It did always sound, and Lestat lets his head roll back with a quiet, breathy, still very French laugh as he finishes wiping clean his hands.
A waste, this body. A puddle of cold blood on the ground. He does not feel a particular need to clean up this mess, a neck wound without exsanguination doesn't prick at his own ingrained instincts to cover trails that are not even his to begin with. He tips his head, rustles through some pockets until he finds a wallet. Here, he can take the few crumpled bills inside, credit cards, and voila, we have a violent robbery, he's a genius. A little like straightening a picture on the wall of a half-collapsed house.
He also doesn't think to search out the cellphone, and gets to his feet as he inspects the cash. Not very much. Into his pocket it goes all the same, as he now turns his focus on Daniel, a lingering looking over that trawls head to toe.
Not Louis', this fledgling—his first guess. Which leaves behind only limited and unbelievable options, the likeliest one being the most incredible of all. It doesn't take much, a kind of psychic tracing over of a rumpled stitch, feeling out the threads of connection. Bright red eyes, unmistakable, and maybe Daniel can feel it, this knowledge plucked free.
Certainly, it can be read in Lestat's face. A flicker of some complicated tangle—amusement, first, mock-scandal in the snapping back of his focus to Daniel's eye. The focus of a predator, seeing the twitch in the brush.
"Well," is doing a lot of work, but he continues, "young ones like you shouldn't skip meals. Shall we?"
Daniel can feel it, in fact, and it's very strange. He'd found it critical to understand how to use his mind very quickly, given the situation he'd been left in. Eavesdropping has been a great teacher, and through it, he knows that cross-planet telepathy is an advanced trick that no one suspects in him even if a few have floated the notion that perhaps the writer has been embraced. He watches the information go in his mind's eye, like observing a particularly elegant date stealing a french fry off his plate.
This time, he does laugh, though it's tinged wry.
"At least I know he's probably not listening to me anymore."
Fucking Armand. Lestat can no doubt hear that one loud and clear. Last memories of him like a bizarre cat in the dark, a lithe shadow with lamplike eyes, pulling in all the light like he's greedy for it, and Daniel's world spinning, spinning, spinning.
Meanwhile: interesting. He can't turn off his note-taking brain, and note-take it does. The writer moves over to his would-be-dinner, perhaps looking like he's aping the elder's routine, but in fact fishing for the ignored phone. He mashes a passcode on it until it locks itself, then turns it off. Lestat went for the cash and the cards, Lestat looks properly nourished but is a little bit dressed like he forgot something at the grocery store on a Sunday morning, Lestat said my beloved.
He goes for the dead (?) vampire next, fishes out a second phone, repeats the process. This one he'll take to his guy to get broken into, but the mortal's is getting thrown in the river. Finally he looks back to Lestat.
Lestat is patient, watching Daniel go about the phones—and not disinterested, hawk-eyed and curious.
Back in New Orleans, he had his own rat catcher. A rat catcher who caught rats, and sometimes by accident useful things about the world would drop out of his mouth. None of them included any advice about what to do about cellular devices on victims—but advice on other things, like CCTV and forensic sciences, and after a while, the rats just seemed like the better solution—so he watches what Daniel does, and meets his eye when focus switches back to himself.
Hm, agreeable, with a smile. Pivots, and leads them away.
To nowhere in particular. He hasn't spent time getting to know Atlanta as a hunting ground, but he can listen to voices and thoughts on the wind, can catch scents, can feel his way through the dark streets, and besides, if all he wanted to do was save Daniel Molloy's life when it was in jeopardy, he would vanish as fast as he appeared.
"Lelio," he says, as they start, nothing but a distant siren, the sound of bootfalls on dry concrete. A glance, wry. "Not Arlequin. At that time described in your book, I was the romantic lead, not the clown. Your maker has a poor memory. I suppose it goes with age."
Quickstep, to keep up. Daniel moves like he's much younger than he looks, now, which is great. Honeymoon period, he knows (how could he not know), but he hopes to have a long one. Very curious about this encounter— grateful to be rescued, incredibly so, but that feeling is already in the rear view mirror compared to insistent interest. In Lestat in the flesh, in... what are they doing? Hunting?
Crazy. It's crazy, this happening. Should he mentally ring Louis? Nah, probably not. Even if only because he knows his friend isn't overly thrilled that Daniel has bypassed the 'self loathing and small animals' stage. And he gets why that disappoints Louis, he really does, but after those weeks in Dubai, learning what he learned, he knows that drawing it out is torture over a thing of inevitability. So why bother.
He'll reach out to Louis later. This is probably fine.
"That's generous of you." Right, yes, a simple mistake from mentally feeble old Armand, accidentally recasting Lestat as a clown. "Can't say anything about the stage, but you make an outstanding romantic lead on the page. And a romantic villain."
Frankly, the book might not have come together without Lestat haunting the narrative. Barring the meltdown Daniel was caught in the middle of, the timeline fades into vague summaries after Lestat's withdrawal, despite not having been the interview subject. As though he took something vital with him. A point that Daniel was forced to make in first draft, and then the final draft. Absent only in editing, dithering. So,
A demurring little shrug at his supposed generosity: what can he say? Armand can use all the help he can get.
Lestat, of course, has certainly read the thing. Read it to death. There is a copy stashed with his things, spine broken, pages dog-eared, and this is the second one after, during his first reading, some moment compelled him to take a handful of pages and tear them free in a fit of anguish. He has been more careful since, making sure to get to the end.
Which could be as much compliment to the writer as the subject. The matter of his heroism and villainy, both romantic, is awarded with him opening his mouth like he might say something to it, hesitating long enough—
Good, a pivot. "On a break."
Is it much of a detail, that he ignores the pockets of his coat as he walks, hands free? Maybe not. A slouchy affect isn't universally prescribed. All the same, an old world energy to posture, clinging to his frame for dear life as his accent does to his voice, a century spent in America, longer than the changes of men's fashion.
"But now I am working on an album. My own compositions. I have found within myself, Daniel, a new motivation to reenter the world, but," a turn of his hand, "I feel compelled to offer some credit where credit is due. Do you keep him as your acquaintance? Louis."
Confidence. It could mean that Lestat feels safe enough to turn any situation on its head, no fear of bloody fingers walking away from two brutalized bodies, that he has enough experience and finesse to simply be done with it (though the lack of attention to phones is a little concerning). It could also mean that he's not entirely plugged into reality. Daniel is in danger, he knows. But that just makes him more invested.
"Yeah, we stay in touch. Not as often as I might like, but he's working through some things. Remodeling. A tree was removed improperly from their little," here he makes a gesture, "simulated solarium, which I understand was a pain to restructure."
It occurs to him that Lestat will not have heard Louis' dare shouted out into the night. Only the reactions. What picture must that paint?
'Some things', 'their'. An open wound being cemented over.
This, Lestat had prepared himself for a little. The tantalising morsels of information that may emerge as they speak. He is not without context. His capacity to leave his roost in New Orleans can be solely attributed to a reunion, some shared understanding, a little knowledge of what the past seven decades have been for them both.
Not enough, never enough. But: he has prepared himself a little, so the sense of more metaphorical fangs extending at mention of their is the kind of thing he keeps more or less off his face. Doesn't immediately bite after the bait and demand for more. What tree? What things? How has he progressed, this working out?
No. Back to himself.
"Rock and roll," is said without irony, with great enthusiasm, but the smile he sends Daniel's way sidelong seems just this side of self-aware. Some kernel of sober conviction in the bright-eyed lunacy. "In feeling and sentiment at its least. I will take everything I have listened to over this past century and give it new life. What it chooses to be after that, no maker can dictate."
He swerves a little, a friendly little bump of the shoulder to Molloy's as they walk. "I wish to be on TV as well. You mustn't tell anyone."
A celebrity vampire would take some of the in-community heat off of Louis, he suspects. He opts not to voice this; landmines such as their are unavoidable. Daniel was not in Dubai with Louis alone, and Daniel is not here, in this way, through Louis' grace. He should attempt to steer the conversation away from him, where he can—
Hah, yeah right. It's going to be a mirror. Louis couldn't get Lestat out of his story. There's no surprise in discovering, immediately, that Lestat can't get Louis out of his.
Kinda romantic, ignoring all the abuse. (And they probably will! Sigh.)
"I like rock and roll." Really, Mr Leather Jacket? "It's never been done by anyone whose musical CV loops back to commedia dell'arte."
Alone in this abandoned side street, they're approaching a parking lot. From the deep web maps of paranoid ex-redditors he's consulted, Daniel knows that the nearest camera is on a shitty chop shop diagonal from the lot. A few blocks away, someone is driving an old car, too slow to be going anywhere with purpose. In the 70s, he'd think it was somebody pulling over to get a blowjob, but here and now, it's probably someone trying to get Google Maps to work.
The growl of the engine draws Lestat's focus a ways as well. That might be good, either in particular or as a concept. A meal, and a means of transporting the waste to the darkest body of water. The parking lot is fenced off only on one side, and he notes the shadowy corners they could wait for whatever rat might scurry into a trap.
He doesn't know the territory but cameras give off a sound. Hard to pick up in a modern city full of sounds, but not impossible if you can narrow down your focus.
Speaking of focus—
Lestat laughs, a sudden and exuberant sound that takes all the air from his lungs, and his hand goes out to grip Daniel by the shoulder, as if they are old friends who just exited the bar at cut off.
"Daniel!" Daniel Daniel Daniel. "To speak with you, of course. You know," the amusement staying present in his voice as he leads them off towards the parking lot, "when I was taken," because what is sacred anymore, when Louis and Armand would give up so much of him to this man, who would give it to the world, "I was at the height of my career. I might have played at la salle Richelieu with one more mortal season. I was written about in British papers. And then I died."
Quelle tragique, says the hand to his breast, a brief swing around to walk backwards and look at Daniel as he does so.
"And like you, I continued on. I think we could be of mutual benefit, don't you think?"
One more thing for Lestat to hate Armand for, if he ends up deciding Daniel shouldn't be here, shouldn't have done what he did. (Assuming Louis wouldn't have found another way, another journalist, another drama.) The ancient vampire had decades to go and kill him between then and now, he had every opportunity to shut down the interview. All he did to Louis, Daniel doesn't believe he couldn't have psychically strong-armed him into letting it go.
Because it's not like Daniel was ever going to stop himself. He'd have gotten that book out on his death bed with no recordings, no files, if he had to get it out as a conspiracy theory. As soon as he got on the plane to the UAE, the book was set in stone. Practically already real.
"We both got thrown in the deep end in our own ways, huh."
The driver of the old car is thinking about going home, or killing himself, or getting tacos. Relatable nothingness. Daniel finds mortals very easy to read (he has not tried, will not try, Lestat, unwilling to insert his whole arm into the shark mouth).
"Is it better? Being this way?"
Logic, and all he knows about the man, tells him that Lestat is not a metric by which to evaluate this unlife. And yet despite all his charades, Daniel believes him (or the him he knows through Louis, through Armand, through Claudia) to be the most honest about being a vampire.
The driver in the old car then thinks about a place to pull over, a quiet parking lot nearby, seeing it so vividly in his mind's eye. His own brain rushes to fill in the rest, easy: he can check his phone which he thinks vibrated, and he can think about things, and delay whatever hopeless void awaits him at home.
Lestat's touch in the mortal's mind is like a fingertip tapping the surface of a pond, creating ripples, luring the fishies. No more than that.
Ah, such a question, transmitted through a flicker of his expression, turning back to face the path they've aimed themselves down. Thinking about it a little, as Daniel didn't ask do you like it more? or is it better for you?, but something more universal. Rings a little of the philosophising that tormented his early romances with du Lac, but only in form, he thinks, not spirit. Besides, he's had time to think.
"The most exquisite of agonies, the highest of pleasures. To live as selfishly as our inner animal compels us to live. Not less than human, but more than human, more human than any who walk the earth, more capacity to love and to hate and to rage. We will never escape our grief, our pain, the harms we have done, and every night, a decision to continue, to endure, and kill in the name of that enduring. Not everyone has this ability. Not everyone can stand it."
They could go around the chainlink fence, but why? Lestat hooks his claws into it, resting his weight back on his heels as he looks back at Daniel.
"But in short, it is called a gift for a reason, and it rules. Come," an invitation, before scaling the fence with great efficiency, jumping over it to land on silent feet.
The man in the old car will be here soon. Not much of a hunt, maybe, but Daniel is still a beginner, and if ArMaNd isn't around to drag something injured into the den for his cubs—
For the record, Daniel would have accepted a yes or no answer, but a part of him (the part that enjoyed writing the book, not the part that needled Louis about excusing abuse) is delighted at the theatrical presentation he receives instead. Lestat the actor, Lestat the composure, soon Lestat the lyricist, the poet? If he actually is set on being a musician out in the world, he's going to do great.
A bark of a laugh leaves him at 'it rules.'
You know what, that's a fine answer too. Someday if he's very lucky he will watch his daughters die peacefully, and not be executed by sunlight in front of him. Each drawback also has a silver lining, an it-could-be-worse. He won't wallow, he refuses. He'll have time for it.
Up and over. Surreal to be able to move like this (again? at all), and a part of him still braces inside and flinches now and again, expecting punishment from his body. A break, a sprain, a wrack of tremors he can't control. But he just feels good. Better than ever. And on that trajectory, eating people feels better than heroin ever did. Cognizant of that being a potential problem, he nevertheless waits for the car. Already, he has discovered the ability to go unnoticed, particularly in shadow.
Too much the natural showman for an actual short answer, it's true—at least not one off the bat, with no flourishing off-ramp. Lestat had been too blinded by the unfairness he'd choked down, reading Daniel Molloy's bestseller, to consider if any natural affinity for poetry out of him had translated itself onto the page. He had a way about him, Louis says like three times. Thanks Louis.
Also for consideration: maybe it's important to him that Daniel, personally, find him charming.
But then, when isn't that important to him, for literally everyone everywhere all the time, who ever meets him? He shows a smile to Daniel when the man lands on the other side and it reaches his eyes, and then they are making for the shadows. Naturally silent, vanishing past the glow of streetlamps, signage, haze.
Moments later, the car bumping off the road and into the parking lot, like an endangered sea mammal drifting into the netting. Next to Daniel, Lestat gives a small hum of satisfaction when the engine is killed.
"In or out of the car?" he asks. What is Daniel's instinct?
There are merits to both. If disposing of the car would be difficult, fingerprints and other evidence easily harvested from slipping inside of it, then hauling the victim out would be best. If leaving behind a mess would be the bigger risk, then containing the scene and dumping the car with the body wholesale would be smarter. He considers where they are, and what's around them.
"In."
Date night in the back seat, then a drive. There are paths to the Chattahoochee River that evade cameras, and areas where it's deep enough to roll a car into, never to be seen again. Daniel has done a few of these murders so far, and he feels ways about it, but makes himself compartmentalize. He tries for horrible people, even if those horrors are mundane— might as well, right? He's not God, he's not moralizing, but it's sensible. The worse a person is, the less likely it is that their disappearance will be looked into with any urgency.
"It's like eating hamburgers after going to a rescued animal sanctuary," he says, with an awareness that Lestat is probably eavesdropping for insight into his opinion about this. Might be a little sad, in theory, but in practice, it simply has to be done. "Most people aren't as cute as cows, though, you know?"
So this is actually easier. Cows tend not to beat their girlfriends or exploit minors after getting their Discord usernames off Fortnite.
The sorting through of the angles—logistical and moral, both—has a pleasantly decisive energy that Lestat can appreciate, his focus more intent on the fledgling vampire next to him, his other senses geared for the car.
"I never liked it when Louis selected dogs," he says. Most dogs are cuter than most humans, accounting for some extremes. Overall, certainly more willing to love unconditionally. The meat in the car has his hands on the wheel, his eyes closed. Making it easy, even without more meddling. "But one man can only have so many hierarchies inside of him."
A streetlamp above flickers, and winks out. The shadows that flood in are jarring, thick.
Turn to your vampire elders for the answers, and you will find dust, or something that wishes to be it. Lestat's psychic voice, like a murmur from behind, is made more disorienting as he cuts a path forwards, his stride long and purposeful. You can be God, if you wish. You can be the random and tragic accident, a collision, an act of nature. You can be the curator and refiner of good taste and culture as you see it. You can be mercy. You can be the Devil. In my experience, we try them all at least once.
As he nears, there's the sound of locking mechanisms undoing, and the figure in the car startles from his self-imposed reverie. Looking the wrong way, as Lestat goes for the front passenger door. Shot gun.
Daniel's fine for now, as he moves to the hood of the car and pops it open with a barely-there touch to the latch, Though we'll see how it goes.
Obscured, he leans in and pops the fuse box. Just in time as the confused driver scrambles for the horn and keys at once, mashing down the accelerator— the car goes nowhere, makes no honk, the wheels spin. SLAM, the hood goes down, and Daniel moves to press his hand against the driver's side door handle, crushing it to keep it closed, before hopping into the back seat.
Little smudges of motor oil on his fingers. Nimble despite the signs of age, and stronger than they look (though he has always looked strong, in a way; something something, the pen).
"Hey," he says. Friendly. The man reaches for the gear shift, and Daniel leans forward and grabs his arm to prevent it. Not going anywhere.
Lestat slides into the passenger seat like he's an overly presumptuous Uber passenger with a disregard for pandemic etiquette. By the time he's closed his door, Daniel has very efficiently turned the car into a cage, of which he is merely guarding one part.
The corner of his mouth ticks up as the man begins a panicky struggle, arm captured, the other hand scrabbling at the door, an adrenalised slam of the side of his fist against the glass when it refuses to open.
Lestat reaches to him, and snaps loose the seatbelt.
There were plenty of examples from Louis that described white table clothes, blood streaming like a thick ribbon into crystal glasses, deaths that took hours accompanied with a kind of psychological peeling back of layers. Not like Armand's warm bath but something similar in indulgence, and different in a level of mockery, debasement, and, well, a psychopath's idea of fun.
But there are fast kills too, gleefully violent, as efficient as a lioness on a gazelle. Sometimes, you simply need to eat.
He hauls the man in close, a spread of a smile showing fangs still stained blood-pink, and shoves him towards Daniel between the two front seats. Daniel has his arm, can get him in as close as he needs, and Lestat digs his claws into the seams of his denim jacket and peels it apart at the shoulder like wet paper. Daniel can have the neck.
Lestat bites down on exposed arm, aiming for the neighbourhood of the brachial artery. The car smells immediately (over the scent of body odor, old beer, and stale fries) of fear.
He'd prodded Louis about needing to kill humans to survive. Intentional jabs and challenges meant to provoke, even though he bore the scars of success on his throat, the same place he know sinks fangs into on this undeserving person. A real person, with a life, with relatives, friends, hobbies, opinions. It's important to understand an interview subject, and Louis, no matter what else, was still that. Daniel needed to see what would be defensiveness and what would be pride. What's murder? What's an assault? What's a donation?
Daniel has dedicated hours to the thought experiment of legality. If vampires become a protected class, recognized, what cases might the courts hear? What soulless arguments will be brought up, trying to justify heinous mortal crimes as biological imperatives?
Interesting. Curious. Worrying. Yet all of it fades as soon as he sinks his teeth (his fangs, the feeling of those manifesting is still surreal, but good) into something he can eat. It's better than drugs, better than alcohol or any food; he does not miss human food, does not miss delicate sweetness, indulgent over-salted meals, nothing savory or tart. Daniel liked bitter, sour things, enjoyed the ache in his mouth, and blood from a living human makes the memories of all of his favorites dull and bland.
A hitch, a scream. The man claws, says, Why, what the fuck, I'll kill you, but it's thin and gurgling by the end. Two monstrous, landwalking remoras, draining blood faster than a human heart can keep up with. Daniel feels his life, impressions of it, and the professional part of him can't help but look even as he endeavors to let it pass by unremarked on.
Every time. He drinks, and the difference between before and after a single meal is as stark as before and after death. Everything is better to a degree he has no words for. The man twitches as he tries to grapple, but his movements are weak, and he just bats at the gear shift, at Lestat, flinching soft in Daniel's grasp; gentle nothingness.
It's good every time. So Daniel has that to look forward to.
There is no prescription for how a vampire should hunt. They are perfectly effective on their own. In the wild, pack animals require the structure their instinct drives them towards. Of course, vampires aren't of nature, so that means nothing.
Lestat, anyway, has a theory that they are not meant to do this alone, not really. Even if they can, even if they prefer it. But here, he bites deeply into this mortal's flesh and sinks into that pleasured trance of consumption, and as the struggling heart they are both pulling from fails, it twitches back a veil that has little to do with the mind gift. Something a little more primal than that, a moment of synced heart beats, of awareness.
Life leaves this inconsequential person, Lestat absorbing memory and fleeting feeling with as much nondiscrimination as the quantity of blood he is consuming. He stops before he has taken his full share of it—he doesn't need as much as he used to, anyway—and when he lifts his head, the blood doesn't pour from the lethal wound, barely oozes, directed solely to the remaining tidal pull of Daniel's appetite.
Lestat lounges back in his seat with a satisfied groan, using his sleeve to clean his mouth. Rests his head back, catching his breath.
It's been sometime since he's done that, he reflects, but denies himself the urge to sink into self-pity. At least, for right now.
It is intimate. With the victim, with the other participant. Daniel has recklessly allowed himself to be an open book to Lestat, but in this, he's got enough awareness to have preemptively pulled a curtain over whether or not he's done this before, and with who. A very short list of candidates, and he's going to try his best not to walk them over any surprise land mines, given his habit of lobbing hand grenades as it is.
There is pleasure in feeling like the sole hunter. There is pleasure in finding kinship, particularly in something so difficult to understand. The elation is bonding.
He drinks with both the bottomless hunger of any old fledgling and the pointed, deliberate indulgence of an addiction connoisseur. He knows which expensive whiskeys are for sipping slowly out of a large globe class, and which beers are for knocking back in a breathless chug for applause.
When he stops it's because the human is actively dying, and the dregs, while still delicious, would take effort along the lines of holding the man upside down to encourage better bloodflow. And who has time for that? Not a couple of vampires who still have to dispose of this guy. Daniel sits back, hand still clasped against their victim's arm. A huff of an exhale, a deep, shaking inhale, and he rubs his face. Motor oil and blood leave a stain of dark black-red against mottled white hair.
Well. He had been out looking for dinner. So this all works.
When he hears Daniel slow his pace, Lestat turns to watch him withdraw. Intent on the usual sleepy-satisfied expression that comes next while he cleans off his own fangs with his tongue, the lingering mess of his meal a transparent smear of red across his chin. Daniel looks to him, and Lestat's chuckle is a rich and genuine thing, filling the car.
There is no need to ask: was it good for you? Of course it was.
His hand pats down on the awkward shape of the corpse wedged in place. "I will put him in the trunk," magnanimous, before opening the door on his side. Grabs the corpse by the arm and carelessly hauls him out after him like an oversized doll, the thump of shoes against the dashboard. There is not enough blood left to spatter, not inside the car or out of it.
Over the shoulder and then around the vehicle after a reflexive scan of the place. No one to see, no one to have to take care of. The car sways a little as the back hood is wrenched open, and something heavy dropped within.
It is not like sex. But it is more like sex than other things that aren't sex. And thus it's kind of weird, really, even in the giddy aftermath. An alarm bell rings way back in a far corner of Daniel's mind, telling him that the request to talk to Louis is inevitable as the sun coming up in eight hours, but he swipes to 'snooze' on that. Out of practicality, of course. One hurdle at a time.
Current hurdle: literal. Daniel crawls up into the driver's seat, which is not a graceful affair, but one he manages with all the ease of a bendy teenager. The man was shorter, and he has to pull the lever to scoot the chair back. Thunk, comically timed with the trunk closing.
Yet another phone. This one is unlocked, which is charming in its idiocy. Daniel is able to factory reset it before he turns it off.
"These are worth more than most cars," he says to Lestat once he's back in, gesturing with the phone. An FYI, one old guy to another. Most people don't even check for cash, these days, and almost nobody carries any. His own (real) phone is back in his hotel room, connected to bundled wifi, running a playlist of podcasts and dutifully collecting messages and pinging off nearby cell towers. The cheap emergency burner shoved in a pocket isn't worth detailing, but it, like the ones harvested tonight, is turned off.
"How do you feel about a scenic back roads drive? There's probably enough gas in here to make it to a decent dump spot without anything catching fire."
The popped spark plugs. It'll run, but they are sitting in a thrilling ticking time bomb.
"Allons-y," accompanied with an aristocratic wave of the hand. Onwards.
Cue a little bit of fiddling with the radio, which Lestat appears to know his way around, eventually landing on a station streaming frenetic Scandinavian death metal through its frequency. Lestat doesn't insist on flooding the car with it, especially as the quality of the speakers is fairly poor, but it makes a backdrop as Daniel steers them out of the parking lot, out onto empty roads.
The window dropped a few inches, and the seat slid backwards enough to accommodate a habit for lounging. A crumpled pack of cigarettes, extracted from coat pocket.
"I don't imagine you need to steal cellphones for a living," he says, plastic and paper crinkling as he fishes for a cigarette. "What with your successful career. Everyone is talking about it."
And away they go, in a car that is hopefully not going to immediately burn up. Fitting soundtrack notes.
"Just something I keep in mind if lunch needs to look like a mugging."
Daniel is worse than a guy who watches too much true crime on YouTube, because Daniel is a guy whose work has overlapped with actual real life true crime, who has cracked more than one murder case entirely by accident in the course of investigating other things. Inconsequential obstacles that are now teaching moments he can look back on from the other side.
"My career might be toast," he laughs. "But the money is absurd. Easy to see the appeal of selling out, all of a sudden."
Though of course he hasn't. It's all real. The text, the subtext, the invisible words between lines. A shock for humans to consider vampires, and a shock for vampires to consider the violation of every fucking Great Law— to say nothing of the gossip. The drama of the Paris coven, finally exposed, bleached bones and sin and all.
"What do you think the odds are that the losers you saved me from were the only ones motivated enough to actually try something?"
This advice is absorbed with lifted chin and no further comment—but going forwards, his corpses will be minus their phones. He doesn't mind learning, but no need to make it obvious.
And Lestat gives a thin smile for selling out, watching the intermittent streetlamps go by, the smoke sucked out through those couple inches of open window. No lighter needed, and no need to hide the fire trick either. What's a little magic between friends? Fresh blood settles comfortably in his veins, and he breathes out a sharp stream of smoke through his nose.
"Low," he answers. "And they will get smarter. I would suggest you make for yourself some arrangements, perhaps with Louis," they're friends, and all, "if only to be near the bigger target of vampiric ire."
A little sarcastic dijon mustard on those last overly floral vowels.
But also: the discourse has changed. He has no sense of Daniel sifting around his own thoughts, but does peek through at his in turn.
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A waste, this body. A puddle of cold blood on the ground. He does not feel a particular need to clean up this mess, a neck wound without exsanguination doesn't prick at his own ingrained instincts to cover trails that are not even his to begin with. He tips his head, rustles through some pockets until he finds a wallet. Here, he can take the few crumpled bills inside, credit cards, and voila, we have a violent robbery, he's a genius. A little like straightening a picture on the wall of a half-collapsed house.
He also doesn't think to search out the cellphone, and gets to his feet as he inspects the cash. Not very much. Into his pocket it goes all the same, as he now turns his focus on Daniel, a lingering looking over that trawls head to toe.
Not Louis', this fledgling—his first guess. Which leaves behind only limited and unbelievable options, the likeliest one being the most incredible of all. It doesn't take much, a kind of psychic tracing over of a rumpled stitch, feeling out the threads of connection. Bright red eyes, unmistakable, and maybe Daniel can feel it, this knowledge plucked free.
Certainly, it can be read in Lestat's face. A flicker of some complicated tangle—amusement, first, mock-scandal in the snapping back of his focus to Daniel's eye. The focus of a predator, seeing the twitch in the brush.
"Well," is doing a lot of work, but he continues, "young ones like you shouldn't skip meals. Shall we?"
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This time, he does laugh, though it's tinged wry.
"At least I know he's probably not listening to me anymore."
Fucking Armand. Lestat can no doubt hear that one loud and clear. Last memories of him like a bizarre cat in the dark, a lithe shadow with lamplike eyes, pulling in all the light like he's greedy for it, and Daniel's world spinning, spinning, spinning.
Meanwhile: interesting. He can't turn off his note-taking brain, and note-take it does. The writer moves over to his would-be-dinner, perhaps looking like he's aping the elder's routine, but in fact fishing for the ignored phone. He mashes a passcode on it until it locks itself, then turns it off. Lestat went for the cash and the cards, Lestat looks properly nourished but is a little bit dressed like he forgot something at the grocery store on a Sunday morning, Lestat said my beloved.
He goes for the dead (?) vampire next, fishes out a second phone, repeats the process. This one he'll take to his guy to get broken into, but the mortal's is getting thrown in the river. Finally he looks back to Lestat.
"You're the boss, boss."
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Back in New Orleans, he had his own rat catcher. A rat catcher who caught rats, and sometimes by accident useful things about the world would drop out of his mouth. None of them included any advice about what to do about cellular devices on victims—but advice on other things, like CCTV and forensic sciences, and after a while, the rats just seemed like the better solution—so he watches what Daniel does, and meets his eye when focus switches back to himself.
Hm, agreeable, with a smile. Pivots, and leads them away.
To nowhere in particular. He hasn't spent time getting to know Atlanta as a hunting ground, but he can listen to voices and thoughts on the wind, can catch scents, can feel his way through the dark streets, and besides, if all he wanted to do was save Daniel Molloy's life when it was in jeopardy, he would vanish as fast as he appeared.
"Lelio," he says, as they start, nothing but a distant siren, the sound of bootfalls on dry concrete. A glance, wry. "Not Arlequin. At that time described in your book, I was the romantic lead, not the clown. Your maker has a poor memory. I suppose it goes with age."
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Crazy. It's crazy, this happening. Should he mentally ring Louis? Nah, probably not. Even if only because he knows his friend isn't overly thrilled that Daniel has bypassed the 'self loathing and small animals' stage. And he gets why that disappoints Louis, he really does, but after those weeks in Dubai, learning what he learned, he knows that drawing it out is torture over a thing of inevitability. So why bother.
He'll reach out to Louis later. This is probably fine.
"That's generous of you." Right, yes, a simple mistake from mentally feeble old Armand, accidentally recasting Lestat as a clown. "Can't say anything about the stage, but you make an outstanding romantic lead on the page. And a romantic villain."
Frankly, the book might not have come together without Lestat haunting the narrative. Barring the meltdown Daniel was caught in the middle of, the timeline fades into vague summaries after Lestat's withdrawal, despite not having been the interview subject. As though he took something vital with him. A point that Daniel was forced to make in first draft, and then the final draft. Absent only in editing, dithering. So,
"How've you been?"
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Lestat, of course, has certainly read the thing. Read it to death. There is a copy stashed with his things, spine broken, pages dog-eared, and this is the second one after, during his first reading, some moment compelled him to take a handful of pages and tear them free in a fit of anguish. He has been more careful since, making sure to get to the end.
Which could be as much compliment to the writer as the subject. The matter of his heroism and villainy, both romantic, is awarded with him opening his mouth like he might say something to it, hesitating long enough—
Good, a pivot. "On a break."
Is it much of a detail, that he ignores the pockets of his coat as he walks, hands free? Maybe not. A slouchy affect isn't universally prescribed. All the same, an old world energy to posture, clinging to his frame for dear life as his accent does to his voice, a century spent in America, longer than the changes of men's fashion.
"But now I am working on an album. My own compositions. I have found within myself, Daniel, a new motivation to reenter the world, but," a turn of his hand, "I feel compelled to offer some credit where credit is due. Do you keep him as your acquaintance? Louis."
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"Yeah, we stay in touch. Not as often as I might like, but he's working through some things. Remodeling. A tree was removed improperly from their little," here he makes a gesture, "simulated solarium, which I understand was a pain to restructure."
It occurs to him that Lestat will not have heard Louis' dare shouted out into the night. Only the reactions. What picture must that paint?
'Some things', 'their'. An open wound being cemented over.
"What kind of music?"
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Not enough, never enough. But: he has prepared himself a little, so the sense of more metaphorical fangs extending at mention of their is the kind of thing he keeps more or less off his face. Doesn't immediately bite after the bait and demand for more. What tree? What things? How has he progressed, this working out?
No. Back to himself.
"Rock and roll," is said without irony, with great enthusiasm, but the smile he sends Daniel's way sidelong seems just this side of self-aware. Some kernel of sober conviction in the bright-eyed lunacy. "In feeling and sentiment at its least. I will take everything I have listened to over this past century and give it new life. What it chooses to be after that, no maker can dictate."
He swerves a little, a friendly little bump of the shoulder to Molloy's as they walk. "I wish to be on TV as well. You mustn't tell anyone."
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Hah, yeah right. It's going to be a mirror. Louis couldn't get Lestat out of his story. There's no surprise in discovering, immediately, that Lestat can't get Louis out of his.
Kinda romantic, ignoring all the abuse. (And they probably will! Sigh.)
"I like rock and roll." Really, Mr Leather Jacket? "It's never been done by anyone whose musical CV loops back to commedia dell'arte."
Alone in this abandoned side street, they're approaching a parking lot. From the deep web maps of paranoid ex-redditors he's consulted, Daniel knows that the nearest camera is on a shitty chop shop diagonal from the lot. A few blocks away, someone is driving an old car, too slow to be going anywhere with purpose. In the 70s, he'd think it was somebody pulling over to get a blowjob, but here and now, it's probably someone trying to get Google Maps to work.
"Why Atlanta? Why now?"
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He doesn't know the territory but cameras give off a sound. Hard to pick up in a modern city full of sounds, but not impossible if you can narrow down your focus.
Speaking of focus—
Lestat laughs, a sudden and exuberant sound that takes all the air from his lungs, and his hand goes out to grip Daniel by the shoulder, as if they are old friends who just exited the bar at cut off.
"Daniel!" Daniel Daniel Daniel. "To speak with you, of course. You know," the amusement staying present in his voice as he leads them off towards the parking lot, "when I was taken," because what is sacred anymore, when Louis and Armand would give up so much of him to this man, who would give it to the world, "I was at the height of my career. I might have played at la salle Richelieu with one more mortal season. I was written about in British papers. And then I died."
Quelle tragique, says the hand to his breast, a brief swing around to walk backwards and look at Daniel as he does so.
"And like you, I continued on. I think we could be of mutual benefit, don't you think?"
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Because it's not like Daniel was ever going to stop himself. He'd have gotten that book out on his death bed with no recordings, no files, if he had to get it out as a conspiracy theory. As soon as he got on the plane to the UAE, the book was set in stone. Practically already real.
"We both got thrown in the deep end in our own ways, huh."
The driver of the old car is thinking about going home, or killing himself, or getting tacos. Relatable nothingness. Daniel finds mortals very easy to read (he has not tried, will not try, Lestat, unwilling to insert his whole arm into the shark mouth).
"Is it better? Being this way?"
Logic, and all he knows about the man, tells him that Lestat is not a metric by which to evaluate this unlife. And yet despite all his charades, Daniel believes him (or the him he knows through Louis, through Armand, through Claudia) to be the most honest about being a vampire.
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Lestat's touch in the mortal's mind is like a fingertip tapping the surface of a pond, creating ripples, luring the fishies. No more than that.
Ah, such a question, transmitted through a flicker of his expression, turning back to face the path they've aimed themselves down. Thinking about it a little, as Daniel didn't ask do you like it more? or is it better for you?, but something more universal. Rings a little of the philosophising that tormented his early romances with du Lac, but only in form, he thinks, not spirit. Besides, he's had time to think.
"The most exquisite of agonies, the highest of pleasures. To live as selfishly as our inner animal compels us to live. Not less than human, but more than human, more human than any who walk the earth, more capacity to love and to hate and to rage. We will never escape our grief, our pain, the harms we have done, and every night, a decision to continue, to endure, and kill in the name of that enduring. Not everyone has this ability. Not everyone can stand it."
They could go around the chainlink fence, but why? Lestat hooks his claws into it, resting his weight back on his heels as he looks back at Daniel.
"But in short, it is called a gift for a reason, and it rules. Come," an invitation, before scaling the fence with great efficiency, jumping over it to land on silent feet.
The man in the old car will be here soon. Not much of a hunt, maybe, but Daniel is still a beginner, and if ArMaNd isn't around to drag something injured into the den for his cubs—
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A bark of a laugh leaves him at 'it rules.'
You know what, that's a fine answer too. Someday if he's very lucky he will watch his daughters die peacefully, and not be executed by sunlight in front of him. Each drawback also has a silver lining, an it-could-be-worse. He won't wallow, he refuses. He'll have time for it.
Up and over. Surreal to be able to move like this (again? at all), and a part of him still braces inside and flinches now and again, expecting punishment from his body. A break, a sprain, a wrack of tremors he can't control. But he just feels good. Better than ever. And on that trajectory, eating people feels better than heroin ever did. Cognizant of that being a potential problem, he nevertheless waits for the car. Already, he has discovered the ability to go unnoticed, particularly in shadow.
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Also for consideration: maybe it's important to him that Daniel, personally, find him charming.
But then, when isn't that important to him, for literally everyone everywhere all the time, who ever meets him? He shows a smile to Daniel when the man lands on the other side and it reaches his eyes, and then they are making for the shadows. Naturally silent, vanishing past the glow of streetlamps, signage, haze.
Moments later, the car bumping off the road and into the parking lot, like an endangered sea mammal drifting into the netting. Next to Daniel, Lestat gives a small hum of satisfaction when the engine is killed.
"In or out of the car?" he asks. What is Daniel's instinct?
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"In."
Date night in the back seat, then a drive. There are paths to the Chattahoochee River that evade cameras, and areas where it's deep enough to roll a car into, never to be seen again. Daniel has done a few of these murders so far, and he feels ways about it, but makes himself compartmentalize. He tries for horrible people, even if those horrors are mundane— might as well, right? He's not God, he's not moralizing, but it's sensible. The worse a person is, the less likely it is that their disappearance will be looked into with any urgency.
"It's like eating hamburgers after going to a rescued animal sanctuary," he says, with an awareness that Lestat is probably eavesdropping for insight into his opinion about this. Might be a little sad, in theory, but in practice, it simply has to be done. "Most people aren't as cute as cows, though, you know?"
So this is actually easier. Cows tend not to beat their girlfriends or exploit minors after getting their Discord usernames off Fortnite.
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"I never liked it when Louis selected dogs," he says. Most dogs are cuter than most humans, accounting for some extremes. Overall, certainly more willing to love unconditionally. The meat in the car has his hands on the wheel, his eyes closed. Making it easy, even without more meddling. "But one man can only have so many hierarchies inside of him."
A streetlamp above flickers, and winks out. The shadows that flood in are jarring, thick.
Turn to your vampire elders for the answers, and you will find dust, or something that wishes to be it. Lestat's psychic voice, like a murmur from behind, is made more disorienting as he cuts a path forwards, his stride long and purposeful. You can be God, if you wish. You can be the random and tragic accident, a collision, an act of nature. You can be the curator and refiner of good taste and culture as you see it. You can be mercy. You can be the Devil. In my experience, we try them all at least once.
As he nears, there's the sound of locking mechanisms undoing, and the figure in the car startles from his self-imposed reverie. Looking the wrong way, as Lestat goes for the front passenger door. Shot gun.
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Obscured, he leans in and pops the fuse box. Just in time as the confused driver scrambles for the horn and keys at once, mashing down the accelerator— the car goes nowhere, makes no honk, the wheels spin. SLAM, the hood goes down, and Daniel moves to press his hand against the driver's side door handle, crushing it to keep it closed, before hopping into the back seat.
Little smudges of motor oil on his fingers. Nimble despite the signs of age, and stronger than they look (though he has always looked strong, in a way; something something, the pen).
"Hey," he says. Friendly. The man reaches for the gear shift, and Daniel leans forward and grabs his arm to prevent it. Not going anywhere.
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The corner of his mouth ticks up as the man begins a panicky struggle, arm captured, the other hand scrabbling at the door, an adrenalised slam of the side of his fist against the glass when it refuses to open.
Lestat reaches to him, and snaps loose the seatbelt.
There were plenty of examples from Louis that described white table clothes, blood streaming like a thick ribbon into crystal glasses, deaths that took hours accompanied with a kind of psychological peeling back of layers. Not like Armand's warm bath but something similar in indulgence, and different in a level of mockery, debasement, and, well, a psychopath's idea of fun.
But there are fast kills too, gleefully violent, as efficient as a lioness on a gazelle. Sometimes, you simply need to eat.
He hauls the man in close, a spread of a smile showing fangs still stained blood-pink, and shoves him towards Daniel between the two front seats. Daniel has his arm, can get him in as close as he needs, and Lestat digs his claws into the seams of his denim jacket and peels it apart at the shoulder like wet paper. Daniel can have the neck.
Lestat bites down on exposed arm, aiming for the neighbourhood of the brachial artery. The car smells immediately (over the scent of body odor, old beer, and stale fries) of fear.
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Daniel has dedicated hours to the thought experiment of legality. If vampires become a protected class, recognized, what cases might the courts hear? What soulless arguments will be brought up, trying to justify heinous mortal crimes as biological imperatives?
Interesting. Curious. Worrying. Yet all of it fades as soon as he sinks his teeth (his fangs, the feeling of those manifesting is still surreal, but good) into something he can eat. It's better than drugs, better than alcohol or any food; he does not miss human food, does not miss delicate sweetness, indulgent over-salted meals, nothing savory or tart. Daniel liked bitter, sour things, enjoyed the ache in his mouth, and blood from a living human makes the memories of all of his favorites dull and bland.
A hitch, a scream. The man claws, says, Why, what the fuck, I'll kill you, but it's thin and gurgling by the end. Two monstrous, landwalking remoras, draining blood faster than a human heart can keep up with. Daniel feels his life, impressions of it, and the professional part of him can't help but look even as he endeavors to let it pass by unremarked on.
Every time. He drinks, and the difference between before and after a single meal is as stark as before and after death. Everything is better to a degree he has no words for. The man twitches as he tries to grapple, but his movements are weak, and he just bats at the gear shift, at Lestat, flinching soft in Daniel's grasp; gentle nothingness.
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There is no prescription for how a vampire should hunt. They are perfectly effective on their own. In the wild, pack animals require the structure their instinct drives them towards. Of course, vampires aren't of nature, so that means nothing.
Lestat, anyway, has a theory that they are not meant to do this alone, not really. Even if they can, even if they prefer it. But here, he bites deeply into this mortal's flesh and sinks into that pleasured trance of consumption, and as the struggling heart they are both pulling from fails, it twitches back a veil that has little to do with the mind gift. Something a little more primal than that, a moment of synced heart beats, of awareness.
Life leaves this inconsequential person, Lestat absorbing memory and fleeting feeling with as much nondiscrimination as the quantity of blood he is consuming. He stops before he has taken his full share of it—he doesn't need as much as he used to, anyway—and when he lifts his head, the blood doesn't pour from the lethal wound, barely oozes, directed solely to the remaining tidal pull of Daniel's appetite.
Lestat lounges back in his seat with a satisfied groan, using his sleeve to clean his mouth. Rests his head back, catching his breath.
It's been sometime since he's done that, he reflects, but denies himself the urge to sink into self-pity. At least, for right now.
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There is pleasure in feeling like the sole hunter. There is pleasure in finding kinship, particularly in something so difficult to understand. The elation is bonding.
He drinks with both the bottomless hunger of any old fledgling and the pointed, deliberate indulgence of an addiction connoisseur. He knows which expensive whiskeys are for sipping slowly out of a large globe class, and which beers are for knocking back in a breathless chug for applause.
When he stops it's because the human is actively dying, and the dregs, while still delicious, would take effort along the lines of holding the man upside down to encourage better bloodflow. And who has time for that? Not a couple of vampires who still have to dispose of this guy. Daniel sits back, hand still clasped against their victim's arm. A huff of an exhale, a deep, shaking inhale, and he rubs his face. Motor oil and blood leave a stain of dark black-red against mottled white hair.
Well. He had been out looking for dinner. So this all works.
Daniel looks at Lestat, and raises his eyebrows.
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There is no need to ask: was it good for you? Of course it was.
His hand pats down on the awkward shape of the corpse wedged in place. "I will put him in the trunk," magnanimous, before opening the door on his side. Grabs the corpse by the arm and carelessly hauls him out after him like an oversized doll, the thump of shoes against the dashboard. There is not enough blood left to spatter, not inside the car or out of it.
Over the shoulder and then around the vehicle after a reflexive scan of the place. No one to see, no one to have to take care of. The car sways a little as the back hood is wrenched open, and something heavy dropped within.
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Current hurdle: literal. Daniel crawls up into the driver's seat, which is not a graceful affair, but one he manages with all the ease of a bendy teenager. The man was shorter, and he has to pull the lever to scoot the chair back. Thunk, comically timed with the trunk closing.
Yet another phone. This one is unlocked, which is charming in its idiocy. Daniel is able to factory reset it before he turns it off.
"These are worth more than most cars," he says to Lestat once he's back in, gesturing with the phone. An FYI, one old guy to another. Most people don't even check for cash, these days, and almost nobody carries any. His own (real) phone is back in his hotel room, connected to bundled wifi, running a playlist of podcasts and dutifully collecting messages and pinging off nearby cell towers. The cheap emergency burner shoved in a pocket isn't worth detailing, but it, like the ones harvested tonight, is turned off.
"How do you feel about a scenic back roads drive? There's probably enough gas in here to make it to a decent dump spot without anything catching fire."
The popped spark plugs. It'll run, but they are sitting in a thrilling ticking time bomb.
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Cue a little bit of fiddling with the radio, which Lestat appears to know his way around, eventually landing on a station streaming frenetic Scandinavian death metal through its frequency. Lestat doesn't insist on flooding the car with it, especially as the quality of the speakers is fairly poor, but it makes a backdrop as Daniel steers them out of the parking lot, out onto empty roads.
The window dropped a few inches, and the seat slid backwards enough to accommodate a habit for lounging. A crumpled pack of cigarettes, extracted from coat pocket.
"I don't imagine you need to steal cellphones for a living," he says, plastic and paper crinkling as he fishes for a cigarette. "What with your successful career. Everyone is talking about it."
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"Just something I keep in mind if lunch needs to look like a mugging."
Daniel is worse than a guy who watches too much true crime on YouTube, because Daniel is a guy whose work has overlapped with actual real life true crime, who has cracked more than one murder case entirely by accident in the course of investigating other things. Inconsequential obstacles that are now teaching moments he can look back on from the other side.
"My career might be toast," he laughs. "But the money is absurd. Easy to see the appeal of selling out, all of a sudden."
Though of course he hasn't. It's all real. The text, the subtext, the invisible words between lines. A shock for humans to consider vampires, and a shock for vampires to consider the violation of every fucking Great Law— to say nothing of the gossip. The drama of the Paris coven, finally exposed, bleached bones and sin and all.
"What do you think the odds are that the losers you saved me from were the only ones motivated enough to actually try something?"
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And Lestat gives a thin smile for selling out, watching the intermittent streetlamps go by, the smoke sucked out through those couple inches of open window. No lighter needed, and no need to hide the fire trick either. What's a little magic between friends? Fresh blood settles comfortably in his veins, and he breathes out a sharp stream of smoke through his nose.
"Low," he answers. "And they will get smarter. I would suggest you make for yourself some arrangements, perhaps with Louis," they're friends, and all, "if only to be near the bigger target of vampiric ire."
A little sarcastic dijon mustard on those last overly floral vowels.
But also: the discourse has changed. He has no sense of Daniel sifting around his own thoughts, but does peek through at his in turn.
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