Archive of Our Own

When Louis comes to, there is chaos, and there is calm.

The last thing he’d seen before everything went dark and quiet was Mekare, the lost twin returning, crashing into Akasha with such force it shattered the window behind them.

And now the twins stand together a few steps away from the broken window, Maharet’s arm around her sister, and Mekare not saying a word - but of course not. She can’t. She has no tongue.

Mekare steps forward, and Maharet, being her sister’s voice as her sister was her eyes in the past, the story, the dream, says,

“Behold. The Queen of the Damned.”

Louis stares at them, uncomprehending. Something happened, something happened when he lost consciousness, and they won. They’ve somehow destroyed the Queen, the Mother, and Mekare is the new one, the one who must survive lest they all should die.

He blinks, and tries to take inventory, glancing around the room. He’s propped up beside Daniel, and they’re both in Armand’s arms.

Eric and Santino stare at the twins as Louis had done, but it’s less in confusion and more in wonder, as though they can’t believe what happened.

What did happen?

Khayman is standing up, with Jesse leaning against him. Mael is moving towards them. 

Pandoro against a far wall, hugging herself with blood tears streaming down her cheeks in long rivulets.

Blood on what remains of the window, blood and shards of glass on the floor. And a still form, like a great broken glass statue.

Akasha?

How?

Marius’ surveying the room, just like Louis is. Their eyes meet and Louis thinks of the one private conversation’s they’d shared, when he’d asked him if Lestat was still alive.

Louis gaze moves down to the floor at Marius’ feet, sees Gabrielle a little bit away, slowly crawling towards Lestat.

Lestat, who lies on his stomach and sobs, his whole body shaking.

The room is so still all the sounds grow louder from it. The breeze outside, whistling through the trees. The crackling of the fire.  Pandora’s soft crying. Lestat’s violent sobs.

Stillness. Chaos.

He wants to stand up, wants to go to him, but he can’t seem to find the energy to even move his legs. Armand’s arm tightens around him when he starts to fidget.

Gabrielle’s reached him now, has sat down and pulled him up against her, the same way Armand is holding him and Daniel.

It feels like hours go by, but Louis knows that realistically it’s only been a few minutes before he regains the ability to stand, and then to stumble over to them. Lestat’s entire face is covered in blood from his tears, dripping down his throat to the collar of his suit and into his hair. His eyes - those beautiful iridescent eyes Louis fell in love with now red-rimmed - are staring at something on the floor.

At first glance Louis thinks it’s a bowl, but there is long black hair and blood on it, and when he looks closer he realises that it’s Akasha’s severed head. It’s gone completely translucent. He can see the inside of her cleaved skull.

He kicks it away.

Lestat lets out another noise, one that’s worse than his sobs. It sounds like he’s choking on his own breaths. Louis falls to his knees beside them, blocking his sight of Akasha’s body and the shattered window, and meets Gabrielle’s concerned gaze. His hands hoover over Lestat’s body, and he can’t help but remember the last time they saw each other, before this whole mess began.

Back in that doomed old house in the Garden District, which he would later learn that Lestat came to rest below for over half a century. The house where Lestat had asked him if he’d come home to him again, the house where Lestat had cried and begged and had fed only on cats, the house in which Louis had told him ‘No’, the house he had left behind.

And then four, five nights ago.

‘Have you come back to me, as lovers say?’

‘You’ve come back to me, Lestat.’

And he had, hadn’t he? He’d explained what he couldn’t say back when they’d lived together in New Orleans, he’d gone looking for Louis, had hoped Louis would read his autobiography and find him. They’d come home to each other.

And then he’d been taken. Two nights they’d had, two nights together before Louis woke up to find him gone, and Khayman waiting.

That’s not a lot in a human lifetime.

It’s nothing for an immortal.

And now Louis doesn’t know what to do.

“It’s some time yet until dawn,” Maharet says. She sounds tired, but authoritative. “And I would like to spend that time with my sister. Then tomorrow night we can reconvene here. I understand if… if you would like to change sleeping arrangements. And I think it might be best if everyone stays in the house. There are spare coffins, and a few bedrooms without windows for those of you who prefer beds. Mael and Eric can show them to you.”

They’d shared a coffin that first night when he’d given Louis the Dark Gift, when Louis had been afraid of giving in to his desires, of staying so close to him, but there’s nothing of that feeling now.

I’d share a coffin with you every night from here on out, he thinks. I’ll hold you so tight in my arms in the death sleep that no one will ever be able to take you out of them.

Gabrielle must read his thoughts, because she speaks up, before anyone else can. “We’ll take one of the bedrooms.”

Louis looks up at her in mild confusion.

All three of us, she tells him through her thoughts.

Are you sure? Louis asks back. Gabrielle showed him how she sleeps, deep into the earth as Mekare had. He doesn’t think she’s ever slept in a bed since she was human.

I haven’t. But I will. For him. And for myself. Now take him.

That is all the warning Louis gets before Gabrielle hands over Lestat and stands up. Lestat isn’t heavy, not with Louis’ vampire strength, and Louis hears Gabrielle’s thoughts saying that she doesn’t think he’d be able to stand right now and she doesn’t want to risk it.

So Louis scoops Lestat up in his arms and stands.

Let him complain over the indignity of it if he will. Louis would prefer hearing that instead of the crying. But Lestat doesn’t stop crying. He grips Louis’ sweater in his left hand and presses his face against it. There will be blood on it, but Louis can’t find it in himself to care.

Eric leads them out of the room and down the stairs into a small bedroom. The king sized bed takes up most of the space. One wall is jutting stone, another bears a painted mural of fir trees.

Gabrielle pulls the covers of the bed down, and Louis sets Lestat down in the middle of it. Eric watches them from the doorway, watches Lestat. He hasn’t met him before, but Louis is almost certain he’s seen him through Louis’ thoughts, that he’s aware of what Louis, and Gabrielle, Armand, and Marius - and to some extent Daniel and even Jesse - have all noticed.

Lestat doesn’t look the way he looked before he was taken. He’s paler now, his eyes brighter, but he isn’t smooth like the elders.

What happened to him? What did she do?

He’d gone to sit with her when they all got back to the main room. He’d taken her hand, even as he gestured for Louis and Gabrielle to sit close by him.

‘Be quiet, my prince,’ she’d said. And then, as though replying to something she’d read in his mind, something Louis of course couldn’t hear, she’d whispered, ‘It is nothing.’

What? What was ‘nothing’? What had Lestat thought, what had she wanted to keep from him?

He remembers Maharet’s words, when she’d paused her story. ‘Lestat calls. But it is too faint for me to hear words, for pictures. He is not harmed, however, that much I know.’ And the news reports. ‘… a fair-haired deity who does not speak…’

Louis is certain that Eric can hear his thoughts now. Gabrielle, too. He has never been very good at masking his anxiousness.

“Thank you,” he says to Eric, a clear dismissal, but polite, as Louis always tries to be.

Eric nods. He turns around, closes the door behind him.

Louis considers going to look for water and a cloth, something to wipe away the blood on Lestat’s face and neck, but there’s no real use in doing so. He’s still crying, his breath hitching with every inhale.

He dims the lights; a million little things set in the ceiling, and when he stops and leaves them right before they go off, they look like distant stars blinking up at them.

He rounds the bed - Gabrielle has taken the side closest to the door, as though to protect them of any attacker going for the easiest point of entrance - and lies down. He pulls the covers up over them, and turns on his side, so he can wrap an arm around Lestat’s middle. Gabrielle’s taken his suit jacket off, and the linen shirt he wears is soft and thin.

He hates the sound of Lestat’s crying. In those sixty-five years they lived together, Lestat never cried, not until the end. He would laugh, hysterically and at the wrong moments. ‘Peals of bells’, Louis had described his laughter to Daniel, some ten years ago, and that was right. Louis both hated and loved that sound.

But he’s read Lestat’s autobiography since then, and he’d noticed how often the human and fledgling Lestat would cry, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from wondering if Lestat would cry when they were together, if he’d go away somewhere, far enough away that Louis couldn’t hear him, and cry.

Something about that thought strikes him as painful.

But on the other hand, maybe Lestat simply never did cry during those years. Maybe he was always happy, or at least, never sad, when he was with Louis and Claudia in their New Orleans townhouse.

But it doesn’t matter now. Lestat is still sobbing, and Louis would say it’s at least another hour until sunrise.

Then Gabrielle - who Louis has read about and has known, personally, for less than a week - does something very uncharacteristic.

She begins to hum a song. An old, old French lullaby.

Long forgotten - or rather more likely long buried, knowing him - memories of Louis’ own mother flare to life. Memories of her at his sister’s door, at Paul’s, at his. Memories of her singing that same song.

Louis closes his eyes and drifts. He falls asleep like that, listening to Gabrielle’s soft singing sooth Lestat’s tears to dryness.

(—:—)

As always, Lestat is already awake when Louis opens his eyes the following night. The tears have dried into a thin crust on his skin that must surely itch, but he makes no move to scratch at it. No, he’s busy staring up at the artificial night sky above them. In the dim light Louis can see fresh tears gathering at the corners of his eyes.

They’re alone. Gabrielle has left.

Not for the first time, Louis wishes he could hear his thoughts. Maybe then he’d know what to do. How to help.

“Lestat…”

Louis watches his eyes close and trails off. He’s still got an arm around his waist. Lestat keeps one hand on his wrist, as though to make sure Louis doesn’t move away.

The door opens, brief light flooding into the room, before Gabrielle lightly kicks it closed. She’s carrying a tray in her hands, with a bowl of water and a towel, as Louis had considered bringing last night. She puts it down on the dresser and turns up the brightness of the lights.

“Up, Lestat,” she says. Her voice brooks no room for argument. “Come on, darling. Edge of the bed.”

Lestat’s eyes open, and he does as he’d been told, as he so seldom does. Louis doesn’t like having to let him go, but it’s a relief to see Gabrielle start to wipe the blood off his face.

Although seeing the marble colour of his face sends a chill down Louis’ spine. He gets off the bed and straightens his clothes, smoothing them down. There’s a big dark spot on his jumper.

“We need to go feed,” Gabrielle says.

“I don’t.”

Louis is surprised to hear the first coherent words come out of Lestat’s mouth since Akasha died.

“What?”

“I don’t need to feed,” Lestat repeats. He lies down on the bed again, on his side with his knees pulled up, back to them and facing the mural.

“What do you mean you don’t need to feed?”

“I don’t need to feed.”

“Lestat-“

“Gabrielle,” Lestat says. His voice lacks even the smallest hint of emotion.

“Alright. Fine. Louis and I will go, but we’ll be back in an hour or two, alright?”

No reaction.

Louis does not like the thought of leaving him, but he does need to feed. He follows Gabrielle out and up the stairs. They meet Armand and Daniel on the way to the front door.

“Where’s-“ Daniel starts to ask, but Gabrielle answers before he has the time to finish the question.

“He said he didn’t need to feed.”

“I know,” Armand says. “I heard.”

“Can you read his thoughts?” Louis asks.

Armand shakes his head. “No. He’s shutting me out.”

They go into town together, but then make their separate ways while looking for suitable victims to feed on, agreeing to meet up and make their way back together. Louis is quick about it, and Gabrielle is the last one to come back, but with good reason.

She’d stopped by a clothing store to buy new, clean clothes. Most of them are for Lestat, but there are a few pieces for her and some for Louis, too.

As soon as they get back to the Sonoma house, Louis walks down to the bedroom to get Lestat. He’s surprised to find it empty, and then feels a nudge of panic when there’s no reply as he calls out, voice loud enough to be heard throughout the entire house.

“He’s in the forest,” Marius reassures, coming up behind him. “I can hear him. He’ll be back later. Come now. We need to talk about what happened last night. 

The room has been cleaned, Akasha’s body gone. The hole in the window remains, the breeze cool as it flits into the room.

They sit down at the table, all twelve of them, only Lestat and Mekare missing, and they start discussing. How had it happened? How was it possible for Mekare to gain the responsibility of the Mother? Was it only thanks to the brain? Did the heart matter?

The questions are important, and the discussion interesting, but Louis has not studied science and much of the terminology is far past his knowledge. Louis has studied business, and knows art and literature. Not this.

Eventually, the conversation moves to the subject of Lestat, as it inevitably would.

“Has he told you anything? About her?” Pandora asks.

“No. No, he doesn’t speak,” Gabrielle says. She frowns. “But he didn’t go with us to feed. He said he didn’t need to.”

The others stare at her. Louis had imagined they’d all already know, that they would all be eavesdropping, but apparently not. Despite the close quarters and the preternatural hearing and ability to read most of each other’s thoughts, it seems they will still be respectful enough to close themselves off at times, to give some privacy.

“How much blood did she give him?” Mael eventually asks.

Maharet shakes her head. “We don’t know. But there is no room for us, for vampires or gods or the devil. The Vampire Lestat must die.”

Louis startles. “I’m sorry?”

Maharet looks kindly at him. She must’ve fed recently. Her eyes are a new colour. “His rock persona. We all agreed, we will not meddle with the humans. He can’t be running around publicly.”

“You want us to fake his death.”

“Yes.”

Louis nods slowly. “Alright.”

At first, the discussion as to how, exactly, they are going to do that, goes in a direction Louis isn’t fully certain how comfortable he is with. It seems like Louis is supposed to, for the first time, make a conscious decision in who he hunts, to look for someone as physically similar to Lestat as possible, kill him, and then destroy the body to the point that it can’t be recognised as anyone else, and leave it in Lestat’s ranch house in Carmel Valley. To be discovered by his band members.

But Marius puts a stop to those plans before they’re even halfway formed. He holds his hand up for quiet.

“Lestat doesn’t want that.” He turns to Maharet. “He can hear us talk, and he agrees with you, or he understands why his rock persona must die, why the world and his human musicians must think him dead, but… there’s his lawyer, Christine. It would be easier to deal with his assets, and everything else, if she knew he wasn’t dead. I agree with that.” Marius shrugs. “And he likes her. She’s grown used to his secretiveness and strange mannerisms.”

Mael shakes his head. “Of course you would agree with him. If a single word of that autobiography of his is true, then of course you would.”

“Mael, I need you to understand that no matter how close the two of us grew you did in fact kidnap me and have me turned against my will,” Marius says, words laced in bitterness. “Excuse me for having some empathy for someone in a similar situation.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Mael grumbles.

“I do like him. You’re right about that. And I don’t think there’s any danger in letting Christine know he’s alive. That’s the only thing she’ll know, we’re not telling her about vampires.”

Maharet sighs. “Alright.”

So the plan changes, and it’s why Louis, an hour later, doesn’t find himself outside looking for a potential victim, but downstairs, pressing in Christine’s phone number and holding the receiver up to his ear.

The phone rings, and rings, and Louis’ starting to doubt she’ll pick up, when there’s the sound of a woman’s tired voice from the other end.

“Yes?”

“Christine?”

Louis hears her yawn. “Yes?”

He glances at the clock on the wall and wants to kick himself. “I apologise, I didn’t think about the time difference.”

“I’m sorry, who are you? This is the number to my private home phone, there’s very few people who have this number, and I don’t recognise your voice.”

Louis works his jaw. “It’s Louis?”

Silence.

He sighs. “… Lestat’s Louis?”

“Oh.” There’s the sound as though she’s fallen down into a chair. “So he found you, then.”

It’d been a gamble saying that. She must’ve read Lestat’s book, but Louis doesn’t know what she’d thought, how much she’d figured was fiction. How much Lestat would’ve told her. If he’d made up some story about Louis writing Interview as a sort of metaphor for their relationship, or if he’d just said he had an ex with the same name, and that it had helped play into the story of The Vampire Lestat.

Either way, Christine seems to be one of those modern humans who doesn’t mind relationships between people of the same sex. That’s a relief at least.

Louis still remembers his surprise when neither Tough Cookie, Alex, nor Larry batted a single eyelash when Lestat kissed him in front of them.

He chuckles. “I found him, but, yes.” Louis sighs. “Listen, Christine, I don’t know how to say this.”

Christine sighs. “I stayed up, watching the news coverage of the concert. And I called the following evening, but no one answered. I kept calling. Alex and the others called me, worried because they hadn’t heard from Lestat. I would’ve left for San Francisco if only I knew where he was staying. What happened, Louis? Where is he?”

Louis stares out through the window in the far wall, at the trees outside. Somewhere in that forest is Lestat, listening, walking.

“The less you know, the better,” Louis says. “But something did happen. Lestat got kidnapped.”

He hears the harsh intake of Christine’s breath as though she’s in the room with him.

“Don’t worry, we got him back.”

“‘We’?”

“His mother’s with me. We’re staying at a friend’s house. But Christine, we are going to fake Lestat’s death, and-“

“I’m sorry?”

He never should’ve called her. Louis should’ve just gone outside and killed a lookalike.

But that passage in Lestat’s autobiography, about the pile of boys in Magnus’ cellar…

Louis shudders.

“I told you, the less you know, the better.”

“No. No, Louis- Have you talked to the police?”

“They can’t help,” Louis says. “We’ve… made a deal, it’s- It’s how we could get him back so quickly…” Louis should not be the one doing this. They did not discuss what, exactly, he was going to tell Christine, and he is making all of this up as he goes, and hoping she doesn’t find it as ridiculous and unbelievable as he would’ve. “Listen, Christine, if you don’t want to be a part of this, just forget I called you and try to convince yourself he’s really dead when the news break. He doesn’t want to perform anymore. He can’t.”

There’s silence on the other end for quite a while.

“How are you going to fake his death?”

“There’s a ranch house in Carmel Valley where he’s been staying. We’re going to burn it down. I thought I’d call you from the phone there tomorrow, and then come morning you could call the police station, say something about how you can’t get ahold of Lestat. Ask them to check the house. There won’t be anything to find. Everyone’s going to assume those people who were threatening him, who caused such chaos at the concert, found him and killed him and set his house on fire.”

“Okay,” Christine sighs. “Okay, I can do that. Anything else?”

“You can’t tell anyone he’s alive. Not even Tough Cookie or Larry or Alex. It’s safer for them if they think he’s dead.”

“I think you’re right, Louis. I don’t want to know what any of this is about. But I’ll do what you’re asking. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

She hangs up.

Louis stares at the phone, the tone ringing in his ears.

(—:—)

Louis’ at the ranch house before midnight the next day. The phone call to Christine had been quick, and he’s walked through every room since they hung up, pouring gasoline all over the floor and furniture. The very act combined with the strong smell takes him back to Paris, about a hundred years ago, when he’d gone through Armand’s - Lestat’s, Nicolas’ - theatre and performed the very same actions.

Lestat was gone when he woke up this evening, back out in the forest according to Marius, but there had been a blonde curling ponytail, bound with a silk band, left on the nightstand, and a post-it note with the words ‘for the ranch house’ written on it in Lestat’s messy scrawl.

Louis doesn’t know if it’s actually going to help. It’ll burn quickly, but he figures it doesn’t hurt having something with Lestat’s actual DNA on in the house.

He goes outside with the last tank, past the acacias, towards the little underground chamber Lestat had built himself to sleep in. The one Akasha had taken him from.

He pours the gasoline through the large hole she’d made in the earth and throws the empty cans down into it.

He goes back to the house, breaks a couple windows, and throws lit matches in through them. The flames flare up in violent bursts of heat.

Louis draws back. Back to the hole in the ground at the edge of the property, and throws a last match down there.

Then he steps away, in between the hills, and disappears.

Back to the Sonoma compound, back to the endless questions that ring in all their heads, the questions Lestat refuses to answer.

(—:—)

Louis stares at a wall of coffins and caskets and tries not to think about Claudia.

Gabrielle is at the other end of the room, discussing options with the owner of the funeral home.

The first thing the man had said to them, after a quick greeting, was an offer of his condolences. The second was asking for measurements of the deceased.

Louis had caught some of his horrified thoughts when Gabrielle told him that her son had died in a fire, and there wasn’t anything left of him to bury.

The casket was just for show.

Louis would’ve liked to have stayed at the house with the others and left Gabrielle to handle this, but she doesn’t have a bank account. He’d been forced to come along.

He’d called Christine as soon as he woke up. She’d reassured him everything had gone smoothly. The house was burnt, no one had noticed the smoke by virtue of how isolated it was and how late at night it’d been lit on fire. It was past saving by the time the firemen came.

The police, once Christine called them in the morning acting all worried because her client wasn’t answering his phone, and they’d connected Lestat as being the owner of the house that had just burnt down, had sent a search party to look for anyone matching his description within possible walking distance. They’d called local hospitals looking for someone with burn related injuries, but of course hadn’t found anyone. He’d been declared dead.

Louis had thanked her, told her he and Lestat’s mother would see about arranging a funeral, and left her to inform the band members. He’d asked her to keep it quiet from the press for a while longer, until the funeral was over and done with.

“And how much to add a special design?” Gabrielle asks. She’s already ordered a headstone. “We’re holding the funeral on Saturday evening, so we’d need the casket by then.”

Louis drags a hand through his hair. He hadn’t bothered cutting it when he woke up, and it hangs in loose black waves down the sides of his face.

Aren’t you finding this a little morbid? Or painful? he asks her.

Why would I? It’s not like he’s actually dead. But you know what he is? Dramatic. He’d enjoy this, I think. What do you think? A black one? Solid mahogany?

I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t want to think about this.

What did he used to have, in the Rue Royale? You didn’t really describe it much in the book.

Gabrielle, please.

Louis blocks her out, just in time for him to be assaulted by another memory. Claudia, throwing Lestat’s scarves and jackets on his coffin, going through the pockets of his clothes, the floor filled with coins and theatre tickets and torn pieces of paper, and Louis, astonished in the doorway, staring at the coffin and wishing to open it, wishing he would see Lestat there as always. With them. Where he belonged.

Louis shakes his head, trying to get the memory to disperse the way you would shake an old book of its dust and cobwebs, and lets his gaze roam around the room. He catches sight of three child-sized coffins and caskets, and turns his gaze down to the carpeted floor with a deep sigh.

(—:—)

“He should feed,” Louis says, breaking the quiet of the room. He’s staring out the window at the forest, where Lestat had disappeared earlier. “He hasn’t fed in days, not even an anim-“

“He has,” Gabrielle interrupts. “I got him a murderer earlier. Knocked out and pleasantly drunk, too. And a new denim jacket. Thought those were nice presents.”

“‘Presents’?” Santino echoes. “Why would you get him presents?”

Louis sucks in a sharp breath. “What date is it?”

Eric shakes his head. “I don’t know. The last few days have just blurred together, I-“

“November 7th,” Gabrielle says.

Louis sinks deep into his armchair. “It’s his birthday.” And I forgot.

Daniel’s face brightens. “We should throw him a birthday party!”

Khayman sits up a little straighter at that, clearly interested.

“You should not. He doesn’t want that,” Armand says. “Louis, however, should go into town and feed, and while he’s there, he should stop by and pick up some movies. Then Marius should go and get Lestat out of the woods, and then Louis should take him down into some empty room with a television and they should spend the rest of the evening curled up together on a couch.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Louis asks. “That’s-“

“Ridiculous? Stupid? Silly? Rather intimate? Yes, well, isn’t he also all of those things?”

Louis finds that there isn’t really anything he can say in protest.

The retail stores for movie buying and renting tend to stay open later, so Louis, once he’s fed, steps into a jeweller before he goes looking for movies. He buys a thin bracelet in white gold, laid to rest on a maroon cushion in a little black box.

Then it’s off to pick up movies. Louis isn’t certain what genres Lestat likes, but if his tastes are anything like they were with theatre, then it won’t really matter. He’ll watch anything that sounds even remotely interesting.

Sometimes, Lestat would go off to some tiny theatre and watch performances he knew were going to be bad. For fun. Louis never understood that.

He chooses a wide range of movies, enough to last them two full nights, and goes back to Maharet’s house.

First floor , Louis hears in his head the second he enters.

He startles a little, trying to figure out who’s speaking to him.

Khayman. First floor, young one. He’s the only one there. Listen for his heart and you’ll find the right room.

‘Listen for his heart.’ Louis does so, hearing the slow beat of a heart that’s grown unfamiliar to him, letting it guide him to a room at the end of a long corridor.

It’s a small room, the drapes pulled shut over the window. There’s a TV in one corner, and a couch with its back turned towards the door. Lestat sits on one end, his knees pulled up to his chest. He’s playing with the frayed edges of the blanket in his lap.

“Hi,” Louis says.

No reaction.

Louis takes out the little box from the jeweller’s as he walks up to the couch, stopping behind Lestat and kissing the top of his head. “Happy birthday,” he whispers as he hands him the box.

Lestat opens it. His fingers flutter as he strokes the cool surface of the bracelet, and Louis can’t help but think how close they are in hue. Whatever Akasha did has turned him so pale he looks fully like a corpse.

“Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

Louis rounds the couch so he’s crouching in front of him. “Can I put it on?”

Lestat nods. He holds out his hand for Louis, and Louis takes the bracelet out of the box and puts it on his wrist. It fits perfectly, and glitters pleasantly in the low light.

He drops the bag of VHS on the couch beside Lestat.

“Marius told me you went to get us movies.”

You mean you didn’t hear that yourself? Louis thinks. Of course, it’s possible Lestat isn’t listening in on every conversation in the house. “I did. But I didn’t know what you wanted to watch, so I got a few different ones.”

He sits down on the other end of the couch as Lestat starts going through the bag. Eventually he comes to a decision and moves the bag to the floor. He stands up and goes up to the player, putting the movie in.

Louis had expected him to sit back down on his end, but instead Lestat lies down on the couch, stretching like a cat. He grabs the abandoned blanket and covers himself, and puts his head in Louis’ lap. Louis doesn’t hesitate putting his hand down on his arm.

He hadn’t noticed it before, but Lestat’s trembling. At the first touch of Louis hand, his breath hitches.

Don’t start crying, please don’t start crying.

He rubs his thumb in a soothing circle, and if Lestat cries, then it’s so quiet Louis doesn’t hear.

(—:—)

He goes with Gabrielle to an upscale boutique the next evening, to buy funeral wear.

And then on Saturday, they go to the funeral.

It’s a small affair, just him and Gabrielle, Christine, Tough Cookie in Alex’ arms, and Larry holding them both. Three bodyguards stand back at the edge of their small party. 

Louis can’t help but feel surprised to see the band members crying. It makes sense, of course, but still. To think that Lestat had managed to form such a close relationship with these humans, to make them feel the real love of friendship for him. Louis has been a solitary creature for decades, ever since Armand left him - or he left Armand, depending on how you want to look at it.

The casket is dark wood, with trimmings and details in silver and gold. Gabrielle had an intricate design carved into the top; an electric guitar, piano keys, a skull, vines, bats, and birds, and feathers.

Louis watches as it’s lowered into the hole in the earth. He feels detached from the scene, as though it isn’t real. No more than a dream. No more real than the vision he’d had in the cathedral after they thought Claudia had killed Lestat the first time.

That’s the fifth one , Gabrielle thinks to him. 

She’s standing beside him, hair plaited over her shoulder and face obscured by black lace from the hat on her head.

Louis frowns behind his black sunglasses. His leather-clad, gloved hands hang limply at his sides, fingers brushing against the pockets of his black coat. He doesn’t like putting his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t find it graceful. The fifth?

The fifth casket I’ve seen lowered into a grave bearing one of my children’s names. It’s funny… I know where the other four are buried, but Lestat’s brothers, the two who died in the revolution, those I have no idea where they ended up.

Does that… bother you?

No. It was just a thought.

They stay there for a while longer, staring at the headstone. Christine hangs back while Lestat’s old band members begin regaling him and Gabrielle with stories of him, during that year they had together making music.

Louis can’t help but smile at them. Gabrielle outright laughs at a few.

Larry glances back at the grave, and a more somber feeling falls over them. “We were at the new house. Partying. Why wasn’t he with us? Why did he go back to Carmel Valley? We should’ve stayed with him. We should’ve been together-“

Louis shakes his head. “We’d be burying four people today if you had.”

“Were you there?” Alex asks, and there’s something in his voice, in the way he asks it, that has Louis needing to remind himself that these people don’t care if Louis loves a man. And how wonderful isn’t that?

He shakes his head. “Not that night. He was alone.”

Tough Cookie looks away. “He shouldn’t have been.”

“No,” Gabrielle agrees.

Louis gets a flash of her thoughts, knows she’s remembering the horror of waking up and finding Lestat gone, the earth where he’d gone to sleep disturbed, and Khayman in the house, waiting to tell them the Mother of all vampires had taken him right at sunrise, when no one could have even tried to stop her.

There are tears in Tough Cookie’s eyes when she looks up at Gabrielle. “We’re so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Gabrielle says. “I understand if you would want to keep playing your music again. But I would like to ask you not to use The Vampire Lestat as a band name going forward. For your own safety, and for my son’s memory.”

Nods from all three. “Of course.”

Before they part, Christine comes up to Louis and wraps him up in a hug. Quietly, so as to no one else will hear, she whispers into his ear, “How is he? Really?”

“He’ll be alright.” Louis’ confident in the truth of that statement.

Lestat is always alright.

If life is a chess match against the Reaper, then Lestat is the best cheater Louis knows.

(—:—)

Maharet takes Gabrielle and Jesse with her to San Francisco the next night, and Louis has to figure out how to spend the next couple hours.

Logically, he knows he ought to go talk to Daniel. He should apologise for the way he left him that morning after the interview, when Daniel begged him to turn him into a vampire, if nothing else.

But the truth is that Louis doesn’t know how to approach that subject, and any time he catches Daniel’s thoughts he just seems happy to be here, with them.

Lestat’s out in the forest again. And Louis doesn’t dare go after him, scared of what he’ll find. They’d watched movies until dawn on his birthday, and Lestat hadn’t said a word once they started.

Those three sentences on his birthday are the only ones he’s said to Louis since Akasha died. The quiet unnerves him, worries him.

He’s never been a fan of Lestat’s reckless impulsiveness, but he wonders if maybe he wouldn’t take that over the silence.

They’ve got him back, Louis got him back, but there’s a distance he can’t seem to cross. Yet Lestat sleeps in his arms every day, and the bracelet glitters at his wrist when he moves.

He ends up joining Marius on the couch. The TV’s on, and Louis stiffens as the report changes, and a photo of Lestat and the rest of his band appears.

“And in entertainment news, we are sorry to report that the singer of the rock band The Vampire Lestat has died. The band played their first and only concert on Halloween night, an evening which ended dramatically when there were several small fires and a few crush related injuries as people tried to leave the area. It seems as though the band had been receiving threats, on account of their satanic and supernatural lyrics. The young singer died at his house the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, in a fire the police are referring to as arson. He was laid to rest yesterday in a private ceremony, and the band’s record label released a statement this morning on the singer’s passing. Since then, devoted fans have gone to the gravesite to pay their respects.”

The segment ends with a shot of the cemetery, showing Lestat’s headstone. The little mound of earth before it has been completely covered in roses and lit candles. There are groups of teenagers still there, and Louis hears the low sound of a boombox playing one of Lestat’s songs.

Marius sighs. “Well. That’s that, then.”

Louis sinks back against the cushions. “I suppose so.”

The broadcast moves towards sports, and Louis listens in mild interest. Jesse, Maharet, and Gabrielle come back around midnight, and while Gabrielle and Jesse join him and Marius, Maharet disappears outside.

She’s not gone for long. An hour, at most, before she’s back in the doorway and commanding their attention, her hand loosely held in Eric’s. She’s wearing a black dress, belted at the waist, and her long hair looks very red in contrast.

“We’re leaving for Rangoon with Mekare tomorrow.”

Louis sees Jesse’s lips press together. “Just you three?”

“You can join us in a few weeks,” Maharet tells her. “Once we’ve settled down.”

“I’ll pick you up at the airport,” Eric promises.

“And the rest of us?” Marius asks. “I thought we talked about this. That we would stick together this time.”

“We will,” Maharet says. “We will never be isolated from each other again. We have ways of finding one another. And perhaps come spring, you could all come and stay at my house in Burma. Or I’ll surprise you one evening. You’ll see me again soon, Marius, don’t worry.”

Marius looks a little annoyed at her word choice, at the idea of him worrying about seeing her.

“I’ve talked to Armand,” she continues. “He’s invited you all to come and stay with him and Daniel on their island in Miami. You’ll go tomorrow.”

Louis inclines his head. He turns back to the TV as Maharet turns around and leaves the room with Eric, presumably to let the rest of the house’s occupants - who hadn’t listened in - know the plan.

But before Louis can fully focus back on the program, he hears her voice in his head.

I went to see Lestat. I asked him about his silence, why he insists on isolating himself. I told him how protective and fearful and worried you are.

And? What did he say?

Nothing. He is happy to be leaving here tomorrow. A pause. But I thought you should know. You have a very anxious mind, Louis. But he keeps his mind blocked and shut tight even from me, only letting us in when he wants to. It is not only you he is distancing himself from.

Louis wonders if there’s a polite way for him to tell her that whether Lestat ignores her makes no difference to the hurt Louis feels that he is ignoring him.

Vaguely, Louis thinks he hears something that sounds like Maharet laughing.

(—:—)

They leave the Sonoma compound one hour after sundown, in four shiny, sleek black cars.

Maharet, Mekare, and Eric in one, heading for the airport.

Then Louis in the backseat with Gabrielle, Lestat in the middle seat between them, Daniel in the passenger one and Armand driving, driving towards Miami. Following behind them are Mael, Jesse, and Khayman in one car, and Marius, Pandora, and Santino in the last one.

Louis relaxes against the deep velvet upholstery. Lestat’s head is resting against his shoulder, and Louis is holding his hand. The bracelet on his wrist catches the streetlights outside and glimmers. Louis can still feel the tremors wracking him, only a little diminished.

When will you recover? he thinks. When will you talk to us, to me?

The atmosphere in their car is tense for the first few miles. No one seems to know how to act with Lestat so close to them.

Eventually Gabrielle breaks the silence. She nods towards Armand and Daniel in the front. “So. How did this come about?”

“What do you mean?” Daniel asks.

“You two, together. This relationship.”

“Oh,” Daniel laughs.

Armand snorts. It’s not a noise Louis is used to hearing from him, and sounds almost involuntary. It reminds him of how young Armand really is. Or rather how young he looks to be.

“It’s just that I’ve read both Louis’ and Lestat’s books, and this is not something I would’ve pictured likely from their accounts.”

“Maybe Louis and Lestat don’t really know me as well as they think they do,” Armand remarks.

It’s probably true, Louis thinks. He had liked Armand, had been attracted to him, when they met in Paris. But then Claudia had died, and Louis had stopped caring about most things after that.

And Armand had lied to him, Louis knows that now. About a lot of things. Yet he doesn’t feel angry. In vampire years he is still rather young, but Louis has always felt the passing of the years more keenly than most of his peers. He is too old to be hurt by things from a century ago. They don’t matter anymore.

“Ten days after I’d interviewed Louis, I went to Lestat’s old house in the Garden District,” Daniel says. “I… I thought I’d find Lestat, wake him up, bring him out into the world. I thought it was what Louis wanted me to do.”

Louis frowns. “Why did you think that?”

“You basically told me exactly where to find him, Louis. Why else would you have done that?”

For accuracy’s sake, Louis thinks. But maybe that isn’t the whole truth. He’s always been good at lying to himself, and not allowing himself to feel the full truth of his feelings.

Armand laughs, quick and short.

“Well,” Daniel continues. “I didn’t find Lestat. I know now that he was there, sleeping in the ground under the floorboards, but I didn’t then. I did find his books, and I found his pocket watch. Which reminds me, Lestat? I still have it, it’s in Miami, if you want it back?”

Louis remembers that pocket watch. Gold, on a solid chain, engraved with Lestat’s name. It, too, had been a birthday gift from Louis, during one of those early years with Claudia when they’d been happy.

There’s a small spark of warmth in his chest now, at the knowledge that Lestat had kept it and taken it with him to that house he’d decided to hide away and spend a couple lonely decades in.

Lestat says nothing in reply to Daniel’s question. Louis would’ve thought him asleep, if it wasn’t for Daniel’s nod. Speaking through their thoughts, then.

How often has Lestat done that? Does he talk to Marius, to Armand? Are Louis, and Gabrielle, the only ones he refuses to talk to, since he can’t converse with them through thoughts? Had Maharet been wrong?

No, Armand thinks in response. Louis hadn’t meant for him to hear, but he doesn’t mind the reassurance. Only when he overhears a conversation that he feels the need to have a say in does he speak to me. Sometimes I will catch a stray thought, but mostly he keeps himself locked away and closed off.

“Anyway,” Daniel says. “I took out the tapes, and I let them play while I looked around the house. Then I saw Armand. And then darkness. I woke up in a cellar, and Armand didn’t come back until the fourth night. He called me beautiful.”

Armand huffs. “I called you naive, too.”

“You liked my eyes.”

“Yes.”

“He said he found me interesting. Because I was alive and I knew his name. And he didn’t want to kill me. He let me go, and then he followed me all around the world.”

(—:—)

It takes them almost five nights to reach Miami, and from there, the large white villa on the Night Island.

Armand and Daniel have barely showed them anything before Lestat is gone, disappearing into an upstairs suite and locking the door behind him.

“There’s a private staircase down to a room in the cellar,” Armand tells him. “I don’t think he’s planning on coming out for a while.”

That night is the first one in almost two weeks that Louis doesn’t sleep with Lestat in his arms.

He reassures himself with the thought that no one can touch them here, that there is no one left who would even want to. And for whatever reason, Lestat needs to be alone.

(—:—)

Louis finds he loves the Night Island. They all do. There is always something to do, something to see, and on the days when Louis just wants to stay in, he can. He can sit somewhere with the window open, letting in both the heat and the cool night breeze.

Those first few nights, there’s a lot of talking, still, to be done. They ponder the irony of Mekare killing Akasha the way a human would, but with her supernatural speed and strength.

“This will be the coven house,” Marius says one evening. “A place we can always come back to.”

“A sanctuary,” Armand agrees.

Together, they decide on new rules. They will always be there to help one another. No one is allowed to kill any other vampires. No one will go off creating any more vampires, the kill needs to be covered up well - a point they try to repeatedly drive home to Daniel and Jesse, the youngest and least experienced of them - and finally, there will be no more books written about them.

And yet Louis knows that if they concentrate, they can all hear the sound of Lestat’s fingers clicking against the keyboard of the computer one floor up.

“I fear the memory loss,” Khayman says. “I know I shouldn’t, because it used to only come in moments of pain, and I am so happy here. But I fear that I will lose myself, and that I won’t be able to find my way home to you. I am so happy with you. I want you to know that.”

Louis can’t fathom being so old. Now that the Mother and Father are gone, Khayman is the oldest vampire alive. The third vampire ever created.

To think, Louis used to be so obsessed with finding out their origins, with finding others, and yet he’d never thought that this would be what he’d find.

Sometimes they discuss Lestat, usually in silence through their thoughts, because it’s harder for Lestat to read those than it is to simply listen to them speak aloud. Or so they tell him.

They are all worried, and restless with growing anxiety and confusion. They all have the same questions. When is he going to recover? When is he going to come out and talk to them? What powers has Akasha given him? What happened those few nights he spent with her? How much has her blood affected him?

When is he going to stop writing through the night?

“He thinks in chapters,” Marius had told Louis one night when they’d been together in the library, looking for books to read. “It is as though he is trying to make sense of everything that happened. And he is always writing, or he is lying on the divan, staring at the palm trees beyond the terrace and listening to us.”

Louis had sighed. “Not another book?”

“I don’t know,” Marius said, bitterness coating his words.

Tonight, Khayman has taken Armand’s black racer boat out for a ride. Gabrielle had gone with him. Mael, too, is gone. He comes and goes, one week with them, then a few days somewhere else. When he is there, he tends to stick close to Jesse.

Louis sits in the armchair beside the couch Daniel is lying on and reads. Over by the window, Marius is doing the same. Armand and Santino have started another of their never-ending chess games.

The silence of the room is broken by Jesse. “He was screaming,” she says, glancing up at the ceiling before she turns her gaze down to a hole in her jeans. Her fingers tug at the loose threads.

No one needs to ask who she’s talking about. Only,

“When?” Louis asks, worried, again, that he has missed something.

“When Akasha died. You were in pain, all of you, I know that. I was, too. But not like that. Not loud like that. Marius, you were calling his name. He was seizing.”

Louis is glad he lost consciousness and didn’t have to see that.

“He was reaching for her. As though he hoped to help her. And yet he started yelling about the dream, as though he’d just realised what was happening, as though he only saw it all and understood it right then and there.”

“He did,” Marius says. He’s put his book down in his lap. “He knew almost nothing of the twins before then. They were just fragments of dreams he didn’t understand, that he barely remembered.”

“I hear him when he wakes up sometimes,” Armand says. “Before he has the chance to block me out. He wakes up thinking she’s still there. He thinks he sees her eyes in the dark, or feels her hair, or her arm around him. He looks for her, and when he doesn’t find her, he thinks of some poor fledgling vampire she’d killed. Baby Jenks. A teenage biker.”

Louis feels a little cold, suddenly. He has to swallow a couple times.

“But why?” Jesse asks. “Why does he… She was a monster.”

“He’s writing,” Marius says, as though they don’t all know that.

“Why is he writing?” Santino asks. “For whom is he writing?”

Marius looks as though it is with great reluctance that he answers Santino’s question. Almost five hundred years ago, Santino had tried to light him on fire, and had succeeded in separating him and Armand until they met again this very month. “If we’re lucky, it’s for himself. If we’re luckier, maybe it’s for us. Maybe it’s the only way he knows how to tell us what happened.”

Well that, at least, checks out. For Lestat, and Louis, too. It seems as though they have only ever been able to communicate effectively when it is through the written word.

(—:—)

Often, when Mael isn’t there, Jesse will spend the nights with Gabrielle, walking up and down the beach.

So Louis finds himself a little surprised when she, a few days before she’s to leave for Rangoon, comes to find him.

“I want to tell you something.”

Louis puts his book aside. He’s in the library, and through the open door he can hear Pandora’s piano music filtering down the hallway.

Jesse sits down in the armchair opposite him. She looks so much like the twins, Louis sometimes finds himself wondering if Maharet has come back when he sees her out of his periphery.

“One of my assignments for the Talamasca,” Jesse begins. “Was to find out as much as I could about you, and Lestat, and Claudia. They knew Interview was real. I didn’t believe them.”

Louis eyebrows raise involuntarily.

Jesse laughs. “I know. Here the woman I believed to be my aunt was a vampire and I had spent time with three of them, and I regularly worked with cases relating to witches and ghosts, but I refused to believe in vampires. It seems silly. It’s alright, you can agree.”

“I have to admit it does seem a little unbelievable.”

Jesse nods. “I went to your house in the Rue Royale. I bought out the lease. Lestat still owns it, doesn’t he? You deeded it to him in 1862, and there was a local agency that rented it out, but the payments are made to an attorney in Paris.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry to say that I destroyed a lot of the walls. I needed to see the burnt timbers, the old wallpapers. I found Claudia’s room. I found the mural he had painted for her.”

Louis closes his eyes. Brief spark of pain. He remembers the smell of the paints, night after night as the painter went to work. A marvellous creation of a magical forest, unicorns and golden birds, fruit trees and sparkling streams, flowers. Deep vermillion sky, a full moon and stars made of real silver. A stone wall and a castle behind it - how similar was it to Lestat’s childhood home in the Auvergne, he now wonders?

Louis had thought him an uneducated peasant, had hated him for refusing to say anything of his past. Claudia had hated him for the same reason. Had that mural been his way of speaking? Of telling them something? What other clues might he have left them, had they understood enough to look for them?

Yet they’d been happy then. In the beginning. When they went to the theatre and the opera, and Lestat sent for tailors and dressmakers and shoemakers for Claudia. Endless clothes and toys.

But she hadn’t wanted toys in the end, had she? She’d grown up, and she’d wanted her freedom. Louis had stolen it from her when he killed her, and Lestat had made sure she could never have it when he turned her into a vampire.

“I found the opening in the castle door,” Jesse continues. “I opened it, and I found a rosary, one of her dolls, and a diary.”

Louis smiles bitterly. “Which one?”

“The one you gave her on her birthday in 1836. She didn’t understand what that meant, you know. If it was her real birthday, or the day she was turned into a vampire.”

“The second. We didn’t know when her real birthday was. She was an orphan.”

“She would burn her dolls. Destroy them. ‘The doll expects it. So do I.’”

Louis nods. It hurts to hear this. “I know. I found them sometimes, smashed to pieces with their hair burnt off.”

There’s something she isn’t telling him. The experience had shaken her, and thinking back on it leaves her mind more open than it would usually be.

It’s not hard for Louis to catch sight of his daughter in Jesse’s memories.

“You saw her.”

Jesse startles. Her eyes widen.

“You saw Claudia,” Louis breathes. “You saw her ghost.”

Jesse shakes her head. “No. No, I-“

But Louis is already catching the images from her memories. The old furniture in their flat, the oil lamps, the phone ringing and a woman’s voice speaking. The fountain in the garden, the sound of carriages on the cobblestone street.

Claudia in Jesse’s hotel room. Menace. Jesse screaming. Someone-

She blocks him out.

“No.”

“You saw her. You didn’t know what she looked like, and I saw her in your memories. I recognise her. I know my own daughter when I see her.”

“Then you must see this, too.” She opens her mind to him, and Louis sees the shadow of a man moving in the living room of the old townhouse. “You,” Jesse says. “Or Lestat. But neither one of you are dead, and so it cannot be a ghost, and then neither can Claudia.”

But Louis shakes his head. “If you have learned anything at all about me from reading my interview, and spending these few weeks together, then you must know that knowledge is less likely to keep me from believing what you saw was Claudia’s ghost, and more likely to make me question if perhaps we are truly both damned and blessed. Blessed, if our souls do leave us at the moment of death when the Dark Gift comes and we are able to go into the life hereafter, but damned, because then these creatures we are now are truly soulless monsters.”

Jesse sighs. “No. No, Louis, you… You have the worldview of an eighteenth century catholic.”

Louis smiles. “I am an eighteenth century catholic.”

She snorts. “I know you heard Maharet’s story. There are no gods or devils. There are spirits, good or evil depending on how useful they are to witches. There are ghosts, but they are restless entities or addlebrained spirits, as Mael once described them to me. Don’t think about her. I never meant for you to see her.”

Yet the thought doesn’t leave him. There’d been whole decades when he hadn’t thought of Claudia, but now the thought won’t leave him.

Every day until Jesse leaves, he asks her, begs her politely, to please tell him one more time of the apparition of his daughter. And every time Jesse shakes her head. “But Louis, it wasn’t real.”

(—:—)

Since Jesse left, Gabrielle will spend most of her nights alone, but this evening, she is walking the beach with him and Marius.

“I tried to talk to him again,” she says. “I was trying to ask him about what happened to him, how these new powers came to be, what all he can do, but I couldn’t find the words. Do you know what he told me? He said he loved her.” She wrinkles her nose and frowns, as though finding the very idea distasteful. “I don’t understand it.”

Louis thinks back to her words when they’d been listening to Maharet’s story. How she’d wanted to kill ‘the bitch, the monster’ who’d taken her son.

“My husband-“ Gabrielle continues. “My husband was a bastard. He’d force me into bed with him, and then he would hurt the children I’d borne him, and mould them into copies of himself so they started hurting each other. I never wanted to be a mother, and I didn’t care much for the others, but Lestat was my favourite. I loved him. And oh, how his father hated that, how he hated when I stood up to him or bought Lestat gifts. He used to rage at night in our bedroom.”

Louis winces. He remembers the feeble, blind old man he used to play chess with, the one he couldn’t understand Lestat’s tumultuous relationship with. He remembers Lestat’s refusal to forgive him on his deathbed, and Louis insistence that he must.

Why hadn’t Lestat ever told him these things? The truth? His past?

Louis had known nothing, and so Louis had made his own assumptions, based on his own thoughts and prejudices. His experiences. His wishes, dreams, for a father who had died when he was young, a father he missed.

“And I know… I know Lestat hated me, a little, for not teaching him how to read or write, while I always sat there reading my books and writing my letters. But the truth is that was the only way for me to survive. To know I would always have him with me, that I wouldn’t be alone in that godforsaken castle, and to dream myself away in my novels. Tonight, when I went to talk to him, he seemed almost scared I was going to leave the island. Leave him behind again.”

What kind of parent would Louis have been, if he’d been able to age? What kind of parent would Lestat have been? What kind of woman would Claudia have been, if the three of them had been allowed to grow old and age together?

He wishes he could say something to comfort Gabrielle, but he has no words.

Only half-formed dreams and thoughts and questions. Always questions.

“We all read his autobiography,” Marius says. “And I have the benefit of having been there when he first saw the Mother. You two may not be able to read his thoughts, but I can. He had imagined himself a sort of hero, coming to rescue the princess, imprisoned by her evil husband, as though he were a character in one of his beloved plays. Of course, we know now that Enkil loved Akasha, truly loved her. I think Lestat’s having a hard time reconciling his idea of her with who she proved to be in reality. That, or maybe he’s just having trouble recognising the difference between physical attraction, because she was beautiful, we all know that, and love.”

“Maybe,” Gabrielle says. She smooths down her hair. It hangs long and free down her back. “My son has always liked the beautiful ones.”

Louis feels her gaze on him, but chooses to say nothing.

(—:—)

Louis knows the others sometimes go up to talk to Lestat. Jesse did, the last night before she left, and Khayman and Daniel have both done it. And Gabrielle goes up almost every night, right before dawn.

But Louis stays away. Let Lestat come to him, let Lestat come home to him again when he decides he wants to. Enough of Louis running after others.

He knows Lestat’s only left the island once, has only gone out to Miami once, and only for a few hours. Only to feed, when the bloodlust must’ve become unbearable.

Louis still thinks of Claudia. Of what Jesse saw.

Could she really still be there? In the Rue Royale, when she’d died in the Paris sunlight?

“You should go,” Armand says. He’d just come back from Miami with Marius thirty minutes ago, and now he’s back in the drawing room, playing chess with Santino.

Marius is in his usual chair by the window, reading. His hair’s been cut short, and he’s wearing a grey silk blazer over a red turtleneck.

“Hm?” Louis says.

“I can hear you. You’re torturing yourself. You should go, and get it over with.”

Louis shakes his head. “I don’t want to leave him-“ Louis may not want to go to him, either, but he is willing to wait. He likes the Night Island, after all.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Armand waves his concern away. “We’ll send him after you.”

“You will?”

“Yes. Marius has been wanting to go talk to him, anyway. Go, Louis. I’ll have my man drive you to the plane.”

(—:—)

Louis lands in New Orleans around 10 pm. It’s raining gently when he steps out of the airplane.

He avoids the house the first hour. Something keeps him away, something tells him to walk around the city first. He hasn’t been here in decades.

It’s startling how much has changed, and at the same time how little. He still finds his way around, he knows the streets, but there are new modern buildings that have popped up over the years.

He walks past the house Lestat had slept in for so many years, the garden still overgrown and the house deserted.

From there, he finds his way back to the Rue Royale. The outside is little changed from the last time he saw it.

And just like that time, just like he’d described it to Daniel, there is again that strong sense of Lestat here, and then that rich, sweet sadness.

Something lost. Something broken.

This was home.

For sixty years, this was home.

He winces a little when he sees the dolls in the windows of the downstairs shop. God. Claudia.

He turns his gaze away, down to the wet pavement, and walks around the building, into the overgrown courtyard and past the ruined fountain to the backdoor, forcing it open. He’d lost his key long ago.

He keeps his coat on. The stairs creak as he walks up them. Dust on the floorboards. Years since anyone stepped foot in here.

Almost immediately, he’s assaulted by the smell of burnt timbers. He has to cover his nose and mouth with his hand to keep the nausea at bay.

Charred, black timbers in the front parlour. Louis rolling around on the floor in the flames with Lestat. Scorching heat.

Claudia with a kitchen knife. Louis begging her to stop. Lestat, bleeding out and calling for him. Louis, still in the shadows, staring, unable to move.

No .

He doesn’t want to remember these things. Banish the thoughts.

He pulls his hands through his long hair, again and again. Closes his eyes. He wants the happy memories, before Claudia grew up and realised what the two of them had doomed her to. Unable to age. Before she was a woman stuck in a child’s body. Before. Before, when she was little in mind and not only in stature.

The old wallpaper Jesse had uncovered, that Louis had bought and chosen with Lestat. Here, where the harpsichord used to stand, where Lestat would play, long fingered and beautiful. Where Claudia would practice her Mozart and Haydn.

Louis’ old room, where he would sit and read. Lestat’s room. They’d go out and waltz with the women at the balls, and then they’d come home and waltz here, just the two of them, together in silence.

Louis teaching Claudia to read and write and count. Lestat prancing through the rooms, quoting Shakespeare. ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’.

Coming home from the theatre and proceeding to act out the plays in full, him and Lestat while Claudia watched and laughed and clapped in delight.

Lestat with his antique pack of French playing cards, the very same pack he’d gifted Claudia. Lestat in a top hat, grabbing his cane in one hand and Claudia’s small one in the other, the two of them going out to feed.

Louis stays in each room for a long time, letting the memories wash over him. But no ghosts, no distant piano music, no flickering outlines of furniture or the sudden appearance of oil lamps, no strange shadows.

If only she could’ve stayed the child forever.

But that is unfair.

Finally, he goes to her room. But he can’t bring himself to cross the threshold, so all he does is stand in the doorway and stare.

How beautiful the mural. Louis can’t understand why anyone would’ve ever wanted to cover it up.

The sound of hinges groaning, and then the low thud of a heart he knows, a heart belonging to a mind whose thoughts he will never be able to hear.

Louis turns his head. The outline of Lestat out on the balcony, peering in through the open French doors, gaze on Louis.

“Lestat,” Louis quietly calls.

He just keeps staring, and for one brief moment Louis feels the icy hand of fear. Is this the shadow of the man Jesse saw? The ghost of Lestat? Or just Louis own mind playing tricks on him?

But no. He can hear the heart, the steady beat of it in Lestat’s chest.

He calls his name again, and sighs when there is no reaction.

Will you keep ignoring me even as you came after me?

But it becomes clear as Louis shifts and moves closer that Lestat really hadn’t heard him. It doesn’t seem as though he’s seeing him, either, his gaze transfixed on that distant spot Louis had occupied in the hallway.

As Louis comes closer, he’s sees how Lestat’s eyes - God, those eyes! How he’d fallen for those eyes - have clouded over. Hint of blood tears in the corners.

Louis reaches his hand up, rests his palm on Lestat’s cheek. No reaction.

“Lestat?”

Nothing.

He moves both hands to his shoulders and shakes him. “Lestat. Lestat.”

A couple blinks in quick succession, a tightening of his eyebrows, and he comes back to himself. “Ah, Louis, forgive me.” His eyes shift to something behind Louis, and he feels him shudder beneath his hold. “I came here because I was so concerned… about you.”

Louis tries for a smile. “No need. It was just a little pilgrimage I had to make.”

One of Lestat’s hands comes up, fingertips tracing a path over the bridge of Louis’ nose, down one cheekbone. Louis shivers as they brush past his lips to his chin.

“She’s not here, Louis,” he whispers. “It was something Jesse imagined.”

“Yes, so it seems.”

“We live forever; but they don’t come back.”

Louis tilts his head. Would you have liked her to? he thinks about asking. Even after everything she did to you?

But Lestat’s eyes look so haunted it doesn’t feel right to ask, so he nods. He lets go off his shoulders to take one of his hands instead. “Come on,” he says, and leads him inside, down the long hallway.

Very fine tremors go through Lestat’s hand, and he keeps glancing around like he expects the shadows to come out and take him.

Louis struggles getting the backdoor closed. Lestat lets his hand go and gestures for him to step aside, and then he leans against it and shoves it closed, using strength Louis isn’t used to him having. He is only ten vampire years his elder, and barely five human ones.

Lestat looks out over the ruined garden with a small, displeased frown. “I’ll fix it all for you if you want. You know, make it like it was before.”

Louis shakes his head. He takes his hand again. “Not important now. Will you come with me, walk with me a little?”

Say yes. Please. I miss you.

Come home to me. Leave the past behind and come home to me. Let me learn who you are today.

Lestat nods. Together, they start walking down the carriageway, towards the gate, but Lestat stops before they reach it.

Louis glances behind him to see he’s turned halfway around, staring at the back porch.

A small sound leaves him, so small and quiet Louis wonders if Lestat’s even aware he’s made it.

Claudia had stood there, watching Louis as he stuffed Lestat body into the carriage, covered in the sheet she’d put him in, and smelling sweetly of the chrysanthemums she’d sprinkled over it.

Louis hadn’t wanted to touch him - it, the body, Lestat’s dead body - and then he’d taken him deep into the swamp and he’d wanted to follow him into the water, to leave Claudia behind.

Louis tugs on his hand. “Come on. No good to stay here any longer.”

He has to let go off it to close the gate behind them, and pauses, briefly, to take one last look at the old house before they leave.

He doesn’t take Lestat’s hand again as they turn down the street. Society may be more acceptable of people like them in this day and age, but he knows that there is still danger in walking down a dark street while holding the hand of another man.

They could kill anyone who tried to hurt them, of course, but Louis doesn’t have the stamina for bloodshed tonight.

They don’t speak as they walk down the quiet streets. The same streets they used to walk down, together, so often, so many years ago. The cold wind nips at his hands. Had Louis been a weaker man, he’d have stuffed his hands into his pockets. But you’ve got to hold on to at least some of your principles.

“You gave me a little fright,” Louis says. “I didn’t think you were real when I first saw you. You didn’t answer me when I said your name.”

He’s hoping Lestat will offer something, anything, about what was going through his head, but he doesn’t. He buttons up his jean jacket - the one Gabrielle got him for his birthday. “And where are we going now?”

“Just one last place, and then wherever you wish. Back to the coven house, I should think. We don’t have much time. Or maybe you can leave me to my meanderings, and I’ll be back in a couple of nights.”

“Can’t we meander together?”

Louis’ face splints into a smile. “Yes.”

Please. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Lestat follows as Louis takes the lead. He hadn’t even realised where his feet were taking him until they were halfway there.

He breaks the lock of the St Louis Cemetery gate with his hand. The clouds still hang threateningly above them, but the rain has turned into a fine mist. The water from earlier turn every smooth surface into a mirror.

Louis looks up, over at the lights of the city just outside the cemetery walls. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lestat wince, and then his hand reaching up again, to trail over his cheekbones and below his eyebrows.

“Blessed darkness!” he says, quite out of nowhere. “Blessed darkness has come again.”

Louis sighs sadly. “Yes. And we rule in it as we have always done.”

He takes Lestat’s cold hand and leads him down the paths between the graves, towards the oldest part of the cemetery. They stop at Louis’ own tomb, and he leans back against the one behind him.

He watches Lestat look at it for a moment, before he straightens again.

“I only wanted to see it again,” he says, and reaches out to touch the engraved marble. 

He thinks back to Lestat’s fresh, empty grave in San Francisco. To think he reached over two hundred years of age before he got his own gravestone.

If he’d been able to choose, where would’ve he have wanted his grave to be? In Paris, where he’d been when he’d died as a mortal? In the Auvergne, with four of his siblings? Here, somewhere close to Louis’ tomb?

“Now we can go home.”

Lestat smiles. His hands go out to touch the headstones beside him, and he looks up at the sky.

Louis’ struck with sudden fear. “You’re not going to leave us, are you?”

“No.” There’s a strange look in his eyes. “You know, we were lovers, she and I, as surely as a mortal man and woman ever were.”

Were you? Louis thinks. Were you really? You aren’t a mortal man, and she wasn’t a mortal woman.

He thinks back to the conversation with Gabrielle and Marius on the beach of the Night Island.

‘He said he loved her. I don’t understand it.’

‘He had imagined himself a sort of hero, coming to rescue the princess. I think he’s having a hard time reconciling his idea of her with who she proved to be in reality. Or maybe he’s just having trouble recognising the difference between physical attraction  and love.”

‘He has always loved the beautiful ones.’

Oh, all the ways Lestat manages to delude himself! One day, they will talk about it, or maybe Louis will read what he has written and get the narrative straight. But tonight, he doesn’t feel like fighting, and Lestat’s feelings for Akasha are too complicated to work through during these last few hours before dawn.

“Of course I know,” he says instead.

Lestat gives him a smile. And then he’s stepping forward and kissing him. It’s the first time Louis’ felt his lips since the concert. They’re different now. Colder and smoother than they’d been. The same as his hands as they touch Louis’ cheeks, the back of his neck, and run through his hair. Louis relaxes into the familiar feeling.

What an image they make. Two vampires, kissing in the graveyard.

Their lips part, and Lestat’s eyes are bright as they stare at each other.

“Do you love me now?”

Louis smiles. He feels his face soften. “Yes.”

I’ve always loved you. I just didn’t dare let myself realise it, not at first, and then I thought you were dead.

He can hear Lestat’s heart thudding in his chest, and feels his smile widen. Just a little.

“Want to go on a little adventure? Want to break the new rules?”

Oh, no… No, Lestat, not this again. He shakes his head.

“What in the world do you mean?” Louis whispers.

Lestat starts laughing quietly, and a little hysterically.

Louis stares at him, worry and apprehension growing. Is this it? Has his sanity finally snapped?

“Oh, come now, Louis. Just a little adventure. I promise, I have no designs this time on Western civilisation, or even on the attentions of two million rock music fans. I was thinking of something small, really. Something, well, a little mischievous. And rather elegant. I mean, I’ve been awfully good for the last two months, don’t you think?”

Is that what you think? That you’ve been good?

You’ve been worrying me more than I have ever worried in my entire too-long life.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Louis can hear the desperation in his own voice.

“Are you with me or not?”

He shakes his head again in incredulousness, and pulls his hands through his hair.

God, Lestat, the things you do. Silence for weeks and weeks and now this.

Louis is sure the only reason he entertains the idea at all is because of the way Lestat looks at him. So much joy and love in his eyes, so much hopeful expectation.

“When does this little adventure begin?”

“Now.” Lestat grins. “You have four seconds to make up your mind.”

“Lestat, it’s almost dawn.”

“It’s almost dawn here.”

Louis sighs. “What do you mean?”

“Louis, put yourself in my hands,” he says and holds them out. “Look, if I can’t pull it off, you won’t really be hurt. Well, not that much. Game? Make up your mind. I want to be off now.”

God, Louis loves him. He thinks he knows what this is. Lestat reverting back to his old antics because he doesn’t know how to deal with what happened, how to talk about it. He’s reckless and impulsive and still Louis loves him.

“Yes or no?”

“I’m probably going to regret this, but…”

“Agreed then.” Lestat puts his hands on his elbows and lifts him off his feet. Louis stomach fills with butterflies and a whooshing feeling. He can’t remember the last time he was lifted off his feet like this.

He stares at Lestat as he’s set down again. “ Mon Dieu .”

But that can’t have been it. Impossible that Lestat showed such excitement at just being allowed to lift Louis up a little.

He’s proved right a moment later. Lestat’s arm comes around his waist, and this time he doesn’t lift Louis a little.

He shoots them soaring into the sky. 

Louis gasps as both their feet leave the ground, and they travel upwards, past the tallest of the headstones. “Lestat!”

“Put your arm around my neck. Hold on tight. We’re going west, of course, and then north, and we’re going a very long distance, and maybe we’ll drift for a while. The sun won’t set where we’re going for some time.”

And where is that? Louis thinks.

They go into the clouds, and Louis tenses. He stares in awe when they emerge, and the deep wide night sky spreads out above them, billions of glittering stars, and the moon a large shining sphere.

So this is what she gave him. So many nights left wondering, and now here he is, showing it to Louis.

‘These are my new powers. This is what I have become.’

Louis relaxes against Lestat’s body, his arms crossed behind his neck with Lestat’s long hair tickling his hands, and stares up at the stars.