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He found her sitting on the steps of the mansion where they’d taken that night’s meal, face dripping with blood and chin resting on her knees. Despite being rather irritating, Armand did find himself a little taken with Claudia. He knew he could be rather irritating too, and there was camaraderie in that. He sat on the stair above her, removing his pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and offering her one. She narrowed her eyes a little when she looked up at him, but took the cigarette anyway. Armand lit his own, and then hers with his mind. She blinked a little at that, but shrugged. Wasn’t much weirder than Lestat being able to fly all of a sudden, she thought to herself.
“Can you fly, maître?” Claudia finally asked, looking over her shoulder at Armand. He hummed.
“I can, yes. But I don’t often have much reason to.”
She scoffed. “He didn’t either, til he needed to drop Louis thirty-thousand feet out the damn sky.”
Armand’s eyes had widened a little at that. Louis had told him Lestat was his maker that first hunt, told him they’d been companions until Lestat became violent, at which point —well, ‘at which point was being generous’, the younger vampires hadn’t seemed to have retaliated until he finally became unbearable,— he and Claudia had killed him. But he hadn’t gone into detail.
“He didn’t tell you.” Claudia realized, dropping her forehead to her knees and sighing heavily.
“Your brother has a tendency to withhold.” Armand replied. It made the woman next to him snort.
“Yeah. I’m aware. What’d he say to you? That him ‘n our maker had a complicated relationship? Did any of it mention Lestat throwin’ him through our walls, or was that withheld?”
“He said Lestat was violent to the two of you. He did not get any more explicit than that.”
Claudia took a long drag from her cigarette in response, blowing smoke into cool night air before she turned back to Armand. “Surprised he managed to admit that much. Guess it shouldn’t surprise me he still defends him, even now. Figures.”
She was half-shielding her thoughts from Armand, but he could feel the bitterness and the frustration coursing through her veins. A human probably could have felt it, really. Armand settled on a soft “Well you are here, and he is not, non?”
Claudia rolled her eyes. “Oh, he’s here. He’s always here. They always stick around. Cut off their heads and another one grows back.”
The older vampire tilted his head, focusing on her thoughts. There was Lestat, of course, but someone else too. A boy Claudia had met on the road, and the mere feeling of him made Armand shiver. “Indeed.” Responded Armand. “The maker-fledgling bond is inescapable.”
The woman shut her eyes for a long moment, taking a final inhale of her cigarette before stubbing it out on the marble stairs of the manor’s garden. “You know it ain’t just that, maître.” Claudia said, near imperceptibly. “You’re what, four-hundred ‘n somethin’? You can see my thoughts, don’t bother condescending to me.”
Armand nodded. “We are not in the theatre, Claudia. Armand is fine.”
She chuckled. “Right then. Pass me another cigarette then, Armand.”
He smiled a little, obliging. He lit it for her. “So there was a Bruce?”
Claudia shrugged, eyes falling to her feet with another one of her heavy sighs. “There was a Bruce. It was when I was alone. ‘M sure you can fish out the rest for yourself.”
Armand had no desire to do so, and he did his best to deafen himself to Claudia’s mind. He could tell she felt him doing it, because she looked back at him with a little surprise. “I cannot tell you not to think about him, but I do not need to see details. It is not my place.”
Claudia turned sideways on the stairs to look at him, appraising. “Thought all the coven’s thoughts were your business.” Armand tilted his head at that, blinking slowly.
“I do not give them such parts of my history, I do not need yours.”
She crossed her legs and brought her cigarette to her lips again, contemplative. “There was a Bruce for you too, huh?”
The older vampire’s nose scrunched at that, and he dropped his eyes. He decided if there was one thing he respected about Claudia, it was her sheer audacity. No one else ever asked. It was almost nice.
“In a way.”
“Get the feelin’ you don’t talk about it much.”
Armand put out his cigarette and rested his head on his knees in a similar position to Claudia’s previous one. He didn’t talk about it at all.
“I do not speak of my maker often, no.”
“Shit.” Claudia replied, eloquently. She looked up at him, and Armand was struck with the sudden fear that this woman may somehow know everything about him. “That must make it rough.”
Armand chuckled at that, soft and amused. “An understatement, Claudia de Pointe du Lac.”
“How d’you manage it?”
He shrugged, sighing. “Endurance. Practice. Time. It helps that he’s dead.”
“Did you— get him?”
The older vampire scoffed weakly. He looked down at Claudia, cigarette dangling from between his long, clawed fingers. “No. I did not, as you say, get him. He was burned with his atelier by another coven. Many years ago.” Armand rested his head on the heel of his hand, eyes raised to the stars above the two of them. They sat in silence for several minutes, Claudia finishing her second cigarette and ashing it with her shoe.
“How did you meet him?”
“I was a child pretty enough to be removed from my prior employment.” Armand said finally, observing Claudia’s face as she considered the statement. “He gave me a better life. He was kind, my maker.”
Claudia steeled her face, obviously skeptical. Armand could tell what she was thinking without hearing her thoughts, but he wondered if she was going to say it. She did.
“That what you tell yourself, maître?” The ‘maître’ tacked on at the end made Armand chuckle quietly, amused at the title’s placating nature. He could tell she was unsure with the question, but she didn’t rescind it. It was rather nice, to speak to someone who wasn’t a sycophant.
“Yes.” Replied Armand, simple and half-honest. It was what he told himself, and sometimes he managed to believe it.
“The maker-fledgling bond is inescapable.” Claudia echoed, maneuvering herself to sit on the same step as Armand.
“I suppose the positive in that,” Armand murmured, “Is that at least part of this, you can escape.” The woman nodded, helping herself to a third cigarette. Armand followed, in the name of camaraderie.
“Suppose so.” She said, once their cigarettes were lit. The sounds of screaming from the manor echoed in the wind, and Claudia lifted her cigarette in a mock-toast. “Hope they both rot.”
Armand lifted his in kind. “Santé.”