Chapter Text
He asked me, what value I think there is in truth.
When I told him, naively, that truth shapes everything, that it is all we have, that it connects us and grounds us to our humanity, he laughed.
“Wrong,” he said. “Truth has no intrinsic value, for it has no objective stability. It is only as real as the conviction of the individual mind, and even that can be altered by the powerful and the nimble.”
Daniel Molloy, “San Francisco Interlude” from Interview with the Vampire
***
The house was nestled unassumingly between two other historic French Quarter townhouses.
And—honesty—Daniel had to admit that the house wasn’t merely ‘unassuming’. It was in a far worse state than whatever picture that might bring to mind, propped up as it was in the middle of two other structures that had clearly been much better cared for.
No, with honesty in mind, Daniel has to admit that the house on Rue Royale looks awful; dilapidated and run down, the wooden shutters rotting at their hinges, the wrought-iron gate rusted over. Strands of ivy are even making a valiant attempt to wrap the house exterior in a suffocating green shroud.
Yet, the rundown nature of the house works like a charm in Daniel’s favor—it’s very easy to break into, even in his current state of near-collapse. He simply jimmies the padlock with his pocket knife, and the thing unlocks with a solid-sounding click. Then he slides off the chain, opens the gate, and walks up to the front door, which is already unlocked.
“Like you knew I was coming,” he murmurs approvingly to the house, giving the door frame an affectionate pat.
All in all, it takes roughly 5 minutes to accomplish something he’s been agonizing over since 1973.
He’d been shocked, earlier that day, when he had seen the house’s exterior for the first time.
He’d gone knocking on the doors of the neighbors, reassuring them he was a reporter when they (correctly) assumed he was an addict going through withdrawal. People loved talking to journalists—unless they had something to hide.
But these people were easy marks, eager for a chance to be heard. They opened up as soon as they heard the magic word “interview”. So, Daniel lied and said he was doing a story on the neighborhood, that he had a few questions about the street’s history, and all the while he congratulated himself on how productive he was being, despite the migraine and the tepid fever and, obviously, the persistent urge to curl up into a ball and die. Yes, everyone was really quite amenable to chat, right up until Daniel got to asking about that particular house.
“Which one?” they all asked him blankly, as if they’d forgotten about 1132 Rue Royale’s very existence.
Reliably, though, each slack-jawed face proceeded to morph into ill-disguised disgust. “I just don’t understand,” one irate woman had told Daniel, “why the city doesn’t just tear it down if they’re not going to renovate it!”
Daniel is wondering the same thing, especially since the house doesn’t have any active tenants. The property was managed, as far as Daniel has been able to find, by an attorney based out of Paris. The place had held various renters starting in the late-70s, all of who appeared to have only stayed in the house for, at most, 3 months.
As he steps inside now he can see that indeed, in all that time, the space has barely been altered. Everything looks to be original; moldings, mantels, and delicately-patterned wallpaper all clearly dating to the early 20th century. Even the furniture, filthy and faded, appears to Daniel’s eye to still be placed just as it might have been by the house’s first inhabitants.
He moves up the stairs, finger tracing the bannister, making a small trail through the dust. He stops when he brushes over notches in the wood.
There, cut haphazardly against the grain, are the initials CDPDL, encircled in a girlish heart.
“They were really here,” Daniel says out loud, wonderingly. He laughs, once, twice, before doubling over, dry heaving until he drops to his knees.
***
Daniel is there to find items that belonged to Louis. Instead, he stumbles into the room that must have been Claudia’s.
The mural Lestat had commissioned for her is just as Louis had described it to him, so long ago: “Unicorns and golden birds and laden fruit trees over sparkling streams.”
Dazed, Daniel traces the pads of his fingertips along the painted tree branches. At nearly a century old, it still looks incredibly real, as though Daniel might be able to push past the veil that separates him from the fairytale, and step out onto the mossy ground.
As he traces the length of the image, Daniel could swear he can truly hear notes of chiming birdsong and smell the moist, damp earth. The birds cry out abruptly in panic, and Daniel can see that—beneath the saffron sky dotted with, rather than a blazing sun, a crescent moon and smatterings of silver-stamped stars—a doe is being stalked by a tiger.
He should shout out in warning, alert the animal to the danger, but he finds he cannot speak.
He can’t stand watching either, and so he turns his gaze away, back to the warm beckoning of the jewel-toned forest, and the castle beyond it, guarded by a wooden gate.
There’s something strange about the gate’s dimensions, though. It seems to stick out slightly from the plaster, like it was fitted into place after the fact. Daniel peers at it, momentarily perplexed. A hidden compartment?
He crouches nearer, peering at the gate and pressing his fingers along the seam where it rests. Nothing. He does it all again, swearing with frustration when nothing happens. He’s overthinking this, he knows it. It’s not really even a hidden compartment per se, just an eccentric toy for a spoiled child.
Suddenly, the puzzle resolves itself. If the whole contraption is a child’s toy, whoever designed the thing would hardly bother making it complex, would they?
Triumphant, he pushes inward on the gate’s painted handle, and smoothly the compartment springs open.
Inside the cedar-lined box there lies a rosary, a white leather bound journal, and a small, porcelain doll.
Sluggishly, Daniel reaches for the book, feeling like he might fall asleep despite the excitement racing through him. But, while its interior is finely embossed with the words “Property of Claudia de Pointe du Lac de Lioncourt”, the journal is blank. Well, almost blank. The first page does have two sentences written in hasty succession, and then vigorously crossed out: “Birthday gift from Lestat. Ha!”
Daniel gingerly traces the looping script of Lestat’s name, before setting the journal aside and taking hold of the doll. Even aged, Daniel can tell that it was expertly made. No doubt it had cost a fortune, with its jointed limbs and fading silken dress.
The head of the doll is in remarkably good condition too, preserved as it had been within the secret cabinet. The porcelain is still smooth and uncracked, and the huge brown eyes stare at Daniel with a mischievous glimmer, unblinking.
In contrast, Daniel’s eyelids feel so heavy, weighing him down as he considered the doll. Claudia, he wonders idly, what became of you?
The thought follows him, a haunting question, even as he is dragged into sleep.
***
It’s the phone ringing downstairs that wakes Daniel up. He jerks out of sleep with a sideways shake, not quite sure of where he is, how he might have gotten here, or why it’s so cold.
Meanwhile, the phone keeps ringing. Rrrrrnnnngggg-rrrrrnnnngggg, it goes, louder and louder and louder.
Still half asleep, Daniel wonders in irritation why one of the few amenities added to the house since the early 1900s was this specific fucking telephone. Its ringing is a horrid, shrill noise—the type that can relentlessly cut through the aging wood of an old house. Rrrrrnnnngggg-rrrrrnnnngggg.
Daniel curls in on himself slightly, covering his ears with his hands. Rrrrrnnnngggg, the phone continues to scream. rrrRRNNNNGGGG—
How can the phone be ringing? Daniel finally asks himself. The phone shouldn’t be able to ring.
Indeed, Daniel had seen the phone cord on his way in—sometime within the last several decades the thing had been gnawed into pieces by mice.
It’s Claudia. He knows it with utter surety, and terror emerges like a groundswell from beneath still-stubborn tendrils of grogginess. He looks down at the tiny doll he’s clutching in his hand. Fuck me, it’s the Vampire Claudia.
RRRRRNNNNGGGG the phone insists. It’s beginning to sound like it’s laughing at him, mocking his fear, his idiocy. Fuck, Daniel thinks again. Fuck, fuck.
Then suddenly, it stops. There’s the murmuring of a voice from below. Someone has picked up the line.
The thought brings Daniel no comfort.
Down below, the voice raises in anger and a large crash sends shudders up into the support beams.
Whatever Claudia and this newcomer discussed, it wasn’t a pleasant conversation.
There’s no time for Daniel to relax, however, because footsteps have begun to move steadily up the stairs. A rhythmic thump-thump-thump. As even as a heart beat.
Daniel is shaking still, not from withdrawal anymore either—this is a movement brought forth from a pure biological imperative: flee.
The urge is innate, written into his genetic code.
A tiger stalks a doe.
And there’s the predator now—
“Hello, Daniel,” it says.
“Who are you?” Daniel asks, scrambling backward into a corner, trying to make out the shape of whatever creature has come for him.
From his seated position, the figure looms over him, face in shadow. It’s dressed in a three piece suit, supple leather shoes coming to stop before Daniel’s outstretched legs. Its steps, contrary to the journey up the stairs, are now completely soundless.
“You’re trespassing,” Daniel admonishes. He’s shocked by how awful his voice sounds—scratched over and raw, like he’s been screaming for hours.
“Ha,” the specter laughs. “And you’re not?”
Daniel can only shake, wishing he could ask the real question—the one currently caught up in his throat. Birds sound in a cacophony above his head.
“Go on, ask me. I promise I’ll listen.”
“What-what are y—“
What are you?
He isn’t able to get the words out fully before the other man is kneeling in front of him. “Vampire,” the creature hisses, wrapping its two hands around his neck, pulling him up by the throat so that they are face to face.
Absurdly, for a moment Daniel is sure he’s going to be kissed.
Instead, the monster’s thumbs press with more and more force, slicing through his skin and beyond his trachea, until they are piercing the slick length of his esophagus. An experimental scrape of each sharpened thumbnail has Daniel gagging and choking on blood. A lovely smile flits across his attacker’s sculpted features at the noise.
Maybe it’s merely the adrenaline keeping him from feeling the full breadth of the pain he’s in, but, as warm, hot blood spills from his throat, staining the vampire’s white sleeves and pinstriped suit jacket, Daniel almost feels better than he’d felt when he broke into the house on Rue Royale. He certainly feels warmer. He attempts to swallow, only to wretch once more. He can feel his blood rise and fall around the aborted movement, drowning him all the while.
“Ah,” says the vampire in disappointment, “what a mess.” Smoothly, as though holding the interior portion of Daniel’s throat in his hands is merely an exotic fine dining experience which has revealed itself to be rather gauche, he jerks his hands out from the mangled mass of flesh.
“Waaa,” Daniel bleats, his power of speech fading fast. “Wa-whyyyy?”
“Why?” the vampire asks. It sounds almost confused, like it is Daniel’s reaction, and not its own, that is odd. It tilts its head to the side, and a stray shaft of moonlight illuminates the honeyed glow of its irises. Its skin shines like a stone that’s been buffed to perfection. “I’ll tell you why, Daniel.”
Half conscious now, and with no more sensation in his fingertips, all Daniel can do is gurgle. He feels blood all around him, pouring out of his throat, yes—but also rushing through his veins, pooling and stagnating in his brain as his head lolls to the side.
The vampire pulls him in close. Its breath stinks, the outward veneer of beauty only a container for hunger and rot. “The answer, Daniel,” it hisses, “is retribution.”
Then it dips its head down, lapping like a cat from the open wound in Daniel’s throat—
***
—“At least,” the vampire says from where it’s curled up on the windowsill, smoking a cigarette, “that’s what I should do.”
“Oh god,” is all Daniel can say. Distantly, he’s aware of the fact that he’s saying the phrase over and over again, clutching at his throat which is, to his own shock, still all in one piece and not at all sliced open. He’s gasping, hyperventilating, still stuck in the aftershocks of the horrific illusion.
“Oh, calm down,” the vampire snaps in annoyance. “You should be grateful an illusion is all I showed you. I could do much worse.” After a moment it muses, “I have done much worse.”
Coughing still, Daniel whips his head up in fury. “What the fuck,” he asks, “is wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me? Wrong with me?”
“Yes! You waltz in here and you-you—“ Daniel breaks off, shaking his head in shock.
“Please,” the figure sneers. “I taught you a little lesson about what you’re dealing with here. Better me than any other vampire you’re likely to stumble across.”
Daniel freezes at the word, so familiar and yet, incomprehensibly strange. “So you are…?”
The vampire scoffs. “Of course I am. What other sort of creature could do what I just did?”
Finally having regained some semblance of calm, Daniel squints toward the humanoid figure. Rather than wearing the elegant suit it had projected, the vampire is dressed in a ragged shirt and threadbare pants. Its feet are bare and dirty, dark hair tangled up with sticks and leaves. The image is not very impressive.
“An all powerful vampire,” Daniel muses, still angry. Then he laughs. Hypocritical and feverish, he informs the vampire, “You look like shit.”
But the vampire only smiles indulgently. “Are you disappointed, Daniel, that vampirism is not nearly as romantic as it seems in theory?”
Daniel frowns. “You’re not the first vampire I’ve met, just so you know.”
Sighing, the vampire slides from where it sits on the sill, tossing its hair in a fluid movement that would have been beautiful if the creature itself weren’t so raggedly dirty.
“Of course. Louis de Pointe du Lac? He’s actually a close friend of mine.” Speaking the word friend seems to require tremendous effort from the creature, and its face contorts around each consonant like it’s laced with barbed wire. “The vampiric social circle is rather small. I even knew little Claudia, for a time.”
“You know Louis? Where is he? Can you get me into contact with—“
“No,” the vampire says emphatically. It takes a drag from its cigarette, blowing the smoke through the window into the night (the boards which had been covering the opening when Daniel entered the room now ripped neatly away). “I cannot.”
“Ah.” Adrenaline from their initial encounter fading, Daniel has begun to shiver once more. He digs his nails into his palms, attempting to ground himself against the urge to vomit. The vampire watches him with dull distaste, before proceeding to viciously stub out its cigarette on the windowsill frame.
“Why are you looking for him anyways? I can’t understand why—of all the foolish things.” The creature laughs coldly, wading through the room’s decaying junk to come closer to Daniel. It shoves aside a velvet chaise lounge whose stuffing is pouring out onto the floor like sea foam. “And it’s not as if I don’t have better things to do—that I would end up here, in this wretched house—“ Another laugh bubbles up from its chest, low and sharp.
“Look,” Daniel finds himself acquiescing, “I know you don’t care, but please let me go. I’ve got a daughter, I’ve got a wife—I have people who are counting on me.”
“Hm, yes,” the vampire agrees. “How is Alice?”
It says her name so casually, like Daniel and itself are two friends catching up after a long separation, like it’s not true that one of them is a man and one is a monster.
Daniel’s horror is limitless.
“How do you know her name?”
“Oh Daniel, assume I know everything about you.”
“Hah,” Daniel wheezes. “Don’t—please don’t hurt my family.”
“As if I care about them,” says the vampire, lips pulled back in a feral sneer.
“So you care about me?”
“What? You? No—I,” seemingly caught in a fit of intense irritation the vampire’s eyes narrow as it glares at Daniel, “I care about Louis.”
“Oh of course, your friend.”
Snarling, the vampire crouches before Daniel. Up this close it’s easy to see the manic glow in the creature’s eyes, the inhuman speed of its movements, and Daniel shivers when it pulls the porcelain doll from his grip and throws it to the floor.
“You should leave well enough alone, Daniel Molloy,” it tells him. “It’s dangerous to go exploring in places like this, and you’re liable to draw unwanted attention to yourself, Louis included. You may have met him once before and escaped with your life, but trust me when I say I know the encounter was not a pleasant one. I am feeling generous today, though, so if you leave now, consider yourself free to run home to your charming, lovely wife.”
“I can’t.”
“No?”
It waits for a response, but Daniel finds there is none he can provide. Why is he here? And why can’t he leave, not even at the behest of an apparition straight from his wildest fantasies and worst nightmares? Daniel could almost laugh at the impossibility presented by these questions.
How could he explain the restlessness he felt with Alice before their marriage, and how, in the wake of standing before a priest with her, of promising to have and to hold his bride forever, how the result of those commitments was only a deeper discontent? How can he explain the fervent longing inside him, the itch inside his soul that he has begun to guess was seeded there by the Vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac?
Sure, he should have a reason, even if it is a reason only comprehensible within his own mind. He has none, though. He was driven here by that thoughtless, incessant instinct to escape, nothing more. He is, as always, an addict and a coward. A slave to his own passions and urges, the Freudian id winning out again and again against the ego.
More importantly, why should he explain? He owes nothing to this-this thing.
The vampire watches him carefully. “You are being difficult, Daniel.
It’s in my nature, Daniel thinks bitterly. The thought, conceived with greater clarity than the rest of his currently muddled, shapeless sentiments, crashes up against a new structure that is rapidly being erected in Daniel’s mind. It is, Daniel realizes, the vampire itself, threading its awful presence into the fleshy ridges of Daniel’s brain.
Yes, says the vampire, soft, smooth voice now lofted, disembodied, into the interior of Daniel’s mind. I can hear you in here, too. There is nowhere safe from me, not for you.
Shocked, Daniel twists up and over, smashing his head against the mural as he does so. He yelps, half from pain and half from fear. But the vampire doesn’t seem to care why Daniel has cried out, for it has no physical reaction to the noise, and its impacted infiltration into Daniel’s thoughts is unaffected. If anything, the pressure it’s exerting is steadily increasing. Its presence is everywhere, a slick feeling of coldness that coats one memory after another. It is searching, and all the while its anger, its cruel, sardonic amusement, only grows.
There is no escape, and Daniel can only writhe in agony as the torture extends itself on and on. The pain spirals inwards, down into the depths of Daniel’s soul. Ghostly appendages milk each and every thought he has ever considered, tracing the paths with a needled touch.
“I see,” the vampire finally tells him as it withdraws unceremoniously, cool and distant once more. “You are dying, Daniel.”
“Makes sense,” Daniel spits out venomously, once he has finally (again) regained the ability to string words into sentences.
The vampire laughs, lips edging up in bloodthirsty amusement. “Oh, not because of that. I’ve plenty of practice perusing the weak-willed minds of men, I’ve yet to cause any sort of permanent damage, at least none I’m aware of. And don’t think I refer instead to some metaphorical death—no, you’re really dying. Right now, in front of me. Your pulse is weak, your breathing shallow. A healthy mind is firm under a vampiric assault. Your mind, Daniel, sloughs away beneath my fingertips, like parchment in rain.”
Ah, Daniel realizes.
Is that why he is here, then? The instinct he’s been following, all along it’s been the cold grip of death pulling on the lead? He’s followed it here to this collapsing house the same way a sick animal drags itself away from the pack, so that he can die alone, unobserved?
Yet, that’s not quite right.
This vampire was looking for something in his mind, something to do with Louis. It only suggests that Daniel’s hunch is correct, whatever is wrong with him is connected to the first vampire he met, so long ago, in San Francisco. He is following death, yes, but a living death. And he will not die, he refuses to.
Don’t be afraid, Louis had told him, start the tape.
He must not allow himself to fall further into distraction. Perhaps, with the right angle, this new vampire will confess to him where Louis is after all, and lead him toward salvation.
The vampire continues to watches him, face unreadable, all lingering traces of mockery wiped away.
“So,” Daniel asks, “what’s the diagnosis then, doc?”
“Addiction.”
The vampire lobs the accusation with the same moralistic disgust that a preacher might wield against a wayward parishioner. But, imagining this tangled, harried creature as anything close to a servant of God is so perverse that Daniel can’t help but fall into hysterical laughter.
“I guess,” Daniel manages to gasp out, “I thought it might be something more interesting than that.”
“More interesting?” the vampire parrots back spitefully. “Perhaps. Perhaps it will interest you to know that the addiction I speak of, the one that is killing you now, is from no human drug.”
“I don’t—“
“Blood,” says the ghoul. “Vampiric blood. An addiction maintained only by mortal pets of the supernatural and the basest, most vile types of imbeciles. I’ll give you one guess as to which category you fall into.”
“You’re hilarious,” Daniel deadpans, still dying. “If I’d had vampiric blood, wouldn’t I be a vampire right now?”
“Would that it were that easy, Daniel. No. Becoming a vampire is a much more, shall we say, involved process than just drinking the blood of one with the Dark Gift.”
“Dark Gift,” Daniel mocks, unable to stop himself. “Don’t you think I’d recall drinking a vampire’s blood? Seems like that might be a memorable experience.”
“You wouldn’t recall it,” the vampire responds carefully. “Not if it had been erased from your memory.”
Yes, yes. His days in San Francisco, his time interviewing Louis, is like a fading reel of film. The memories curl in on themselves, the actions and inhabitants they contain becoming shadowy suggestions rather than anything discernible. It makes sense, so much sense, that those memories might have been tampered with, stolen and dissolved.
It’s not just Daniel who is the problem.
It’s not just Daniel.
“So, he got me addicted to his blood, grabbed the memories, and fucked off?”
The vampire shrugs, its thin shoulders ratcheting up and down as the tiny shoulders of doll-Claudia might have, if one had attached strings onto her round, wooden joints. “Louis often does not think about how his actions will affect others. He thinks about himself, and he thinks about how the actions of others will affect his own self perception.”
“So I do need to find him,” Daniel begins to mumble, more so to himself than to his companion. It’s easy to tune out the rest of what the vampire is saying. Daniel doesn’t give a shit about Louis’ psyche, doesn’t care to listen to a frigid monologue about a ghost that has haunted him for 8 years.
But the vampire shakes its head, seeming to change course in the face of Daniel’s disinterest. “You don’t. If you do, you’ll end up dead, and then where will that leave Alice? Where will it leave your child? No, Daniel. I’ll give you the answer this time; the only thing you need is blood. I can give you that.”
“And that will fix—“ He breathes harshly, refusing to finish the thought. “That will stop me from dying?”
“For now.”
“The blood,” Daniel wonders suddenly, “it doesn’t have to be from the vampire who caused the addiction? It can be from anyone?”
“Well, blood from the original source would be most potent, but you’re ultimately correct—any blood will do. You don’t need Louis, Daniel. You only need me.” It smiles sweetly, icy demeanor vanishing beneath its new, magnanimous role as benefactor. The change is undeniably bizarre, but Daniel’s eyes can now only focus on the creature’s wrists. The inner pulse points are turned away from him, jagged knuckles directed outward instead. He can envision them rotating, a slow spiral until a ribbon of blue satin, drowned beneath flesh, is revealed. Saliva floods his mouth at the thought—disgusting but undeniable proof that his strange visitor has revealed a fundamental truth about Daniel’s illness.
He licks his lips, sudden hunger eating through the lining of his stomach. A starving beast has woken up inside him and it demands to be fed (a tiger stalks a doe).
“What will it cost me?” he rasps out. He’s not so far gone yet that he can’t recognize a trap laid out plainly before him. “How much for you to let me drink your blood?”
But the vampire doesn’t react the way Daniel expected. There is no solicitous purr or vindictive snarl. It merely shakes its head. “I’m already here aren’t I? And what more do I have to gain by making deals with you, Daniel?”
“There must be something,” Daniel says.
“Won’t you just accept my help?” The dark head before him tilts in an unsubtle display of curiosity. The eyes flicker and spark.
“And why would I do that?”
“Because you are desperate. You have no other options.”
“I’m not the only one who seems desperate,” Daniel points out.
“Yes,” the creature admits, though it does not expound upon the point. “Which of our wills is stronger, I wonder?”
Gnashing his teeth, Daniel attempts to stand up. “Tell me where Louis is.”
“No.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
Daniel collapses back down, panting.
“Always biting the hand that seeks to feed you, and still you feel owed something.” The monster purses its lips. “Yet I remain—“ It crawls even closer to Daniel instead of continuing, sitting between his legs, trembling hand reaching out to firmly grip his chin. “I’ll admit, I am caught between the urge to atone, and such utter hatred—“ The eyes search Daniel resolutely. He feels like he’s being shoved through an x-ray machine.
“What would you ask for, Daniel? If it were the other way around, and you held my life in your hands?”
“I—“
“Wealth? I could give you that. Power? Easy enough. Sex? Drugs?” The thing pauses and each offering hangs in the air with a fat, overripe weight, a vine swollen with fruit. A heady sensation of fear kisses along Daniel’s pulse. “Immortality?”
Daniel is no genius, and certainly no saint, but he likes to think—despite the thinly veiled remarks from the creature before him—that he’s no idiot either. He knows a snake in the garden is far more likely to be Satan than an angel.
As such, he is sure there is a trick at play. If only he could figure out what it was.
Traitorously, though, his heart shows its hand. Freedom, it answers the vampire’s question. Happiness that doesn’t make me hate myself.
The ability to hold my daughter and feel worthy of her.
An answer to why I am always looking for something.
“I’d ask for you to tell me where I can find the Vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac.”
A rabid noise of disgust emanates from the vampire’s throat. “So you don’t wish to become a vampire then, Daniel? You would prefer to plod along with the rest of mankind, numb and thoughtless, sated with the opiate of contentment? And you think, so transparently I might add, that Louis is the key to achieving such banality?”
“And you’d make me a vampire?” Daniel scoffs, shaking his head. “I don’t believe that. I think you’d sooner kill me.”
A fresh sneer steals across the vampire’s face. “You forget I hold your life in my veins as we speak, and I offer this salvation to you freely. But, you wish to meet with Louis? Fine. I will take you to him.”
Daniel inhales sharply, overwhelmed with relief.
But, he has no strength left to stand. The shroud of his fever wavers just beneath his skin like a mirage and he droops forward, head unintentionally balancing on the vampire’s shoulder. “I don’t-I don’t think I can walk anywhere.”
“Shall I carry you, Daniel?” the vampire mocks. Or maybe it’s asking sincerely. It’s so hard to tell, Daniel finds, when the creature is so close and all its sharp edges are blown out of focus.
The terror which licks at his heels now is muted and velvet soft, a gentle push he fears might tip him further forward, into his captor’s arms.
“No.”
“No?” Blinking slowly, the vampire nods in assent. With another mocking (or perhaps sincere?) grin, the vampire shrugs. “Only one thing to do.”
It draws its thumb across one too-sharp canine. Blood wells up, glittering despite the room’s dusty haze. “Just a drop,” the vampire tells him. “Just a taste to get you moving.”
An ache has begun to pulse in Daniel’s sternum at the sight of the blooming patch of red, vibrating up into his throat. His eyes slip shut, and every muscle is tensed. It’s as if his very molecular structure has reversed polarity to match the direction of a new magnetic field. The empty hollow in his chest swallows, wet and wanting, ready for satiation.
He knows now, in a way he didn’t before—or at least had no conscious knowledge of—that he can fill the emptiness inside him. The edges of that particular cavernous pit have been illuminated in sudden, vivid shades of scarlet. And they are, it appears, carnivorous.
He can’t speak, can only nod, can only open his mouth placidly to receive. The vampire, echoing its actions from the earlier vision, digs its thumb into the thin skin of Daniel’s throat. It proceeds to drag the finger up, up past Daniel’s chin and chapped lips, onto his waiting tongue.
Daniel sighs—and he sucks. Hard. There is blood, but it is not enough. It will never be enough.
The finger in his mouth is his sole anchor to the earth; the vampire, jailer and savior in one—invisible shackles looped round his wrists and ankles are unlocking and crumbling into dust as the blood trickles down his throat like droplets of molten gold. He might be crying. He can’t tell. It just feels, so good. It is the warmest, most loving embrace he’s ever experienced, with a jagged edge that has him hard and moaning around the finger in his mouth. He’d like to shove one hand down his pants and get himself off, right here, right now, but he can’t seem to loosen his frantic grip around the vampire’s wrist.
“Easy, easy,” the vampire advises. When Daniel ignores the request, it pinches shut his nostrils, cutting off his air supply until his lungs are screaming and he opens his mouth against his will, gasping. The bloodied finger is immediately removed.
All sense of pride vanquished, Daniel attempts to grab at the vampire’s wrist. “No,” says the vampire sternly. “You wanted to go see Louis, so get up. Let’s go see him.”
***
The headstone reads:
LOUIS DE POINTE DU LAC
OCT 4, 1877 - OCT 18, 1930
Beloved brother
“This,” the vampire tells Daniel, not unkindly, “is Louis.”
Blood-high fading fast, and with his body weighed down by the hot, heavy air they had walked through to get to this graveyard from the house on Rue Royale, Daniel can only shake his head in confusion. “Are you being a dick right now? Is that what this is? We’re in front of the Vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac’s grave, ha ha? Or is he going to dig himself up from the dirt? Is this where you assholes sleep when you’re not living in piece of shit houses?”
“Don’t be crass, Daniel.”
“Then, is this some sort of riddle? What’s the answer?” He slaps his hand onto his forehead in an exaggerated pantomime of mock realization. “Oh, I know. What is, the Vampire Louis is un-dead?”
“The answer,” Daniel’s vampire scoffs, “is that vampirism is a curse, and that chasing after ghosts will not reveal anything to you.”
“I don’t want to be a vampire,” Daniel protests, mortal heartbeat pounding against his ribcage. “I want some escape from—from—“
“There is no escape! What you feel Daniel, is your own humanity.” Its lip curls as it regards Louis’ grave. “To be a vampire is what you behold before you; an empty, worthless grave.”
The creature sighs abruptly, the noise weighed down by centuries, and turns back toward Daniel. “Someone once reminded me that, for a human, every second is a countdown toward death. ‘It all matters’, that was what he said. Until the very end, it all counts for something.”
“And death, Daniel, counts for nothing. There is no escape there, no sweetness to be had by submitting to its grip. I’ve lied often, I’ve told innocents and criminals alike that there is some measure of peace in eternal slumber. I don’t believe there is.”
At these words, the grave seems to rise up before Daniel, the massive, marble structure of it winking in and out of focus as though he is looking at the moon through a telescope. The austere, distant sheen gives off an impression of dewy wetness, the arched stone sickened with the same feverish sweat as Daniel himself.
Never before has Daniel felt so alone.
“It is not vampirism that should be coveted,” his companion continues, voice shot through with disgust, “but humanity. Humanity, imprecise and ephemeral—“ the vampire laughs. Some measure of longing, though for exactly what Daniel can’t decide, leaves the noise sounding hollow, like the reverberation of a mallet banging against a drum, “—truly, only something that ends could manifest with such unflinching brilliance. The spark of human life imprints against immortal eyelids like the afterglow of a flashbulb; even when we ignore it, it animates us, attracts us, guides us.”
“You will die, yes, but Daniel, you should rejoice at that fact. You are not cursed, you can love and be redeemed in a way a vampire never can. That is a gift. Don’t go to Louis. Don’t squander your life.”
“What life?” Daniel says raggedly. “I have nothing, I am nothing. That’s why I’m here, what I wouldn’t say earlier. You say I’m not cursed? You’re right. I am the curse. I bring pain to everyone I love.”
Humiliatingly, Daniel feels hot tears beginning to prick at the edges of his eyes. “Fuck,” he swears. “I want to be better, but I don’t know how. I thought maybe if I traced backwards, if I could talk to Louis like he was some sort of fucking oracle, maybe, maybe,” he trails off, throat closing up.
“Freedom,” the vampire says softly. “You said that’s what you wanted. Freedom from what?”
“Don’t know.” Daniel sighs. The glittering after effects of the thimble of blood have faded and his body has once more begun to feel like a hollow shell. “From myself. From everything.”
“You won’t find that here,” the creature says. “This way lies only pain and death and suffering.”
“Which way doesn’t?” Daniel asks bitterly. “Aren’t I doomed anyways? A human addicted to vampire blood?”
“A slow death,” says his companion, “depending on the general health of the victim. Your muscles and mind will wither but, if you drink your fill from me now, and as long as your heart is strong, you might live on for many years.”
Then, almost hesitantly, the vampire closes the distance between them, cupping Daniel’s cheek with its soft, cool hand.
“Would you really do it?” Daniel asks suddenly, overcome by the foreign rush of intense intimacy that has fallen between himself and this strange creature. “Would you really offer me all those things you said earlier? And why would you bother? What worth do I have, to something like you? What am I to you?”
“What are you to me?” the vampire repeats softly. “An endless mystery. Penance. Salvation. Does it matter?”
Smirking slightly, Daniel finds himself leaning into the monster’s grip. “Haven’t you heard?” he says. “Everything matters.”
The vampire’s smooth, pink lips curl self-deprecatingly upwards. It tugs down the collar of its ruined shirt. Daniel swallows at the exquisite sight of its long, exposed neck. “Come closer, then. Drink.”
Can he? Should he? Does he deserve this strange gift, escaping from death in the here and now, in exchange for agreeing to die later?
But he does want it. He wants more blood. He wants the creature’s arms wrapped around him, dragging him downward.
And yet, perhaps the stronger urge is still to run. Or, to take the being’s slender neck in his hands and somehow wring immortality from the simple act of snapping its windpipe.
Who is the monster, Daniel wonders, and who is the man?
“Daniel?” The vampire watches him, then uses one of its dagger sharp nails to make a small incision at the base of its neck. Blood wells up eagerly. “Daniel—“
The wide swing of a flashlight in the distance interrupts them. Daniel had forgotten, in his hazy delirium, that the graveyard they’d broken into was a historic site. As such, it had security patrolling through it every few hours, an effort by the city of New Orleans to crack down on blights such as vagrancy, graffiti, and—“Most awfully of all,” city council members said, voices laced with that lovely, world-renowned empathy attributed to politicians—addicts nestling in amongst headstones to shoot up.
Daniel surges forward, the muscle memory of running from cops on numerous occasions moving his limbs before he has time to think about what he’s doing.
And then there they both are; tucked against the massive headstone of Louis de Pointe du Lac’s grave. Daniel has successfully caged in the delicate, feral creature that has offered to save his life.
The vampire had made a soft noise of shock when Daniel roughly pushed them against the stone, but now it only lies pliantly beneath Daniel’s own body. Every inch of them touching, Daniel can feel how painfully thin the creature is. It blinks at him silently, not bothering to remove the hand that Daniel pressed thoughtlessly against its mouth.
It seems there is no need for talking anymore, though. Cool hands cup the back of Daniel’s neck. He bites back a groan, and gives in.
He bites messily at the cut in the vampire’s throat, relishing in the way the slick skin gives way to his tongue, his teeth. Blood-soaked, the expanse of skin feels like silk.
The vampire hisses beneath him but still does not move. Instead, it bares its neck even more, inviting Daniel in.
What an invite.
He can feel himself warming up. God, he’d had no idea how cold he had been mere moments before. And now? Now Daniel is on fire, flames licking through his insides where the vampiric blood seems to be taking root.
Though he has no memory of drinking blood before, Daniel can easily understand how he became addicted to this feeling.
“Good,” the vampire is murmuring from somewhere far away. “Take your fill. It will be alright.”
Daniel laps at the wound in a continued frenzy, using his teeth to periodically rip at the soft edges of the vampire’s skin.
Finally, around another mouthful of ambrosia, Daniel asks a question he hadn’t cared about until this very moment.
“Who are you, anyway?” he moans, buoyed upward by the iron tang on his tongue. “What’s your name?”
“Oh,” the vampire whispers. The question seems to have made him wilt.
“Armand,” he says. “My name is Armand.”
“Armand,” Daniel repeats, his breath whispering against Armand’s blood slick skin. It’s a beautiful name. “It’s a shock to hear myself say this but, ho-o-ly shit, it’s been a real pleasure to meet you, Armand.” With great difficulty, he lifts his head up from where it kisses against Armand’s neck so that he can look the vampire in the eye. He holds his hand out, even as it trembles with adrenaline—after all, a business transaction wrought with blood ought to at least be sealed with a handshake, shouldn’t it?
But Armand only stares down at the proffered extremity, gold eyes huge in his narrow face. “A pleasure? A pleasure?”
The vampire laughs, and the blood that has begun pooling in the hollow of his neck overflows, spilling down his chest and bleeding through the fabric of his shirt. A rabid grin has wrestled its way onto his face. “Has it really?”
“Ah, sorry?” Daniel says, taken aback. His pulse is hammering in his neck.
“And what,” says the vampire Armand, “are you sorry for now, Daniel?”
Blood is still flowing from the wound on Armand’s neck. Daniel can smell it too—the rusted edge of it sits heavily at the back of his throat. “Seems like you’re upset.”
Upset barely covers it. The vampire’s eyes are glittering dangerously and, when Daniel attempts to lower his hand, he grips it with a supernatural speed, wrenching their bodies around so that it is now Daniel who’s back is smashed up against cool marble. His head slams against it with enough force to make his brain rattle jarringly against his skull.
“Me?” Armand says coldly. “Upset? No, no. I’m just pleased that we’ve reached the point of official introductions.”
“I—“
“Yes, yes, you’re Daniel Molloy, journalist with a terminally bad attitude and a drug problem, hm? And now you know who I am—the Vampire Armand.” He leans in close, running his nose up the side of Daniel’s neck with a shuddering sigh. “A creature,” he continues, “with very bad habits.”
Goosebumps spring up all over Daniel’s body at the touch. With Armand’s blood throbbing in his stomach he feels better than he has in ages. “Please,” he whispers, the plea feeling far too familiar for comfort, “let me go.”
“If you ask me that and mean it,” Armand tells him, “perhaps I will.” And then teeth are enclosing ravenously around Daniel’s neck, breaking the skin, breaking, Daniel thinks, something much deeper than that.
If he thought he was in heaven before, that doesn’t compare to this. He clutches Armand closer, eyes rolling back in their sockets.
“Armand,” he groans, and the name slips around his throat like a collar.
“Don’t you want your prize?” Armand bites out furiously. “For capturing my attention?”
Daniel’s vision is going spotty, his sense of space distorted by the relentless torrent of euphoric pain.
I’m losing consciousness, he realizes.
“You’ve won, Daniel, aren’t you happy? Here’s the truth; everything you do fascinates me.”
The admission is not ornate. Still, it spirals and hooks deep underneath Daniel’s skin. His heart rattles in his chest, and a poisonous thread of victory winds round and round his arteries, choking off the vital flow of oxygen.
“Stop,” Daniel says weakly. “Whatever you’re doing…stop.”
Armand continues, utterly unforgiving. “So here I am, breaking my vows, giving you your wish. You will be a vampire, Daniel. And we will see how well you fare then.”
Cold fingers card through Daniel’s hair—the fingers of a corpse. They, too, are unforgiving.
Unbidden, he can feel other fingers in his hair—the fat, tactless fingers of a baby, yanking and pulling with abandon. She, who is perfect in her newness, who is experiencing what it means to exist for the first time.
And Daniel had left her behind, warm and round and rose-colored. He was leaving her behind still. Permanently. It makes him sad and he wishes—too late he knows—that he had never left at all.
What was he leaving her for, anyways? Not, Daniel knows, for anything good.
So selfish, he admonishes himself. Will he leave behind such flaws? When he is a vampire? Somehow, he doubts it.
A heart-wrenching moan splits the night air, long and mournful.
“Fuck,” the vampire Armand, now several feet away, laughs. “No one catches me off guard like you do.” He is cradling his dark head in his hands and, when he finally looks up, blood is all over his mouth. My blood, Daniel knows.
Armand laughs again, a frantic giggle that makes his whole body jerk. He is almost certainly aware of the direction of Daniel’s thoughts.
And then—that noise, that scream; Daniel realizes belatedly, it had come from Armand.
The sequence of events is darkly comedic, the exact type of thing Daniel would usually find amusing. But, god, Armand’s cry—it holds such immense grief that even Daniel feels the weight of it.
“Are you ok?”
“Such concern,” Armand laughs sarcastically. “You should be dead by my hand right now, and yet you are concerned.”
Irritated into a higher state of alertness, Daniel staggers closer. “What do you want me to say? Fuck off, you monster? That would make you happy, Armand?”
“Don’t call me by my name,” the vampire tells him coldly.
He glares at Daniel, eyes glowing yellow in the gloom. He looks utterly inhuman—more inhuman, with his hollow cheeks and sharply cut bones, than he ever has before. Stranger even, somehow, than when Daniel had thought his own throat severed by a mere press of those elegant fingers. Every element of his person is just so very far from Daniel. It’s that sensation of vast distance that makes Armand look so foreign. The sharp cut of his mouth holds all the warmth of a marble bust.
And then the frightening image flickers, smudges away like condensation. The remnant of Armand heaves a sigh and frowns. He looks rumpled, overwhelmed. If it weren’t for his absurd dirtiness, or his baroque beauty, he could be anyone.
“What shall I do, Daniel? I fear I am only capable of doing harm.”
“Why would I care?” Daniel asks harshly. He feels like he’s suffocating. “And what would I know about what you’ve done? You don’t want concern from me, you’ve made that clear. So, I won’t bother giving it.”
A hand encircles his wrist, its grip unbreakable. “Because we are the same. You, you cried before—‘I hurt the ones I love’. So do I, Daniel. I trap them in cages so that they cannot leave me, I have done it for centuries. And yet, I have never kept anyone. And now I grow tired of it, of playing a game I know I’ll lose.”
Daniel can’t help it, he laughs.
“So it’s true what they say.” Armand just stares at him blankly. “About the mind? It goes with age?” Still no response.
“Christ. Ok. You want me to spell it out? The answer is obvious. Honestly, I’m not sure you’re not just asking a rhetorical question.”
Daniel considers all the myriad ways he’s failed people, and what he might of done, were he braver. He considers the creature in front of him; evil and immoral, terrifying, and yet…it appears as though Armand has saved Daniel’s life. At the very least, he’s extended it.
And there’s that strange kinship between them. The grotesque rightness of being caught in Armand’s grasp. The sensation of falling.
Finally, Daniel shrugs. “You let them go, Armand. If you love something enough to not want to hurt it, fuck—then you allow it to be free. And then you hope it’s true, what people say; if the thing you’ve released loves you as well, it will come back.”
***
They sit there in silence for a long time, leaned up against Louis’ empty grave. The night crawls by, every deep pocket of shadow gradually becoming more and more shallow.
“It’s going to be dawn soon,” Daniel finally says.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you have to go, then?”
“Yes. Soon.”
They lapse into quiet once more. The wind whistles through the gravestones.
“Want to take a picture, or something?” Daniel asks, bristling under the continual weight of Armand’s gaze. He doesn’t mean to be combative, but he can’t help it. It feels like something important is slipping through his fingers.
“No need,” Armand says. “My memory is far better than any photograph could ever be.”
“Ah, so you want to remember me.”
Don’t go, he thinks, inexplicably.
“I do not like to say goodbye.” Now when Daniel chances a glance at the vampire, Armand is smiling.
“We could meet up again,” Daniel says to him. “You could give me more blood. It would be nice not to start losing my mind immediately.” He says it lightly though he knows, if he’s being honest with himself, that he is terrified.
“Ha,” Armand grins broadly, comforting despite everything. “I think we have ‘met up’ more than enough. You will be fine. Between the two of us, you will be whole for many years. Rest easy, Daniel.”
“What if I want to see you again, though?” A last ditch effort, and not one that matters anyways. Daniel still feels as though he is shattering. Something final is occurring, and fuck, he doesn’t know what it is.
Armand doesn’t even bother responding. He merely continues to gaze at Daniel, expression inscrutable. Eventually, faster than Daniel can process, he takes Daniel’s face between his hands. Then—and of course this was inevitable—the vampire kisses Daniel. His white-hot mouth is just as electric as his blood, burning away everything in its wake. It is perfect. He whispers a word into Daniel’s open lips.
“Goodbye,” the vampire says.
Daniel’s eyes fly open. “Armand—“
***
Even though he knows Alice will yell at him, Daniel walks toward a payphone, eager to call home. He’ll take the yelling, so long as she eventually agrees to put Alana on the phone, and allows Daniel to hear his daughter’s cheerful burbling. If he can just hear that small, lovely laughter, he thinks he might be able to beat back the strange buzzing sensation that’s persisting in his fingers and toes.
It’s only that he feels so sore, so uneasy—though he thinks that’s a pretty fair reaction to waking up with no memory of the previous night, curled up in a fucking graveyard, of all god forsaken places. Actually, when he’d first opened up his eyes, trying to make sense of where he was in the dim, pre-dawn light, he had assumed he was really dead, and was looking up out of his own grave. Then he’d thought that maybe, Ebenezer Scrooge-style, he was being taught some sort of lesson. What was the moral he needed to learn? Take responsibility for your fucking actions.
Maybe next time, he responds internally.
What he needs is an anchor, something to guide him out of the eerie half-light that is sunlight filtering through headstones, something to call him back to his real life. As it stands, he feels like he might vibrate out of his skin. It’s as though there’s a current running along his veins. For a post-blackout hangover, the sensation is incredibly fucking weird. It worries him.
Still, he’s sure if he can manage to hear Alana, he’ll be alright. He will forget the name on the grave he had woken up next to, and he won’t allow himself to reflect upon long ago nights in San Francisco, or the things he’d seen there (if he does, if he follows his instincts, Daniel knows he will entangle himself in a labyrinth far, far from his daughter. Will he be able to get back to her, if that happens?)
As he dials his home number, his hands shake.
“Molloy residence. Who is this?” Alice’s voice emanates from the receiver, spiked with distaste. She’s always so suspicious of the unknown, Daniel thinks fondly.
“It’s me.”
“Oh god,” she says. “What the fuck. Daniel, where have you been?”
“I’m sorry—“
“—I sure fucking hope you’re sorry—“
“I’m sorry,” he says again. And then, to his own horror, he begins to sob, collapsing sideways on top of the small phone box. “Fuck. I’m so sorry.”
He does not notice, as he continues to cry with great, gasping breaths, that he is being watched. And even after, long past the time Daniel eventually wanders away, laden with strict instructions to take the next flight back to New York, no one else notices the stranger either. It’s easy to dismiss the dirt-caked figure with the furrowed brow. Their eyes slide past him as though he were invisible. After all, he’s not hurting anyone. He merely stands there, shaded from the sun, staring at the empty space where Daniel had been.