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Claudia is too astonished to be angry at first.
There’s Lestat, shaking and looking impossibly small – more vulnerable even than when they killed him – and there’s the crowd, watching, and where there was lecherous leering just a second ago when they pronounced her guilty, there’s a stunned silence now, a whole theater full of humans halted in their speech. And Claudia sees other words crawl up their throats, almost unwillingly: banishment.
It’s all over seconds after. The vampires – who she thought was her coven, who she believed to be her family – drag her across the stage. She futilely tries to reach out for Louis, for Madeleine, damn it all to hell, even to Lestat – but they’re too strong and she’s too weak, in her birdlike body with bones like glass and skin like paper. She thinks she screams but can’t be sure. It’s all a blur of violence, of pain and overwhelming fear.
The last she sees of Louis is his grief-stricken face, the green of his eyes shadowed, unrecognizable. His blood glinting under the stage lights. Then he’s gone.
Claudia wakes up in the middle of nowhere.
It takes her a second until she realizes it’s a landfill and a second more to realize that it’s dawn, the sun pinkening the horizon. Claudia gasps and tries to sit up but they’ve done something to her legs, they’re bent and broken and she remembers Louis, carefully setting his broken bones right so they’d heal faster. It had still taken over a week for him to stand up again. Now, she can’t even set her bones alone. She’ll die if she doesn’t figure out how to drag herself into some shade.
Claudia doesn’t think of what happened or where Louis and Madeleine are. It doesn’t even cross her mind because she’s so intent on surviving. There’s no feeling in her at all. She digs her hands into the trash, tries to make it so she sits up but her hands slip and she falls back. Again, she tries. Again.
It’s only when she hears another approaching that a cold fear spreads through her. She’s vulnerable, out in the open. It could be Bruce all over again, against all reason; the coven could’ve called him just as they had Lestat. Or she’s summoned him like some evil spirit simply through pretending he was Louis’s and her maker. Less terrifying but still awful, it could be Santiago, coming to finish the job before the sun can. Or he wants to stand and watch. Or, and now there’s a faint hope in her, it could be Louis and Madeleine.
The newcomer is the last person Claudia expects to see here.
Lestat’s clothes look dirty, like he threw himself into a dead fireplace. There’s blood smeared on his face; it covers every visible bit of his skin. And in his hair, too, matted like that of a stray dog.
It’d have delighted her greatly, once, to see him like this. Now, there’s nothing left. Even the fear’s gone.
He bends down to pick her up, without any greeting or explanation and his arms feel thin, the skin of his hands leathery. He’s like a vampire from the movies they made fun of back in the happy days, Nosferatu or Dracula. And he shakes, even though her weight should be nothing to him. Deep in his core, he trembles.
Claudia thinks of fighting him but it’s not a real thought. It wouldn’t matter, even if he seems weak. And at least he won’t rape her.
Lestat carries Claudia away, through the landfill, out the gates, onto the streets, too fast for any mortal eye to register. She looks up at him, during, and his haunted face reminds her of another, decades ago. The black angel and the white one. One father and then the other. Taking her from certain death, delivering her to another. It’s a neat little parallel, she supposes. And still, no one asked.
Up into an apartment, small and dusty. The wooden floor creaks under their weight and the door only closes properly when Lestat bolts it.
He sets her down on a bed. The sheets feel dusty, too, like no one has changed them, no one has lived here for years.
Claudia remembers the pain only absently. She’s still looking at Lestat. He’s so ruined.
She’s still mad at him – doesn’t think this is something that can ever change, it’s become such an integral part of her – but she’s pretty sure he’s saved her life twice now when she only ever tried to end his. She doesn’t know what to make of it. Can’t bring herself to feel gratitude. Again: didn’t ask. Even if she would’ve said yes, doesn’t matter, it’s about the principle of the thing.
Instead: “Where’s Louis?” Because she doesn’t kid herself. He wouldn’t have cared about Madeleine. She got her sentence first. As long as Claudia doesn’t think about it, as long as she focuses on the other things, it isn’t real.
So no, he wouldn’t have cared about Madeleine. But if Lestat would save anyone, it’d be Louis. If she’s here now, he must be too.
Lestat doesn’t answer. He’s looking out the window, where the light of the morning streams in. But he doesn’t seem to actually see it. His eyes are empty and hollow and he looks utterly inhuman. Not vampiric either. Just lifeless. Dead.
Claudia blinks and the light shines in and reflects off a ring on Lestat’s finger. It’s Louis’s.
This is the first time Claudia actually considers it.
The anger bubbles up in her so fast, she manages to sit up before the pain reaches her. There’s poison in her head and in her mouth and she spews it out without thinking because surely – surely this is some ploy, some sick way to mock Claudia, or it’s real and Lestat gets something out of it, seeing all his lovers die. Maybe he’s a male black widow. Maybe he really only cares for himself and his own happiness. She can’t believe she ever called it into question.
“What is wrong with you? First saving me and pretending you care and then – what? Why even do this when you planned on killin’ us all anyway? Keep me alive so I can suffer knowing you murdered Madeleine and Louis? Your last big revenge for half-killing you?”
“No- stop.” Lestat grits out. “It’s not about that.”
Claudia scoffs. “Oh, excuse me, I forgot for a second – it’s not about me at all, never was. Then why?”
She thinks of Louis reaching out for her, thinks of the ring Lestat now wears like some kind of fucked up trophy. She wants to tear him apart. Do it properly this time, not how Louis did it before. With fire and everything. Shove him out the window right now.
“Did you watch them do it? I bet you took some kind of sick pleasure in it. Did that do it for you? Something to remember, surely. No wonder everyone always tries to get away from you.”
She struggles to get up but her legs are still broken and the pain starts to creep in black around the edges of her vision and she certainly doesn’t want to pass out. Who knows what Lestat might do to her. At least this way, she can fight back.
Frustrated, she sinks back into the bed. Her eyes burn but it’s from the dust all around. Or the broken legs.
Lestat is uncharacteristically quiet. He hasn’t turned away from the window and is still as a statue. Maybe he hasn’t heard Claudia.
But then she breathes in and it sounds young, juvenile, even though she’s 46 now, a full-grown adult, at least mentally. People would call her middle aged. 14-year-olds would think she’s old, call her a grandma.
The breath gets caught in her throat and she doesn’t even need it, she could’ve just held it. But it makes this noise and Lestat turns. There’s twin rivers of blood running down his face. She’s never seen him cry before.
He’s beside her in a blink and Claudia startles, tries to scramble backwards but can’t because her legs are broken and suddenly, she sees Bruce hovering above her again. But Bruce never cried. Bruce never sat beside her and tried to gather her in his arms tenderly.
It’s so wrong, so backwards. He’s killed her companion, her father-brother. She hates him. She wants him to die.
He reaches for her and she buries her fingernails in his upper arms, tears through fabric and skin until blood coats her fingers and flows down his arms.
It’s as if he doesn’t even notice. He wrestles closer even though she fights him, scratches him everywhere she can. And then he has her in his arms.
This has never happened before. Lestat has never hugged her as long as they were together, not even in the happy days. She doesn’t recognize his smell, the ash and soot. The heartbeat under her forehead is out of tune, misses a beat, jumps ahead, searching for an invisible rhythm. But his blood, his blood is familiar. His ragged breaths. And against any and all reason, to her own annoyance, she feels safe. As if the coven couldn’t come near her, as if Bruce holds no more power over her than a mortal.
She breathes in and sees Louis, his outstretched arm, the agony in his eyes. And behind him, a dazed Madeleine. Madeleine. Madeleine sitting in a café and smiling at her, impossibly happy. The only one who ever understood her, who saw her for her. Who was prepared to die for her, who did…
The burning is stronger now. Claudia breathes, shakily, and cries.
Claudia doesn’t remember falling asleep but when she wakes, she’s burrowed under the blanket.
Inside her, there’s a terrible hollow feeling and she knows why but she doesn’t dare think of it. Instead, she throws the blanket off.
The room is dark and empty. Lestat has shoved a wardrobe in front of the window. But he’s not here.
Claudia tries to feel her legs. It hurts. But the bones seem to be set right. She thinks of the months it took Louis to recover from when Lestat dropped him and it spurs on her hatred of him. She hates herself, too, for letting him hold her as if he was still her father and she was still a child.
On the bedside table, there’s a glass filled with a red liquid. Claudia is hungry and she downs it all without thinking.
Immediately, she wants to throw it back up.
It’s Lestat’s blood. The taste lingers in her mouth, metallic and sweet and it’s hard to swallow. She tries anyway, again and again.
His blood comes with flashes of memory. Claudia herself opening her eyes in wonder, burning orange. A fire flaming high. Claudia skipping through the house. A dark room filled with blonde corpses. Claudia mocking him with blood on her white dress. A blindingly bright sunray cracking Louis’s skin and turning him to ash.
Claudia takes the glass and throws it across the room. It breaks into thousands of pieces and then it’s all quiet again, so Claudia can hear her own broken breaths.
Lestat comes back later. He has an unconscious man slung over his shoulder and drops him next to Claudia’s bed.
She holds his gaze. “I don’t want your blood. I don’t want nothing from you.”
Lestat looks back at her. He strikes her as a dog suddenly, sad and innocent with big wet eyes. He’s not though. He looks frail and weak but he was still cruel enough to give her his blood.
“But you’ll heal faster.” he says quiet.
“I don’t care. Give me your blood again and I’ll kill you.”
Lestat turns away politely as she painstakingly works herself into a sitting position from where she can latch onto the neck of the unconscious man and drink.
When she’s done, she shoves the body over. It crashes to the ground and Lestat flinches.
“And maybe shower, yeah? You’re filthy.” she remarks tonelessly.
He picks the dead man up and leaves.
Claudia spends her days sleeping. Every evening, Lestat brings her a body to drain. Then he vanishes. Claudia has no idea where he goes but she doesn’t care. He can fuck off for all she cares.
In all her life, Claudia’s always had a goal. Survive, at first. Then, for four happy years, it was to have fun. Until she realized how small and stifled her life really was. Then, it was to find other vampires. Establish herself in the coven. And again: have fun. Travel the world. Spend the days curled up with Madeleine in a coffin or anywhere they could find shelter from the sun. Spend nights hunting together, exploring vibrant cities and all the hidden corners no one else cared to see. Talk, hours upon hours, about everything that came to mind. Madeleine was endlessly fascinated with Claudia’s home in New Orleans and the garbled French they spoke there and Claudia’s childhood, even if it wasn’t much fun. Claudia confided things to her she previously only told her diaries. Useless diaries that couldn’t comprehend or talk back.
Madeleine could. Madeleine could so beautifully, so bitingly sarcastic and unpitying.
Now: nothing. Survive, yes, but to what end? Search for vampires, again? Find good ones, only to have them burnt, again? An endless cycle, again and again, find, befriend, lose, Charlie and Madeleine and Louis.
Or maybe kill Lestat. For everything he did to Louis and everything he did to Claudia and everything he’d have done to Madeleine, had he gotten close. Or no: her death was his fault, too.
Kill Lestat and then what? Kill Bruce, too? Every evil vampire in the world?
There’s nothing. No purpose.
One day, Lestat comes in without body. He gets a glass from the cupboard, cuts his wrist and squeezes his blood into it.
Immediately, Claudia sits up and backs away until her back hits the wall. When he turns, she almost hisses at him.
“Please,” Lestat says and he almost sounds desperate, “you have to drink. I haven’t found any mortal but you still have to drink.”
She doesn’t recognize him anymore. The dog Lestat. Big wet eyes, groveling at her feet. He disgusts her. He’s no father. He’s a child himself and Claudia feels grown and cruel, the mother sending her child away when it asks for love.
“Never knew you were a bad hunter. And I said I don’t want it.”
“You have to.” Lestat tells her, pleading. He offers her the glass, a trembling hand outstretched. She sees Louis’s ring again.
“Do you want to force me to do it again? Like you did when I was turned? Open the dead girl’s mouth and drip it in. No matter if she can’t say no.”
Lestat grows pale. He smiles, suddenly, humorlessly. Turns again. He’s manic, sets the glass down, opens a cupboard, gets another, slashes his wrists, both of them. Begins to drip it in, then stops too soon, gets another glass while he’s still bleeding and makes a mess of the counter and the floor.
Claudia watches him silently. Lestat is muttering something in French, too fast for her to understand and his voice goes up and down, up and down like a ship at sea.
He tries to fill another glass but the blood flow has slowed to a trickle and he claws at his throat, instead, opens it up. A wretched gasp escapes him as he bends forward, catches himself on the counter.
It’s a red waterfall, filling the glasses, splattering on the floor. He’s draining himself dry, Claudia realizes, but she doesn’t get why.
She doesn’t feel her legs as she slowly stands up. But she manages to hobble over to him, bracing herself on the furniture as she passes.
The floor is sticky and slippery. She holds herself up on the edge of the counter.
“What are you doing?” she grits out through the exertion.
Lestat’s eyes wander from left to right wildly, unseeing.
“You need the blood, c’est mon sang, tu dois boire.” he gasps out.
He reminds her of the night when they killed him. If she let him, he’d do it himself this time. Or something close to it. But again, Lestat has withheld. And with him useless, she can’t know it.
“What’s with the coven? You take care of that?”
Lestat shakes his head, all while babbling “No, yeah, right, right.”
His eyes find her. He still looks crazed and it takes a lot for Claudia not to flinch back. But he makes no motion to grab her.
“Tu me détéste, non? Tu a réussi à me détester. »
Claudia doesn’t know what to say to that. There’s still blood pouring from Lestat’s neck.
She doesn’t want to do it. It’s so far beyond her. He’s right: she does hate him. She considers telling him that he doesn’t have to worry, it’s easy to hate him. But instead, she cuts her own palm and puts it over the wound.
Lestat looks at her incredulously, with too wide eyes. But his breathing starts to sound normal, even if he’s still paler than usual.
“Yes.” Claudia says. “I fucking hate you.”
Lestat starts to cry. “Merci,” he whispers, “merci beaucoup.”
This is the first time Claudia seriously lets herself consider that Lestat didn’t want Louis and Madeleine to burn. That maybe, he truly didn’t save her just to let her suffer.
It’s foreign to her. She almost has an immediate gag reflex reaction to it. A complete refusal to let herself think this is even possible.
But there’s three glasses on the counter filled with Lestat’s blood. There’s a double-digit number of dead people somewhere that Lestat brought here for her. Like a parent bird bringing their fledgling worms. And isn’t that a nice comparison. Claudia the frail little birdie. The fledgling vampire. I see the best of my vampiric self in her, Lestat said. Infant death. Evil of my evil.
“Did you kill the coven?” Claudia asks again.
Lestat shakes his head, his eyes red-rimmed.
“We gotta kill them?” she asks.
Lestat shakes his head again. “They will not bother us anymore. I threatened them with mass destruction. Armand knows I have the blood of Akasha in me.”
“Whatever that means.” Claudia sighs. “Okay, here’s how it’s gonna go from now on. You stop wallowing. Get yourself together and be a 200-year-old vampire with Akasha’s blood in you or whatever. And tell me everything.”
Lestat straightens. Claudia is tempted to slap him. But it isn’t nice to kick somebody while they’re down. Normally, Claudia wouldn’t care, but right now she’s tired of it. The misery.
“I can’t.” Lestat says quietly.
“What do you mean you-“
Lestat nods over to the glasses with his blood. “See for yourself.”
“Great, now you’ve started manipulating again.” Claudia snipes. But she reaches over and grabs a glass nevertheless.
Maybe she should’ve sat down first. Her recently healed knees almost buckle as the sight of Louis dissolving into ash greets her.
It fades but comes back stronger when she takes another sip.
Distantly, she registers Lestat ushering her back over to the bed. But she’s already seeing Louis again, his face distorted in anguish. His familiar features falling apart. Then he’s suddenly closer, looking up at her desperately. His hand’s clutching her arm but it isn’t her arm; it’s Lestat’s. Dark ash stains the fabric of his sleeve.
Louis is silently begging, mouth half-open. Falling to his knees. Dust coming off him and dancing in the sunlight like desert sand in a light breeze.
Then he crumbles down into ash, right in Claudia’s- Lestat’s arms.
The flakes coming off of Lestat’s own exposed hands mingle with what’s left of Louis. And a shirt, pants, Lestat digging through the dirt, searching for Louis underneath all the lifeless soot. But he’s not there; there’s only the ring suddenly glinting in the sun.
Claudia comes back into herself violently. The images dissipate but the feeling stays. Lestat’s feeling. Her own. Doesn’t matter, it’s all the same.
With mounting horror, she realizes she told Lestat to wash Louis off. And he did. He just did it.
She’s angry at him again, for letting the remnants of Louis just go down the drain. ‘Did you ever actually care about him?’ she wants to say. Hateful words. But she can’t get them out. What would it help? Louis is gone.
“What’s with Madeleine?” Claudia asks with a rough voice.
Lestat’s sitting on the only chair of the room. His eyes are dim but he doesn’t look crazy anymore. The front of his shirt is stiff with his blood.
“She burnt quickly. I think she didn’t feel the pain as fiercely.” As Louis goes unsaid.
Claudia lies back down and throws the blanket over her head.
She looks into the darkness, throat dry even though she’s drunken blood. Her eyes, too. They’re dry. So dry they itch.
The next time she wakes up, Lestat is gone again. She goes to get another glass of blood because she’s kinda hungry. This time, she sees his turning and it reminds her of Bruce. She feels unmoored, watched from every corner of the room so she goes right back into the bed and hides under the covers and wraps her arms around her knees.
When she feels the phantom touch of fingers trailing up her leg, she gets up again and drinks the last glass.
It must’ve been the first one he tried to give her, before she provoked him. This one is filled with bright and easy memories of Louis and Claudia. This time at Rue Royale when Claudia’s objective had been to have fun.
Playing catch in the yard and almost running into the wall because she hadn’t quite mastered super speed yet. Louis and Claudia obviously speaking telepathically even though Lestat could not hear. Louis reading Claudia a book while she boredly traced the pattern on the rug. Going hunting, Claudia lighting up with joy and pride.
This time when Claudia creeps back to bed, she feels small and alone, caught still in the memory of the happy years and secretly mourning all that is eternally lost.
Lestat doesn’t show up for three days. When he does, he’s dressed in a fine suit and carries two big men. He knocks on her bedframe as he passes and sets down the bodies before turning to her with a flourish.
There’s a smile on his face, satisfied and joyful. He looks just like he did in New Orleans.
“Come now, ma petite. Eat up. We don’t want to let this all go to waste, do we?”
Claudia hesitates and regards him with skepticism. He’s too cheerful. And too nice. Drawn himself back up into the untouchable sophisticated gentleman vampire.
Claudia begins to drink and Lestat continues chattering. “I’ve been ruminating on an idea for quite some time now and since you’re almost healed up now, I believe we can start transforming the theoretical into the practical. There’s a ship leaving port at dawn, we can go aboard and hide under deck for the duration of the day and after, well, I presume there will be quite a wide-spread array of options available to us, food-wise. We will be able to visit Italy, Greece, Turkey…”
Claudia lets the dead body fall to the floor and looks up to Lestat. He’s expectant, confident he won’t be shot down, for whatever reason.
“Are you serious?”
Lestat entirely disregards her. “Well, since I know you desire to see the world, why not start as soon as possible? There are great musicians everywhere, I am sure we can learn a thing or two from them and I might be able to start working on-“
“We? Who told you I want to go anywhere with you? You killed Louis and Madeleine.”
Lestat looks away and for a second, Claudia can see a flash of hurt and insecurity in his eyes.
“I didn’t. I tried to prevent it and I could not.”
“Then why even come?”
Lestat looks at her again and now, there’s a glint of something fierce in him.
“Had I not come, you would have all died. You think the coven would’ve refrained from sentencing you had I not been there? No. They were determined the first time they set eyes on you.”
Claudia doesn’t know whether to believe it. Maybe it doesn’t matter. What has happened has happened and they’re the ones standing in front of each other now. Still, there’s another thing that doesn’t make sense.
“Then why save me? Why not Louis? You hate me. I plotted to kill you and convinced Louis to go along with it. You said it yourself; it’s never been about me.”
Lestat sighs dismissively, looks away again. “When I forced them to spare you, I thought I still had enough strength to do the same for Louis.”
Claudia watches him and is surprised to realize it’s a lie.
Lestat gets Claudia a cane so she can learn to walk again. He hovers over her as she tries to take more than three consecutive steps and it’s so reminiscent of Louis’s smothering parenting that she snaps at him to leave her alone. He does; goes to sit in his chair again and pretends to read the newspaper he brought at her request.
Claudia lets herself admit that she’s gonna stay with him. What else should she do? Someone is better than no one. And Lestat is surprisingly nice to her; does what she tells him to for the most part and since he’s come back after his outburst, he’s mostly sane. Doesn’t cry or beg her to drink his blood, keeps his clothes clean, talks quick and eloquent and walks weird like he always did before, all over the top and extravagant.
But he’s also clingier than before. Where he used to shove her aside to get to Louis, he now approaches her. He starts staying the days, sleeping in a pile of blankets in the wardrobe.
When he brings up the ship again, two tickets in hand and grinning proudly, Claudia grows angry.
“How can you do this?” she spits. “Pretend they never existed?”
Lestat falters, his smile turning sad. “Oh, ma petite.” he sighs.
It sounds condescending. It’s also very unlike Lestat, who would have sooner had a shouting fit had she brought it up back in New Orleans. Never one to talk about his feelings.
Now, he keeps her gaze.
“I have just learned how not to show it. You will, too, in time. I will teach you how to endure.”
Claudia ponders if this is insulting. Stands and rips up the tickets instead.
After that, the proposition of leaving on the ship is quietly dropped. Lestat doesn’t speak of it again and neither does Claudia.
One day, almost a month after the trial, Lestat brings her her food and perches on the chair with tension in his shoulders.
Claudia pulls the woman up into her lap and exposes her neck. Then, she pauses. “What is it?”
Lestat considers her. He’s serious today. One of his nails taps on the table impatiently. “After you’ve eaten.”
Claudia complies and sinks her fangs into the woman’s neck. She tastes sweet. Claudia idly wonders why Lestat always brings them in unconscious. Why not put them under a spell? Maybe she should try to hunt herself again, just to get some of the thrill back.
She puts the woman beside her once she’s done. The woman’s still alive; there’s a sluggish heartbeat.
Claudia raises her eyebrows at Lestat.
He sighs, as if it costs him a great deal to talk to her. Even though it’s clear he intended to.
“I found the apartment you stayed in with Louis. I was thinking about paying it a little visit and thought it polite to ask if you wanted to come with.”
Somehow, this hasn’t crossed her mind. She looks down on the woman, her perpetually rosy cheeks and blonde hair that glints red under the lamplight.
“I want to leave Paris after we go.”
The apartment is unchanged from the last time Claudia has seen it. No one seems to have bothered to come by and clean it out – or the absence of its owners hasn’t been noticed yet. Whatever it is, it has the devastating side-effect that it still feels lived-in.
Louis has left a book open on the table and there’s a few photographs of his tucked in the side. One of his jackets is on the hook. The door of the little wood burning stove is still open, as if Louis has left in a hurry.
Claudia knows this space. She looks around and sees Louis still lounging back on a chair or standing on the balcony looking out into the night.
Lestat doesn’t. He surveys the room as if trying to take it all in. And he’s quiet again. It’s not a good sign if he doesn’t even care to keep his façade up.
Claudia goes to open her own coffin. She accidentally left a book in there that Madeleine gifted her and now she craves the little parts of Madeleine she can still find. Maybe there’s an annotated page somewhere in there. Her handwriting, her thoughts, anything. It’s as soothing as it is painful, like rebreaking her legs every time she thinks of it. But she’s an addict, seeking out how to hurt herself again and again.
Claudia finds the book, picks it up, but doesn’t dare open it. Not yet.
As she looks back to Lestat, he’s approached the table and is reading the open book without touching anything. He’s making his way through at a snail’s pace, even though Claudia would’ve never called him a slow reader before. Maybe he’s trying to savor the words the same way Claudia would the ones in her book, maybe he’s imagining Louis as Louis read them a month prior.
It’s still a foreign concept to Claudia. Louis just gone. He can’t be. He’s been the steadiest thing in her life. Everything else has changed, time and time again and through it all, he’s been the haunted figure at her side. No matter where she went, what she did, she only had to open her mind to catch a whiff of his presence. Idle thoughts displayed to her, too, because he trusted her. Calling out for her, admonishing her, begging her to come back. Never once shutting her out, no matter how angry he was at her. It didn’t last long anyway, his anger. He was like a tick, always clinging on.
It annoyed Claudia, once. When she wanted to be independent and he was more overbearing than loving. But it could benefit her too, made him much more malleable.
Now, when Claudia casts her mind out, his presence is just gone. The absence is so disturbing Claudia keeps herself closed off most times, because it prevents her from feeling any vampire at all. When she does it, she can almost imagine she’s run away again and is just punishing him with her silence. It works only so long; sooner or later, habit kicks in and she searches for him, just to see what he’s thinking about. And he isn’t there. Instead, there’s only Lestat’s stormy aura ghosting around her, but his mind is closed and he feels different. Despite his heartbeat reminding her of Louis’s, he is different.
Claudia traces over the book to pull herself back from those thoughts. They’re no good.
When she looks up, Lestat is at Louis’s coffin. He kneels down and carefully picks up the photographs Louis always keeps there. Looks at them silently for a long time.
Claudia suddenly feels weird watching him. She’s seeing herself from the outside, motionlessly observing Lestat. It’s so strange that she’s allowing this. Lestat in the one place where she thought she’d be free of him. Touching their stuff. And she isn’t even plotting to kill him again.
“You look happy here.” Lestat remarks and it compels her closer to him.
Lestat’s holding up the picture where they first went hunting with the coven. She’s smiling wide, showing teeth, exhilarated. Claudia remembers Louis with his camera taking this picture, eyes constantly wandering over to Armand. Armand, slick as anything, smiling back at Louis, flirting with him, acting all sweet while he never regarded her with anything but bored indifference or contempt. Who threatened her and went on to conspire Madeleine and Louis’s deaths.
“Yeah. I was. Didn’t know they were gonna try and kill me yet.”
Lestat puts the pictures down. Sends her a fleeting, almost hesitant look and then gets into the coffin.
Claudia wants to stop him. It’s weird. But she can also remember Louis and Lestat sharing a coffin back home frequently and how Louis carried Lestat with him for so long in Europe and she can’t say for sure this isn’t what Louis would’ve wanted. Maybe she’s betraying him by letting it happen, by letting Lestat take over him again, even in death. But she doesn’t know and doesn’t have the strength to fight it so she lets him curl up there and bury his head in Louis’s pillow.
Does it even still smell like him? A month is a long time.
Claudia goes to find the darkroom. It’s empty. But at the end of the hallway there are pictures hung up to dry and Claudia takes them down. Most of them are of the city and random people. One is of Claudia. And there, in the back, she would’ve almost missed it, is one of her and Madeleine.
It’s immediately post-transformation, Madeleine stuck in the stage where everything is beautiful and overwhelming. Her eyes are changed already and she’s looking at Claudia and smiling widely and they’re holding hands. There’s such pure wonder and devotion in Madeleine’s eyes.
Claudia has to swallow the tears that want to come. Takes the photograph down more tentatively than any of the other ones. Carries it back to the living room.
Lestat hasn’t moved. Claudia could almost think he’s dead. But vampires don’t need to breathe and are also impossibly hard to kill so she sits down in her own coffin without checking.
She traces Madeleine’s features with her eyes. The bit of blood stuck on the corner of her mouth. The way her hair falls down her back and over her shoulder. The details in her eyes. Suddenly, her enhanced vampiric vision isn’t good enough, the photograph too small and she wants to remove herself from the picture just so she can see Madeleine better.
Claudia should’ve taken more. Maybe Louis did take more, Claudia didn’t even know this one existed, there could be others. But she doesn’t want to search for more and be disappointed so she lies back in her coffin with the photograph and her book and alternates reading and looking at it well into sunrise.
Sometime in between, Lestat has begun crying in Louis’s coffin.
Claudia finds two other pictures of Madeleine, one with both of them and the other with Madeleine alone. In the same pile, she also discovers the few pictures she took of Louis, as well as one of Armand. She rips that one up, keeps Louis’s pictures for herself and, because Lestat still hasn’t left Louis’s coffin and she pities him, she graciously lets him have two.
Under other circumstances, it would’ve been amusing how quickly he sits up and how reverently he cradles the pictures, as if they’re newborn babes. She stops him when he moves to trace Louis’s face with his fingers. One, because it’s weird, and two, because it could damage the photograph. Lestat looks disproportionally spooked at that and treats them even gentler.
They stay another two days. Claudia trains walking. Lestat goes out and when he returns, he carries the keys to an expensive car.
They pack up every trace they can find of Louis and Madeleine and get in the car.
Once they leave the city, Lestat stops at the side of the road and lets her drive. It reminds her of their driving lessons when she was young and, judging from the look on his face, Lestat’s thinking the same.
She’s traveling again. She’s been traveling again and again all her life; first alone, then with Louis, then Madeleine, now Lestat.
“You know, a month ago I thought I had already experienced the worst thing that could ever happen to me. I’d say I don’t expect you to understand but I guess you do.” She pauses, takes a breath. It’s hard to get out. Lestat remains quiet.
“Now, I don’t know if I even want to travel anymore. I just want to curl up and die.”
The steering wheel groans in her grip. She could rip it out easily, just as she can break human bone without effort. There’s no purpose. All these mementos of Louis and Madeleine in their bags and still, not them.
“I have, once.” Lestat confesses.
It surprises her, Lestat actually talking about his past.
“You always wake up again. And it always gets worse. What to do but endure?”
“But endure for what? To what end? Until the sun takes over night and kills us all?”
From the periphery, she can see Lestat turning his head.
“I have… I have tried to bury myself to sleep for another century or two, in vain. By nightfall, I always found myself back up. Because I knew you were hurt sitting in the room I confined you to and needed to feed.”
This, too, sounds like a confession. Claudia turns to look at him because she’s so blindsided by it.
Lestat’s eyes are brimming with tears again.
“You are my daughter, Claudia.” he grits out, almost angry. “I cannot let you go, no matter how hard I try. But I want to give you space. So if you want to bury yourself forever, I will show you how. Know only that I will be resting a stone’s throw away in the dirt.”
A beat passes. Lestat grabs her by the chin and forcefully turns her head.
“Look at the road, Claudia.” he admonishes her.
She’s too stunned to snap at him for it.
They get through still-destroyed Germany. Lestat is powerful enough to make any authorities walk the other way.
The blood in Germany is worse than in Paris. Many are homeless. It doesn’t look all that different from East Europe during the war.
Claudia urges them to go fast. Taunting death by only stopping to find shelter when the first sunrays touch the grey rabble. Continuing on while the sky is still pink and red.
In Denmark, they board a ship that gets them over to Sweden.
Neither of them can speak Swedish but the country has survived the war better than most and the blood is good. And Claudia is quick at learning.
It’s nice to get away from all the misery when Claudia still feels it so acutely in herself.
Lestat rents a room for them in the most expensive hotel they can find. People look at them strange; Claudia has an American accent and Lestat a French one; Claudia is black and he is white. But for that amount of money, no one asks. If they did, Lestat would claim she’s a misplaced American child he took under his wing.
Their room is huge. Decorated with golden stucco, lavish blankets and drapes that have varying thicknesses for the windows. Claudia immediately draws all of them shut. The fabric is impossibly soft to the touch.
It inevitably reminds her of their townhouse on Rue Royale, which she called home longer than any other place. For a second, the glow of the new intermingling with the old lets her forget about it all and she twirls to take it all in like she did back as a young girl, wondering on all those luxurious things she suddenly got to call her own.
Through an open arched double door, Claudia can see into the next room. The center of it is taken up by a huge piano.
It ignites a disproportionate amount of excitement in her. She hasn’t played in so long and though the memories were tainted by the end, there was a time where she loved to do it.
She runs over, slides onto the bench and calls “Wanna play, Lestat?” over her shoulder, but the rest of his name gets stuck in her throat and she ends up calling him Les.
She falters in her excitement.
But Lestat is already there, sitting down on the bench next to her like nothing’s wrong.
“What do you want us to play?” he asks mildly.
They do happy, easy songs and then Lestat shows her a lullaby, something simple and sweet, nothing like the beautiful, masterful pieces he usually likes to play.
The next night, they go buy clothes and Lestat compels the store clerk to leave them alone and locks the door so they have the whole space for themselves.
Claudia picks out some dresses and Lestat goes with her through the women’s section, holding up suggestions.
Claudia finds one that looks painfully similar to one Madeleine worked on in her shop and she stands and looks at it for a long while, tears gathering in her eyes. She wants to buy it. She wants to go back to Paris to get all the dresses from Madeleine’s shop. But she’s had it closed for months now. Someone probably already stole everything.
“What do you think?” Lestat interrupts her thoughts.
Claudia turns around and Lestat is standing in front of her in a dress, striking an elegant pose. He looks so silly she almost laughs because the dress is too tight around the shoulders, too loose around the waist and then she almost cries again because Madeleine could’ve made it perfect for him.
“You look ridiculous.” she tells him through the tears and then giggles despite herself.
Lestat scoffs and flips his hair with a decisive head movement. “No taste.” he tuts.
When they leave the shop, Lestat tells her about this house he found while strolling around at night and that they could move in soon.
Claudia picks out a sleek black coffin with green decorations outside and red satin inside. It reminds her of both Madeleine and Louis.
Lestat lets her decorate the living room while he does the dining room and Claudia gets boring chairs because she knows he’ll hate them.
At daytime, when she’s lying in her new coffin and looking up at the beautifully painted white ceiling, she realizes how much has changed.
A week ago, they arrived in Sweden.
A month ago, they departed Paris.
Two months ago, the worst thing that could’ve ever happened, happened.
And now?
She had fun this past week. Louis and Madeleine are dead but she had fun still. With Lestat, the one vampire she swore to hate. She hunted with him all throughout Germany and Denmark and now Sweden. It’s almost as nice as hunting with the coven, inventive, and it makes her feels powerful. She can feel Lestat’s joy in it; the vampire pride they both share. They have a piano Lestat plays and Claudia is allowed to, as well. He teaches her again. And she drives whenever there are no people around to see her doing it and it makes her feel her age. Lestat treats her as an adult, too.
With a painful jolt, she realizes how much Louis would’ve loved to see this. Claudia and Lestat interacting without spewing thinly veiled insults. Claudia can’t remember when this started, but they’re getting along. And he can’t witness it.
Claudia gets out of her coffin and wanders out of her room and through the hallway barefoot.
It looks similar enough that Claudia can pretend she’s back home and going to her parent’s room after a bad nightmare to slip into Louis’s coffin. This isn’t a nightmare but the sadness she’s known ever since the trial comes over her still. And it makes her feel just like the nightmares did: like she’s alone in the world.
These times, it’s hard to remember it wasn’t all good. That she hated Louis just as much as she loved him sometimes. Resented him and Lestat for putting themselves above her, looking to each other first in a burning room. But the resentment’s bled away; she had Madeleine. And since Louis is gone, there is no one for Lestat to look to but her. Only the sadness stays.
There’s only one coffin in the room. She hesitates in the doorway and then sneaks over.
Uncle Les opens his coffin before she even reaches it.
“What is it, ma petite?”
It’s not really a nickname he’s ever called her but he’s weirdly intent on it now. She still starts to cry because she feels small again, fourteen, when she hasn’t been that age in so long.
“I miss Daddy Lou.” she whispers through the tears.
Uncle Les makes space for her without a word and she climbs in beside him and cries into his chest. She can feel the shuddering breath that goes through him and knows he must’ve started crying, too. But he starts combing through her hair and she feels safe again, even though she’s never before slept in Uncle Les’s coffin, was never allowed to.
“Me too, my little milkweed, me too.” he reassures her quietly.