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“Send him to Belgium!” Santiago declares.
The audience is howling, falling over themselves like newborn piglets, but Louis is trying desperately to think. Can he somehow find a way out of whatever they plan for him to save Claudia? Is this one last extended hand from God? He doesn’t look to Lestat; there’s no point. Where once he might have found safety, he knows there is nothing. In seconds, the coven is on him, dragging him from his chair.
“No, no, no! No, no! No! No, Claudia!” He’s reaching out for her, and she for him, and for a second, they find footing in each other’s hands; a twisted kind of Michelangelo.
“Louis!” She screams, and he’s not heard her call for him like that, not ever. Had she called for him like that when she’d be caught by Bruce, imprisoned under floorboards?
“No!”
He’s almost off the stage, and he doesn’t know what will happen then, but it’s not hard to guess that he stands the most chance here. These mortals might be fools, but they’re not blind. Lestat is here, and despite it all, Louis can’t help but hope, can’t help bu remember every small gesture of kindness the vision of Lestat has made. There might still be some purchase he can cling to.
“Louis!”
“I’ll be back!” He says and means it. He will. There is no alternative.
They carry him more than he walks, the whole time clawing and biting and wrestling to be free. But he isn’t the Louis who once pulled a knife on his brother, nor the Louis who had beaten Lestat black and blue as much as he was beaten himself. Years of drinking bad blood, sick blood of prisoners of war, hollowed out Europeans, scrawny French pigeons, and there is nothing left of that Louis. The coven come together in their cruelty, wrecking his mind, slashing his ankles. Lestat, his Judas come to give a final kiss, risen from his shallow grave. What chance does he stand in the face of all that?
Louis tries, though, and howls the whole time. He can hear some of them hissing in pain along with their laughter, and there’s satisfaction in causing even just a moment of suffering. They’ve dragged him to the basement again, and he can almost hear Claudia’s cries again from when they’d fed her to the rats. Heavy hands push him into a coffin, and he can’t grip the sides without fingers ripping him off again. Then rocks, pouring over him, stopping all movement; a sand timer running out.
“What was that, Louis? I can’t hear you.” One of them coos, and he thinks it’s Gustave. He needs to remember. He has to. Louis keeps yelling, shouting with all that’s left of him, even as the rocks pour over his mouth and stopper him up. Buried alive, unable to even shift, he can do nothing but think, think, think. Gustave has given him an idea. Using the last of his strength, he focuses on sending his thoughts to Claudia, up through the trapdoor.
“Claudia!”
“Louis?”
“It’s alright, it’s gon’ be okay,” he thinks, knowing it won’t.
“Louis?” she asks again, but he knows she’s heard him anyway. It’s nothing but a plaintive call. “Sun’s coming out.”
“I’ve got you,” he thinks, as steady as he can. “I’ve got you. Claudia, my Claudia,”
He can hear her screaming now, the pain too white-hot that her mind must be reeling. Can’t keep it in.
“Daddy Lou?” she whimpers raggedly.
“The sun comes up, we go down,” he thinks, empty. Something he once told her in their earliest days. “That’s never gon’ change.”
It might sound vicious, a brittle reminder of what’s happening to her now, but he hopes Claudia will know it for what it is. If she can know anything anymore.
“We got rules, lil’ miss.”
Rules are for fools, Daddy Lou, she had said then. Now she says nothing, only screams, only cries.
“Keeping you safe, little waif.”
He’s only met with silence.