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I am loathe to admit this, but I find myself missing Lestat. It is something I will never admit to Louis, a secret deep inside of me, that will never come to surface, but in the quiet of the near morning light, when Louis has drifted to sleep in his coffin, I think of my maker, of my father, and I miss him.
Cruel Lestat. Selfish Lestat. Uncle Les, who made me this, a girl eternal, never to be loved the way a woman longs to be. Lestat, whose death I still relish to this day, the pride swelling within my chest with knowledge that I defeated the monster under my bed.
My maker, who surely never believed I would succeed. My liar of a creator, whose confidence blurred his logic and ability to see what was right before his eyes, making him vulnerable to my treachery.
Couldn’t he see? Was he so blind in his own selfish needs that I was able to slip past him time and time again? After all, I learned it all from him. From his mistakes. Through his triumphs. In the lessons he gave to me, his infant death.
Evil of his evil, his daughter, sister, and the most large of his regrets.
He should have let me die that night all those years ago when my Louis, my knight in shining armor, carried me through the doors of that townhouse. Lestat, foolish Lestat, allowed darling Louis to sway him into agreement and then I was born to his darkness. I joined them in our unholy family.
A devil in angel’s clothing. His golden hair, a broken halo, his smile, the most wicked of all.
Lestat, the vampire, and his death, my greatest victory.
Yet life is not as I had dreamt it would be with all the plans I had excitedly made. My Louis, my most cherished brother, is joyless, his bright eyes, dull and pained. The green so muted, reminding me of moss that grows against the long forgotten and rarely visited gravestones in cemeteries.
This is what I did not plan for. I should have known when I asked Louis to open his heart to the devil that he would fall and fall so hard. There would be no coming back from it, but I had not understood the depth of love that Louis held for Lestat. It couldn’t have been more than I had witnessed yet… it was all consuming. It was with every breath taken, the sound of their tandem beating hearts, and myself, a fool as well.
Nothing has ever come easily to me. Life has been cruel, since I was human, and then, as a vampire.
I missed that bastard. If only things had been different all those years ago. If only my maker could have been more gentle with my broken heart.
I had been so young, still innocent to some things in life despite the many wicked things I had partaken in. I had not understood the true extent that losing my first love would cause me.
Should Lestat not have provided me with comfort and kindness? Should he not have consoled me, his child? Was I not worthy of even a bit of his love? Had it all been for Louis and Louis alone?
His cruelties were vast, growing worse as time went on, and then, and then, and then… that fateful night, that nightmare, the violence and all the blood.
It could have been different. We could have tried, somehow we could have tried to change it, to make a new way of it. It shouldn’t have ended with Louis, his body broken and bloody upon the ground, and my own body, crouched over his to keep him safe from any further physical damage.
I had not understood then, but all the damage that had been done would not amount to what the damage was now.
Louis was broken now, in ways my love and care could not heal him. I could not nurse his broken heart back to health. I could not make it better. I could not do a damned thing and it was all so unfair. I cursed Lestat with every breath I took. I hated him with every rush of blood through my veins.
It could have been different. Had it been, Lestat could have been here, and Louis would not be a shell of the man I adored more than any other.
This was our second chance. This was my freedom from a cage that I had been locked in for far too long.
In my coffin, I see clearly, and the words fly from my fingers, through the ink of my pen, sinking into the paper beneath it. I allow all I feel to be revealed, and in the pages, I wonder if I will find a way out of this hell.
This is not what I expected. This is not what I wanted.
It was never you, he had told me when I had begged him to leave Louis alone and take me instead. It had never been me and would never be me. He had been so cruel, yet honest and in a way it was admirable. He was so clear in his evil, in his determination to let me know I was his regret and he wished I had never existed.
It is only that now, as Louis slumbers away his heartache, I know that I am once again at a loss. It is not me. It will never be me.
He clipped my wings long ago, and no matter how far we go, I will never gain the ability to fly away from it all.
And so, wherever he may be, if there is a place for him in hell, my maker, my monster, my father, must be laughing at me.
He must be laughing until his eyes shed bloody tears. Even in death, he mocks me. Yet there is an empty spot within my own heart, my battered, bruised and bloody heart, that misses him.
He has the last laugh, even now. I hope he is rotting away in that dump.
The bastard.