Chapter Text
Daniel still dreamed. Marius said that it was because he was still young, or a symptom of his madness, and that one day the death sleep would be restful and quiet.
Daniel wasn’t actually sure he was all that mad—what, just because of having a hobby (everyone in the coven had hobbies, what was so unsettling about model trains?), or getting lost several times in a strange city (that had happened to him as a mortal too; it happened to everyone once in a while, no?), or really liking the blood-smell of people who had taken ecstasy (a little buzz never killed anyone)?
Still, the dreams—the visions—were sometimes unsettling, and so it was very annoying when Marius, instead of actually listening to what Daniel was saying or answering questions in a useful, succinct sort of way, just sighed heavily and patted his hair and told him he would grow out of this madness by the end of the century and that Marius would continue looking after him until then. Claiming that he wasn’t mad was, of course, exactly what a madman would do, so to reduce the frequency of the condescending head-patting, Daniel had stopped mentioning the dreams, and eventually Marius forgot to keep asking about them.
Then, of course, they had moved to Auvergne. Daniel had little care for where they went, as long as he had his own space in the house and someone else’s credit card in his pocket. (He still had two of Armand’s, though they were long since expired. Memories of happier times, maybe, when his every wish had been granted.) The castle in Auvergne turned out to be one of those sprawling things that’d had wings and outbuildings stuck on piece by piece over the course of a thousand years or so. Daniel had always been the sort of person who liked to poke around and see how much he could get away with (and vampires were so bad at saying no—antiquated hospitality manners, maybe?), so he trotted around, found an absolutely enormous attic with vaulted ceilings—more like a great hall than an attic—taped a piece of paper on the door that said “Daniel Molloy’s Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock)”, and moved in.
When Marius found Daniel several days later, he read the sign, sighed as he came in without knocking, patted Daniel’s head condescendingly, and said something about Daniel’s madness. Daniel, carefully shielding his thoughts, nodded mildly in agreement, and added “having a sense of humor about this shit” to his mental list of Symptoms Of Madness According To Doctor Marius. Then he told Marius that some of his boxes of train paraphernalia had gotten lost in the move and he would have to buy replacements, so Marius gave him another credit card.
Daniel immediately put about $15,000 of bullshit on it, including a new computer and something newfangled called a 3D printer. Call that a Condescension Tax. Marius had not yet noticed that Daniel always made enormous purchases after the head-patting, and Daniel was very interested to see how long he could milk this particular cow before Marius got wise and sighed at him about it.
But the dreams. The dreams were weird, and getting weirder. Lately, the dreams were of Armand.
That was not all that unusual—Daniel did dream of him as often as he dreamed of the other vampires. He’d dreamed of him the day Armand had thrown himself into the sun, which… hadn’t been great, to say the least, but at least Daniel had known by the time he woke up that evening that Armand was fine.
That might have also been a contributing factor to Doctor Marius’s ongoing diagnosis of madness. The sane thing to do when someone gently broke the news to you that your maker had thrown himself into the sun and was missing and presumed dead would be, naturally, to freak the fuck out and have some degree of hysterics or a theatrical tantrum. It was the Vampire Way, yes?
Except by the time anyone had gotten around to remembering that Daniel existed and, as Armand’s firstborn, ought to be told things, he’d already dreamed of Armand partially sheltered under the ice and an overhang, clearly set on having a little bit of a sulk by himself rather than calling anyone for help (like he easily could have done if he’d wanted to), and then dreamed of him safe in the company of a couple young mortals, well-fed and looked after.
Responding to Marius’s grave sorrow by blithely saying, “Nah, he’s fine,” was maybe the sort of thing that did sound a bit crazy. Especially when Marius kept trying to come back a day or two later and get it through Daniel’s skull that Armand was dead, and Daniel kept saying, “No, he just went away for a bit,” and then, losing his temper and letting himself get sarcastic, “Wow, yeah, super sad, dead Armand, what an enormous tragedy. I’m gonna make a little gravestone for the model cemetery by the train tracks.” or “Oh no, I’m an orphan, what shall I ever do? Go out on the street and be a little matchstick waif, I guess.”
Of course he hadn’t gotten any credit for being right when Armand had indeed turned up alive. Whatever.
But the dreams. The new dreams of Armand, the dreams that did seem to be dreams rather than visions of things that were true. The, ah, wet dreams—despite the fact that vampirism meant he didn’t wake up with a mess in his briefs anymore, he wasn’t sure what else to call these sudden, inexplicable, and weirdly vision-vibrant fantasies. They were mostly the same, though not identical: Just minute variations on Armand, pink-cheeked as if he’d fed well, writhing in a decadent bed, jerking himself off feverishly like a mortal. And coming like a mortal. Well, except that it was creepy blood instead of jizz.
First of all, hot.
Second of all, Daniel had had dreams a lot like that when he’d still been human. It had been one of the greatest heartbreaks of his life when Armand had said he couldn’t be pleasured like a mortal lover could be. Daniel had wanted to. God, he’d wanted to! He’d tried on dozens of occasions: sucking Armand’s cock, licking that tight hidden place between his legs, stroking him, fingering him, fisting him, fucking him, but Armand had only smiled indulgently at him, or laughed at him, or mocked him until Daniel got too caught up in the delicious humiliation of failure to remember what he was trying to do and came so hard he nearly passed out.
Vampirism was really fucking weird. He still had sexual attraction , and he felt as though he still had a libido, even if his body didn’t respond to anything but blood. It was frustrating. He’d liked sex as a human, and Lestat’s books had sworn up and down that drinking blood was even better than sex could ever be, but… Daniel wasn’t sure now why he’d decided back then that Lestat of all people was a reliable narrator, or that Lestat’s preferences were naturally also the preferences of every single vampire alive. Bad journalism on his part, not asking more impertinent questions.
Point was, Daniel’s maker was the hottest thing on two legs—vampires, humans, ghosts, witches, and aliens included—but Daniel should not have been having wet dreams about him. Maybe it was just an expression of frustration and resentment, a new way for his mind to whisper, Look, look at this thing I can never, ever have. Look at this thing that he can never, ever give me. I hate him for it.
Armand had warned him, hadn’t he. Fledglings always grow to resent their makers. Daniel hated him for being right, too. And he hated himself for having begged for the Gift—he would have been, what, seventy by now if Armand had left him a mortal? And they could have continued to be together, to have the closeness that they’d once had, the love between them, even if Daniel could only please him with his blood. Stupid fool, he’d been. Both of them. Two fucking idiots in love. And all the bad choices that came with it.
And now here he was, furious with Armand all over again for these dreams, furious at himself, furious at the prospect of an eternity of isolation where he could never quite reach what he wanted. An eternity of longing unfulfilled.
***
A tap on the door one night, about three or four months into the dreams, which were now a near-daily occurrence.
Daniel whipped out a thought to brush against the mind of whoever was at the door, and was surprised to be met with… Benji.
He looked up from staring fixedly at the 3D printer as it worked so slowly and hypnotically. He frowned at the door. Come in, he thought bemusedly.
Benji swanned in like he’d been taking lessons from Lestat and grinned at him. “Saw the sign on the door. Looked like a personal invitation. Can I look around?” He waved his cigarillo vaguely. “And is it okay if I smoke in here?”
“Don’t get ash on the models.”
“Sure, sure.” Daniel watched him closely as he made a circuit of the huge vaulted hall, peering at the models. “These are pretty cool. Looks like a lot of work.”
“It takes up the time.”
“Hah! I hear you on that.” Benji made it back over to the 3D printer and spent several minutes gazing at it, moving only to tap his ash into the trash bin and then perch on the edge of the desk near Daniel’s stool. “That’s neat. Armand would like that.”
Daniel’s heart hurt. Armand would like it. Armand would be over the goddamn moon about it. He’d be like a kid at Christmas with it, all shining eyes and little gasps of delight. “Why are you here?”
“Just exploring my territory.” Impertinent. It was Lestat’s territory, surely, but Benji was cocky and charismatic enough to get away with saying whatever he wanted. “Heard you were in Auvergne, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you since before the Rhoshamandes incident.”
“In New York? Yes, you did, several times.”
“No, the one here."
“Was there one here?”
Benji took a drag of his smoke, looked around at Daniel’s trains. “I guess you were busy. Didn’t Armand lock you in the dungeons for a bit?”
Ah. That. The only time that Armand had approached or spoken to Daniel since that one time in New York that they’d gone out hunting together. (Daniel had hurt in his heart during that whole hunt. No attention for the mortals they were stalking, too consumed and wracked with longing. He had thought as loud as he could, Please, Armand, I’m sorry, let me come home, please, I love you, even as he’d known it wouldn’t work. Armand should have known anyway. Armand had been in his head for twelve years—he should have known what Daniel wanted. Probably had known that night, and just decided to be reserved and distant. Not unfriendly, just polite. Like Daniel was a stranger, not his firstborn. His only, still.)
But then, here in Auvergne, Armand had shown up one night in a high fury and said something about someone being kidnapped, seized Daniel bodily, ignored Daniel’s loud objections and ferocious, insistent wriggling, hauled him all the way from Daniel Molloy’s Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) down to the crypts and dungeons beneath the castle, wrestled him into a tiny stone chamber with a jail cell and couple of humans chained to the walls, locked him in, started walling up the door with big stones and actual mortar and, worst of all, had failed to laugh at Daniel’s final, bone-dry, scathing question: “For the love of god, Montresor, where’s the fucking amontillado?”
(He might have been more upset, but it wasn’t the first time Armand had locked him in a cellar for most of a week, was it. And this time he’d left food, so that was nice. Daniel had sipped off of them carefully and slowly, because ignoring some whimpering, frightened people was preferable to sitting in the dark with a growing pile of festering corpses.)
Of course there had been no explanation when Armand had eventually come back, hacked the walled-up door down with a pickaxe, and let Daniel out. By that time, Daniel had worked himself up into some kind of crazy hope that this had all been a sweeping romantic gesture on Armand’s part, recreating how they met, and that it might be followed by more little recreations of the beginning of their dance. Is it an anniversary? Is he taking me back to where we had our first date, next?
But no, Armand had just broken down the wall, unlocked the jail cell door, and walked away without a word.
“Locked me in the basement,” Daniel said vaguely. “Yeah, he did.”
“Thought it was cute of him,” Benji said. “He’s really cute sometimes. Fussy mama cat, hauling her kittens around by the scruffs of their necks and hiding them places to keep them from being kidnapped by the big scary ancient vampire. Shame he didn’t put me and Sybelle in there with you, huh? We could have hung out. But he thought you might convince us to help you escape and then you’d run off and do something stupid.”
Daniel’s stomach soured with jealousy. “Nice to hear that he explains himself to someone around here.”
“Nah, I begged and whined and hacked into his head to pry it out of him as soon as he gave me the slightest opening. Just cheating, y’know, it doesn’t count.”
The jealousy soured further.
“Ah,” Benji said. “Didn’t know that was a sore spot. Sorry.” A pause. “I really thought he was gonna… y’know. Capitalize on the moment. Ask you out to dinner again or something, afterwards. Feels like if he’s going to go hauling you around like a kitten, he could at least take you to dinner after the dust settled.” Another pause, and then a world-weary sigh. “He does vex me.” Daniel snorted, and Benji barked a laugh. “Mashallah someone besides me has a sense of humor around here! I like your door sign, by the way. Really funny. Bet no one else appreciates it, though. We’re surrounded by sticks-in-the-mud and wet blankets, eh?”
It was a small balm to the jealousy. So was the sorry— Daniel couldn’t quite remember if he’d ever heard a vampire say that before. “Why are you here?” he asked again. Less accusing this time.
“Like I said. Exploring. And you’re family, so.” Benji shrugged, ashed his cigarillo into the trash again. “Wanted to say hi and catch up. Check in on you, see your trains, get to know you better. Tell you all the hot gossip, if you want. Help out if you need an extra pair of hands for anything.” Another shrug. “Or we can just watch your 3D printer together. I’m flexible.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to get to know me better?”
“Transitive property of love,” Benji said immediately. “I love Armand, and Armand loves you,” Daniel’s stomach dropped sharply and his throat tightened, a note of pain so exquisitely sharp that he nearly didn’t hear Benji finish: “So you’re one of mine.”
He got up. “Sorry to break it to you, but no, he doesn’t.” Not anymore. Maybe never, not really. Daniel had just been a plaything, like Armand’s blenders and microwaves. A pet. Not someone Armand could stand to see as an equal. “Good to see you, thanks for coming. Door’s that way.”
To Benji’s immense credit, he immediately hopped off the desk and gave Daniel a manful clap on the shoulder. “Yeah, good to see you too!” He gave a crooked grin, as if the sudden dismissal hadn’t been rude in the slightest. “Next time, show me your favorite bit of the trains, yeah? Next time!”
And then he left, trailing smoke and style, and closed the door after him.
Daniel was not sure he could think of a single other vampire of his acquaintance who was as easy to get rid of. Marius would not have gone until he was ready to. And no one else would have shown up in the first place, unless there was an emergency and someone remembered Daniel existed.
His heart hurt. He turned all his attention to the trains until it went away.
***
The next night, Daniel woke up from a wet dream about Armand and found himself trembling with such rage and frustration as he sat at his model-painting desk that he smudged every miniature he picked up to work on. He threw down his brush, dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.
A vampire’s mind brushed against his, like a little clearing of the throat or a soft tap at the door— Hey, it’s me , Benji thought at him. I’m in town to hunt and I just passed a model shop that’s open late. Anything I can pick up for you?
Glue, Daniel thought back cattily. And good fucking luck with that, Benji, because there were at least thirty different types of glue. If he came back with, “What kind?” then Daniel could say, “What do they have?” and make him list off every single type of glue while Daniel shot down each one.
But Benji just said, You got it. I’ll pick you up a thing of model grass too, I noticed you were running low.
Daniel looked up at the shelves over his painting desk—the plastic tub of tufty green field grass still had a third left.
What was Benji’s angle here? There had to be some kind of angle.
***
A wet dream, and then smudging the models, and then he found that the 3D printer had had a tantrum sometime during the day and ruined the print.
So he was in a vile mood by the time he felt Benji approaching, heard his footsteps on the stairs, the tap on the door. It’s me, Benji thought, and Daniel sent a brusque yank of thought at the door to wrench it open.
Benji trotted in with an enormous paper bag on each hip. “Who would have thought that one shop could offer such an amazing variety of glues! I didn’t know what you wanted, so I got you one of each.”
Daniel heard the echo of Armand’s voice, saying nearly the same thing more than forty years ago, across that table in the Copley in Boston as the waiters unloaded the entire menu between them.
“And,” Benji said, depositing the bags onto the desk. “They had different colors of that fluffy grass stuff, so I got that too, since you only had green. The guy said you can use it for other things, not just grass. Leafy trees or flowers. Good to have on hand, right? You never know when you might need it. And! I got a few things for me too, and I was hoping maybe you could help me? I watched some Youtube videos about model-making last night and I wanna try making one of them.” He whipped his phone out of his pocket—it looked aggressively sleek, like those ultra-modern watches Armand used to like to wear—and showed Daniel a picture of a diorama of a pretty Japanese temple with a huge, terrifying creature of the deeps lurking in the water below.
Daniel spared the picture only a glance, because it reminded him of Armand and therefore hurt to look at. He turned away and glared at the bags of glue and whatever else. “Okay,” he said, tight and controlled. “Listen here, buddy, I’m not built for goddamn court intrigue or whatever you’re trying to pull here.”
“Friendship and family,” Benji said easily.
“Bullshit.”
“Well, what are you built for?”
“Don’t play games with me.” Only one person got to do that. “Don’t try to yank me around. You want something, say it straight out or leave.”
“Hey, there he is.” Benji grinned at him, wider than Daniel had ever seen, and stuck his hand out. “Daniel Molloy, the one and only, eh? Nice to meet you properly, at long last. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Daniel crossed his arms. Benji left his hand out for a long moment, waiting, his eyes twinkling, and then tucked both hands behind his back and paced slowly around the room, looking at the trains and the minute cities in all their preternatural detail. “Not built for court intrigue, huh? I don’t know about that. I tried to do court intrigue with you yesterday and you clocked it immediately and threw me out. I feel like the first step of court intrigue is not being gullible and oblivious, y’know?” Hands still tucked behind his back, he bent down to inspect something closely—the Forest of Wild Things, as Daniel thought of it. “Not built for it,” Benji mused, then glanced over at Daniel with another big grin. “Because you’re a journalist at heart, right? So what are you built for? Honesty, truth, meaning? Yeah, that’s gotta be it, right? Ultimately we’re all here in Auvergne today because fifty-some years ago, you wanted to hear something meaningful and true, huh?”
Daniel wanted to tear his throat out. He clenched his jaw.
Benji returned his attention to the models. “Wanted it bad enough to bait Louis de Pointe du Lac, of all people, into taking a chomp out of you. The man who sits there reading the dictionary until dust collects on top of him, but you were the one who got under his skin and pissed him off like nobody else but Lestat can manage. Pretty fucking cool. Daniel Molloy, the one and only. And then, not discouraged at all, you did the same thing to Armand for twelve damn years. The man who keeps his heart in a lead-lined Swiss bank vault and recreationally hates people, but you were the one who swept him off his feet and got him to run away into the sunset with you. For twelve years. And then, as if that wasn’t already enough, he turned you. Daniel Molloy, his one and only.”
Benji moved on to—Daniel’s throat tightened. To the model of Pompeii, the gardens from the last dream Armand had shown him. No one else had ever looked so closely. He thought, and did not bother to shield his thoughts, about kicking a hole in the roof and throwing Benji out of it.
If Benji heard it (and he must have), he ignored it. “And then you just sorta vanish from the historical record. Just one line about you in Lestat’s latest—or second-latest now, I guess—the only one who had ever captured Armand’s injured heart, or something like that. Daniel Molloy, the one and only.”
He turned to Daniel and looked at him frankly from across the room. “Can’t blame me for being curious, can you?”
“Bullshit,” Daniel bit out. “You’re just changing your angle again because you think I’ll like this one better.”
“What’s this one, then?”
“I don’t like court intrigue, so you stopped doing court intrigue. You called me a journalist, and now you’re showing me a journalist.”
Benji was still grinning. “Whoa, Daniel Molloy, the one and only! Not just a journalist but a really good journalist, huh? I bet you would have won a Pulitzer or two if you’d stuck with it a bit longer. Yeah, okay, sue me, mirroring works on a lot of people.” He came back over briskly and hitched himself up onto the stool near the 3D printer. “Ah, that’s unfortunate,” he murmured, glancing at the disaster inside it, then returned his attention to Daniel. “I mean, you got me. I was gonna butter you up with something like ‘Ooh, but you heard all the legends about Lestat and you went looking for him, is it really so hard to believe that I might hear the legends about Daniel Molloy and come looking?’” He tipped his head on one side. “That’s even part of the truth. So is the journalism thing, actually—I’ve got a podcast. Like a radio show on the internet,” he added quickly. He must have caught a spark of Daniel’s frustration about what in the world a fucking podcast was. “People call in sometimes, and they say, ‘Whatever happened to the Vampire Daniel, anyway?’ What am I supposed to say, you know? ‘Oh, Daniel Molloy? Yeah, he lives in my house, he’s got a room up in the attic with some mad science experiments or something, we’re blood relatives, but I don’t know what’s going on with him; we don’t talk.’ Come on. That’s not responsible journalism. The people want to know!”
“That’s not all. What else?"
Benji grinned and kicked his heels a little in restrained delight. God, had he gotten that from Armand? When Armand sat with his feet off the ground like that, he emoted with them as much as his hands—when he sat like that and was happy, anyway. “Well. I read the books—had to get caught up on all the existing drama and interpersonal vexations, you know—and there’s that great bit about you and Armand in Queen of the Damned, and I just started wondering… ‘All of this is about how much Daniel Molloy loves Armand, but I wonder—what’s Armand love so much about him?’ You gotta go looking for that answer. Gotta think about it. Gotta trot upstairs to Daniel Molloy’s Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires, Please Knock, and poke your nose in places it doesn’t belong. Kinda thought you’d be more used to it, what with Lestat doing the same thing all the time, and all those obnoxious questions you asked Louis and Armand, but… Eh, you win some, you lose some.” Benji held up his hands in modest surrender. “I shouldn’t have come into the lair of the master thinking that apprentice tricks would work on him.”
“Don’t flatter me,” Daniel snapped. “And stop trying to manipulate me.”
“Okay, okay! Yeesh, tetchy. Look, if it helps, when I’m manipulating Armand usually I just hang off his arm and cry and wail about how terrible my life will be if he doesn’t come away from staring gloomily at the rain and help me decide whether we’re going to the movies or the opera or the museums. I felt like you wouldn’t appreciate that, on account of you’re not as much of an enormous softie. And, like, Armand will simp for anybody who bats their eyes at him and says they need to be loved and protected and cared for and taken in out of the cold, you know? But you, you’re more like, ‘I’m a strong independent vampire who don’t need no man! You really gotta earn my simping, and I will periodically run away just to keep you on your toes about it! Mutual simp hours 24/7 or I’m out! Gone! Lethal codependency or bust!’ Like that, that’s you.” A pause. Benji swung his feet a little. “How’s that, how am I doing? How close am I to being kicked out of the World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza? Are we bringing that good old throwing-people-off-a-roof tradition into the new generation, or nah?”
The outright mockery had in fact soothed a couple of his ruffled feathers. At least it was honest. “What do you want?”
“I mean, the ‘friendship and family’ thing wasn’t that far off the mark.”
“No, but you have an agenda and you’re attempting to make me a tool of that agenda. So it does all loop back to court intrigue, doesn’t it.”
Benji considered this for a long moment. “In the very most grand scheme of things, yes.”
“What’s the grand scheme?”
“I don’t want to tell you, and you don’t need to worry about it for at least five hundred years or until Lestat dies, whichever comes first.”
Daniel paused. That rang of truth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Pfft, come on. You’re the master journalist who got Louis du Lac to run his mouth to you, and lived to tell the tale and run a fucking bank heist on Armand le Russe’s emotions, so how about you get off your ass and figure it out yourself?”
Better. Better. A few more ruffled feathers soothed down. “Sure,” he said slowly. “So your long-term plan, whatever it is, takes five hundred years or Lestat’s death. But you’re here in my room—”
“Your Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires.”
“—trying to make friends with me right now , for reasons that are directly related to the master plan.”
“Should I have a cool name for my master plan, do you think? Benji Mahmoud’s Fantastic Breathtaking First-Rate Master Plan for Grownups and Politically-Inept Vampires?”
“Politically-inept, are they? That’s part of the motivation, is it?”
Benji beamed at him. “See, I knew we’d get along. I really do want to be friends! You and me, we’re simpatico. Kindred spirits. A couple of cool guys. Two great tastes that taste great together. And we both like Armand, and puzzles, and eating people. We’ve got so much in common! How come it’s so suspicious that I want to hang out with you?”
“You want an ally. ”
“Who doesn’t? Is that a crime? You said it like it’s a crime. And what’s the difference between ‘ally’ and ‘friendship and family’, anyway? Or is that I’m doing it on purpose?” Benji leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his eyes bright and sharp and clever.
Benji didn’t look like a child. Well, no, he did. He did look like he was twelve. But… maybe there was something here related to Daniel’s visions. Maybe it was just the way Daniel looked at people, something of the old journalist still stirring in him, always looking beyond the surface, under the skin, seeking the truth of the person in front of him. Unless he made a conscious effort, he’d never seen a pretty seventeen-year-old boy when he looked at Armand; he saw a deadly and breathtakingly beautiful-terrifying five-hundred year old creature, as horrifying as that great insect he’d once described to Lestat for his book, a monster that had killed millions, thrilling and wondrous and infinite in all directions. With a mouthful of scary teeth that he wanted to kiss.
What did he see when he looked at Benji and looked deeper than the outside appearance?
He’d never really tried it deliberately before, invoking a vision in his waking hours, but now…
His sight flickered: A creature sat before him, a creature as surely as Armand had always been a creature; something slinky and sly and cunning, something with sharp teeth—but not a snake or an insect or a great monster—something closer to a mongoose, perhaps. Not a malicious thing, no, but a thing that might hurt what threatened its den, a thing that was possessive but not hungry. At worst, something fey. A strange and unsettling fairy-creature, not made for evil but for mischief. And in the layers beyond—oh, what was it, what was that glimmer he saw behind all of that, the something shining nobly across his brow like a princely crown?
Daniel caught himself on the edge of the table.
Benji was lighting up a cigarillo. Perhaps it had just been the fire of the lighter, that shine on his face. “You okay?”
“Yes.” God, he was tired. He passed a hand across his brow. Barely midnight, and he was already ready to go back to sleep. (Oh, but sleep would mean dreaming of Armand again. He hated the thought as much as he longed for it.) “Why are you here, Benji?” Exhausted, finally, all accusation drained away.
“Because in five hundred years, I want you to like me,” Benji said, so simply and so openly that Daniel saw another glimpse of the shine on his face. “That’s it.”
“In five hundred years, it will be important that I like you, you mean.”
“That’s what I said.”
“For your master plan.”
Benji waved his hand, trailing a ribbon of smoke. “It’s all the master plan, Daniel. You could be my cool wizard mentor in this master plan, but—”
“Surely that’s Marius. Or Armand.”
“They’re like elves, bro, they’re not cut out to be a cool wizard mentor. Like Gandalf. Gandalf has to be fun. You get it.” He took a drag from his smoke. “You’re fun. You get to be Gandalf in the master plan, if you want to.”
Daniel scrubbed a hand over his face again. “That you’re playing a hobbit or a dwarf seems unlikely. Hobbits don’t have five-hundred year plans, and dwarves aren’t as important as you seem to think you are.”
“Mm,” said Benji, and blew a noncommittal smoke ring.
A thunderbolt struck Daniel’s brain and rang through him. Politically-inept vampires. Five hundred years or Lestat’s death, whichever came first. Not aligned with elves or wizards or hobbits or dwarves, so that left— And the vision just now—
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said Daniel, staring at him.
“Hm?” said Benji, all innocence as he took a long drag from his cigarillo.
“I don’t think I want to say it aloud.”
“Why not?”
“Because it might make me an accomplice to treason.”
The little bastard wanted to be prince.
Daniel paced to the Forest of Wild Things and back, scrubbing his hands over his face and yanking at fistfuls of his hair before he cried, “Why in God’s name am I the wizard mentor on this project!”
“The First-Rate Master Plan, please, not a project. Because wizards catalyze change, and you changed everything. Wizards go where no one else dares go and ask questions no one else dares ask; you did that, over and over. Wizards are just a little bit crazy, and you’re the guy who once soppily thought about how romantic it’d be if you were devoured by a giant man-eating bug who loved you. Wizards can make something out of nothing.” And he reached into one of those paper bags on the desk beside him and took out a smaller bag, marked with the name of a bookshop—took out a very battered paperback of Interview with the Vampire, tossed it on the floor between them, a gauntlet thrown down. “You did that too. Spun gold out of no more than breath and ink and paper.”
“Lestat did it more than I did,” Daniel said faintly. There were other things in that bookshop bag on Benji’s lap. Dread settled over him.
“Copycat. Cheap knockoff. A product for mass manufacture, after the muse of invention has already come and gone from the house of her prophet.” Benji waved his cigarillo at him. “Oh, calm down, I’m not usurping anyone. We elect our princes in this government, haven’t you heard? And he’s going to get bored eventually and wander off. Or some absurd adventure is going to befall him. Or he'll shock us all and die. And when one of those things happens, someone’s going to have to step up, and I think that person ought to be me.”
Daniel bent slowly to pick up the battered copy of Interview. Terrible cover. All the editions had such terrible covers. He straightened, turned it over in his hands, traced the badly-broken spine, the tattered edges, the dog-eared pages. The price sticker, handwritten: 1€.
“I’m not even forty yet, my guy,” Benji said, laughing under his breath. “I’m barely out of fledglinghood. That’s why I’ve got to wait a while. Work up to it. Grow into my fangs a bit more, you know? But there are projects I can do in the meantime.”
“Like making me accessory to treason.”
“Like making friends, Daniel. Like building relationships. Like being nice to people, making myself helpful and useful, putting my nose to the grindstone and doing my time on political grunt work—the sweeping-floors and scrubbing-pots part of politics, the internship phase of vampire hierarchy. So here I am, telling you all my secrets, just like Louis did. Confessing my hopes and wishes and dreams to the nearest local wizard and hoping that in a few centuries when I launch my campaign, he might remember me fondly, and look around at all the wonderful works I have wrought in his life, and decide to give me his vote.”
“I didn’t have a vote last time.”
“That was your own fault,” Benji said. “You were sulking and pretending to be crazier than you were. Why haven’t you gotten yourself appointed Chronicler, eh? You could have had it for the asking, I bet. Lestat loves giving out fancy titles, and you have a great case for why that one should be yours.”
That sounded exhausting. And… too much. Overwhelming. Too, too, too much. Daniel shook his head sharply. “No, I can’t. I have too many projects already. I have my trains. Thank you for the glue and the grass. I will make good use of them. Goodbye.”
It was a dismissal, and Benji was as easy to get rid of as he had been the night before: He only raised his eyebrows a little bit, nodded in a “well, alright” sort of way, and slid slowly off of the stool. Deliberately, he laid the paper bookstore bag on the desk. “I’m coming back tomorrow,” he said. “I really do want you to help me make that diorama I showed you. Please.”
And he left.
Daniel leaned heavily on the edge of the table and consoled himself with several pertinent points:
- That Lestat was too politically inept to execute people he loved or was slightly fond of, even if they were found guilty of treason,
- that Daniel probably still counted as someone Lestat was slightly fond of,
- and that if Lestat did try to have Daniel executed, Armand would probably go fucking nuclear. Unless he didn’t. (No, he would. He would.) (Or would he? He loved Lestat more than he loved Daniel.) (Would Marius step in? Would there be any salvation from that quarter? No, not if Daniel was accused of treason; Marius liked rules too much, Marius would stand there shaking his head sadly and talking about Daniel’s madness, and then Daniel would have a genuine mental break and attempt to kill him finally, and then—well, then he would be guilty of treason and attempting the assassination of the Prime Minister, so—)