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Daniel had been a little bummed out when he’d opened up to Louis about how he would sometimes feel Armand like they were the only thing left on Earth only for Louis to tell him, “Sounds weird”. During their interview in Dubai, Louis had literally told Daniel he could feel Lestat’s presence during the trial before Lestat had entered the stage.
Had he been exaggerating then, or was he downplaying his bond to Lestat now?
Louis was still pissed at Daniel about the book, so it made sense that he’d keep his guard up around Daniel now. But then Louis had told him about thinking he saw Claudia almost immediately after their exchange about their bonds with their makers. That hadn’t felt like Louis keeping his guard up...
Daniel guessed he could accept that he and Armand had a particularly strong bond, compared to other maker-fledgling pairs. He wasn’t sure he liked it, but he could see it. Armand was old, even for a vampire, and he’d never made one until Daniel, which apparently meant his blood was undiluted and Daniel had gotten the full whammy of all the power Armand had inherited from his maker.
Not that Daniel had been reaping any kind of cool benefits from that, but whatever. Armand’s blood was supposed to be like a quintuple espresso shot or the Panera lemonade that kills you compared to that of younger vamps or those who popped out fledglings the way Lestat did.
So, yeah, Daniel could see it.
He’d somehow just assumed that that was it, though. That the whole world-falling-away-thing was the one thing that was specific to his bond with Armand. Had assumed that the other weird shit was just run-of-the-mill maker-fledgling stuff.
But you know what they say about assumptions – they make an ass out of U and... Well, they’d mostly led to Daniel making an ass out of himself in front of every other vampire he encountered, really.
They were somehow staying in another one of Louis’s hotels, which suited Daniel just fine, because it gave him an opportunity to talk to Sam Barclay. He hadn’t gotten around to that in Detroit due to the, uh, big drug-fuelled, head-ripping, ceiling-wrecking brawl with the Fang Gang that had ended with Lestat busting through the window and both of them being exposed as real vampires.
Which had been fun (turns out decapitating people with a garrote gave Daniel a real head rush, pun not intended), but Daniel had some questions about how Sam had gotten roped into working for the Talamasca, and, more importantly, how a vampire who had gotten himself roped into service with those chuckleheads might extricate themselves from their chokehold.
As Daniel had feared, Sam’s answer to that second question was that once the Talamasca had their claws in you, you were basically fucked forever, even if you were centuries old or the world’s most well-connected nepofledgling.
Ah well, Daniel had worse things to worry about. Like the fact that Armand had another creepy French nursery rhyme stuck in his head and was making it Daniel’s problem.
Daniel made an off-hand remark about it to Sam while words he’d never heard before and didn’t understand danced around his head.
Aux marches du palais. Aux marches du palais. Y a une tant belle fille, lon la. Y a une tant belle fille.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Sam asked.
Daniel thought Sam just hadn’t heard what he’d said, so he repeated himself, but Sam only looked more confused once he did.
“How... How d’you know?”
“Know what?”
“That Armand has a song stuck in his head?”
Now it was Daniel’s time to be confused. “Well, it’s not me who started it, is it? I barely speak three words of French and I definitely don’t know any 18th century French kids’ songs. At least this time it’s not Latin hymns or Gregorian chanting or the fucking...what’s that 1990s British girl group? The Spice Girls.”
Armand knew a lot of Spice Girls songs, which meant Daniel did, too, now. If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends. As if Armand had any friends for Daniel to ‘get’ with.
Sam was quiet for a second or two before tentatively asking, “You can still communicate with each other telepathically?”
“No?” Daniel frowned. “He's my maker, we can’t hear each other’s thoughts.”
“No, I know. I just...figured I’d check since he’s...sending you songs?”
“I mean, I don’t think he’s sending them to me. He just gets one stuck in his head and then I do, too. Even though it’s shit I’ve never heard before.”
Daniel suspected some of the earworms he did know also came to him courtesy of his maker these days. There was no way Daniel thought about Total Eclipse of the Heart this often of his own accord. No way.
But, yeah, today it was something French again. Daniel nodded his head along to it without meaning to.
Dans un grand lit carré. Dans un grand lit carré. Couvert de toille blanche, lon la. Couvert de toille blanche.
He almost didn’t notice Sam hadn’t responded to the last thing he’d said. “I mean... You know.” Daniel waved his hand.
“I don’t think I do,” Sam said.
“That’s not something that happens to you – or happened? With your maker?”
Sam slowly shook his head. “No.” He was apparently too polite to just echo Louis’s, ‘sounds weird’, though Daniel didn’t need to read his mind to know he was thinking it.
Huh. Another Armand-and-Daniel special then? That option hadn’t occurred to Daniel yet. The Vampire NPR Gift. Only playing whatever your maker feels like. Daniel grimaced and thought Thanks, Dad, into the void.
(Et nous y dormirions. Et nous y dormirions. Jusqu'à la fin du monde, lon la. Jusqu'à la fin du monde.)
The vamp Daniel was talking to was called Urszula. She looked to be about 45 but was apparently older than Lestat. She was from some place in what was now Austria. When she’d first shown up, Daniel thought they might have another vamp-on-vamp smackdown coming, but it turned out she hadn’t come for that. She liked the book and thought what Lestat was doing with his music was ‘diverting’. Go figure.
Tonight’s concert had already ended so they’d cut the cameras. The venue was quickly emptying out because apparently Lestat was outside doing selfies and autographs. Daniel should probably get some footage of that, but fuck it. They already had enough shots of people fawning over the Brat Prince, and Daniel thought he might have a shot at getting Urszula to come back to the hotel with him. They were hitting it off pretty hard.
He was just telling her about his second Pulitzer when he started to taste pennies. If pennies tasted like the most gourmet five-course meal you’d ever had. Fuck. Daniel hadn’t been hungry before but now he felt ravenous. His stomach growled, his mouth started to water and he even popped a vampire-semi; the tips of his fangs elongating just enough to peek out from under his upper lip.
“Is everything alright?” Urszula asked, and Daniel realized he’d stopped talking mid-sentence.
Daniel forced his fangs to retract and swallowed, but the taste of blood remained. “Yeah, no, I’m fine. Sorry about that. My maker just killed someone.”
Urszula frowned and looked around the room. “Where? I don’t sense another vampire nearby. Other than the singer.”
“Oh, no he isn’t here. Don’t know where he is – he’s been MIA for about two years. But he was hungry and he’s eating now – no, wait. He’s done.”
Urszula looked at him like he’d just grown another head.
Daniel sighed.
Right. Great. Thanks for the Tasting When You Feed Gift, dad. Real useful, that one.
Daniel should’ve never told Fareed about his and Armand’s supercharged vampire bond, because it had led to him lying in an MRI machine in some shady private clinic in Bumfuck, Massachusetts at four in the morning.
MRI machines were fucking loud, especially if you had vampire hearing, and you weren’t allowed to have any metal on your person while you were in one, so all Daniel had to keep the noise out was a pair of useless silicon ear plugs.
He felt like an idiot, lying there in that metal tube, looking at random pictures while Fareed scanned his brain to see how it reacted to each one. And he was supposed to focus on the pictures, too. Wasn’t even allowed to zone out and think about who was for dinner or how he was going to approach his next interview session with Lestat.
So far Daniel had looked at: a waterfall, two kids on bikes, boba tea, a kitten, Queen Elizabeth II, a rainbow, a single potato, the Hot Topic logo, boba tea again, Ray Charles, the Brooklyn Bridge, a muddy footprint on a yellow carpet, some sheet music, a cherry pie with a wedge cut right out of the center, a close-up of some white person’s eyebrow – and about two dozen equally arbitrary images.
It was boring as hell.
Daniel wiggled his toes and clicked his tongue as a photo of a bombed-out building made way for the movie poster for Return or the Killer Tomatoes.
“Focus, please, Mister Molloy,” the good doctor called out over the din of the MRI machine.
Daniel projected out a bored Yeah, yeah, and then the movie poster was replaced with a picture of Armand looking absolutely drop-dead gorgeous and before Daniel could ask Fareed how on God’s green Earth he’d gotten hold of that, the noise from the MRI disappeared and the machine itself disappeared and Fareed standing outside of it probably also did and all Daniel could feel and think and taste was Armand Armand Armand.
It was hard to tell how long it lasted this time, but by the time Daniel snapped out of it, Armand’s portrait had been replaced by a picture of a honeybee flying into a tulip and Daniel could hear the MRI powering down around him.
“Got what you wanted there, doc?” Daniel called out. “Fucking asshole.”
“I think so, yes,” Fareed replied calmly. “The images I captured will require extensive analysis and I would like to replicate the experiment several more times, but that was certainly...fascinating.”
“Fascinating? Really? You just had to use that word?”
Salamander had been pretty insufferable since he’d figured out that Armand was Daniel’s maker. Apparently the way Daniel had described him in the book had made Armand an instant fan favorite despite the fact that he was basically the villain of the tale (no need to unpack what that said about how Daniel felt about him) and the bassist was a total fanboy in a way that made Daniel feel slightly jealous (definitely not unpacking that). He’d been bombarding Daniel with questions about Armand any chance he got, which could be annoying, but also extremely entertaining because of the way it made Lestat’s eye twitch.
Daniel had decided to indulge Salamander tonight.
Dee had consumed a dangerous amount of cocaine, which they had graciously shared with Daniel through their blood, Daniel had lost his ereader somewhere in Canada, he hadn’t experienced any Armand-related raptures in 56 hours (though who was counting), and they wouldn’t be arriving at their next destination for at least another five. So Daniel was bored, high as balls, and feeling that vampire loneliness particularly hard right now, and if someone wanted him to yap about his maker, yap he would.
Daniel and Salamander had been talking about Armand since they’d gotten onto the bus, with Dee throwing in a question every now and then as well. Lestat had stomped upstairs about fifteen minutes in. He really couldn’t handle people thinking Armand was cooler than he was.
Daniel took another sip from Dee, then leaned in towards Salamander. “So get this, right. If I press into where he bit me when he made me, right here.” He touched two fingers to the left side of his neck, not where he still had his scar from San Francisco, but the other side, where only Armand had ever bitten him. “If I press here, it’s like his fangs are still inside me. Like I can feel him drinking from me. Rings of Saturn and everything.”
Salamander leaned in, too, absentmindedly reaching for the side of his own neck, his mouth slightly open in wonder. “Woah.”
“Yeah.” Daniel leaned back and put his arm around Dee’s shoulder. “It’s fucking awesome. Not gonna lie, sometimes I do it when I’m jerking off.”
Dee snorted. “You would.”
“Woah,” Salamander repeated. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”
On the top floor of the bus, Lestat smashed something and roared, “IT IS NOT A THING!”
“FUCK YOU, MAN, IT SO IS!’ Daniel roared back.
The band and the rest of Lestat’s entourage had gone down onto the dancefloor. Daniel remained in the VIP area on the mezzanine with Lestat and Sofia.
“Do you guys ever – ”
“No, we don’t,” the two other vampires cut Daniel’s question off in unison.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say!” Daniel protested.
“Oh, I think we know,” Sofia said.
“Does the rain smell like your maker to you?” Lestat asked mockingly.
“Do you hear his voice in every song?” Sofia added.
“Do you see his face in every flower?”
“Hey, I never said those last two!”
“Next you will be telling us you can feel it when he pisses,” Sofia drawled with a roll of her eyes.
“Wait, so you don’t feel it when your maker takes a piss?” Daniel asked.
Lestat muttered, “Putain de merde,” underneath his breath.
“Assuming they’re still around, I mean,” Daniel added. “You know, you still haven’t told me who – ”
“He is,” Sofia said. “And I don’t. Not unless he pisses directly onto me, which hasn’t happened since 19 – ”
Daniel never heard the rest of the year, because Lestat swore too loudly as he stormed off towards the stairs.
Daniel had only just woken up. He hated sleeping on the tour bus. He should’ve negotiated a proper coffin but somehow Christine had screwed him into that fucking sleeping bag like he was an orphaned baby marsupial. At least he didn’t have to eat in secret anymore now the cat was out of the bag (ha) regarding his being a vampire. He shuffled into the main part of the bus’s ground floor while sucking some cold AB neg straight from yet another bag.
Salamander perked up the second he spotted Daniel. “Hey, can you tell me if Armand – ”
Daniel held up his free hand to silence him, then pulled his fangs out of the blood bag and swallowed. “Nah, man. I’m done talking about Armand around this crowd. You should probably knock it off, too. Florence Welch’s Wario here is this close to eating you over it.”
He motioned vaguely over to Lestat, who had come down from his penthouse for a change and was leaning against the wall separating this part of the bus from the driver.
“He is?” Salamander turned to look at Lestat wide-eyed. “You are?”
Lestat didn’t say anything. He just flicked his hair, but Daniel could see the vein in his forehead pulsating.
“He is,” Armand confirmed calmly, and then everybody lost their shit.
(Except Fareed, who really wasn’t there this time, and Daniel’s cameraman and sound technician, who were goddamn professionals and merely swivelled their equipment in Armand’s direction.)
Larry yelled, “Yo, where the fuck did he come from?!”, Dee jumped up from their chair, knocking over the bowl of cereal they’d been poking at, and Salamander straight-up fell from his booth with a loud yelp.
“Wait, you guys are seeing this, too?” Daniel asked. He’d figured his maker suddenly popping up was just their vampire bond acting out again. Like how Louis used to hallucinate Lestat. And Armand just sat there in the booth opposite the one Salamander had just tumbled out of like people hadn’t just started yelling and falling over, much like someone who wasn’t actually there might.
“Yes, we’re seeing this, too!” Christine yelled just as Lestat demanded, “How the fuck did you get back on the bus?!”
“What do you mean, ‘back’ on the bus?!” Daniel demanded in turn.
“You left your best guitarist in Ohio,” Armand said like that explained anything. He motioned towards Alex, who was also somehow back on the bus.
Alex gave the room a sheepish little wave. “Hey guys.”
Larry physically flinched away from his brother. “Where the fuck did you come from?!”
“Ohio,” Armand repeated.
“Wait, that’s him, isn’t it?” Salamander asked from the floor, scrambling so hard to get back onto his feet it was hindering rather than helping him. “That’s Armand?!”
TC came out of the bands’ ‘bedroom’ looking like they'd woken her up from hibernation. “What are you idiots screaming a – woah, shit!” she nearly tripped over Salamander and course corrected so hard Dee and Christine had to catch her to keep her from faceplanting into one of the windows.
“STOP THE FUCKING BUS!” Lestat roared over them all.
It was the last thing Daniel heard before all of them – even Lestat – got fucking raptured and it was just him and Armand.