Chapter Text
Armand walked across the second floor of Lestat’s decrepit house, carefully avoiding the holes where the floorboards had rotted away. New Orleans was always and perpetually damp, as she’d discovered. She walked to the once-grand French balcony doors, now hanging loose in the frame. Most of the glass panes were shattered, whipped around and beaten by one storm or another.
She stopped, just out of sight, and peered through the empty panes of the door. There was a mortal on the sidewalk below, but Armand had initially registered the girl’s presence only as background noise, just another of the many mortals who came in the night to whisper about the ghosts in this house.
And then –
This is it. It matches the address on the public records. And besides, Louise described it perfectly.
Armand had risen, immediately, intrigued. Now, she watched, stared down at the mortal on the street whose mind spoke Louise’s name. The moon was full, though of course Armand would have been able to see with her vampire eyes, regardless. But it shone down on the mortal girl; on her blonde hair, the lenses of her glasses, the metal frame of her chair.
She began to move, turning the wheels with her hands. Armand watched, fascinated. The iron gate, of course, was unlocked, and the girl pushed it open easily enough. She continued into the garden, out of view of the balcony. Armand turned, walked deeper into the house.
I’m gonna get stuck in this, the girl thought. Armand looked at the garden through her eyes: grown over with weeds and once-cultivated vines, no path to be seen. She drew a pocketknife from somewhere, began hacking away at the mess. I’ve got to get inside, she thought, If I can just find Lestat…
Armand paused, stood still at the top of the stairs. So this mortal knew of both Louise and Lestat? She had intended to kill her, perhaps to terrorize her a bit first; mortals visiting haunted old houses so loved to be terrorized, she’d found. Now, though…she peered into her mind, curious.
The girl was half-mad, her thoughts scattered and incoherent. She was a journalist, or something very like it. Armand saw Louise, sedate and sorrowful, then enraged and vicious. Louise, hauling her up by the shoulders, tearing like an animal at her neck. Louise, releasing her back into the chair, drained and half-dead. Will I die? A bloody smile. I don’t know. Then days, frantic days and nights, duplicating the sound of the vampire’s voice on little plastic boxes, then sending them away in the mail. Pleading with county offices, poring over tax records for the name she sought: Lestat de Lioncourt, the vampire who had made Louise.
She’d reached the front door, leaving a chlorophyll-green massacre behind her. The rusted lock crumbled with the lightest push of her hand, and the door swung open, creaking on its hinges.
This is like a horror movie, the girl thought. This is where I die. But I won’t, will I? This is what Louise wanted, it must be. Why else had she given me so many clues to find this house, to find Lestat?
Armand stood watching, intrigued, as she leaned back to get her front wheels over the short and crumbling doorstep. The house was dark, and Armand was masked by shadows, even as the girl produced a light from her pocket, a stick the size of her hand.
And if I die? Well, what else can I do? I know things now, things I can never unlearn. I want to live forever, I want to know it all!
So tenacious, this mortal. Facing death, seeking it out. Defiant even still. Proud, greedy. So very mortal.
Much of the ground floor was empty, nothing but stacks of books lining the walls, as high and solid as wallpaper. Louise’s books, forgotten and mildewing. No human could or would have done such a mad and methodical thing, she thought, the mortal girl.
When she’d explored all, found nothing of what she sought, she came to a stop before the stairs. They were rotted-out, falling in on themselves.
I could try to haul myself up, she thought, shining her light along the railing. Armand stepped back, just out of view. How many steps is that? Fourteen? Fifteen? I could make it. I can handle fifteen steps. Maybe. I couldn’t do it twice, couldn’t get back down again. But, well, I guess I’ll either be dead or a vampire, so it won’t matter. If Lestat’s even up there. I might collapse halfway up and die anyways, in this grimy old house.
She dropped the light onto her lap and rolled back a little, clearly irritated. She dug around in her bag, the leather satchel hung across the back of the chair. She produced a metal box, then more of those plastic recordings that Armand had seen in her mind. Perhaps the phonograph of this new century? She watched through the girl’s eyes as she pushed one of the smaller boxes into an opening, closed it. Pressed a button.
Louise’s voice began to play, crackly and unclear, though of course Armand recognized it. “I was twenty-four years old when I became a vampire, and the year was seventeen ninety-one.”
Another voice, the girl’s voice: “How did it come about?”
The girl leaned over the arm of her chair, chin in her hand. The recording played for an hour, maybe two, until it cut itself off, clicking. Instead of inserting a second, the girl silenced the clicking, then considered the stairs again. She was slower, now, fatigue evident in her movements.
Could a vampire walk down those stairs? If I – would it – Christ, Dani, don’t say fix. My knees are killing me. I don’t think I could make it up five stairs right now, let alone fifteen. And I’m – God, I’m so fucking tired. I’ve been tired for ages. Is Louise ever tired? Is Lestat?
Armand, intrigued, leaned forward. When the girl removed her glasses to rub at her eyes, Armand moved, appearing at the base of the stairs in an instant.
“Are you going to sit there all night?” she asked, amused.
The girl jumped a little, scrambling to push her glasses back on. She rolled back, instinctively distancing herself from Armand, even before she’d seen her.
Armand followed her, stepping into the light, the sliver of moonlight that shone through a hole in the ceiling.
“Armand,” she breathed, eyes wide.
Armand said nothing, but tilted her head.
Scared the shit out of me. How did she move so fast? Vampire, right. Christ.
“If you’re looking for Lestat, I’m afraid she isn’t here.”
The girl’s brow furrowed, ever-so-slightly. “Huh?” she asked, eloquently.
Armand considered her. Sleep, she sent, an order more than a suggestion.
The girl’s body obeyed her; her eyes fell closed almost immediately, and she slumped down in her chair, head lolling against her chest. Her hair fell against her forehead, limp and ash-blonde, like a shadow of the blonde-headed vampire she sought.
Armand stared at her for a moment. She considered killing her then and there, leaving her body to rot with the house. She strode over, plucked the modern phonograph from her lap. The buttons were clear enough, but the symbols were unfamiliar to her. She pressed one after the other, but the only result she could produce was the same clicking that the girl had earlier silenced. Her brow furrowed, a little frustrated, and she put it back into the leather bag, then slung the whole satchel over her arm. Whatever she did with the mortal, the physical preservation of Louise’s voice, Louise’s story, would not leave her hands.
She looked, then, at the girl. Such a shame. Perhaps she ought to keep her, just for a little while. It had been so long since she’d had a pet, after all.
The girl slumped a little further, collapsing over her lap.
Armand reached out, pushed her back to see her face in the moonlight. She tilted her head, watching her. Then she arched over her, craned her neck to put her lips over the still-healing wound that Louise had left at the base of the girl’s throat. She would have to be careful. There wasn’t much blood to take, with the underfed state of this mortal. Foolish.
Stolen blood was a particular sort of sweet, but Armand regretted that she hadn’t taken it while the girl had been conscious. She loved a secondhand adrenaline rush. She closed her eyes, sinking into it. Show me who you are, girl, show me why I shouldn’t kill you now and be done with it all.
Memories, flashes of a life half lived.
The girl was young, younger than Armand ever remembered being yet older than she’d ever been. She saw the sun, golden and bright and blinding, and childish little hands on a wooden stick, cracking loud against a ball; running, pain flooding her limbs, then sand in her mouth, under her hands. A dog brushing past her in a park, sending her falling to the grass. Laying in a bed, pain radiating through her joints.
A wheelchair, grey and sterile. A man – her father? – sliding cans of spray paint across a table; teal blue and shimmering like the Mediterranean waves in Armand’s oldest memories.
Her own face in a bathroom mirror, scissors hacking madly at her hair; it looked terrible, but she smiled anyways. A hallway full of teenagers, all of them towering over her; hands on the back of her chair, arresting her movement; irritation fading as the hand moves across her neck; you’re coming to my party tonight, right Dani? A dark room, standing on unsteady legs to press the girl against the wall, to kiss her. Later, sitting to pull jeans back over her hips; laughter, soft and feminine; That was fun, but I mean, I’m not like a lesbo or anything; a smile, hand running through short hair, Hey, course not baby.
Graduation, forcing herself across the stage on foot to avoid an argument, collapsing into her chair on the other side. An older woman crying; her mother? A gift wrapped in silver paper, a metal box; the modern phonograph that Armand now held.
A dark bar, hazy, and Louise’s beautiful face appearing in the shadows. How much tape do you have? Enough for the story of a life?
Armand pulled away before she killed the girl by mistake. She swiped with her thumb over the bite, cleaner and neater than Louise’s, and studied the girl, pale and deeply asleep. Then she readjusted the satchel over her shoulder, collected the girl in her arms, and moved with preternatural speed to an old cellar she knew well.
She set the girl down, limp against the damp stone, and watched her for a moment. The girl didn’t move. Armand stepped back, closing her in, and considered the girl’s bag. It was leather, well-worn and sturdy. Not Italian leather, but nice all the same.
Armand recalled the chair, then, the sea-blue chair with the chipping paint and the beaded bracelets tied around the left arm. She returned with speed to Lestat’s old house, bent beside the chair to examine it. She reached out a hand, delicately turned the wheel, fascinated as the chair moved forward. There were metal nubs on the back, something sawed off and carefully filed down. Handles, perhaps, unwanted?
The sun was approaching the horizon, sooner than she would have liked. She felt its pull, even now. Irritating, sometimes incredibly so. She gathered the chair, hoisting it above her shoulder with little to no effort. It was light, lighter than she’d expected. Something fell to the floor, rolled away, but Armand didn’t care to find it. The beaded bracelets clicked and swung as she moved.
She didn’t go into the earth that night, but slept in another walled-in cellar, dark and forgotten and blessedly free from damp.
When she woke, the chair was there, glinting like the sea, even in the dark. Armand scowled at it, but it made no reply.
She turned, instead, to the leather satchel. She upturned it, pouring its contents onto the packed-earth floor. She knelt over the little pile, intrigued. A book, cheaply produced and dog-eared. A name scribbled in the front cover, illegible. A little tin of pills, unlabeled. Armand sniffed at them, but they were odorless.
A tube of something, perhaps a lip balm. Four pencils. A pen devoid of ink. A little booklet, dark blue with some sort of crest on the front, bearing a grainy photograph, a younger version of the girl smiling widely; her glasses reflected the light of the camera. A pack of cigarettes, nearly empty now.
Two plastic lighters and a metal one, dented beyond use. She picked it up, turned it over. There was an engraving on the back, a flag and a date. She tossed it aside, reached instead for the wallet, a rich brown leather, worn to holes on the edges. She opened it, pulled out a number of little cards. On one of them, a name printed in mechanically-precise letters. Danielle Molloy. State of Connecticut Motor Vehicle Operator’s License. A signature, sloppy and slanted. Childish.
Armand dropped it, bored with the contents, and grabbed the phonograph. She managed to turn it on, then pressed every button until the door at the front opened. She took another of the boxes, replaced the one that had already played, and closed the little door. Another exploration of the buttons produced sound, Louise’s voice washing over her.
“I saw as a vampire,” she said, wistful and soft-spoken. “Lestat was standing again at the foot of the stairs, and I saw her as I could not possibly have seen her before. She had seemed white to me before, starkly white, so that in the night she was almost luminous; and now I saw her filled with her own life and blood; she was radiant, not luminous. And then I saw that not only Lestat had changed, but all things had changed…”
Armand sat, listening, in silence. When the recording had finished, she replaced it with the next, then the next. She passed more than half the night like this, until she found herself listening to Louise’s rage, burned forever into these little plastic boxes.
“What! What!” she demanded, softly at first, then a desperate cry.
“Give it to me!” pleaded the girl. A thumping sound, like her hand on her chest, or the arm of the chair. “Make me a vampire now!”
There was a noise, a commotion. A little squeak. Armand imagined the girl wrenched from her chair, witness in one night to both Louise’s great human sorrow and her great vampire rage. “This is what you want?” she whispered, that beloved voice soft once more. “This…after all I’ve told you…is what you ask for?”
A little cry, something between a laugh and a sob. “You don’t know what human life is like! You’ve forgotten. You don’t even understand the meaning of your own story, what it means to a human being like me.” She was crying, loudly and wetly. Armand cocked her head, listening to it.
“God,” Louise whispered, sounding horrified. Tired.
The girl didn’t notice, or didn’t care. “I beg you…give it all one more chance. One more chance in me!”
“I’ve failed. I have completely failed,” Louise said, and the agony and disappointment in her voice was so unbearable to Armand that she had to shut off the recording, quickly pressing the button to silence it. Horrid, to hear her so desperate, so ruined. That she would confess such a tale to this girl, this undeserving mortal…
Armand put her face in her knees, her arms over her ears.
She sat like that for a long time, a very long time. When the pull of the sun began to grate on her nerves, she untwisted herself to set the mortal’s bag back in order. Then she put all of it on the seat of the chair and pushed it into a corner. She curled up in the opposite corner, as far from it as possible. The wretched things, the mortal accoutrements and the physical record of Louise’s eternal misery.
When Armand woke, she wondered whether her mortal would be alright, alone in the cellar for so long. It was so easy to forget how delicate mortals could be. She climbed out of her place of refuge, into the harsh electric street lights of the modern world, and made for the secret location of the troublesome mortal.
As she grew nearer, she could hear the mortal’s mind, loud and desperate.
I’m gonna die here, the girl thought, though her mind was confused, delirious. On top of everything? Anybody listening? Somebody has to help.
As Armand grew even nearer, she could smell her, even with the wood cellar-door between them. Mortals were such messy creatures. So many fluids.
“Help,” the girl moaned. She seemed to think it was much louder than it was. “Somebody help me.”
Armand almost wished the window wasn’t blocked off. She wondered what the girl looked like, now. If she’d cried all day.
Satisfied that the girl was alive, she rose and traveled through the air to find Louise. Miles and miles, the cold of the clouds whipping around her. The girl had come from the far west, California. Armand would start there. Louise’s mind was quiet, absent, but she was often quiet. She would be found.
The night passed with no sign of her. Armand warmed herself on the blood of two rapists, then hacked them to pieces and watched them burn in the California desert. She slept burrowed in a cave that morning, trying not to think of the wretched Gabrielle.
When she woke, she immediately tensed, her subconscious alerting her to the presence of another.
Peace, Armand, spoke the familiar mind of Louise.
She relaxed. “My love,” she said, standing to put her hands on Louise’s arms, slide them down to her hands. How are you?
Louise studied her, green eyes weary and tired. “I sensed you here, alone in the desert,” she said, instead.
“I was looking for you.”
Louise looked away. “You left me.”
She keened, pained, and gripped her hands tightly. “You were safe. I made sure you were safe.”
Louise bent to press a cold kiss to her brow, then withdrew her hands. “I know, Armand.” She turned to the rest of the cave, walked around. Her hands were in her pockets, stretching out the sweater. “This is beautiful, this desert. Have you seen the flowers that bloom only in the night?”
Armand didn’t understand why they were talking about the desert. “I didn’t come here for flowers,” she said, bluntly. “I was only looking for you.”
Louise eyed her, then shrugged. “I’m alright. I think I need to be alone for a while.”
A while longer? Armand thought, her heart sinking. How long?
Louise shrugged again.
Armand balled her hands into fists. It was hard, sometimes, not to hate Claudia. But then she remembered what a horrible end she’d had at Armand’s own hand, and regret flooded her every nerve. She looked away.
“Someday, Armand,” Louise said, drawing her attention. “I just need to be alone for a while. Maybe I’ll go into the earth.”
You won’t, Armand thought. You never would.
Louise put a hand under her chin, tilted her face up to kiss her. “I’ll be alright,” she said, when they parted. “And so will you. You might even find something you like. Go to the cinema or see a show on Broadway. You might like that.”
“Broadway?” she repeated, bewildered.
When Louise made as if to leave, she twisted her fingers into the stretched-out sweater, clinging desperately. But she couldn’t bring herself to say what she wanted. What would asking do? Louise was right, Armand was the one who had left. She uncurled her fingers, smoothed her hands over the knit fabric. Alright.
Louise studied her. “Alright.”
Then she left, and Armand stood by the entrance of the cave, watching her walk away, slowly like a mortal. When her shadow was nothing more than a spot on the horizon, too far for even vampire ears to spy, Armand walked back into the cave and wailed, gripping at her hair. She yelled and screamed and slammed rocks against the walls and gouged great lines into the floor with her diamond-hard talons. And when she’d rid herself of all the energy, she collapsed into a pile amidst the wreckage, devoid of any feeling at all.
She returned to the captive mortal the next evening, waited just outside the door for a moment, listening.
…couldn’t even get out of here if I tried, she was thinking, miserably.
Armand opened the door. “No one could get out of here if I didn’t want them to.”
Finally come to kill me? she asked, too weak for words.
Armand tilted her head. “Kill you?”
Trace of an accent. Not European; something sharper, yet softer at the same time. Arabic or Greek perhaps, that kind of music. The girl, Danielle, studied her, eyes bleary and red-rimmed behind her glasses. Through her mind, Armand saw amusement at her clothing. Like the imitation of a twentieth-century woman. Like a corpse for the coffin – that sterile, that well prepared.
She looked down at herself, at the suit she’d stolen from a woman she’d killed. A secretary. It fit Armand well, more or less. She looked back at the girl, mystified.
Armand slid the leather satchel from her shoulder, set it onto the ground beside the girl. “Get out,” she said, softly. “Take your tapes with you. They are there. I know of your book. No one will believe it. Now you will go and take these things.”
The girl didn’t move, but her eyes met Armand’s. Then you won’t kill me. And you won’t make me one of you, either. She knew the thoughts were foolish, even as she met Armand’s eyes and thought them anyways, as if in defiance.
“Make you one of us?” Armand asked, narrowing her eyes. After Louise’s violent refusal, the mortal still asked it of another? “Why would I do that? I would not do that to those whom I find to be despicable, whom I would see burning in hell as a matter of course. So why should I do it to an innocent fool like you?”
I want it. She pushed herself up on her hands, leaned back against the wall. Her hand reached, almost absently, for her bag, drawing it into her lap. I want to live forever. I want to be with Louis and with you.
Armand couldn’t help but laugh. She knelt beside the girl, reaching out to grab her chin. She tilted it, looking at her in the dim light that came through the door. “I see why she chose you for her confidante. You are naïve and beautiful.” She clicked her tongue, tapping a forefinger against the girl’s cheek. “But the beauty could be the only reason, you know.”
She was silent, staring at Armand with eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar.
Armand hummed, studying her. Beautiful, indeed. “Your eyes are an unusual color, almost violet. And you are strangely defiant and beseeching in the same breath.”
Suddenly, rage flooded the girl’s mind. Make me immortal – give it to me!
Again, Armand laughed. She released the girl’s chin. “It was all true, what she told you. But no one will ever believe it. And you will go mad in time, from this knowledge.” A sad truth, when Armand considered it.
She shook her head, a little desperately. “No,” she said, barely audible. This is real, it’s all happening. You’re Armand and we’re talking together. And I’m not mad.
“Yes,” she said, slowly. “And I find it rather interesting…interesting that you know my name and that you’re alive. I have never told my name to anyone who is alive.” She hesitated, tapping her thumb against her knee. “I don’t want to kill you,” she said, eventually. “Not just now.”
The girl raised a brow, stubbornly ignoring the fear flaring in her chest. Her eyes raked over Armand, taking her in. A ghastly imitation of the living.
Armand leaned back on her heels. “I am going to let you leave here. I want to follow you, watch you, see where you go.”
The girl huffed a laugh. Go? Where the hell do you expect me to go?
Armand cocked her head. “Anywhere. As long as I find you interesting, I won’t kill you.”
The girl leaned back against the wall, closed her eyes. Right, sure. Just kill me now, make it easier on us both.
Armand laughed, surprised and delighted. The girl’s eyes opened to watch her, fixated on the sharp points of her fangs. “All this, and you give up so easily?”
The girl scowled, opening her mouth as if to attempt speech.
Interrupting whatever she may have said, Armand lunged forward, grabbed her by the collar. She stood, lifting the girl with her, and began to drag her out of the cellar.
“Of course,” she continued, as she ignored the girl’s weak struggles, “I may lose interest altogether and not bother to kill you. That’s always possible. You have to hope in that.”
She dropped her into the sea-blue chair just beyond the stairs, then arched over her, hands on the padded metal arms. She leaned in, until their faces were only inches apart.
“And maybe with luck,” she said, low and quiet, “I’ll lose track of you. I have my limitations, of course. You have the world to roam, and you can move by day. Go now. Start running. I want to see what you do, I want to know what you are.”
She stood, abruptly. The girl’s body followed her, for half a moment, before it remembered itself and fell back against the leather of the chair.
Go now, she spoke, directly into her mind. Start running!
With only a frantic look back, confused and a little uncertain, she was gone, through the door and down the road. Armand stood in the rotted doorway of the building, watching her. She propelled herself faster than a mortal could run, certainly. Not faster than Armand, of course. But fast enough.
Prove interesting, little mortal. I want to see what you do. I want to know what you are.