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Claudia fell to the floor after Louis' claws crushed her windpipe. She was discarded like a doll, and left to watch with blood tears spilling from her eyes as Louis crawled back to their wretched Maker and held his lifeless body in his arms, muffling his sobs into the neck of Lestat De Lioncourt.
That pale neck of his was split wide open, weeping deep red onto his snow-white blouse, their persian carpet. His mistress laid discarded to the side, as did their sacrificial lambs. The scene they painted was glorious. It was violent, cathartic, and entirely Claudia’s doing. The triumph coursing through her veins from watching Lestat choke on his words alongside the poison died just as quickly as he had. Hurt took its place. Helplessness, too.
The hurt and the helplessness morphed into rage when she witnessed Louis split his lip in two and feed the blood to the body beneath him.
“You slit his throat. You are the one who put that blade to his neck and slit it like you do to a cow. Own up to it, don’t be such a coward,” she seethed. Each word seared her throat and came out rough and ugly, but she couldn’t bear to stand witness to the pathetic sight otherwise.
Louis ignored her. Sometimes, talking to Louis was like talking to God. He was filled with so much love, so much brightness and warmth that enveloped you one smile at a time— but he rarely listened to a word you said.
He continued to mumble against those cool, cool lips, “There you go, Les, drink up. Just come back to me, please…”
The floorboards scraped the skin of her knees raw as she shuffled onto a crouching position. The pain made her grunt.
“You don’t want him to come back; he’ll do far worse to the both of us than we did to him.” Claudia didn’t sound like herself when said, “He has to die, there is no other way.”
Louis continued to ignore her in lieu of his dead lover. It only made her blood boil.
She screeched, “Don’t you remember all that he did? He betrayed us both! He betrayed you. Beat us and kept us inside this prison of opulence like dogs in a padded cage. And you are thinking of reviving him; letting the cycle repeat itself? Have you lost your mind?!”
“Maybe it’s what we deserve,” Louis mulled in response. The words were like a slap to the face. Like getting choked against the wall.
It was the Catholic in him seeking self flagellation, a hard enough whip to lash at both their backs, and Claudia wouldn’t stand for it. Not now. Not ever again.
She banged her bloodied fists onto the wood boards. An animalistic snarl wrenched itself out of her abused throat.
“I don't give a fuck! Just kill him,” Claudia screamed. “You have to, I'm not asking!”
Louis’ tears both pained her and infuriated her. Did he believe his grief outweighed hers? She loved her Maker, too. Lestat was her father, her uncle, her brother, the man who taught her how to drive, the first person to recognize her as the young woman she was. It was Lestat who kept her picture in a locket, it was he who affectionately called her the blood of his blood. She never loved him as much as she did at this moment. The floorboards cried beneath her fists. She loved him. She truly did. That was why it had to be done.
That was why he needed to burn.
Why couldn’t Louis understand? Why did he cry like a baby over the corpse of the monster that tormented them? Would he mourn this way if it was Claudia in Lestat's place? Would the day he chose Claudia over Lestat ever come? Would she and her sacrifices ever be enough?
“KILL HIM! KILL HIM, KILL HIM, KILL HIM!” She screeched, sounding more beastlike than human.
But the rawness of her vocal chords couldn’t hide the fact that she was begging like a mortal at an altar.
Why, for the love of God, couldn’t Claudia find the strength to stand up and walk away?
She knew why: Claudia was a beggar at the altar, and Louis was her world. Lestat was the God who could bend the world to his every whim.
She screamed for ages. She screamed until her voice gave out, and then she screamed more. Louis simply rocked Lestat back and forth, mumbling sweet nothings with a shell shocked look to his swamp green eyes.
Hours passed before Louis stood up. He walked over to his daughter, this bloodied, wretched monster lying on the floor with her white skirts fanned out. The pen she dipped in Lestat’s wound was clenched in her small fist. She was a mirror of their Maker, and Louis loved that about her as much as he loathed it. Blood of his blood, indeed.
Louis looked down at her in a way that made her feel young again. Like she was a child looking up to her father for comfort. It made her despair that this was what she had been worn down to.
“We must leave soon. Antoinette needs to be burnt,” Louis said. His voice was hoarse, but not as bad as her’s.
Claudia looked towards Lestat’s body. “And him?”
“We dump him in the trash.”
Dissatisfaction pooled in her gut, but she said nothing. They burnt Antoinette together, put Lestat in his coffin and left New Orleans forever.
Claudia didn't say a word to Louis during the train ride. She didn't say a word to him when they got on board the boat. She kept to the docks despite the stormy weather, smoking a cigar that she had snuck from another passenger's pocket. Claudia looked out into the dark ocean and was reminded of the light going out of Lestat's eyes. She could hear his laugh in the biting wind.