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Bella normally did not spend her Saturday night’s at a gay bar.
The bar stood nestled in a narrow alley off Castro Street, a beacon of color against the muted grays of the city. Its neon sign flickered like a heartbeat, casting hues of electric blue and magenta onto the pavement, the letters curling in an art-deco flourish: Polynesian Mary’s .
Layers of posters, old fliers half torn, remnants of protests and pride alike, ghosts of a past that lingered but never haunted. Music throbbed from within, a steady pulse that mingled with the laughter spilling out as the door swung open.
Inside, the air was thick with warmth—human, electric, alive. The space glowed with golden light, casting soft halos around the faces of men and the very few women in quiet conversation or wild abandon.
Bella grimaced, pocketing the small piece of paper that her lecturer had given her. The old man rose an eyebrow when Bella told him that she wanted to do puff portraiture.
It was too loud, too sweaty, and the company tended to be like lukewarm beer. But in the dimly lit streets of San Francisco and a deadline looming over her head, she needed to write something.
Charlie would be fuming right now. What was she thinking? She was a woman walking the streets at night. She told no one, not even her dorm mate – they were not on speaking terms as it is. When the weather turned colder, Bella’s nightmares got worse. Her heart never healed from the pain of him . He left and took everything with him. Their memories and their love might have never existed for all she knew, if it weren’t for the occasional mentions and her pains.
He told her not to do anything dangerous.
Well, here she is doing something dangerous.
But it wasn’t her crowd. Instead, Bella exited the bar, grasping for fresh air. She bent over. Bars really were crusty.
“May I help you, miss?” someone called out. A man was standing outside Polynesian Mary’s, the cigarette in his hand clouding him in smoke.
“I’m good,” she crossed her arms from the cold, so he knew she was not in the mood to talk. “I was just looking for…something.”
“And that would be?”
His mesmerizing green eyes stood out even more against his brown complexion. She wondered if they were real or contact lenses.
“A subject to interview,” Bella answered truthfully. “I was hoping something would be interesting.”
“You’re standing in history here in ‘Frisco, m’am,” he blew a cloud of smoke in the other direction, which she appreciated. “What makes you think you can’t find nobody?”
“I have a particular thought in mind.”
“And what would that be?”
“You’d laugh,” Bella shook her head. It was dumb to think that she would be able to find them.
It has been years since she thought about actively going to find a vampire. There were months when she searched the streets, begging for a sign of a vampire, but it was all for not. The last vampire she ran across was Victoria. Long dead, thanks to the shapeshifters.
“Try me,” the man shrugged. “I’ve been around the block. Heard some things.”
“Vampires,” Bella finally said. There, she said it. If anyone asked her, she would say that she’d fallen down a rabbit hole, something about Vampires in New Orleans. Maybe she should have headed there instead for the weekend, but her Chevy could only take her so far these days.
The man chuckled softly, but it built up into a warm hearty sound. It was warm and infectious, with a gentle, deep tone that matches his calm and approachable demeanor.
“Now you wouldn’t be that far from a Vampire Scene bar, I tell you that –”
“No, real ones,” Bella quipped.
He smashed the cigarette against the brick wall. “Are you one of Daniel Molloy’s students?”
Daniel Molloy was her lecturer for this class, and it was where she got the idea to start her journalism career. He told her he started with puff portraiture before actually getting the good stuff. While he would not share the content of such interviews, Bella liked the idea of being armed with a tape recorder.
“What would he know about someone who goes to the gay club?” it slipped out of Bella’s mouth. That man was on his way to a second divorce and had two kids, as far as she knew.
“I know that man, but he doesn’t like to mention me,” the corner of his mouth twitched. “Louis de Pointe du Lac, not at your service.”
Oh gosh, Bella realized. This guy must be some dude Daniel Molloy hooked up with. He raised an eyebrow.
“Was that a rhetorical question, child?”
“Yes, sorry,” Bella frowned. The cadence of how he spoke… something about it felt old. He talked like a grandpa.
“Well if you know Mr. Molloy, do you mind if you ask me questions?”
“He won’t like that. Last time we didn’t part on good terms.”
“Then I can blackmail him with it,” Bella waved her arms. “It’s not like you tried to suck the life out of him?”
The moment she said it, she regretted it.
She felt herself being moved to the back alley and pushed up against the wall.
And it all made sense now. She got excited. She’d finally found one! Edward had said that there were so few of them around, so she was lucky she could even find one.
“Now you listen here,” he warned.
“You’re one!” Bella said excitedly. “Finally!”
“F-finally? Girl, hold up,” Louis let go of her. The sudden moment made her stumble and then scrape her knee because she was a klutz. She looked down at her knee and saw the blood that dripped down.
Louis stared at her knee, a look of torture cross his face. She could see his Adam's apple popping up and down. He was tempted, she realized. She was going to die… because of a scraped knee.
The same way she nearly died because of a paper cut. She backed up.
“Bella.”
She snapped her head up, her breath catching in her throat. Edward stood in front of her, tall, his bronze hair shimmering in the soft bar light. His eyes, dark and intense, bore into hers with a mix of frustration and concern. He was back, his hallucination was back.
"Edward?" she whispered, her voice trembling. Her heart leapt in her chest, confused, torn between relief and dread.
But Louis stood still, cocking his head, confused. She looked up at him, seeing the torment written all over his face, and for a moment, she wondered if she should just let it happen. Let him have her. After all, wasn’t she always destined to fall to something she loved that could never love her back the same way?
But then the last of Edward’s fading image flickered in her mind, his cold, critical eyes watching her from the shadows.
“I can hear your thoughts,” Louis said suddenly. “You dated one?”
“Yeah,” she muttered. “I did.”
“A dangerous thing to do, but love makes you blind,” he rolled his eyes. “An immortal lover – I’ve been there before as a human. It sucked. Let me guess, he asked you to be his immortal companion?”
“No,” Bella’s heart broke. Who was this person who turned his lover into a vampire without question? Why did Bella have to fight for it only to be left behind? Louis proceeded to walk away.
"Wait! Please,” Bella knew it was fruitless to run after the vampire. They were fast, strong, and nothing in this world could stop them – perhaps only sunlight, in this case, but dawn would not come for another few hours, and it was the dead of night.
If a God existed, God could not help her in the slightest. If her father, a small town cop, knew that she was running around in San Francisco right now, chasing after myths and legends, he would lock her up in the house.
But the legend was right in front of her. It was very much real.
“He told me he loved me!” She sounded like a broken record.
There was a sigh. Louis turned around, hands on his hips and a look on his face that told her she only had a couple of seconds, or she would be toast.
“I… I don’t think you know what it’s like just losing something like that. The love of your life. He just left . No traces. Said that human life was fleeting, I would forget. He had other distractions. Do you know what that does with a person?”
“Oh Ms. Swan, I do,” he said coolly. She never told him his name.
“And trust me when I tell you I know what human life was like. What it’s like to lose the people around you, your community . But unlike mine, your community is still alive and kicking, and I can read your thoughts. Do not go looking for immortality. Your Mr. Molloy tried to do the same thing after I told him my story.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say last time I turned someone, it didn’t end well for them. Or the time before that, though partially involved,” he cleared his throat. “Missy, where are your parents?”
“I’m not a missy, I don’t care how old you are!”
“You are twenty, that is still young and you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he chided.
“Oh and what would you know about it, given that you are immortal?”
“I had a daughter, Miss Swan,” his eyes went glazy. “Not in my mortal life, but we turned her far too young. The longer she lived, the more she resented mortal life. Her mind grew older, but her body didn’t. Stuck evermore.”
“Where is she now?”
Had. Past tense.
“Gone in the wind,” he said. “All I have left of her are a bunch of diaries… a picture or two.”
He walked closer to her, and the alarm bells at the back of her head went off. The way he walked was mesmerizing.
“Listen, wherever this fella is, you’re better off living your life as a human. Get better, live your life, the way my Claudia never got to live hers. And if, only if, you still long for the Dark Gift, then I’d reconsider.”
The vampire licked his lips before sitting down next to Bella. “A vampire bond is hard to severe, but you’re not a vampire, Bella. You can leave, and time will heal all wounds. You can fix the damage or leave it to remember it.”
“I can’t talk to anyone else about this. They’d stick me in the looney bin.”
“Okay, then tell me about it.”
“He… he was insufferable. I showed up to class on the first day, and I thought he hated me because he wanted to change classes. Turns out it was just my blood that made him want to murder me.”
“Ah but I got the petite coup , enough to sustain him and not enough to kill me.”
“Where is he now?”
The vampires eyes darkened. “You don’t need to know that.”
“Alright, alright…”
“Mr. Molloy was a lot better at this. We got high off black tar.”
“I presume that I’m also not your target audience,” Bella pointed out.
“True that,” Louis mentioned. “Did you hallucinate him too, for a while?”
“I did,” Bella stood up from the floor. Louis patted her on the back.
“Don’t worry, I don’t kill like that no more. Not since the year 2000.”
“What happened in 2000?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’ll get you a drink. Tell me about this man.”
Louis sipped slowly on his glass of wine—though it was more for show than anything.
Bella, sitting across from him, swirled her drink with a straw. She wasn’t a drinker, but she loved Highball.
“You know,” Bella began, breaking the comfortable silence, “Edward... he's so distant sometimes. Edward’s... suffocating,” she finally said, her voice low but sharp.
There was an edge to it Louis hadn't heard before, a frustration simmering just beneath the surface. “He acts like he loves me, but everything he does is about control. He decides what’s best, without asking me. Always telling me what I can’t do, where I shouldn’t go—like I’m some fragile thing that’s going to break if I take one wrong step.”.”
It sounded like him when he first talked to Daniel about Lestat.
“He tries so hard to protect me from... everything. But he forgets that all I want is him, you know? Just him.”
Louis chuckled, the sound low and almost wistful. “Yes, well, my man was nothing if not theatrical. He thrives on drama, on being the center of attention. He’s like a flame, always burning, always demanding to be seen.” He looked down at his glass, swirling the liquid thoughtfully. “And I’ve always been drawn to that fire, even when it consumes me.”
Bella bit her lip.
“Is it really a vampire thing?”
“We do grow and change,” Louis admitted. “It takes time to move past what happened to us. We’re made out of trauma… and I think I’ve finally outgrown it. I’m headed to Dubai soon.”
“Dubai?” she quipped. “Why is that?”
“None of your business, lil miss,” Louis told her. “Now what you should be doing is staying in school and writing that goddamn assignment for Daniel Molloy.”
“Alright, alright,” she sighed. Louis nodded towards the bartender.
“He’s been a bartender since the 70’s. He can tell you a story or two about this place. We are in San Francisco, after all.”
“And I am always surprised that you still look like you’re thirty, Mr. du Lac,” the bartender slammed two shots on the table. “On the house.”
“Black don’t crack, my friend,” Louis grinned. “To our dumb lovers.”
“To our dumb lovers,” Bella grinned.
“Get over him, my friend. That hallucination will leave once you've let go. There are better people and vampires out there. Trust, I found myself one just fine. "
She followed her eyes past her to a man standing in the corner with expressive dark eyes, thick eyebrows, and a beautiful dark complexion, talking to another stranger.
Two vampires walked into a gay bar? What a great day for her.
“Not my crowd here,” Bella told Louis.
“Well, never said it had to be here here.”
When she handed in her assignment the following Monday, Daniel Molloy raised an eyebrow when she saw it was dedicated to a Louis du Lac.
“He sends his regards,” Bella said. “He said I only needed to start doing black tar heroin and then I can be just like you.”
“Uh huh,” Mr. Molloy seemed conflicted. “Someone didn't properly read my memoir...did he mention anything else?"
“Nope. He just told me to get over my ex.”