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Wartime Paris. Dreary. Trapped under the thumb of the German regime. Claudia and Louis were starving right along with the mortals. The horrid curfew kept the people from the streets, kept them inside at night. No reveling in the balmy summer night for Parisiennes.
Claudia had opened the front windows to their humble flat. It was in one of the largest buildings on the occupied street, but due to the restrictions and rationing, the place was sparsely furnished. Claudia didn’t mind. Traveling through Europe during this terrible war had stripped away much of her need for finer things. The breeze filtered in through the gauzy white curtains. The sun had set an hour ago, the light lingering in shades of red and yellow as the stars slowly revealed themselves. The curfew had struck at nine o’clock, and the street below was empty.
She felt the hunger rip through her. She had grown used to being thirsty for the past few years. Blood was scarce now. They had grown weak with it, Claudia felt strung out and dried up like the husk of a dead insect. She knew she didn’t look much better. Felt how her skin had shrunken with hunger, how her veins stuck to her bones like ropes. She had even lost what baby weight she used to have. She knew that, to return to herself, she would need the blood of at least four grown men. Maybe five, if she wanted to be sure.
The sight of her wasted body had become familiar by now. Just as thin as the occupied people below, as the prisoners of war they had come across in their wanderings.
Louis languished in the living room. He’d been wearing the same suit of clothes for the past two months. He hadn’t bothered to keep up with changing clothes, with taking care of his hair. He didn’t have the energy to hunt what vermin there were in the walls. Even Claudia found the idea of taking down the rats too exhausting to handle.
But she knew she could get through it. She always found the will to carry on, and she’d carry Louis on her back if she had to.
They shared a coffin these days. It was narrow, carved from pine and lacquered black. It had seen better days, it was a worn and sad thing. The cheap satin lining had long since been worn away by their bodies. They slept together to avoid detection, and to stay warm in the cold months. Cold, the heat, these things couldn’t really hurt them anymore. The chill ached in her bones now though, more acutely than it ever had while she was human.
Those years were far behind her now. Her human memories were only vague smears. She couldn’t remember what it was like to be human anymore. Claudia walked through the apartment, checking on Louis.
They had risen for the night, only for Louis to instantly fall asleep on the couch in the parlor. It was an ancient thing they had fished out of the garbage. Claudia had draped an old blanket over it, and it served them fine. All Louis did anymore was sleep. She was sorely tempted to join him, to lie back down and let the dreams overtake her. But she couldn’t. She had to find a way to feed without drawing attention to themselves.
The last thing they needed was to be separated. Not now.
Claudia wrapped herself in a threadbare shawl, pulling it over her head. She was cold even on a warm summer night. She let the fabric cover her, let it conceal her face as she went down to the lobby of the apartment building. She wanted to see if anyone lingered in the hallways, if a stray cat or dog had snuck in during the day. It had happened before, and she hoped she could find an easy meal while walking the halls.
No such luck. She went downstairs, wandering the lobby of the once-beautiful building. The mail room had no attendant tonight. Curiously, she looked into the letter boxes. So many of the apartments were abandoned, only a few letters left in the slots. She found nothing in theirs, went to walk away, when her foot knocked against a heavy box.
It was addressed to her! American stamps littered the box, post marks in Russian and Polish and even German. This package had been in the mail for the better part of a year, from the looks of it. It came up to her knee, around two feet across and just as tall. She bent to lift it, nearly struggling with the weight.
Claudia carried it up the stairs. She had to pause at the second landing, panting for breath. Her body was too starved to sweat, too weak to truly fill her lungs. She could feel the hunger throb in her muscles, in her veins. It took her a few moments, gasping like a fish, before she could muster the strength to carry it up to their fourth floor apartment.
"Excusez-moi mademoiselle? As-tu besoin d'aide?” A man’s voice from down the hallway.
Claudia looked to the source of the sound, saw a man in uniform walking towards her. A policeman. He was obviously coming in from work, even had his keys in his hands. He’d been intending to go home. He was plump, flushed with color. He was a well fed man in this time of famine - no doubt accepting bribes from the Germans.
He was a vision to her. Face moist with life, his heart pounded through her ears. She let him take the package from her arms. She knew she couldn’t carry it up the rest of the way without exerting more energy than she had. If this pig could work for the enemy, then the least he could do was carry her box.
They had reached her door. She dug the keys out of her sweater pocket with shaking fingers, the metal jingling in her grasp. She looked up at him, at the light sheen of sweat coating his brow.
“Merci Monsieur. Pouvez-vous me l'apporter? J'ai peur de ne pas me sentir bien.” She didn’t have to pretend to sound weak.
The concerned man carried the box in. She closed and quietly locked the door behind them, watched as he set the package on the unused dining table. He had to push away a pile of papers, a stack of books. He turned to say goodbye and take his leave, but stopped at the sight of Claudia.
She had taken off the shawl, let her gaunt face be seen in the dim light of the kitchen. She could see her face reflected in his thoughts - wan, thin, dark circles around her eyes. She looked like a perfect horror. She would have enjoyed his fear if she weren’t so starved.
“Pauvre fille. Puis-je vous aider? Avez-vous besoin d'un médecin?” His voice shook.
He had backed into the table, fright overtaking him. He instinctively knew that Claudia wasn’t human, no person could look like this and still live. He stood rooted to the spot - Claudia’s gaze keeping him pinned.
She beckoned him down, reaching up with her thin arms. This was the only instance where being a perpetual child was helpful. She let him wrap his arms around her, let him pat her back comfortingly, let his fearful thoughts and worried paranoia wash through her mind. She let him hug her, let him pull her in, let him wonder at how thin she was.
She struck quickly, so fast he never noticed her fangs piercing his fleshy neck. He started, stood stock still as Claudia drew the blood into herself. She had never drained someone so quickly before, had never been so desperate for the blood. He buckled and fell to his knees. Claudia didn’t have to reach on her toes for his neck anymore, she was taller than him as he knelt.
She was very careful not to spill a single drop. She fought against the urge to tear, to rip him apart as she would have years ago. Claudia simply held him close as she drank, letting his heart pulse into her mouth with a delicious intensity she hadn’t felt in nearly six months.
Six months of feeding from rats, an errant cat, a lost dog. Six months of going without, of starving, of wasting away into something entirely inhuman. Six months of watching Louis become weaker and weaker and less responsive to the world around him.
The man’s blood revitalized her. It filled her with warmth, his blood coursing through her starved veins. His heart was slowing now, the rich pounding lagging in her ears. Just as it stopped, she pulled away. His face was waxen, gray, no life giving blood left in his body. She let him slump to the floor. Claudia licked what blood that had escaped from her lips. Her fingers and toes pricked with warmth, she felt like she had come in from the cold.
She looked at her hands. Her flesh had filled out some, the veins not so prominent anymore. The gray sheen to her skin had faded, and she looked more alive. She flexed her aching fingers, looking down at the man as he died. She would have a hard time hiding his body. While his blood had helped, it did not fully revitalize her. The easiest thing would be to heal the wounds with a small amount of her own blood, and leave him downstairs in his own apartment.
The powers that be would think he had died in his sleep. Claudia had had to do this before. No one had seen him go with her, she was sure of it. Before someone could miss him, could suspect her doings, Claudia lifted his arm around her neck.
She didn’t stagger under his weight, but took her time dragging him back down to the second floor. She had discovered an ancient servant’s passage and back stair shortly after they had moved in - she was suddenly grateful for the conversions of the old aristocratic hotels into civilian apartments over the years. Claudia came out of a secluded hallway on the second floor. She knew the layout of this floor as well as her own, there wasn’t much to do these days except wander. She dragged his body down the hall, preternatural senses peeled for any unexpected mortals.
Nothing. No person leaving an apartment. She stopped in front of his door. She let the body slip down, partially hidden by her skirt. She searched through his pockets, found his door key. Claudia opened the lock, taking his forearm in hand to drag him across the floor. He lived alone, thankfully. She surveyed the front room of his apartment, found a lone chair. She sat him in it, letting his body splay about. She knew she should leave. Claudia couldn’t risk discovery. But the richly decorated apartment drew her in.
While he wasn’t a highly ranking officer, she could tell by his uniform, beautiful vases and artwork littered the shelves and walls. A French scene sat situated in the middle of the parlor. A man and woman in their fancy clothes, a beautiful flowering glade, the sunshine playing on the silk of their costumes. Claudia wanted it. She wanted to feel the sunlight again, to smell the wildflowers and the earth on such a sunny day as this. It hurt to look at it, she had to turn away.
A heartbeat pricked in her ears. A white cat sat on the windowsill, fur a fluffy cloud in the twilight darkness. She saw the cat’s eye shine in the dark, heard the machine of its body as it leapt down from the window. It crept towards her, eyes shifting from green to yellow as it looked up at her. Such a pretty thing. Sweet, soft, so alone. She bent down to pet it. It sniffed at her hand, found her worthy of such attention. She picked it up by the scruff of its neck, tucking the head under arm. She muffled the yowl it released, and left the man’s apartment.
She hoped she could get Louis to feed on the cat, if he had enough energy for that. Claudia took the back stairs again. Louis was where she had left him, wan and washed out on the couch. The cat had stopped struggling in her arms, its little heart racing against her flesh.
“Louis.” She called out.
She took him by the arm, shaking him. Louis didn’t stir. She walked around to the front of the couch, looked down at his face. He was skeletal, eyes sunken, dark skin almost colorless. The dim light coming from the kitchen didn’t help him any, the pits of his cheekbones stood out as sure as any memento mori did. Her heart ached - for the miserable thing he had become, for their situation. For her own suffering. If only she could leave him.
She would be much happier if she did. She could travel anywhere she wanted, feed on whoever irked her - but she couldn’t leave him like this. He was hers . They were bound together by that terrible cord, doomed by the actions of one man to be trapped forever with each other. Chained together by fate. If he went overboard, she would surely follow.
“ Louis .” She hissed, shaking him almost violently now.
One of his eyes opened, bleary green peering up at her. It slowly fell closed, and Claudia shook him again. Both of his eyes opened then, but the shroud of sleep still blanketed him.
“Here. You need to feed.” She held the cat out to him.
He didn’t seem to notice it. Louis’ eyes closed again, his face deathly still. Claudia couldn’t fight the frustrated growl rising in her chest. With her right arm, she pressed the cat to her torso, using her left arm to prop Louis up on the arm of the couch. She pried at his lower jaw with her nails, balancing him with a knee. She raised the struggling cat to her mouth, grimacing as she ripped its neck with her sharp teeth. All of its struggling ceased, as if it had been trapped in a stupor.
Quickly, so as not to waste a drop, she pressed the little neck to Louis’ lips. His eyes shot open, his own wasted arm coming up to press the animal to his mouth. She heard him swallow, saw as the deathly tinge to his skin lessened. The cat was dead now. She took it from his arms, saw the snowy fur matted with the blood. Louis sunk back against the couch, asleep again.
Well, at least he had fed on something. Claudia went over to the opened window, threw the wasted little body out of it. She watched as it landed on the trash heap.
Having made sure Louis fed, she turned her attention back to the package on the dining table. It became clear to her that it was a wooden crate, littered and scuffed with postage marks. Someone had wrapped twine around it to hold it together at some point. Claudia cut the string with her nails, inspecting the postage.
The original stamps had been worn away. The most recent bore that terrible German emblem. She shivered at seeing it, and pried the top from the crate. Packing straw concealed the inside. Claudia took handfuls of it and threw it on the floor around her. The top of a lacquered box gleamed in the dim light. This was odd.
Neither she nor Louis had ordered anything this fine in ages. It wasn’t for lack of money, they still had plenty in the American accounts. Any money Louis had been able to keep in the Swiss or French accounts had been inaccessible, but if they so desired, they could still have money wired to them. No, Claudia hadn’t ordered anything.
She lifted the heavy box from the crate. No markings littered the fine wood, no markings to indicate what exactly was inside of it. She looked back into the crate, found a letter buried in the straw. She lifted it out, set it next to the box. Nothing else remained in the crate, she moved it to the floor. The ancient chandelier swayed above her, the crystal tinkling in the breeze coming from the window.
The seamless box puzzled her, but the letter is what drew her attention first. Like ancient letters she had seen in libraries, it was sealed with wax. Claudia peered closely at the seal. Her heart caught in her throat. She recognized the coat of arms - it had haunted her dreams for years. Two lions flanked a shield, a fleur de lys in the middle. A knight’s helmet ensconced in a banner sat at the bottom. The motto was deeply engraved into the wax.
Aut inveniam viam aut faciam. She didn’t need to know Latin to know what it meant, Lestat had proudly told her about “their” family crest for years. “ I shall either find or make a path ”.
Claudia couldn’t fight the shudder from overtaking her. It had been almost ten years since she had last seen her maker. Ten years since they had bundled his drained corpse into that terrible coffin, ten years since she had seen him bleed out. She knew then that he had lived. Louis’ devotion to him, twisted and misguided as it was, had made sure of it.
Lestat lived. Lestat had sent her a package a year ago, and it was just now arriving. Did he know where they lived now? Would he arrive next, sweeping in to “save” them from their fate, to take him under his suffocating wing once again? The idea terrified her more than she wanted to admit to herself. Their lives may be full of suffering now, but at least they had their own lives. Power and control enough to choose their own fates, pursue their own interests and needs. Lestat wasn’t around to lord his age and privilege over her anymore. He couldn’t go on about his status as “maker” anymore, as if he weren’t the sniveling mockery of Clytemnestra.
And like Clytemnestra’s daughter, Claudia had sought his downfall. For all of the suffering they had seen and experienced, she would never take the choice back. She was free.
She picked up the letter. The paper was finely made and heavy, folded to make the envelope as they would have in olden days. Claudia wanted to throw it and the box out the window. Wanted to never look at it again. She could still catch his scent on the paper, in the wax. Floral with the musk of incense. It was faint, but it brought back long since buried memories.
Claudia as she sat next to him, teaching her the piano, patiently guiding her through the motions. Sitting across from him as they played chest, the anger building cool and hard in her chest. The early days, Lestat holding her as she cried about her mother. This one - this was the most painful to face. He had never been her father, not in the way Louis was. He never could have been. As Lestat loved to state, he had made her. Given her the blood. Claudia had come to hate him for birthing her into the world.
She took a deep breath, cracking the seal in her hands. It was old and brittle and it crumbled in her fingers. The letter wasn’t very long, only one page. Her eyes filled with reflexive tears to see his sprawling handwriting. Too familiar. She had seen it on too many birthday cards, too many notes to Louis, too many receipts. She had to close her eyes to it. She didn’t want to know what angry words had been etched here in his old fashioned script. What had he deigned to write to her then, almost a year ago?
She set the letter down. Claudia wiped at the tears streaming down her face. She took a deep breath, braced herself. She lifted the letter again, reading it by the dim light of the kitchen. Just five lines, written in French, his voice shining through as surely as if he were in the room speaking to her.
“Dearest Claudia,
As your maker, I should have taken better care of you. I deserve your revenge. I would have done the same to my father, if I had the strength. Accept this as my deepest apology.
Evil of my evil, daughter of my blood.
Lestat de Lioncourt.”
He had signed it with his customary flourish, the signature nearly coming off the page. She shook her head, laughing wetly under her breath. Of course. Even while apologizing, he had left no room for refusal. Old anger tore through her. Anger, and a strange sad resignation. Resignation that she would, even thousands of miles removed and nearly a decade away, still do as he asked.
Claudia set the letter face down on the table. She didn’t want to see the writing anymore. She turned to face the box. What could be inside? She itched with nervous energy. Her heart thrummed in her throat, she felt like she couldn’t breath around it. What cruel game was he playing?
She found the nearly invisible seam of wood, pried her nails into it. It was the sort of lid that would notch into a groove and she slid the lid away. A strange odor came from the dark opening. It reeked of dried blood. But it wasn’t human. The blood smelled dusty, vaguely like dried ink and rot. She turned her face away, shutting her eyes tight to the overwhelming stench. It smelled like the strange, undead creatures they had come across during their early wandering days through Eastern Europe. The shambling creature that Louis had killed came to her mind then, the terror Claudia had felt as it tried to attack her.
Where would Lestat have found a thing like that? She let the fear fade, let it wash over her. She took a steadying breath.
The light from the kitchen did not provide much illumination, but it was enough for her preternatural eyes to see by. At first, she didn’t know what to make of it. It was dried, shriveled, darkened by decay. The only thing that seemed to still have any sort of vitality to it was a strange mass of shining black hair. For that’s the only thing it could be, as she looked into the dark box. Nothing else had that same texture, no substance on earth besides human hair.
Claudia gripped the strands, pulled the thing out. It was a head, as she had assumed. The skin was shrunken, dried, clinging to the skull in flakes and strange mask-like smoothness. She slowly turned it to look at its face. The mouth hung open, the grotesque mockery of a scream. The teeth were white, gleaming like ivory in the dark. Claudia couldn’t mistake the sharp canine teeth.
The nose was flattened, a gaping hole in the skull. She didn’t want to look at the eyes, found she couldn’t tear her gaze from them. She expected them to be empty pits, like mortal mummies often were. But she knew this was no human thing.
The eyes frightened her. The white globe still shined, still appeared wet even as the eyelid skin had pressed flat to the skull with decay. She knew these eyes. These eyes haunted her dreams, her every waking moment. Amber irises, not unlike her own, shining like gold in the dim light. She dropped the head. It fell to the floor, thudding heavily on the wood. The sound frightened her almost as badly as the thing itself, compounding the fear and strange uncanny terror.
She looked to the couch. Louis hadn’t stirred. He lay prone, sleeping, dead to the world. Claudia panted, smoothing her hands over her hair. She looked down at the thing, the strangely alive hair, the eyes. She half expected it to blink up at her. But it was still. Nothing moved.
The fear gradually lessened its grip on her heart. She suddenly felt silly for being so afraid of a dead thing. She nudged it with a slippered foot. Nothing. Claudia bent to pick it up, marveling at how strangely heavy a dried thing could be. She took it into the kitchen, wanted to get a better look at it. It was Bruce, alright.
She was holding his head in her hands. His dead, dried, mummified head. His wild black hair, nearly writhing with strange life. Something struck her as funny - she lifted it by the hair, held it out in front of her. Imagined that she was Perseus, and this thing was the cursed head of Medusa. She laughed then, the image sticking in her mind.
Her laughter rang through the apartment, growing louder and louder. She couldn't control it. Her voice broke, tears flowing again. These weren’t tears of fear. The terror had passed, and now she felt strangely lonely. Louis laid unresponsive on the couch, her preternatural laughter hadn’t woken him. She could see him through the doorway, still as the grave. She clutched the head to her chest, let herself cry.
Bruce was dead. Lestat had killed him. Lestat had tracked him down and torn his head from his body, all for what he had done to Claudia. How long had he held onto the head? Did he kill Bruce after they had tried to kill him? Or had Lestat enacted this revenge during their rocky final years?
She ran over to the dining table. No other letter in the crate, nothing else in the box. She threw the head back into the box. She took the letter into the kitchen, held it up to the kitchen light, trying to see if there was anything she had missed. Nothing. Just Lestat’s short note.
“Evil of his evil, daughter of his blood”. It was a poor apology, to be sure. Claudia knew that. All the same, it was a poignant reminder of their early years. Lestat taught her all he knew, in the best way he could. Lestat, distant though he was, giving her gifts, taking her to operas. He had shared all he could with her, and she… Claudia felt strangely guilty.
But the guilt wasn’t alone. She knew that this apology, this gesture, wasn’t totally well meant. The manipulative letter was itself a testament to how Lestat saw love. His love wasn’t unconditional, at least not when it came to her. She went back to the dining table, looking in on the head. The blank face stared up at her, seeming as if it were about to ask her what she was going to do with it.
She tucked the letter into her skirt pocket. Claudia slid the lid back on the box, put it back into the crate. She hesitated. She didn’t want to get rid of it, not really. There would be no risk to Louis finding it, not if she hid it well enough. She went into their coffin room, pried up the loose board she had been hiding banned items in. Her diaries, her copies of resistance literature, the books of poetry and clippings of American newspapers that Louis had collected over the years. His rosary, the one his mother had given him all those years ago. Louis didn’t know that Claudia had this hiding place, didn’t know that she had saved these precious things.
Claudia carefully moved these items aside in the chasm beneath the floorboards. The box was just able to fit here, the lid flush with the boards. She replaced them, stamped them down with her foot for good measure. Claudia read the letter again, trying to burn his script into her mind. She vowed to herself that she would destroy it. If Louis found out that, without a doubt, Lestat was still alive, he’d leave her without batting an eye.
Louis would never find it.
Claudia went into the kitchen, stood in front of the stove. She’d never had occasion to light the gas stove before. The kitchen was perhaps the most neglected room of their apartment; it had gathered a thick layer of dust in the two years that they had lived here. She examined the knobs, found the one that started the gas, the flint. It sparked, the scent of gas filling her senses. She watched the blue flames flicker, wavering like dancers in the grate.
She gave the letter one last read. “Evil of my evil, daughter of my blood”. She would copy his letter down from memory in her latest diary later that night. Claudia would rip that paper from the fragile binding, would wad it up and throw it from the window. This process would be repeated night after night, for years. For some nights, it was the only thing that would carry her through the darkness.
For now, she watched as the flames curled the paper. Watched as Lestat’s last words to her burned away into nothing. Only her memory would sustain these words, that phrase. And memory was a powerful thing.