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.
"Yeah, talk radio's definitely more mad at him than me." A glance in the rear view mirror, eye contact between two pairs of uncanny undead blue eyes. "Louis says he'll be fine..."
But.
Daniel shrugs. It doesn't take telepathy to tell he's concerned about his friend, but telepathy probably helps. An echo of a memory, hearing Louis broadcast his fucking address to every vampire (except one) on the planet, Daniel groaning and dragging his hands down his face over the body of some greasy nobody he'd eaten for a post-interview brunch. Exasperated, concerned, wryly fond.
There are doors in his mind that are closed. His daughters, the incident of his turning, a sectioned off dark corner that might as well be iron gates of hell with ARMAND scribbled in them on by some beast's wild clawing. January 17th 1972, and January 8th, and 9th, and 10th, and 11th...
And yet, and awareness. Sensitivity and deftness born no doubt of transference from an ancient, butthurt power. Daniel is aware that Lestat is peeking, can sense it like feeling someone reading over his shoulder. But he maintains that openness because he thinks it is, frankly, only fair. Louis and Armand practically dissected Lestat in front of Daniel. Twice. And then Daniel went and made millions off his love story.
"I'm not much of an arrangements guy. I want to know what, and who's coming."
A knowing mind, sharp and awake. That will certainly serve Daniel well, of all the gifts they might have. It seems correct that he should inherit that one, given the source.
Lestat barely has a chance to put much weight on this thought, to admire the rest of the scenery and tap at the doors, by the time that snatch of memory drifts by, Louis' voice. It's not like a tape, where you need to rewind, replay, stop and start—the memory is snatched away in the form of a copy, absorbed in its fullness.
Affection. Fear. Fierce love, always. Lestat's next breath in draws sharper, flattens all of that down into a scoff of exasperation.
"Just everyone, it would seem."
He did suggest there's a war on already. Gauntlets flung down. "That explains the change of tune," a flick of ash out the window, "if the chapter describing a vampire massacre did not already invite pause. He will not be fine."
"Mm. And even if he can take on every single person with the balls to accept the challenge, it's not going to be great for his mental health."
Maybe it'll be satisfying. Louis is clearly spoiling for a fight, looking to vent anger and dole out retribution. It's not just Armand that wronged him, but all of vampire society. Great Laws and covens and the inability to simply exist. Don't record any information and leave new converts in the fucking dark (ha ha), make the punishment for infractions death and don't give any leeway to the ignorant, do weird Jesus shit, do weird theater shit.
But spiraling is never a good idea, and Daniel has seen first hand what happens when Louis gets too close to the edge.
"I've been working on identifying some of the angriest voices in the night. One could be laying dead back in that alley you gallantly swept me out of, but the odds seem low."
"If his friends come back and put him in a coffin he'll be fine," is a dismissive handwave of a sentence, and at a rush, like it's too boring to linger on the thought.
And: fine-ish, take it from him how well that goes. In a court of vampire law, that may not hold up, but at the very least, there are no American covens that he knows of with which to carry out judgment. It is, appropriately, the wild west in this way.
But who knows? And moreover, perhaps unclaimed territory is its own kind of dangerous.
"Your enemy will be the covens that hold close to the Great Laws, written by the Children of Satan," Lestat fans his hand, "proper nouns. Delightful lunatics. I imagine your maker will be able to tell you all about them."
The barest hitch there in with the emphasis. Parts not being adept at such terminology yet, with the cognitive dissonance of referring to someone who looks so much younger as being stationed in hierarchy far above him, parts clear (complicated) resentment. He finds himself wary, too, of Lestat's judgment and - perversely - exposing Armand to critique. It's easier to bump artlessly against the subject with Louis. The permanent but elastic tether of trauma bonding is forgiving.
"My maker." Trying again. Better. "Minds his own business."
Even absent, a silk-wrapped nail bomb. Daniel's eyes have shifted like a kitschy 90s mood ring, uncanny blue to familiar-horrible amber. He focuses on driving.
"What's the deal with covens and all the Satan junk? Really. I refuse to believe vampirism just makes people dumber."
Lestat smiles to himself, out the window, at this telling little hitch. At the news that comes next. This hypocritical little demon, whom Lestat would not mind tearing to shreds with tooth and claw and! he may!, if they cross paths!, barring Louis looking at him too woundedly about it for some reason. Daniel is keeping his brain to himself, but the slither of rattlesnake hostility, coiling itself, would be easy enough to detect without effort.
Well, it would be a shame to terminate a friendship too quickly at the expense of Armand, if Daniel is feeling some kind of way, and who could blame him? Lestat had wept after Magnus died. He smokes, breathes it out through his nose in a chuckled flutter.
"The stupidity is medieval superstition enduring. From what I have managed to learn," which is not a terrible lot, says his tone of voice, "it is a cult, one that does not extend as far back as our origins. These laws are not commandments written by the Devil himself, handed to the first vampire, although they may pretend at it. Our kind is older than any of that."
A shrug. "But there is nothing else. No other order, no other court. Just the mercy of what ancients persist, and the safety of a pack."
It was a lot. From 1973 til now, it's been a lot, and he's only recently remembered. Still processing. Daniel can't imagine that how he feels about it all today will be how he feels about it all in a hundred years.
It's fine. If he's a little off about it, whatever. Posting through it.
(Eating people through it.)
"The logic," and he draws circles in the air with his index finger, lazily, "doesn't work for me, even if it's just superstition. How can you believe you're damned, if your laws come from the Devil? First he's the warden of God's prison, now he's ordaining codes of conduct to terrestrial demons? But none of that's ever made sense to me in the first place. To believe in God is to believe God is an idiot, and what's the point."
Perhaps a little philosophizing can be forgiven (hah), seeing as he hasn't had a chance to do much of it quite like this. They are near the woods now, and Daniel is careful in his offroad navigation. This junker wasn't made for it even when it was new. An adventure!
"Our origins. Do you know much about it?"
'Akasha' did not make it into the final draft of the book. Daniel had gathered little bits and pieces, but between Louis' disinterest, Armand's silence, and Talamasca's limited intel, he just wasn't left with enough to warrant its inclusion.
Lestat doesn't ignore Molloy's philosophising, offering little agreeable sounds while watching city turn to brush, the speed of the car slowing to take care of the terrain. God is a lie, existence is a curse, and he has never been able to take this nonsense seriously enough to ask anything further once he had proven he could dismantle the belief system of one such group with a little flash and dazzle.
Daniel pulls focus for the last thing, an innocuous and logical kind of question to leap to that nonetheless has Lestat smile as he considers it.
"I don't know if I can say, you haven't said off the record yet. You've been coy in your appearances about a second book and the world is watching."
"I'm not recording," he says, easy banter. "And even if I was, I have an immaculate record of protecting sources who ask to remain confidential."
Too bad about so much of Lestat's life going out without his permission, but how would he say it, c'est la vie, and—
"Did you ever see 'Rashomon'?"
There's one sure fire way to set the record straight, and that would be holding the second book hostage with his own interview. Regardless, they're doing something else at this moment. Daniel would prefer all on the record discussions happen while he isn't actively committing any crimes.
Thunkthunk, the car rattles.
"Damn. Alright, well, we're pretty close." He can hear the river in a way a human can't. He can hear something else, too, maybe a person? But distant enough that their paths hopefully don't cross. Daniel lets the car trundle to a stop, foot on the brake while he shifts it into neutral. It's get out and push from here. "Got any more of those?"
The pack is retrieved, tossed into Daniel's waiting hands.
And Lestat exits the car, the vehicle swaying with the action as if he were five times heavier. Out into the woodlands that, to his senses, feel meagre and nondescript compared to some of the wildernesses he has gotten to know in his life, but breathes it in anyway as he pitches aside his now finished cigarette.
He had already decided to forgive Daniel the publication of his book, its contents. Decided it when he'd viewed him doing his interviews, saw the signs of vampirism. How could he decide otherwise? Good for him. And it brought Louis back to him, at least when it mattered most. He is being gracious in his old age, it's true.
He lights a cigarette the old fashioned way. If Daniel knows the fire gift, he's keep it to himself. (Or maybe he just doesn't want to slip on a banana peel right away.)
"Rashomon," getting a grip on the back of the car, "is a movie about a thing that happens, and the different perspectives it's told from, none of which are the same. It's different than an 'unreliable narrator', because for real people outside of literary devices, perspective is truth."
Push, push. The car trundles along, like it weighs as much is a bicycle.
"And of course, an unreliable narrator is different than a liar."
Everything locked away in his head, but imperfectly: impossible, when he thinks of it, not to see in crystal clear HD 4k, every detail permanently burned into his brain with vicious triumph, the look of devastation and terror on Armand's face the moment he realized that Daniel knew, and that Louis was going to believe him.
"What's my point, anyway. I just mean— maybe there'll be a sequel, if there's anything else to add. Or maybe I'll get so addicted to money that I'll just make some shit up."
Yeah right. Daniel used Lestat like a grenade and pulled the pin while maintaining eye contact. The fear-adrenaline-victory rush of getting to the truest, least kaleidoscoped version of the truth is better than any drug. On the record or off it, he's always going to ask.
Lestat helps. Hands braced, pushing along, and between them, it's easy enough that the help is more a matter of balance and direction. He listens, and also listens, and in the dark, looking at the dappled moonlight glancing off the glass of the shitty car's back window, his pupils spread inkily in bright blue.
A very satisfying execution to witness. He laughs, both a response to banter, as well as the rush he can feel that scores this memory bright and vivid into record.
"Then I will tell you, I have met our origins. I have partaken in its blood."
Something faintly ridiculous about even brushing against this subject while trundling a car along the backwoods of Atlanta to hide the evidence of an okay dinner, but there's been little opportunity for graceful landings over the past several decades.
"And although your revelatory text casts me as the narcissistic untrustworthy manipulator, among others," because let's give credit where credit is due, Armand didn't make it out great, "I have never lied when asked for my story."
Edited (the feminine urge to redo a tag) 2024-07-17 12:31 (UTC)
Daniel has learned that everything in life is ridiculous. Drugs, sex, his job, and now, vampires. This is perfect, actually. Even as the car hits a downed log and Daniel has to walk around to lift the front bumper up. This is a blood-soaked cartoon.
"The best role in any story is always the villain," he says. It's not an insult or an accusation, and hopefully he's not walking out onto a lake covered in deceptively thin ice by traversing this path. "Especially if you can sympathize with him. You got the good part. I tried for it in my own autobiography, and just came out tacky and too self-aware."
But it sold. And Louis liked it. (Why does that matter? Ah, well.)
"Our origins, its blood. 'Akasha'?" Back to pushing. (The car, the subject.) "An old Sanskrit word applied to cosmology, the thing that makes space and room for existence. Hard for cosmology to bleed, so I'm guessing that's an actual name."
There are no true villains in commedia, he might reflect. Only stupid and smart, young and old, funny or bland(ly funny), all tangled together to make their drama, their jests, their pursuits. If anything, his casting is more in keeping with Armand's dig of describing him as the Harlequin—who, equally, can often become the audience's favourite. Less a matter of sympathy so much as entertainment.
An agitated toss of his head to re-sit tangled waves as they roll the car along. Sympathy. Is that what the book has given him, in its portrayals? It's a difficult thing to stomach, when his first instinct had been to rend the text to shreds in a dramatic fit of tearful pique—and unexpected enough that Lestat doesn't snarl and snap at it.
And then 'Akasha', and his glance is sharp. Did he ever say that name to Louis? He must have. Recounted in ignorance. His claws leave little pinpricks in the car paint.
"I suppose we have the Great Laws to thank that you couldn't find her on Wikipedia."
The car jars against something, a stone, and Lestat bullies it over with an irritated shove of strength. "Akasha is the first of us. Our neglectful mother. Are you looking for an introduction?"
Sympathy, mystique, revulsion, romance. A seductive monster that readers are as terrified of as obsessed with. Lestat, before taking his first step towards musical stardom, has a fandom.
Which may end up being the worst thing Daniel's ever done! Oopsy.
"Do you think she'd make a good interview subject?"
Probably not. Armand is the oldest vampire Daniel has interacted with (and that Louis has interacted with, and that Talamasca has ever interacted with), and he was a miserable pain in the ass to wring anything out of. Inhuman in a way Louis and Lestat aren't, yet. What must someone his distant senior be like? Alien beyond Daniel's comprehension?
He's curious, of course. What must that be like.
"I'd just like to know. It's all been a bit like falling into another dimension."
They're near the water, now. Daniel takes a moment to look out into the dark, wide river, and is still a little surprised at just how much he can make out. Assessing the best angle to send it in towards the depths.
Like a stone is alien to the flesh, is the thought that drifts through Daniel's ponderances. She bleeds at her pleasure.
Blood. Information. Acknowledgment. Take your pick.
The car comes to that brief rest, and the air is full of the sounds of water, heightened to their ears, just as all the layers of shadow render the nighttime world in unpaintable, unphotographable beauty. Lestat straightens from his lean against the car, looking at Daniel looking at the river.
"You land on your feet well enough," he says, careless in tone. "Should we credit your maker with anticipating you would?"
Through the water, vampire eyes will be able to pick out where it runs shallow, and deep. A bar of land beneath the surface that drops off steeply is likely the best chance of hiding the whole thing, with enough of a push. Lestat doesn't point it out, not while Daniel is still thinking it through.
"Armand begat Daniel. Marius of ancient Rome begat Armand. And those that begat Marius were servants of our queen, who ruled over a place we now call Egypt." A little shrug, resetting his hands against he end of the car. "There is your origin. A few knots in a long crimson thread."
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no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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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But.
Daniel shrugs. It doesn't take telepathy to tell he's concerned about his friend, but telepathy probably helps. An echo of a memory, hearing Louis broadcast his fucking address to every vampire (except one) on the planet, Daniel groaning and dragging his hands down his face over the body of some greasy nobody he'd eaten for a post-interview brunch. Exasperated, concerned, wryly fond.
There are doors in his mind that are closed. His daughters, the incident of his turning, a sectioned off dark corner that might as well be iron gates of hell with ARMAND scribbled in them on by some beast's wild clawing. January 17th 1972, and January 8th, and 9th, and 10th, and 11th...
And yet, and awareness. Sensitivity and deftness born no doubt of transference from an ancient, butthurt power. Daniel is aware that Lestat is peeking, can sense it like feeling someone reading over his shoulder. But he maintains that openness because he thinks it is, frankly, only fair. Louis and Armand practically dissected Lestat in front of Daniel. Twice. And then Daniel went and made millions off his love story.
"I'm not much of an arrangements guy. I want to know what, and who's coming."
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Lestat barely has a chance to put much weight on this thought, to admire the rest of the scenery and tap at the doors, by the time that snatch of memory drifts by, Louis' voice. It's not like a tape, where you need to rewind, replay, stop and start—the memory is snatched away in the form of a copy, absorbed in its fullness.
Affection. Fear. Fierce love, always. Lestat's next breath in draws sharper, flattens all of that down into a scoff of exasperation.
"Just everyone, it would seem."
He did suggest there's a war on already. Gauntlets flung down. "That explains the change of tune," a flick of ash out the window, "if the chapter describing a vampire massacre did not already invite pause. He will not be fine."
C'est ridicule.
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Maybe it'll be satisfying. Louis is clearly spoiling for a fight, looking to vent anger and dole out retribution. It's not just Armand that wronged him, but all of vampire society. Great Laws and covens and the inability to simply exist. Don't record any information and leave new converts in the fucking dark (ha ha), make the punishment for infractions death and don't give any leeway to the ignorant, do weird Jesus shit, do weird theater shit.
But spiraling is never a good idea, and Daniel has seen first hand what happens when Louis gets too close to the edge.
"I've been working on identifying some of the angriest voices in the night. One could be laying dead back in that alley you gallantly swept me out of, but the odds seem low."
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And: fine-ish, take it from him how well that goes. In a court of vampire law, that may not hold up, but at the very least, there are no American covens that he knows of with which to carry out judgment. It is, appropriately, the wild west in this way.
But who knows? And moreover, perhaps unclaimed territory is its own kind of dangerous.
"Your enemy will be the covens that hold close to the Great Laws, written by the Children of Satan," Lestat fans his hand, "proper nouns. Delightful lunatics. I imagine your maker will be able to tell you all about them."
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The barest hitch there in with the emphasis. Parts not being adept at such terminology yet, with the cognitive dissonance of referring to someone who looks so much younger as being stationed in hierarchy far above him, parts clear (complicated) resentment. He finds himself wary, too, of Lestat's judgment and - perversely - exposing Armand to critique. It's easier to bump artlessly against the subject with Louis. The permanent but elastic tether of trauma bonding is forgiving.
"My maker." Trying again. Better. "Minds his own business."
Even absent, a silk-wrapped nail bomb. Daniel's eyes have shifted like a kitschy 90s mood ring, uncanny blue to familiar-horrible amber. He focuses on driving.
"What's the deal with covens and all the Satan junk? Really. I refuse to believe vampirism just makes people dumber."
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Well, it would be a shame to terminate a friendship too quickly at the expense of Armand, if Daniel is feeling some kind of way, and who could blame him? Lestat had wept after Magnus died. He smokes, breathes it out through his nose in a chuckled flutter.
"The stupidity is medieval superstition enduring. From what I have managed to learn," which is not a terrible lot, says his tone of voice, "it is a cult, one that does not extend as far back as our origins. These laws are not commandments written by the Devil himself, handed to the first vampire, although they may pretend at it. Our kind is older than any of that."
A shrug. "But there is nothing else. No other order, no other court. Just the mercy of what ancients persist, and the safety of a pack."
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It's fine. If he's a little off about it, whatever. Posting through it.
(Eating people through it.)
"The logic," and he draws circles in the air with his index finger, lazily, "doesn't work for me, even if it's just superstition. How can you believe you're damned, if your laws come from the Devil? First he's the warden of God's prison, now he's ordaining codes of conduct to terrestrial demons? But none of that's ever made sense to me in the first place. To believe in God is to believe God is an idiot, and what's the point."
Perhaps a little philosophizing can be forgiven (hah), seeing as he hasn't had a chance to do much of it quite like this. They are near the woods now, and Daniel is careful in his offroad navigation. This junker wasn't made for it even when it was new. An adventure!
"Our origins. Do you know much about it?"
'Akasha' did not make it into the final draft of the book. Daniel had gathered little bits and pieces, but between Louis' disinterest, Armand's silence, and Talamasca's limited intel, he just wasn't left with enough to warrant its inclusion.
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Daniel pulls focus for the last thing, an innocuous and logical kind of question to leap to that nonetheless has Lestat smile as he considers it.
"I don't know if I can say, you haven't said off the record yet. You've been coy in your appearances about a second book and the world is watching."
Both worlds, in fact.
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Too bad about so much of Lestat's life going out without his permission, but how would he say it, c'est la vie, and—
"Did you ever see 'Rashomon'?"
There's one sure fire way to set the record straight, and that would be holding the second book hostage with his own interview. Regardless, they're doing something else at this moment. Daniel would prefer all on the record discussions happen while he isn't actively committing any crimes.
Thunkthunk, the car rattles.
"Damn. Alright, well, we're pretty close." He can hear the river in a way a human can't. He can hear something else, too, maybe a person? But distant enough that their paths hopefully don't cross. Daniel lets the car trundle to a stop, foot on the brake while he shifts it into neutral. It's get out and push from here. "Got any more of those?"
Cigarettes, he means.
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And Lestat exits the car, the vehicle swaying with the action as if he were five times heavier. Out into the woodlands that, to his senses, feel meagre and nondescript compared to some of the wildernesses he has gotten to know in his life, but breathes it in anyway as he pitches aside his now finished cigarette.
He had already decided to forgive Daniel the publication of his book, its contents. Decided it when he'd viewed him doing his interviews, saw the signs of vampirism. How could he decide otherwise? Good for him. And it brought Louis back to him, at least when it mattered most. He is being gracious in his old age, it's true.
And yet.
Lestat moves around to the back of the car.
"I did not see 'Rashomon'."
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"Rashomon," getting a grip on the back of the car, "is a movie about a thing that happens, and the different perspectives it's told from, none of which are the same. It's different than an 'unreliable narrator', because for real people outside of literary devices, perspective is truth."
Push, push. The car trundles along, like it weighs as much is a bicycle.
"And of course, an unreliable narrator is different than a liar."
Everything locked away in his head, but imperfectly: impossible, when he thinks of it, not to see in crystal clear HD 4k, every detail permanently burned into his brain with vicious triumph, the look of devastation and terror on Armand's face the moment he realized that Daniel knew, and that Louis was going to believe him.
"What's my point, anyway. I just mean— maybe there'll be a sequel, if there's anything else to add. Or maybe I'll get so addicted to money that I'll just make some shit up."
Yeah right. Daniel used Lestat like a grenade and pulled the pin while maintaining eye contact. The fear-adrenaline-victory rush of getting to the truest, least kaleidoscoped version of the truth is better than any drug. On the record or off it, he's always going to ask.
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A very satisfying execution to witness. He laughs, both a response to banter, as well as the rush he can feel that scores this memory bright and vivid into record.
"Then I will tell you, I have met our origins. I have partaken in its blood."
Something faintly ridiculous about even brushing against this subject while trundling a car along the backwoods of Atlanta to hide the evidence of an okay dinner, but there's been little opportunity for graceful landings over the past several decades.
"And although your revelatory text casts me as the narcissistic untrustworthy manipulator, among others," because let's give credit where credit is due, Armand didn't make it out great, "I have never lied when asked for my story."
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"The best role in any story is always the villain," he says. It's not an insult or an accusation, and hopefully he's not walking out onto a lake covered in deceptively thin ice by traversing this path. "Especially if you can sympathize with him. You got the good part. I tried for it in my own autobiography, and just came out tacky and too self-aware."
But it sold. And Louis liked it. (Why does that matter? Ah, well.)
"Our origins, its blood. 'Akasha'?" Back to pushing. (The car, the subject.) "An old Sanskrit word applied to cosmology, the thing that makes space and room for existence. Hard for cosmology to bleed, so I'm guessing that's an actual name."
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An agitated toss of his head to re-sit tangled waves as they roll the car along. Sympathy. Is that what the book has given him, in its portrayals? It's a difficult thing to stomach, when his first instinct had been to rend the text to shreds in a dramatic fit of tearful pique—and unexpected enough that Lestat doesn't snarl and snap at it.
And then 'Akasha', and his glance is sharp. Did he ever say that name to Louis? He must have. Recounted in ignorance. His claws leave little pinpricks in the car paint.
"I suppose we have the Great Laws to thank that you couldn't find her on Wikipedia."
The car jars against something, a stone, and Lestat bullies it over with an irritated shove of strength. "Akasha is the first of us. Our neglectful mother. Are you looking for an introduction?"
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Which may end up being the worst thing Daniel's ever done! Oopsy.
"Do you think she'd make a good interview subject?"
Probably not. Armand is the oldest vampire Daniel has interacted with (and that Louis has interacted with, and that Talamasca has ever interacted with), and he was a miserable pain in the ass to wring anything out of. Inhuman in a way Louis and Lestat aren't, yet. What must someone his distant senior be like? Alien beyond Daniel's comprehension?
He's curious, of course. What must that be like.
"I'd just like to know. It's all been a bit like falling into another dimension."
They're near the water, now. Daniel takes a moment to look out into the dark, wide river, and is still a little surprised at just how much he can make out. Assessing the best angle to send it in towards the depths.
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Blood. Information. Acknowledgment. Take your pick.
The car comes to that brief rest, and the air is full of the sounds of water, heightened to their ears, just as all the layers of shadow render the nighttime world in unpaintable, unphotographable beauty. Lestat straightens from his lean against the car, looking at Daniel looking at the river.
"You land on your feet well enough," he says, careless in tone. "Should we credit your maker with anticipating you would?"
Through the water, vampire eyes will be able to pick out where it runs shallow, and deep. A bar of land beneath the surface that drops off steeply is likely the best chance of hiding the whole thing, with enough of a push. Lestat doesn't point it out, not while Daniel is still thinking it through.
"Armand begat Daniel. Marius of ancient Rome begat Armand. And those that begat Marius were servants of our queen, who ruled over a place we now call Egypt." A little shrug, resetting his hands against he end of the car. "There is your origin. A few knots in a long crimson thread."
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