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It was the 24th of December and the night was cold, but not cold enough that Lestat was burdened with the chore of mimicking breath, so that none of the people who stared at him as he stalked by – and stare they invariably did, because there was nothing better to look at – would be made suspicious.
Image was important to Lestat, although how he desired to be seen was somewhat mercurial and prone to sudden, alarming shifts. Right now, it pleased him to be a member of a delightful family and to be seen as such, which was becoming difficult because his family was composed of Louis, who had no sense of fun and Claudia, who had rather too much of it.
He’d become accustomed somewhat to Louis's inadequacies, and he had at least improved greatly since Lestat had given him Claudia. God, what an embarrassment Louis had been in those days; the mewling, the whining, the non-stop complaints and blame, refusing to acknowledge how singularly blessed he’d been in Lestat. How few did death come to, blonde and beautiful, seeking their consent? How different might he himself have been with one like him as his maker and guide? To have his patience, his generosity, thrown back in his face! Even today the unfairness of it rankled.
At least now he was eating properly, if still secretively, wanting to set a good example for their child and not burden her baby mind with the ethics of killing. These days he mostly kept the promise of companionship that he had unknowingly made the night Lestat had followed him, drunken and stinking, his eyes begging for the one gift a vampire could always give. Let it stop. Let it all stop.
No, it was Claudia, sweet, deceptive little thing, who was the problem. He’d been, both by his own standards and those of his kind, extraordinarily patient with her and in return she clung worshipfully to Louis and forgot everything she was taught.
No one from our street, no one in our employ, never in the house. So simple! Yet their servants and neighbors melted away and though he hadn’t yet found them he was certain she sometimes stashed their bodies somewhere in their house because the whole place had an odd, sweetish smell that never entirely aired out. Sometimes he regretted making her at all but he’d heard that most parents felt like that sometimes, even the good ones, so he didn’t trouble himself with guilty feelings about it.
He paused before the doors to his home and had to suffer the indignity of searching his pockets for the key. There should have been a footman, glorious in white, red and gold livery but he had vanished a week ago and they were struggling to find another. Still it gave him a second to arrange his face and run over what he must say again.
The Lestat who walked into the house was not the one who had waited on the steps outside of it, leisurely sifting his pockets. His features were stamped with such wild ferocity that Louis, who had been reading on the divan, recoiled from him with an almost human fear. Claudia, safe on his lap, merely laughed. The smell was back, worse than ever.
“Pack!” Lestat hissed at them, teeth bared to the root. “We’re leaving!”
“Leaving?” Louis protested, though he stood obediently enough. Lestat thawed towards him a little. Beauty was a common enough trait amongst vampires and yet Louis was as rare as they came. Then he ruined it, of course.
“My God, what did you do?”
Lestat rounded on him, thrilling at the way that he flinched and yet somewhat hurt by it. True, Lestat could have twisted his head off as easily as pulling a cork from a wine bottle, but he'd never actually laid hands on him in anger, not even at his most provoking.
“What did I do? What have I ever done save keep us safe, give you a home, give you a child – but there is no time! We are discovered, and if you care about our daughter’s safety, you will cease your eternal fault finding and come with me now!”
Hooves clattered outside, right on time. They should be, Lestat was paying enough. Louis went to the window and stared down, fierce and wretched.
“It’s just the cab,” Lestat reassured him, “but we have to leave now. Never mind our things, we can send for them if it’s safe.”
“But our coffins-” Louis, turned from the window, trying to read the truth of their situation from Lestat’s face. Was he being recklessly hasty, or perhaps, fatally slow? Had they a minute, had they twenty? Was it already too late? Claudia clung to his legs, infected with the anxiety of her parents.
“I’ve made arrangements.” Lestat waved away his concerns. If he was taking any pleasure in frightening them, he wasn’t showing it. And he had come back for them, and only them, not his money, or his clothes, or his comforts and Louis knew how dearly Lestat loved all three.
Lestat made for the door and after a brief yet still insulting moment of hesitation, Louis followed him.
Outside it had begun to rain in long sharp needles, relentlessly dismal. The cab horses flicked their dripping tails in animal resignation and the driver wiped his eyes clear with much the same expression, his face pulpy and sodden.
Louis looked up at the sky uncertainly, Claudia huddled under his coat. The rain could do them no harm of course, or even cause any real discomfort but both were too young to have outgrown their habit of distaste.
“You’re sure this is necessary?” He resisted Lestat’s efforts to hurry them into the chilly cab, which in fairness looked decidedly uninviting compared to the warmly lighted rooms they were leaving behind.
“Yes, quite, you must trust me.” Lestat placed a hand on the small of his back, not to force him forward, of course, but firm enough that a gracious retreat would have been impossible.
Trust me.
He tried to press the thought into Louis’ mind but as always it was as closed to him as if he were a common corpse. Not for the first time he thought how much simpler things would be if only Lestat were able to woo his thoughts like those of a mortal man. Naturally, Lestat would never stoop to such tactics; he was above that. But if he could, Louis would have had to be grateful for his restraint and would perhaps have become more malleable in his gratitude.
“You can trust me.” He repeated, speaking aloud this time and for a wonder Louis turned his angel’s face away and allowed them both to be ushered into the dank cab. Lestat followed close behind them, closing the door smartly and bracing against the sudden lurch of the horses as they set off at a squelching trot.
Inside, the cab was comfortable and clean, but without the luxury all three of them had become accustomed to. Lestat had his excuses for this ready, tongue tapping against his teeth with impatience, but neither of them asked.
Claudia pressed her face to the window, watching the city roll past them. Fat raindrops rolled down the cab windows, reducing the view into splinters and globs of yellow light. The weather had driven most of the revelers inside but laughter and music trickled out of a dozen cracked windows and propped open doors. From dark bedrooms with closed drapes came the whispers and giggles of children poorly feigning sleep, inaudible to their parents but bell clear to Claudia, who listened with her cheek pillowed on her arm.
“Will I still get my presents?” She demanded, suddenly, twisting to face them and ready to stamp. Lestat pulled her sulky weight into his lap.
“Of course, cherie, of course.” He assured her. Louis’ anxious eyes met his over the top of her flaxen curls. It must be driving him wild with worry, not knowing what they were running from, or where they were going, or what arrangements there would be when they got there. If it hadn’t been for Claudia, Lestat knew he would have been bombarded with questions, but Louis wouldn’t want to alarm their petite. Really, Claudia was the best idea he’d ever had.
He kissed the crown of her head and she snuggled trustingly down into his lap. Louis sighed.
“Trust me” Lestat mouthed at him for a third time, pushing experimentally at the blank of his mind, not that he would ever sink to the level of his maker.
“I just hope you know what you’re doing” Louis murmured back, leaning against Lestat all the same. Lestat put an arm around him and wished they were less thoroughly swathed in superfluous coats, or that there was some mortal to see them like this, through whose eyes he could have looked and seen the image that they made.
They were leaving the city behind them now, its lights, sounds and stenches fading as if they were being washed away by the rain. Soon there was just the creak and sway of the carriage, the squeaking of harness and the hot, savory blood smells of man and animal, amusingly similar.
Claudia kicked her legs impatiently once or twice, but she was more predator than child and with the forbearance of a cat waiting at a mouse-hole she eventually rubbed her face against the soft wool of Lestat’s coat and went to sleep.
Louis kept his gaze fixed out the window, trying to pierce the rain fractured night, looking for some clue of where they might be going. Once he opened his mouth to ask but Lesat shushed him gently, indicating the lightly sleeping Claudia, a delightful ball of ruffles and curls and he subsided uneasily. Finally the monotony of the wet night and the rocking of the carriage got to him too and he sagged against the cold marble of Lestat’s body and slept also.
Only Lestat stayed awake for the whole journey, committing each part of it to memory, a small buffer between his aching past and an uncertain, overstretched future; Louis’s hair a spill of silk against his cheek, Claudia’s fragile bird weight in his lap, even the beast’s reek of the cab driver was something precious to be hoarded and kept. So he was awake to feel the jolt as the carriage turned in the road, taking them back the way they had come, and awake to see the twinkling lights of New Orleans growing from distant stars into houses and shops; smiling a private smile as the mass gaiety of the city rose again about them once again.
The carriage came to a stop in a slippery series of jolts, with much jangling of harness and muffled curses from the driver as his horses skidded alarmingly in the mud of the street. Lestat, last in, was the first out, dumping Claudia off his lap and springing onto the treacherous cobbles, tense with excitement and incipient triumph.
The rain had almost stopped. When he turned his face upwards it was to clouds of boiled silver, with little snaps and snips of stars between then, so bright they might have been cut from scraps of tin. They all missed the day sometimes, but if the trade were an infinity of nights like this then surely the bargain was very weighted in their favor.
Behind him he heard Claudia, sleepy and querulous, murmuring “We’re home?” and Louis, storming to the head of the cab, too angry to maintain a veneer of humanity, demanding answers in a voice like a hissing cat.
The driver turtled into his neck fat, holding up his hands defensively. Even Louis, sweet, soft, sad-eyed Louis, could be frightening if he really tried.
“I only did as the Monseigneur requested and I did it cheap too, considering the day and all.” He pointed an accusing finger at Lestat, who seemed to take pleasure in the condemnation. “If you’ve got an issue with it, take it up with him!”
Louis followed the finger to where Lestat stood, clenched with mirth, and looked like he was considering launching himself at the architect of their misfortunes but all Lestat had to do was slide his gaze to Claudia, all forlorn in the street and Louis was tucking his fangs away again, hiding his monsters’ rage behind a mask of mortal temper.
“This was all a trick? But why? To what possible end, or benefit?” He looked hurt as well as angry, which stung a little, but he’d understand soon enough.
Lestat beamed at him, teeth bared all the way to the molars.
“Not a trick. A surprise! A surprise for you both. Come!”
The driver, paid in advance, sent the tired horses off as fast as whip could make them, thinking that there was something very off about this whole business and that he’d be better off incurious and far away.
Louis pinned Lestat with such a look of mutinous fury that it took every scrap of his good looks to elevate it above childish ridiculousness. He may have prided himself on being the gentler and less temperamental of the two – a martyr to the whims of his maker – but it wasn’t Lestat who’d burned their house down, or sulked for weeks in the sewers and Lestat may have been the one to give their daughter life but Louis was the one who’d sucked it out of her.
Now he faced Lestat down, eyes and fangs gleaming in the watery starlight, looking very much like he might repeat past indiscretions.
Lestat spread out his hands appealingly, a disingenuous gesture intended to do no more than to buy time and put him within snatching distance of Claudia. It had taken a substantial effort and a small fortune to plan this and it would all come to nothing now if Louis were to storm off into the night and take Claudia with him.
Trust me. Trust me. Trust me.
It was effective as if he’d begged out loud, which is to say, not at all.
“I want to see the surprise.” Claudia demanded, helpfully. Lestat turned to her, all smiles. Louis would go where Claudia did. He held out his hand to her, an elegant Pied Piper and she took it, the little darling and walked beside him towards the house.
He could feel something behind him, nothing so gauche as a footstep, more an almost imperceptible shifting of the air, a pricking between his shoulder blades. Louis was coming after them and suspecting they were more likely being chased than followed he tightened his grip on Claudia’s hand and increased his speed till the ground blurred beneath his feet. Beside him Claudia gave a breathless little laugh and he heard Louis snarl, closer than he’d anticipated. A diet of human blood really had done wonders for him. Maybe he’d finally manifest a more useful talent than perpetual moroseness.
The door was before them but there was no time to be messing about with keys so Lestat simply set his shoulder to it and the lock tore from the frame as easily as if it had been gummed on with flour paste. He made a mental note to repair it - theirs was not a house which could accommodate unexpected guests.
They all three tumbled into the living room, Claudia and Lestat laughing, Louis panting with stress and rage. And then it was only Lestat laughing, as the other two stilled in shock at the scene before them, half familiar, half strange.
Someone had been busy in their absence, likely many someone’s, for the room had been prinked and wreathed and garlanded till it was almost past recognizing.
In the center of the room stood the dining table, similarly transformed with fresh snowy linen and set with silver knives and pale green candles of myrtle wax, their smell almost covering the reek of whatever it was Claudia had hidden. Ranged along it was a platter of pearly oysters, small golden trays of sugared almonds, pink and white, a pyramid of oranges - each wrapped in gilt paper – and perfumed squares of Turkish delight pressed squashily together in a filigreed dish. Crowning all was the turkey, crisp and brown with its own fat and still steaming with heat, resting in a bed of chestnuts. A king’s bounty of food, all to be wasted.
Claudia circled the table, touching each dish with cold reverent fingers, lingering before a pineapple which had been boiled in sugar till it was clear as glass. As a child she had never dreamt of such food, as a vampire they were poison to her. A frown creased her forehead.
Lestat swooped in, directing her attention to a bulky parcel wrapped in swathes of scarlet tissue paper at the foot of her chair. Claudia approached it cautiously, suspicious of trickery after the long cab ride but too enchanted by it's size and splendor to refuse it.
A first tentative ripping revealed a blush of pink satin, a second bared a thin strip of softest, palest skin. Claudia gave a little squeal of pleasure and tore away the rest of the paper. Underneath it was a child, or at least, not quite a woman, bound at the wrists and ankles with velvet ribbons, curled and passive in her nest of torn paper. To a human she could have passed as an enormous doll – the frilled dress, flawless skin and tightly curled golden hair had the perfection of artificiality – but to the three of them the thrumming of her pulse was a clear as a drumbeat.
“For you, Cherie,” Lestat searched her face for the anticipated delight. He’d gone to a lot of trouble. The girl’s parents were rich, and she was very loved and already missed. “She’s all for you.”
“For me?” She reached out to touch a flushed, porcelain cheek and smiled as the skin gave way beneath her fingers in a series of scarlet pops. Reflexively she licked her lips.
“But you said ‘never in the house.’” She gazed up at him, pressed possessively against her prize, savoring the rich smell of intoxicated blood. The girl must have been nearly drowned in brandy to smell of it so strongly. Her coiffed head lolled loosely on her neck, as if she was already dead.
“Tonight is different, tonight is the Réveillon! Tonight we will eat together, at home, as a family.”
Claudia flung her arms around him ecstatically, her claws pricking through his shirt like a kitten's.
“I love you, Papa!” she cried and Lestat shot a glowing, triumphant look over her golden head to Louis, who was gazing uneasily at a similar parcel, this time in green tissue paper, by his own place.
Louis, who had spent several shameless decades publicly groveling after rats was oddly fastidious when it came to humans, preferring to feed in secret like an old lady sucking oranges. Even now, standing amongst a dozen proofs of Lestat’s devotion he might baulk and ruin everything.
Stay with us. Let me see you. Love me.
Oh, he would never, but how he wished he could. Just once.
“You’ll eat with us tonight Louis, won’t you?” Claudia tore herself away from her breathing, bleeding doll to plead with him. If he would only pull apart the layers of green paper and see how Lestat had known and accommodated his every preference, except for that of privacy.
“Maybe just this once,” Louis conceded, grudgingly enough, but then his gaze met that of Lestat’s and “Thank you,” he said, “For doing this for us. It’s beautiful.”
Love me love me love me. Lestat pushed until his mind ached and all the while Louis’s eyes held his, soft, affectionate and unheeding.
A distinctive, gargled breath came from Lestat’s own present and he reluctantly turned away. The line between sedation and death was so delicate for a mortal, eggshell thin. Incredible how they could embrace the sop of drunkenness or opiates, all the time knowing the darkness they sought to taste could be forever. Louis’s present had taken his dose voluntarily and thanked the giver. Louis would appreciate that.
“Come, eat, we don’t want them going cold now, do we?” Lestat bent down to his own bundle of royal blue crepe and scarlet ribbon, eager to beat the unpalatability of death. Claudia, her mouth already reddened from several impatient little sips, drove her teeth so violently into the wrist of her victim that the bones creaked.
Louis shifted, uncomfortably. Claudia was lost to the glory of the moment and Lestat had turned his back, which was considerate of him, but how he hated to be seen at such things. He reached hesitantly for the green bundle; the sound of the tissue paper tearing seemed to rend the air, he felt like the neighbors must be looking about in shock and asking each other Did you hear it? That awful sound.
He stole a glance at the discreet curve of Lestat’s back, as he kept to his polite fiction of disinterest, then back down at the really quite modest hole he had made in the wrapping. Louis knew the man insensate and bound inside, knew his smell and his slack lips, knew how his voice would sound if he were capable of speech, for they had all heard him often enough; cursing God and his wife, his children and anyone who dared to pass him on the street. Once he had even spat on Louis, and because he’d been in a crowd and the dawn had been coming Louis had dismissed the insult in favor of later vengeance.
Lestat really had been very thoughtful.
So he knelt, finally, lips pulling back as the humanity slid from his face and was replaced by an equally exquisite animal need - happily unconscious that he was being observed through a veil of blonde hair. Lestat’s lips were smiling against the neck of his victim, whose faltering heartbeat pushed the blood in thick pulses to the back of his throat to be swallowed indifferently, almost reflexively. The satisfaction that curled in his belly came from a rarer source.
Because it was all, for once, just as he had wanted, food and candlelight and family, not really so different from what was happening in any of the houses around them. If he listened carefully he could even hear them, the same slurpings and gulpings as they downed oysters and red wine. The same sticky lips and fingers, the same new stains to ruin tablecloths and rugs. Happy families, enjoying their midnight feast,
Only one thing was out of place, being a good fifty years too soon to be appropriate and luckily Lestat had no knowledge of its infuriating existence. For wedged high up in the chimney, defying all attempts at discovery and removal, moldered Claudia’s forgotten prize, still in his footman’s livery of black boots and scarlet, white trimmed coat.