular.
But then, where does hunger end, and blackhole of this rage begin? What one bad night can do to a person. Louis is sensitive. He always has been. Lestat's hands squeeze, urging him to turn.
"No," is a sob of a response, even as he gives over to the pressure of Lestat's hands. Says it again, even as he does turn, his head before the rest of his body follows.
"No."
No near to the same tenor as I hate you.
These aren't untrue things. They are only incomplete. Louis has no space for the rest.
Claudia is dead.
The blood has streaked down his chin, his throat. Soaked through his tunic. Lestat is touching him, and Louis wanted that. Louis wanted to be touched by him, has always wanted to be touched by him. Sat on that stage and heard Lestat lie, heard him render their lives in malicious tones to a gleeful mortal audience, and still—
His heart leaps, erratic. Wanting. Even in the midst of all-consuming grief, a corpse at their feet and their daughter dead, Louis still wants him.
Breaking his own rules and intentions by taking Louis' by the face with his hands. How can he not?
But what can Lestat say? Please don't be broken, I need you. Or something even more absurd, like, I'm sorry. The terrible and endless fount of explanation, excuses, reasoning, threatening to break like a furious river against a weakened dam, but even if he allowed it to break, it changes nothing.
But he can hear Louis' heart. Feel it, in that strange, near-subconscious attunement shared between them. He can feel himself crumbling, but the fear also crumbles, fear of rejection or doing the wrong thing, fear of that certain hatred that hasn't left Louis' voice. Lestat looks at him now and he sees Claudia looking back, that desperate searching look that asked him why this was happening, why did it hurt so badly, why couldn't he make it stop?
He had stood frozen, and made himself watch. Here, a choking sound leaves him, and his arms go around Louis, am embrace so insistent they both stagger a step.
It is only Louis, so locked in his own building fury, that keeps them from collapsing here in the street.
There is a not insignificant part of Louis that desperately wants just that. To collapse. To be crushed under the weight of his grief.
Claudia is dead. (A refrain that he cannot shake. That feels as if it will follow him for the rest of his life.)
Lestat is holding him again.
Something in Louis snaps. Breaks.
Lestat clutches him and for a moment Louis cannot move at all. His breath rasps in Lestat's ear, tremors held in check by the force of their embrace. Says something. Maybe no, again.
It doesn't matter.
Slowly, clumsy as if Louis cannot recall how, his arms come up in return. And then it is a bruising, clinging thing, holding Lestat desperately tight in return.
Is he broken? He feels broken, or near to it. As if the only thing keeping him from spiraling into absolute insanity is Lestat, holding on to him.
He knows a pulse of loathing, disgust for himself, when the first sob breaks through. There is no helping it, of course. He had denied himself it up until this point, and as Louis' arms go around him tightly, it is all at once impossible to continue.
But Lestat holds him in return. A firm arm around his shoulders, across his back, centre of gravity reestablished after that initial rocking forwards.
He turns his head, tucking his face in against the side of Louis' neck. His pulse is strong with this new flush of blood. He is alive. Claudia is dead but Louis is alive, breathing harshly into his ear, heart beating, muscles lashing to bone as he returns the embrace so tightly. Louis is alive and in his arms, and the surge of relief and joy makes for a strangely bitter, potent mix with everything else.
And Louis hates him, but isn't that wonderful too? In the scheme of things.
"Stay with me," is blatant begging. "Don't go away, Louis. Whatever you need, I'll give you, only stay."
The first thought, reflexive: Where would I go? What does it matter where I am? Claudia is dead.
Stay, Lestat begs, and it's not about location, about proximity or about intent to flee. It's an appeal for Louis remaining alive, whether Lestat realizes it or not.
She would hate him for this, Louis knows. He's doing it again, she'd hissed, as if she could sense the way Louis' heart, his terrible, foolish heart was already softening.
And while rage and grief have locked so much of Louis into place, his heart—
There is just enough left to warm here, clutched close with Lestat's voice in his ear. Louis' grip on him tightens impossibly further. The words don't come for a long stretch, only the ragged rhythm of his breathing until Louis can finally dredge up a reply.
"I want all of them dead."
Lestat can help if he wishes. Louis will accomplish it with or without help.
One thing at a time, Lestat had cautioned. Maybe it will be easier to feel the grief without being destroyed by it when those responsible have been made to regret harming her.
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One thing at a time, Lestat had cautioned. There are stones in the folds of his clothing, closed into his flesh at the heels. Louis' chin and throat are slick with blood. His eyes are dark when he finally looks fully at Lestat. Swaying on his feet in a casket full of stones, heartbeat accelerating, chest heaving deep, unsteady breaths.
"Help me," is a furious, bewildered rasp. "Help me?"
Claudia is dead.
Louis hand closes in on itself, a feeble preservation of that last moment, of Claudia's hand in his own before he'd been ripped from his seat.
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The word comes out—barely. A sound, a hiss, quiet in his throat.
Standing, and his hands out, and his arms out, like they could embrace if Louis allowed it, if he stumbled from his coffin and if Lestat could catch him.
But there is no romance to this, not in Lestat's expression, where wonderous relief has given away to (a dark flicker) a tense wariness, a focus. The knowledge that there is simply no room or space to feel the thing he can see in Louis' face, hear in his voice. Beholding a burning corridor, wondering if there is a least painful way through.
"Louis, you have to come with me now," voice thick. "Quietly, away from here."
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How can he go? (Claudia is dead. Claudia is dead.) How can he leave her?
"Nah," is ground glass. Agony. "I'm gonna kill them. I gotta kill them."
Fury crystalizing, hardening, even as Louis begins the clumsy, clambering process of spilling out of the coffin. Weakly wrenching his feet from the rocks, overbalancing, Lestat's outstretched hands the only thing that keeps him from falling to the floor.
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This, too, lacks romance.
(Lacks romance? Holding him closely while Louis is consumed by his rage, his own wounded heart leaping in his chest to match it.)
"You cannot," is a furious near-whisper in Louis' ear. "You mistake your hunger for strength, Louis. Your anger for efficacy." The hold he has on him can only emphasise this fact, should Louis try to struggle. It won't work. "They will tear you to shreds and I will not allow it, do you hear me?"
There is no weeping to herald the flooding red in his eyes, just an upswell of deep feeling, impossible to name as one thing.
Somewhere, a theatre full of vampires and drunkards. Now is not the moment.
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Claudia is dead.
"Fuck you," Louis spits, strangled, panicked. A thrash of movement that takes him nowhere, weakened as he is. Spits again, through a mouthful of fangs: "Fuck you."
Because it is the truth, what Lestat is saying. They would tear him to shreds. Armand would allow it. And Claudia—
A flash of memory: Burlap, wrapped around his head.
A flash of memory: Claudia, screaming as they forced her in among the rats.
A flash of memory: Hands restraining him, dragging him, silencing him.
Above them, laughter. Applause. The patter of music and performance. Below, Louis' hatred turning over in his chest.
"Fuck you," flattening out, Louis' knuckles digging in beneath Lestat's ribs. The fight waning, at least for the moment.
inappropriate icon moment
The hold shifts. As Louis weakens, the grip gentles—a relative thing. Still holding him tightly, but that assertion of deep, supernatural strength abates, and Louis finds he is being held by another man rather than an unyielding statue of iron.
And he can break free of it, but Lestat doesn't let go, not yet. Waiting.
hearty lol
Claudia is dead. A constant, endless refrain. Louis' thoughts snag, stuck, coming endlessly back to her screams.
Slowly, like rising smoke, guilt. Deepening even as he takes this small comfort, hand closing slowly in the back of Lestat's vest.
"Should've left me in there."
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The threat of sharp teeth at his throat, the ambiguity of the hand closing at the back of his vest. Doesn't matter. Lestat holds Louis to him, because Louis is alive, rescued, and if he has done nothing else in his cursed life, it is this.
And maybe he will never hold him again. Something he knows as he loosens his arms and grips Louis by the shoulders, Lestat drawing back. That waxy look, now, of a vampire well drained, bringing up the smear of blood tears a little brighter, but his eyeline is steady as he meets Louis' eye.
"Come with me now," he says. "Whatever you do next, do this one thing first."
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Ascend the stairs. Sink his fangs into the first vampire he comes across. Repeat until there are none left, or until he is dead too.
Louis can't bring his fangs back in, can't reign himself back in. Lestat has him by the shoulders. His eyes are glossy, red traces of tears there. Looking at him, Louis feels some distant, dull stirring of feeling in his chest. An awareness of what had kindled during the trial, the breathless flutter of anticipation at his coming, the love Louis carried for him glowing like a coal in his chest even as Lestat damned him and Claudia both.
"I hate you."
Even this is not enough of anything. Not enough of a condemnation.
But it is assent. Louis leaves the certainty of his own death, and gives over to Lestat's plea.
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A ripple of feeling through that intent and steady stare, a twitch at the mouth, absurd hurt flashing plainer behind focused, blood-rimmed blue. There is no surprise in it. A knife that twists and finds no resistance at all.
But it is assent. Lestat lets him go, banished, but expectant of being followed. The way out is easier, with the theatre's bowels tangled with the Parisian sewer system, and Lestat moves as efficiently as a night predator, caring only about making distance between them and the coven, only about Louis following along.
A manhole cover scraping aside. Crawling out onto a quiet street. The gleam of the river nearby. Lestat, first, and then turning to pull Louis out behind him.
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It echoes in his mind, over and over and over. They trek through the sewers in near silence, Louis' palm on the slick stone to keep himself upright and moving. His breath is a scraping rasp of sound, a wounded creature tugged along only by its own pain. Hunger gnaws at him, the stopgap of Lestat's blood waning as they flee.
And his anger, his anger is a refuge. If he disappears into it, then the excruciating pain of his grief diminishes. He is thinking already of how he'll repay them. How he will make them regret what they'd done.
Lestat pulls him out. Louis remains briefly on hands and knees in the street, panting, before he pushes back. Looks up at Lestat from his heels, eyes dark. Fangs catching the waning moonlight. His breath comes faster, looking at him. Hurt. Why blooming in his expression.
"Is this where you leave me?" is the question posed instead, tone an inscrutable thing. Syllables scraped across gravel, thick with misery. One question from the many, the most immediate. How far does Lestat's benevolence stretch in this moment?
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The question, then, takes him off-guard. His hands form fists at his sides.
"You need blood," finally, tone flat, but lacking in edge. "And a coffin, when the dawn comes."
He would like to shatter into a million pieces. Fall to his knees in front of Louis, grasp him, explain everything, a tempting outpouring of hysterics, as if he believed Louis would hear it, would want it, would need it. Lestat would like it, at least, and he doesn't. Because Claudia is dead.
"Come with me. Hunt, sleep. See what revenge looks like then."
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He cannot return to the little apartment he and Claudia had shared. That is closed to him, he who will surely be hunted. Armand will look, Louis knows. The rest, upon finding the empty coffin, will seek to complete the verdict, to banish Louis from this world.
It is tempting to remain here. Kneeling in the street.
He would melt away in the dawn. It would be over.
It should be over. Claudia is dead. What else is there now?
(If he reaches for the comfort Lestat could offer, he will shatter. He cannot shatter.)
"I know what it looks like," roughly, stubborn. The grate is closed, prevents the impulse to simply turn to see it done now.
It is a labor, getting to his feet. But rise Louis does, propelled by the compulsion of hunting, of blood. (Of Lestat, inescapable and tangible, Louis' heart erratic over the continued presence of him.) He straightens slowly, runs his tongue across his fangs.
"Where?"
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And—voices. Foot steps.
Walking the river's edge, the smell of alcohol almost as vibrant as the clap of the woman's drunken laughter. She is wobbling on the arm of the man she is with, and he is moving them with intent. Lestat does not seem surprised, does not even look, as if maybe this manhole had more to do with the sound of easy prey up above than the nearest location of whatever he's managed to procure himself.
Louis is as Lestat has never seen him, not really. Pieces of it. Fury, bloodlust, hatred. But a proper hunt between them, they'd never quite managed. Always Lestat's hunts, and Louis in attendance. Always Louis' fumbles, and Lestat looking aside.
Now, he says, "Go on," and, "I'll keep watch," and expects Louis to do as a vampire should.
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And for a moment, thinks of Claudia. Not her absence. Not her death. Thinks of her, aglow with the joy of her kills, French spilling out of her mouth.
I never want to hunt alone again.
The sound Louis makes then, halfway between a snarl and a sob, startles the man. The woman's laugh goes high, a shrill cackle at what sounds nonsensical to her. What must look nonsensical, in the shadows. Is not identifiable, until it is too late. Louis is older than he had been in New Orleans, faster now than he was then.
This man is already dead. He is already dead when he begins to shout. He is already dead when the woman begins to scream, when Louis flings her away from her companion without looking to see where she lands or if he has left her only to Lestat's mercies. He hasn't chosen her.
Louis tears this man's throat out. Blood spills down his chin, down his chest. The scream turns to a wet gurgle. It is not enough. It will not be enough. His hunger and his anger are one thing. They are a wildfire. This man is only kindling. Louis hears bone snap as he slams the body against the bridge rail, and abruptly the struggling ceases.
He drinks.
The world around him quiets, for a moment.
(Claudia. Claudia is dead.)
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There is no chance at all that Louis will hear the shuddered intake of breath in the moment he launches himself away, Lestat tipping a stare up at the sky as the animal sounds of the attack echo down the low walkway. It would have been the same, rescuing Nicki—an immediate and hateful thought. Vitriol, madness. But this is different. He has always determined that Louis would be different.
And so it is. Blood spatters. The panicky scrape of a drunk woman trying to get up and run, one of the heels of her shoe broken. Lestat looks over, evaluating the progress. Louis, tearing his victims to shreds.
He is there in an instant.
Not to stop Louis, or interrupt the meal he is now quietly indulging in. Further off. He takes the woman by the throat and snaps her neck, and she is dead, and without looking, he hauls her aside to drop into the river. A waste, he knows. He had intended to feed.
A little penance.
Turns on a heel, evaluating Louis, the curve of his back. Ready to intercede, should he decide to drink too deeply.
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There is some distant awareness of a pulse suddenly stopping, of the splash that follows. That he is starving still. That he can still taste Lestat in the back of his throat, even as blood flows forth from the mangled man pinned up against the side of the bridge.
Not so much flow as sluggish spurts, but there is still the promise of more.
And then after, what next? Another, and another after.
More, until he is no longer weak. Until he is no longer a fool. (More, and more, because the world is quiet while he is so occupied, because the oppressive reality of Claudia's death is no longer crushing him beneath its truth.)
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Then, a step forwards, and another.
"Chéri."
The endearment comes without thought, pure reflex, as if its been no time at all since the last time he said it. When he follows the next instinct, it's with more trepidation, a hand going out to touch high on Louis' back, to go and take his shoulder in hand and encourage him away from his prey.
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Chéri wedging under his skin, finding that deep, intrinsic part of him that Louis has never been able to sever.
His jaws release. The man falls. Louis' breathing too hard, too heavily. Something near to shock setting in, vision blurring, narrowing to the corpse at his feet. The hand at his shoulder an anchor point as he sways back a step further.
He has never had to consider whether a vampire can overeat. Has never asked what happens to a vampire nearly starved, and then animated once more.
Shrouding himself in his anger, going rigid in its grasp, this is the only thing keeping Louis from collapsing too. (And Lestat, the hand at his shoulder, the touch he almost sways to if not for his rage. His rage cannot yield.)
"No," has nothing to do with this moment, a moaned misplace of a word.
(He'd screamed it, over and over. It had done nothing.)
"I need more, I need..."
Claudia. The coven reduced to ash. To climb back into that coffin among the stones. His mind spins between these things, flinches away from Armand among the wreckage of them.
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And Louis doesn't shrug off his hand, so Lestat keeps it there, and brings another in to touch his arm. Two solid points, steadying, easing him back away from the corpse. One full adult is enough to sate a vampire, and one who has already drunk another vampire deep enough to fell a mortal.
They could hunt more. There is plenty of night left and Lestat finds he cares very little for the laws that prohibit the kinds of excess that might betray them, given the antics of this coven in particular.
But then, where does hunger end, and blackhole of this rage begin? What one bad night can do to a person. Louis is sensitive. He always has been. Lestat's hands squeeze, urging him to turn.
"Louis," he says. "Look at me."
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"No."
No near to the same tenor as I hate you.
These aren't untrue things. They are only incomplete. Louis has no space for the rest.
Claudia is dead.
The blood has streaked down his chin, his throat. Soaked through his tunic. Lestat is touching him, and Louis wanted that. Louis wanted to be touched by him, has always wanted to be touched by him. Sat on that stage and heard Lestat lie, heard him render their lives in malicious tones to a gleeful mortal audience, and still—
His heart leaps, erratic. Wanting. Even in the midst of all-consuming grief, a corpse at their feet and their daughter dead, Louis still wants him.
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But what can Lestat say? Please don't be broken, I need you. Or something even more absurd, like, I'm sorry. The terrible and endless fount of explanation, excuses, reasoning, threatening to break like a furious river against a weakened dam, but even if he allowed it to break, it changes nothing.
But he can hear Louis' heart. Feel it, in that strange, near-subconscious attunement shared between them. He can feel himself crumbling, but the fear also crumbles, fear of rejection or doing the wrong thing, fear of that certain hatred that hasn't left Louis' voice. Lestat looks at him now and he sees Claudia looking back, that desperate searching look that asked him why this was happening, why did it hurt so badly, why couldn't he make it stop?
He had stood frozen, and made himself watch. Here, a choking sound leaves him, and his arms go around Louis, am embrace so insistent they both stagger a step.
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There is a not insignificant part of Louis that desperately wants just that. To collapse. To be crushed under the weight of his grief.
Claudia is dead. (A refrain that he cannot shake. That feels as if it will follow him for the rest of his life.)
Lestat is holding him again.
Something in Louis snaps. Breaks.
Lestat clutches him and for a moment Louis cannot move at all. His breath rasps in Lestat's ear, tremors held in check by the force of their embrace. Says something. Maybe no, again.
It doesn't matter.
Slowly, clumsy as if Louis cannot recall how, his arms come up in return. And then it is a bruising, clinging thing, holding Lestat desperately tight in return.
Is he broken? He feels broken, or near to it. As if the only thing keeping him from spiraling into absolute insanity is Lestat, holding on to him.
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But Lestat holds him in return. A firm arm around his shoulders, across his back, centre of gravity reestablished after that initial rocking forwards.
He turns his head, tucking his face in against the side of Louis' neck. His pulse is strong with this new flush of blood. He is alive. Claudia is dead but Louis is alive, breathing harshly into his ear, heart beating, muscles lashing to bone as he returns the embrace so tightly. Louis is alive and in his arms, and the surge of relief and joy makes for a strangely bitter, potent mix with everything else.
And Louis hates him, but isn't that wonderful too? In the scheme of things.
"Stay with me," is blatant begging. "Don't go away, Louis. Whatever you need, I'll give you, only stay."
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Stay, Lestat begs, and it's not about location, about proximity or about intent to flee. It's an appeal for Louis remaining alive, whether Lestat realizes it or not.
She would hate him for this, Louis knows. He's doing it again, she'd hissed, as if she could sense the way Louis' heart, his terrible, foolish heart was already softening.
And while rage and grief have locked so much of Louis into place, his heart—
There is just enough left to warm here, clutched close with Lestat's voice in his ear. Louis' grip on him tightens impossibly further. The words don't come for a long stretch, only the ragged rhythm of his breathing until Louis can finally dredge up a reply.
"I want all of them dead."
Lestat can help if he wishes. Louis will accomplish it with or without help.
One thing at a time, Lestat had cautioned. Maybe it will be easier to feel the grief without being destroyed by it when those responsible have been made to regret harming her.
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