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Finding the place wasn’t hard at all. As the thoughts of those around him on the Paris streets swirled in his mind, Louis could not avoid picking up pieces here and there — the dense, clouded image of the lust of one man for another, followed by mental flagellation that was all too familiar; the stinging remembrance of charged moments, urged out of mind quickly and inefficiently; the nervous echo of locales uttered once and only once aloud, set to memory by sheer repetition. In the pool of the collective human conscience that he was forced to swim through each day, Louis found what he wasn’t searching for. More accurately: what he was not searching for yet.
Getting there was an even simpler matter. He merely had to wander without aim through the night. Somehow, the unfamiliar streets of a shadowed city managed to lead him precisely where he did not wish to go. But there was a magnetism about it; he could not avoid the thoughts of humans that were such a succinct parallel to his own, could not resist the pull towards centers of desire he had long since buried. One can only swear off lust so much as they can swear off hunger, and to swear off love is a task more monumental than suppressing either of the appetites. Louis was betrayed by both body and mind, and his feet led him onward.
There was another magnetic pull in the air that evening, one Louis could more clearly feel and name. Whereas the draw towards those of his own romantic proclivities was a low, ever-present sense of grounded weight — like an anchor keeping a boat from drifting too far away — this other sensation was a sharper tug, an almost electric pulse growing stronger or duller depending on the winding turns Louis made through alleyways and intersections. He had felt it before, but grown accustomed to its familiarities; it was the same tug he felt when Claudia was near, a force that disappeared when she did, and reappeared the night of her return to New Orleans, to Rue Royale. It was the pull that let him know she was safe. He felt it now, could tell that she was more or less where he had left her — in their unassuming flat, likely still reading the same compendium as when he had departed for the evening.
But there was this other pull, an entirely new blip on the radar. It was strong. It was close. It was another vampire — of that Louis was certain.
Thinking he was ignoring all impulses that wished to draw him in any certain direction, Louis kept walking, picking up a brisk pace. He lowered his gaze, not allowing himself to look at signs, at passersby, at landmarks or street numbers or fences. Just his own feet, the occasional pile of garbage, the damp cobblestones. He only looked up hours later when he assumed he was truly, thoroughly lost.
But he was not so ignorant of his unwanted influences as he pretended he was. For right before his eyes, in the darkest portion of a small, well-wooded park, was the exact place he was not looking for. A location on the minds of men like himself, a place for clandestine meetings, brief encounters in the dark. The human eye would have to adjust to such a scene, but Louis saw it clear as day before him: couples hidden as best they could amidst the foliage, in different states of embrace, all similarly tense and furtive. An ache shot through him, flashes of his former afterlife erupted before his mind’s eye. Pressed suits, strong hands. The feeling of his own sweaty back meeting the satin-lined lid of his coffin as he sought his pleasure. Fang against tongue, blood passed from mouth to mouth. He had to rip his eyes away from one couple in particular, the taller man’s back turned on Louis, blond locks creeping down his shoulders…
It was then that Louis spotted him. A tall figure, draped in black clothes, whose black hair curled under the grease used to slick it back. He was alone, leaning against a tree and surveying the pairs around him with apparent amusement. A soft smile played over his lips and his eyes met Louis’, a haunting shade of orange piercing through the darkness. Louis was transfixed. This was the vampire he’d sensed, the first of his kind Louis had come to find across the entire continent. He was not like the thoughtless shells of mere animation and bloodlust Louis and Claudia had encountered in the East. This vampire was regal, restrained — beautiful. With a nod of his head, he motioned Louis to come closer, and turned on his heel for an even more remote section of the park. Already betrayed once this night by his ability to resist, Louis followed.
The vampire led the way to the underside of a weeping beech tree’s canopy, an entirely private space despite the lights of the city lingering just yards away. Louis watched in rapture as the vampire drew a carton of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, raised one to his mouth to light it, then with delicate, handsome fingers plucked it out of his own lips and offered it to Louis. Louis stepped closer, accepting the cigarette, feeling the blood thrumming through his body as their fingers brushed in the trade-off. Louis held the thing between his thumb and forefinger and neglected to take a single draw.
“You’ve been running from me,” the vampire said with a slight smile. Streaks of moonglow struck his cheek, the warmth of his brown skin shining through the cool-toned beams. He was nothing short of stunning, in every meaning of the word. Gorgeous and arresting, he had a nonchalance to his demeanor, but an unmistakable intensity behind his eyes, as if he was in his anticipatory silence laying a lifetime of Louis’ sins bare all at once.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Louis said, truth and lie in one response. He thought for a moment, then clarified. “I came to Paris looking for you.”
The vampire raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “A month in Paris, a month of sensing me. And yet you have waited until tonight to find me.”
He had been watching Louis. Of course he had. Had a strange vampire turned up on the streets of New Orleans without introduction or ceremony, Louis and his small family would have undoubtedly kept eyes on him. Louis was not expecting to find another vampire here in Paris, let alone to have to play games of vampiric territoriality.
“We’ll stay out of your way. We just needed to know there were others, that’s all.” Louis turned to exit the park. “I didn’t even sense your presence until tonight,” he remarked in earnestness over his shoulder, much too exhausted for a struggle.
He had reached the edge of the tree’s overhang when the vampire spoke once more.
“Take this before you go.” Louis turned to find the vampire much closer now, hand outstretched with a calling card slotted between his first two fingers. Louis took it, turned it over in his hand without reading it. When he looked up, the other vampire was gone.
Louis looked back at the card, the embossed lettering glinting silver in the moonlight. Théâtre des Vampires, it said on one side, with an unfamiliar address below. On the other, scrawled in ancient-looking script as crimson as blood, it read: Bring your beautiful sister. 9pm promptly. You are most welcome with us. Armand.
Armand. Louis rolled the name over his tongue, tasting it. He felt the void of Armand’s absence strike him as completely as the vampire himself had. The weight of the situation fell all at once upon him: there were vampires here in Paris, a theater of them. They had been watching Louis and Claudia for some time. Now, they wanted an introduction.
Louis set off for the flat at once, realizing that he had in fact never been lost that evening. The surface world was too small to lose his way. It was only in the universe’s underbelly that he felt caught in a labyrinth, with no thread to trace his path. The afterlife had been nothing but blind corners, skirmishes with monsters in both mind and body, one after the other. What great challenge was just one battle more?