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His Amadeo has taken to the sun. Rather; the sun has taken to him, ravaged and laid to desolation all that remained of The Vampire Armand.
Long ago, far away, a storybook’s origins, ah. Well. Marius de Romanus is classified among his kind a judicious sort, he was reared among the antiquated Neoplatonists. Those philosophers who believed in no after, that happiness is not cultivated there.
And so Marius de Romanus and the Vampire Armand’s story was no fairytale. A tragedy is more apt, a tragedy, without the premise it could ever be anything else.
Did Marius not know it then?
Of course he knew. Always knew. A fool was Marius for the fool for God, and now all his misspent faith would come to this.
“He is not here.”
When Armand’s demise had been declared, and on no uncertain terms, Marius said as much to Santino when they pilfered Amadeo’s torched garment from the archives. So obliterated was he that the earth would salvage no scrap parts from his boy. No morsel of preciousness from which to savor, like a desperate dog lapping his slick tongue over the flavor of something gone.
But then, Marius might as well have told Santino, “You cannot have him. You are not even entitled to his memory.” Because Marius had been as good as on all fours when he beheld the garment. His very own Veronica’s Veil. Evidence Armand had been real once. Flesh once.
Once upon a time a Neoplatonist, yes, the Afterlife holds no fulfillment for us we cannot, or should not, attain while living. He is not here –
At dawn, Marius, a perfect liar, a hypocrite, took Armand’s patch of scorched earth with him to sleep. Laid out over his chest, what was not soot was tattered, left his grasping fingertips streaked with pewter.
But he did not grieve.
“You are here,” Marius said unto the darkness.
So had Marius been, long ago. Obliterated in much the same manner at Santino’s hand, an atrocity his Amadeo bore witness to. But Marius de Romanus had not gone.
When sleep took him, Marius dreamt.
“Would you untie me if you could?”
Here, sat his child, here in the dreamscape of the Palazzo: flesh of sagging leather, piercing eyes like metallic mandalas, bulging now where flesh no longer framed them.
“... untether me from this destiny, had you known where it would lead?”
Ah, Marius de Romanus might besmirch rhetorical musings, after all, one does not alter the course of their destiny without hindsight. He smiles plaintively at that, kneels and asks if it might hurt Amadeo to touch him, for he knows he is dreaming. Perhaps his desires compromise with his very subconsciousness then, for his burnt Amadeo shakes his head, and Marius has only to draw him into an embrace.
“Let us speak together of nonsense, then. Let us dream, as though I were to paint for you a futile fantasy as I might on canvas. My lover Amadeo, once the boy Andrei, eventually the Vampire Armand, whom I invariably failed to protect at every turn, for you see, as soon as I loved you, I could not protect you. My very nature forbade it.
“Here now, we sit together, sharing a conversation that would have suited your ears better than your phantasmagoric, ephemeral likeness. Had I not five centuries to come find you, gather you up covetously to my chest in this very same manner, to amend my absence, my innumerable errors and injustices done to you, by virtue of loving you as I had, have, and do? And yet you ask now, if I would undo a single one?
“No,” whispered Marius. And he said again, convicted: “No. Amadeo, were I to be something other than I am, and had I the resolve to love you less, then I would propose another epilogue. You would have walked on the sunbaked masonry of Venizia into the old age horizon of a well-lived life. This, I wanted for you once, and long ago. Before I loved you with my nature. Before I loved you, truly, as I am designed to love, as only we can love; not as a man might another man, but as a Beast’s claw might lacerate the unmarred flesh it intends only to caress.
“My love, Amadeo, is a ruinous thing. And I have ruined you with it. I could no sooner give back to you the sun I reaped from your skies, than I could deny you myself. I would not untie you from me, Amadeo. Will you ever forgive me?”
Amadeo’s answer was no.
The answer did not come in the form of this dream, however, but after the fulfillment of a dream. Some arduous weeks later, when Amadeo entered Lestat’s place of rest, two children in tow. When Marius drew his child in, twice exonerated from the light of the sun, held him near. When Marius sat with plucky child Benji, the prodigy Sybelle. These two spliced wholes of Andrei and Amadeo’s hemispheres, who Marius drew into The Gift as one great whole, this family, this trinity of unconditional love.
The Vampire Armand received his gift with vitriol. Misery. Anguish. And quite rightly, that.
“No. I could never untie you, could I? But I could weave you deeper into me. I could rig others you love into the intricate silk work of this web.
And I do it because a monster loves you as only a monster can love.
And I love you because I know no other way. I could not untie you from me, nor could you untie me from you. And it is done, and it is forever, and never must we wonder what comes after. I am your Afterlife and you are mine."