Things I would say to the vampires from The Vampire Chronicles purely to ruin their evening:
Feel free to use as starters 😉
* You’re going out dressed like that? That’s certainly a choice. (Lestat)
* I thought you’d kiss better than that. (Lestat)
* You’re not nearly as charming as you think you are. (Lestat)
* That outfit is wearing you, babe. (Lestat)
* Have you ever considered shutting the fuck up before entering a room? (Lestat)
* You’re basically an immortal theatre kid with abandonment issues. (Lestat)
* Your mother is cooler than you. (Lestat)
* Nicki was the talented one. (Lestat)
* I’ve met house cats with less need for attention. (Lestat)
* You don’t need another dramatic entrance. We already know you’re here. (Lestat)
* Imagine living forever and still needing everyone to clap when you walk into a room. (Lestat)
* You’re about to catch these hands. (Armand)
* I’m not afraid of you. You’re five foot nothing and emotionally constipated. (Armand)
* Aww, you lost everyone and everything when you were young? Mate, same. Gestures towards my parents’ headstones, lost home, and immigration paperwork. Now what? (Armand)
* You spent five hundred years letting one man live rent-free in your head. Embarrassing. (Armand)
* Have you considered that perhaps people leave because you’re deeply unpleasant? (Armand)
* Being beautiful doesn’t make the staring less creepy. (Armand)
* You’re not mysterious. You just refuse to communicate. (Armand)
* You can stop looking at me like that. I’ve worked in customer service. You cannot frighten me. (Armand)
* Your entire personality is a Renaissance painting of a sad child holding a knife. (Armand)
* Marius had other favourites. (Armand)
* Daniel was funnier before you made him immortal. (Armand)
* You’re very smug for someone who has made almost every possible wrong decision. (Armand)
* At least my native tongue isn’t a dead language. (Marius)
* Those Celtic genes are doing a great deal of heavy lifting, aren’t they? (Marius)
* You don’t actually look very Roman. (Marius)
* I think Greek history is more interesting. (Marius)
* Greek sculpture was better too. (Marius)
* Caravaggio would have hated you. (Marius)
* Augustus would have found you exhausting. (Marius)
* You know, for a Roman, you’re awfully sensitive. (Marius)
* You’re less Marcus Aurelius and more disappointed suburban father. (Marius)
* Being two thousand years old does not automatically make you correct. (Marius)
* You cannot solve every emotional crisis with a lecture on civilisation. (Marius)
* Nobody asked about the Roman Empire, Marius. (Marius)
* Your frescoes probably weren’t that good. (Marius)
* You have the emotional accessibility of a marble bust. (Marius)
* For someone obsessed with reason, you make remarkably stupid decisions whenever feelings are involved. (Marius)
* You don’t want an equal. You want an audience with excellent manners. (Marius)
* Is this another lecture, or will there eventually be a point? (Marius)
* You’re not calm. You’re repressed. There is a difference. (Marius)
* What are we crying about today? (Louis)
* Chin up, buttercup. Life is shit for everyone. (Louis)
* Brooding is not a personality. (Louis)
* Have you considered being miserable somewhere with better lighting? (Louis)
* You could make winning the lottery sound like a terminal diagnosis. (Louis)
* You are the human embodiment of a rainy window. (Louis)
* Nobody has ever suffered as beautifully or as loudly as you. Congratulations. (Louis)
* You’ve been a vampire for centuries and still act surprised by vampirism. (Louis)
* Please make one decision without immediately regretting it. (Louis)
* You don’t hate Lestat nearly as much as you enjoy saying you hate Lestat. (Louis)
* Claudia was the most competent person in that household. (Louis)
* You are not morally superior. You are simply sadder. (Louis)
* I used to admire you. Then you let a man diminish you until there was barely anything left. And then got pissed off when your ex husband fixed that problem for you. (Pandora)
* You were headstrong, brilliant and impossible to command. Marius didn’t fuck it up for you.(Pandora)
* Being difficult is your best quality (Pandora)
* Your music was better before the existential crisis. (Nicolas)
* Lestat didn’t ruin you. He merely gave you someone convenient to blame. (Nicolas)
* You’re what happens when artistic temperament develops teeth. (Nicolas)
* You’re not the reasonable one. You’re simply quieter than Lestat. (David)
* Leaving the Talamasca for this lot was certainly a career choice. (David)
* Imagine possessing centuries of knowledge and still getting dragged into vampire relationship drama. (David)
* You have the energy of a man who would explain my own culture back to me. (Mael)
* Being ancient and Celtic does not make every opinion you have spiritually profound. (Mael)
* Marius still won the argument, didn’t he? (Mael)
* All that druidic wisdom and you still cannot recognise when someone is winding you up. (Mael)
* You’re not mysterious. Nobody remembers enough about you to ask questions. (Santino)
* Your greatest achievement was traumatising a teenager and calling it religion. (Santino)
* Even the other vampires think your cult was a bit much. (Santino)
* You had one job. (Maharet)
* For someone with supernatural foresight, you miss quite a lot. (Maharet)
* Family reunions must be absolutely unbearable with you. (Maharet)
* Being ancient does not make you interesting. Sometimes it merely makes you old. (Khayman)
* You’ve survived thousands of years mostly by looking confused in the background. (Khayman)
* You’re not a queen. You’re a natural disaster with a superiority complex. (Akasha)
* I think you’re worse than Trump. (Akasha)
* Your solution to misogyny was mass murder. Groundbreaking. (Akasha)
* Enkil had the right idea. He simply stopped engaging. (Akasha)
* Your entire family needs therapy, a group chat and several restraining orders. (Everyone)
* Every problem in this universe could have been prevented by one honest conversation. (Everyone)
* For immortals, you all have the emotional regulation of overtired toddlers. (Everyone)
* None of you are mysterious. You’re just traumatised and badly socialised. (Everyone)
* Eternity has given you plenty of time and apparently taught you nothing. (Everyone)
* Anne definitely had favourites, and some of you were clearly not among them. (Everyone)
* Not one of you could survive a normal office job. (Everyone)
* The real vampire curse is apparently an inability to apologise properly. (Everyone)
* You’ve had centuries to work on yourselves. What exactly have you been doing? (Everyone)
This one is for Becky and for anyone who loves David Talbot.
I feel so sad for you. I don’t need David Talbot myself, but there wasn’t need to kill him except as an in-“joke”.
I love to laugh as much as anyone, but serious things are serious! And David is The Character for some people, just as Nicolas is for me. So I take him seriously.
So this is for you, David: the being on all of this earth that Lestat chose to go to when he came close to choosing the end of his immortal life.
~~~~~
“Lestat, stay here!” David said. “You promised the very next time we met, you would let me say all I have to say. You wrote that to me, Lestat, you remember? You won’t go back on your word.”
“Well, I have to go back on it, David. And you have to forgive me because I’m going. Perhaps there is no heaven or hell, and I’ll see you on the other side.”
“And what if there is both? What then?”
“You’ve been reading too much of the Bible. Read the Love-craft story.” Again, I gave a short laugh. I gestured to the pages he was holding. “Better for your peace of mind. And stay away from Faust, for heaven’s sake. You really think angels will come in the end and take us away? Well, not me, perhaps, but you?”
“Don’t go,” he said, and his voice was so soft and imploring that it took my breath away.
But I was already going.
I barely heard him call out behind me:
“Lestat, I need you. You’re the only friend I have.”
How tragic those words! I wanted to say I was sorry, sorry for all of it. But it was too late now for that. And besides, I think he knew.
~~~~~
The teddy: sometimes there’s free food at this place, but not today, but there was a box of free greetings cards, but they were all Father’s Day cards which is a bit triggering when you have a dead Dad, but ok, I guess the Father’s Day cards didn’t sell is why they’re there, so then I thought about all of the dead Dafs…. But THEN under the cards there was free teddy! You’re mine now, Teddy! I guess your name is David!
We’re not sticking to under 3 minutes for you, David.
Apologies: new strings yesterday. Nothing will quite stay in tune.
This is a collaborative RP between @leliorisen and @thy-fearful-symmetry. The following story is a compilation of our joint replies, edited slightly for tense consistency and flow to create a more cohesive long-form narrative. Some original tenses have been intentionally preserved and are marked with an asterisk (*).
Synopsis: Lestat’s in Amsterdam, chasing art, memories, and the fledgling vampire who’d rather not be found. David’s brooding, bitter, and inconveniently irresistible. What follows is a slow, blood-soaked waltz through old wounds, darker desires, and one very compromised hotel suite. Love never dies; but it does hold a grudge.
Words: 5.2k
Bicycles clammer over cobblestone streets, their riders illuminated by the soft glow of café windows. The air hums with a soft energy. Alive. The murmur of conversations, the rhythm of passing trams, and the occasional shrill laughter skips across the canals. Alive. Amsterdam at night is a dance of contrasts. History wrapped in a modern blanket, still waters cradling restless, bustling lives. This city feels like it wants to tell me a story and I’d gladly listen.
The leather of my boot squeaked as I touched down in the seclusion of a back alley, the only small noise that no one would detect. David is here, he’s in this city and he’s been avoiding me. Over the course of a few weeks, he’s eluded all of my attempts to connect. I knew the way without knowing the way. Its as though each turn took me to a bridge in this nocturnal narrative that lead me to Rijksmuseum. Was he reliving his mortal life, coming here?
David sat alone on the thin bench in the dimly lit hallway, arms folded across his broad chest, staring intently ahead at the small painting on the wall before him. With only an hour left until close, the museum was largely quiet, the exception being a few dull murmurs of the lingering public to pierce the silence. He had likely slipped in unnoticed, a trick he exercised frequently, now that he was no longer able to take advantage of the nearly unrestricted access his former face had so often provided.
He stared up at the painted youth with the lowered dark eyes and reddish hair, his boyish face engulfed by a large monastic hood. He wore a musing, almost sad expression. Darkness surrounded him but the contrast of warm light on his skin was entrancing, and I found that David couldn’t take his eyes off it. Yes, he quite reminded him of someone. Smiling now, he didn’t even blink when he heard the soft echo of my approaching footfall.
Seeing him there on that bench, made my heart race uncontrollably. An unexpected nervousness gripped me suddenly. “And what do you see now with your new vision? Does Rembrandt still enrapture your senses?”
He sighed. My low, silky voice with it’s sultry resonance never ceased to make his soul flutter. And I knew it. “Seems you finally found me,” he remarked dryly, making eye contact with my pair of lavender tinted glasses. “Hope I didn’t make it too easy on you, though.”
“I didn’t know we were playing hide and seek.” Shrugging I lazily turned to the oil painting and leaned in for a closer look. “Am I “IT”, now? I have some wonderful hiding places.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do,” he mused. He pondered this for a moment, before the smile left his lips.
“Why did you do it, Lestat?” He asked quite suddenly, his voice even and steady, his eyes never leaving the auburn haired boy on the wall.
Clenching my jaw, I fixed my gaze on some far off piece of marble flooring. “I do many things. You’ll have to be specific.”
“Humour me… did you think about it, at all, before you did it? I told you I didn’t want it, I couldn’t … Did you even consider it for the briefest moment?” His voice was now tinged with a hint of irritation. “Or did you really let reason be damned and feel every bit the monster that night?”
“Oh I am nothing but a monster. You always forget that, David. Did I consider it? Do you want my honesty?” I placed a hand across the breast of my overcoat. “No. I knew it instantly within every sinew of my twisted being the moment you tapped on the glass of that payphone booth.”
The sincerity of my admission took him back slightly, but without missing a beat he snapped back, “So it was premeditated murder?”
“Sure, call it what you will. But I gave you more time with the humanity of this body than I had in it. Doesn’t that count for something? I think the more appropriate question, is how could I not?”
“Did you not stop, at any point in this merciful time period you graced me with, to think that perhaps I wanted to stay in this human form? That I was at peace with my mortality? What right did you believe you had?”
“There have been long nights in my past that I lied in foreign fields and gazed at the cosmos, begging something divine to reveal to me the meaning of my existence. What right do I have to merely be alive after 270 years. And the void echoed back only my own pleas. So when you ask me what right I had, I can only say that I’m a part of your inevitability.” Kneeling to meet his eyes more evenly, my hand brushed against his bronzed cheek. “You can hate me now. As they all do. But you’ll always be my magnum opus.”
“Did you never think about what I wanted?” He closed his eyes tightly, clenching his fist and letting out a deep sigh of resignation. “I love you. I’ve loved you since I first laid eyes on you, that night long ago. But like I’ve asked you before, did that love have to come with such finality? You turned the page before I even finished the paragraph.”
He sighed again, looking away and casting his eyes back toward the boy on the wall. The handsome dark eyed youth, wrapped up in the dark, forever frozen somewhere in time. How interesting, this new relatable dynamic.
“I should hate you. God knows, I’ve tried.” A deep smile crept across his face, and a half laugh escaped him. “You made me the thing I once studied with cold detachment. Now I am the subject. And it turns out… the world looks very different when you’re in the dark.”
The silence that settled between us carried a weight, yet it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. I resisted the urge to rush him through his thoughts, even as the museum staff began their closing rituals. He no longer allowed me to hold him as he had on that New Orleans morning, when I’d found him waiting at my flat. And yet, the memory of his cologne, the texture of his skin—it lingered, maddeningly vivid. Perhaps it was for the best that he was no longer human.
“Are you staying here, in the city?”
“Yes, for the moment,” David said as he stood. It appeared he was not fully ready to entirely drop the subject, and as always, never caring to pass up a chance to poke the tiger. “I haven’t hunted yet this evening. Since you’re here, care to join me?”
We quickly passed from the building into the cool night air, stepping in pace together under the streetlights. David thrust his hands into the deep pockets of his Italian wool overcoat, probably more so out of habit than actually being chilly.
“So do correct me if I’m wrong,” he started, the words escaping into vapor from his lips, “but what you’re saying is that you saved me from my own natural death, and my turning was just inevitable?” He smirked. “How noble of you. I do hope the choir of angels clapped as you drained me.”
My lip twisted into a snarl, a feral response to his jeers. He craved a reaction, relished the thought of me breaking composure. It became a quiet war within me. Indulge him, or let the silence sting sharper than words. Without breaking stride, I exhaled, slow and deliberate. “I recall meeting gentle Candomblé spirits,” I murmured, my voice an edge of silk, “but a choir? No. Would you like me to describe to you the sheer ecstasy of it?”
“Oh you would like that, wouldn’t you?” He teased, unable to suppress that smile that I so loved. “You speak like it was a religious experience. I hate to disappoint, but I was hardly feeling divine at the time.”
After a beat, he slowed his pace and paused, stopping to lean against the trunk of a tall tree positioned beside one of the lampposts. “Alright,” he said finally, purposely rising to the bait. “Tell me. By all means, tell me how I tasted. I’ll try not to interrupt while you relive your favorite conquest.”
My favorite conquest, indeed. None of my fledglings ever fought with the ferocity of David, a necessary evil to forge strength in the blood.
“I could compare you to the fruits of my mortal life, but the memory of their taste escapes me. How can I describe the eruption of someone’s entire existence flooding into your mouth, surging through your veins? It was as if my heart had taken root in your chest, beating in tandem with yours.”
I paused, brushing strands of hair from my face as the cool night breeze tangled them. “You’ve claimed countless victims. What wisdom could I possibly offer about something you’ve already lived? But I will say this, it wasn’t the taste. You know that. It was everything about us. The fleeting moments we shared as mortals. The balmy nights on the beach, the rhythmic cracking of coconut palms swaying in the wind. The way your eyes still mirrored the soul of the aged man I had grown so deeply fond of. It was,” I leaned in, my voice a hushed confession, “the intimacy I was denied in life, that I stole in death.”
I saw an immediate deep, hot flush spread over his face, despite not having yet fed this evening. He glanced away and gave a quick cough to clear his suddenly dry throat, and crossed his arms.
“Careful, Lestat. Any more of that and I might mistake you for sincere.”
He met my gaze, curious and searching, threw on a rather cheeky smile, then decided to continue.
“Listen,” he implored, “Of course I could keep pretending to be angry for all eternity, but you and I both know that’s not true. In all my birth pangs of righteous indignation, justified, I might add, I could never have hated you. That’s the one thing you never understood.”
He reached out and touched my chest, not so much a caress, but a claiming.
“I didn’t want to ask.” His fingers lingered, not over my heart, but just beside it. Where the hunger thrummed the loudest.
“You think I resented you for taking what I wouldn’t ask for. But the truth is…” His fingers absently continued to trace upward until they brushed against my mouth. “You gave me the one thing I couldn’t give myself.”
I gazed into his deep umber eyes, then pressed a kiss to the fingers that grazed my lips. As my eyelids drifted shut, I surrendered to the gentleness of his touch. His hand, unlike mine, wasn’t as rigid and unyielding as stone. It was cool, yet soft, a delicate contrast that lingered on my skin.
I couldn’t help but feel satisfied with his softened demeanor, not out of self-righteousness, but from the quiet relief brought by this newfound closeness.
Pulling myself out of the moment, I caught sight of David’s expression and it almost sent me into a fit of laughter. His mouth hung open, his eyes frozen in shock, and only then did I realize I’d been absentmindedly sucking on the tip of his thumb. “So, mon cher, shall we hunt?” I asked, slipping his hand from my mouth with deliberate ease. Then, curling my lips into my most devilish smile, I added, “Or would you prefer to show me your rooms?”
Gathering what remained of his dignity this evening, he took his thumb, still warm from the assault and curled it into a quick fist.
“I would love nothing more, mon démon charmant,” he paused, letting me follow his gaze. He let his eyes wander to a pair of chatty young people, hand in hand and traveling down a nearby darkened alleyway. So spirited and full of life. How unfortunate for them.
“I adore hunting with you. Truly, I live for the moment when you wink at me over someone’s jugular.” He smiled, adjusted his scarf and made a gentle stride in the direction of the couple, hearing the soft click of my boots instep just beside him.
“There’s a rather large hotel just down the street, I’ve taken a suite overlooking the canal. Afterward, if you’ve nowhere else to be …” he let the insinuation simmer.
It’s a rare thing to learn of David’s hunts, rarer still to be part of them. Though he continues to need the blood each night, I find myself craving it, not out of necessity, but from some deeper yearning that lingers within me.
We descended upon the hapless duo, swift and silent, leaving no time for terror to take hold. I swooped down from above, targeting the male with precision. Careful, Lestat, I reminded myself. No need to crush him. Restraint had become a challenge lately, brutality too easily slipping through. Cradling his head, I sank my fangs into the tender flesh and drank deeply, savoring the rush.
There are moments when I desire the vivid dreams of my victims, and others when I long to shut them out entirely. Yet, I can’t always halt the relentless stream of images that flood my mind in their final moments. Oskar, he was visiting from Germany.
As I lowered the lifeless body with care, his soft whisper cut through my thoughts, “Don’t forget to hide your marks. And here.” He tossed me a small bag of unidentifiable substances. “Put this in his hand.”I complied without hesitation, then paused to adjust my suit, ensuring every detail was immaculate.
It was no more than a kilometer before we arrived at David’s hotel. The Pulitzer, a charming and historic gem. True to its reputation, the view from his room was a stunning perspective of the canal, serene and timeless.
After staring through the curtains at the mirror like ripples of the water below, lost in their endless dance, I finally shed my thick woolen overcoat and draped it over a nearby armchair. Turning to face him, I let the words hang heavy in the air, “How long were you planning to run from me?”
This question gave him the briefest almost imperceptible pause as he continued the task of loosening his cufflinks and hanging his coat. “How long was I planning to run?” David repeated, casually removing his silver wrist watch. “Right up until the moment I remembered how bloody persistent you are.”
Before David could drop his cufflinks into the dish, I materialized behind him like a vesper, my hand cupping his chin to tilt his neck, my grip immobilizing his left arm. “You’re toying with me, David,” I murmured, my lips brushing his ear. “Do you remember those nights long ago, when you were still mortal? I warned you then, I am the devil. Shall I show you just how devilish I can be?”
With a smirk, he leaned back into my firm hold. “If this is your idea of foreplay, it’s a little heavy handed.”
With his free arm, he gently removed the hand that was cradling his chin and kissed each knuckle slowly, with seeming reverence. His mouth opened against the slender fingers, hot breath against the cold flesh.
“But then again, subtlety was never really your strong suit.”
He took the entirety of my ring finger into his mouth, pulling it out slowly and methodically. But not before letting it slide against his sharp canine, leaving the tiniest ruby red trail in its wake.
“Well?” He asked, his voice low and smooth, in an almost demanding whisper. He flexed experimentally against me and the iron grip on his left arm, finding no give in the vice like control. “I’m waiting.”
My actions were meant to scare and shock him, yet lately David has surprised me with a brazenness I never saw in him as an old man. I found myself wondering if he understood that no amount of struggling could challenge my power. Surely, he must have sensed it.
The faint scratch his teeth left on my finger had healed almost instantly, yet I offered my wrist to his mouth with quiet tenderness. Still bound, he pressed a soft kiss to the steady rhythm of my pulse before sinking his flawless canines into my flesh. He drank deeply, each mouthful brimming with greed.
As he eagerly drained me, I pressed fervent kisses to his exposed, now-warm neck. Tasting him, breathing him in. The night I brought him into the blood had been rushed and thick with emotion, but this moment was deliberate, charged, and unrelenting.
I let my hand, which had been gripping his arm, wander down his side until it found the edge of his shirt and the toned skin beneath. He shuddered but remained still. Pulling him deeper into my embrace, I bit gently into his neck, making him moan. What lovely sounds.
***
Pure ecstasy. There was really no other way to describe it. The teeth piercing his skin, the hot mouth pressed against him. The precise, crushing grip as he pulled out David’s very essence in long, throbbing drafts.
He clung to the wrist like a drowning man to driftwood, as if only the pulse beneath his lips could anchor him. The blood permeated him completely; the thick electric warmth filling his insides from his toes to the top of his head. He never wanted to let go. Eyes tightly shut, he began to see a vision of himself, the broken mortal man, covered in his own blood, lying on the floor. His caramel skin glistening with a mix of sweat and sand. Eyes rolled back, heartbeat slowing to that fatal rhythm. Is this what he looked like through Lestat’s eyes, as he lay there? As David saw a pale hand reach down and longingly stroke his cheek, a mix of his maker’s feelings were passing through. He felt intense love. He felt contented domination. He felt possession, body and soul.
Delicious, this private communion they shared.
Slowly, reluctantly, he withdrew this lethal kiss; and immediately wanted more. He felt the stinging absence harshly. But no, mustn't be too hasty. That would quite ruin the fun, wouldn’t it?
The cold hand moved up his side to his stomach, and he sucked in a sharp breath as the pointed edge of the nails raked along his abdomen, and then continued their exploration up to his chest.
***
I drew back, savoring the taste as the intensity coursed through me, forcing my eyes to flutter shut. A tremor escaped with my exhale, and I reached for David’s shoulder, turning him gently to face me.
Those two inches he had on me felt more irritating than ever as I brushed my fingers against his striking chin, tilting his head toward mine. Even the blood couldn’t dull his glow, his mocha toned skin shimmered under the light, accentuating every detail. We were impossibly close, close enough to trace the golden freckles scattered in his deep coffee eyes, close enough to feel his breath ghosting over my lips.
Black curls fell across his forehead, grazing his thick, unruly brows. His shoulders stretched wider than mine, his frame just a touch larger, a bronzed Adonis frozen in perpetual youth. I couldn’t help but smile, a soft laugh slipping out as I imagined how we might appear to humans.
I lingered for a moment, my heart pulling me closer, until I finally kissed him.
No more of these teasing games. I gestured toward the bedroom, and drew him by the hand. He hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty shadowing his face. “No,” I said softly, the words weighted with knowing. “I understand what you're thinking. And no, it can never be as it once was, when you walked the earth as a mortal man.”
Standing before the bed, his face still laden with questions and searching, I thoughtfully undid each minuscule mother-of-pearl button on his virgin-wool Armani shirt. I discarded it into a heap, then pressed him to sit, straddling his lap.
***
He would be lying if he said he’d never found this creature maddeningly handsome. Nothing could be further from the truth. He would especially be lying if he said his old heart hadn’t skipped a few beats every time that devilish smile in patent leather boots graced his office windowsill. Lestat possessed this kind of animal magnetism that seemed to draw everyone to him. Trouble was he knew it, too. That pair of bewitchingly blue eyes didn’t help either. Of course he’d never imagined taking him like this; he could never have comprehended the raw passion that rolled out of him for this damnable being.
Unsatisfied with the space between them, he pushed a lock of blond hair behind his ear, took his face into both of his hands and drew him into a rather worshipful kiss.
Without warning and with a preternatural speed, he then flipped them both, slamming Lestat down onto the bed beneath him and quickly pinned his wrists down above his head.
***
“Now stay.”
***
This sudden shift from the passive to the predator was obviously a bit surprising to Lestat, who didn’t look at all displeased with the turn of events. Those same dazzling eyes peered up at him now, from a face framed with a disheveled lion’s mane spread around him. Someone could easily mistake him for an angel … someone who didn’t know better.
At once he began to nestle into his exposed neck, the tantalizing flesh visible under the hem of his silken collar. He sank his teeth in without permission or hesitation, and once the first hot gush filled his mouth, he let out a near feral moan. He could have sworn he heard a whisper of something in French by his ear. A plea, a prayer, a curse? He couldn’t tell. He was too distracted by the twin pleasure and pain of the claws digging into his back, which were surely drawing blood.His face now drenched, he pulled away long enough to grind out, “Good boy,” and pressed a deep kiss to Lestat’s full lips. Biting into his own tongue, he ignored the ache and let his blood pass into the eager mouth beneath him, who pressed back just as forcefully to receive the offering.Finally, he sat up and settled back onto his knees, still straddling the hips beneath him, wiping his face with the back of his wrist.
***
“Your shirt. Take it off,” he ordered, the command dripping with old authority.
Defy or obey? With anyone else my instinct is to scoff at demands but with him, I always find myself heedlessly bending to his will. Maybe it was his accent, the slow command in his cadence. Or maybe I am simply drawn to the way a man moves when he knows exactly what he wants. Regardless, my shirt landed in the same pile as his.
"Does any of this atone for stealing you into darkness?" I asked, my lips curling into a smile too sly to suppress, my voice tinged with mockery. He studied me from above, his face impossible to decipher. In moments like this, I wonder if my reckless tongue will ever learn silence.
I reached to brush at the red smear near his mouth. “Michelangelo himself could have carved you from stone.”, I marveled, then chuckled at myself, “Ah, but you’re my very own David.”
“I may be your David, but you’re the one made of marble.”
***
He whispered as he planted slow kisses in a long line up from the navel, appreciating each hardened muscle of the stomach. Then up the solar plexus, stopping briefly to admire the perfectly chiseled chest, and continued his travels until his mouth landed on the rather prominent Adam’s apple. Just a tiny bite, he thought absently. His lips pressed a kiss to it, then hovered his head above Lestat’s own, his gaze devout and unflinching, asking silent permission to drink from him again.
As if his senses had only just been returned to him, and his lust leashed yet still wanting more. As if he had only just remembered this beautiful god beneath him had been allowing himself to be ravished and to be taken. As if this powerful creature couldn’t have stopped him at any time he chose. This fierce lion pretending to be tame.
Having received no such refusal, he gently bent down into the crook of Lestat’s neck, running his tongue slowly along the place where the wounds had already healed, sealing it with a kiss, if only to savor the remaining blood.
Good god, his blood. It sang to him as it slipped over his tongue. It was like drinking fire smothered in velvet. Unbearably rich and heady, it lit up every nerve, and was tinged with an ancient heat that permeated every mouthful and crawled down his spine.
In his blood he also had tasted the things his very soul cried out for; to be adored, to be forgiven. And he did forgive him, one drop at a time.
A warm tear rolled down his cheek, wholly unbidden. His heart fluttered in his chest when he saw those pearly white canines break into a sincere smile, and when Lestat placed his hand on David’s face in a fond, familiar gesture, he felt it might soon entirely explode.
The thirst still gripping him, he made his way to the unstained side of the throat, breath heavy against his sire’s skin for one restrained moment until the teeth broke through once again.
After what felt like a small eternity, his eyes slowly opened, quickly adjusting to the light. It was then he realized that they were no longer on the bed, but in fact floating a few feet above it. His arm still wrapped tightly around Lestat’s waist, the other cradling the back of his head, entwined in the mass of blond hair. How long they had been like this, he did not know. The only thing he knew at that moment was the shuddering demand of their embrace, locked in their beautiful unholy union.
***
Charred flesh. The stench clawed at my throat, filling my lungs with its acrid weight. Heat pressed against me from all sides, merciless and unrelenting. I tried desperately to turn this way or that to escape the oppressive heat. Somewhere beyond the flames, Antoine’s screams tore through the roar of the fire.
“Louis!” My voice surged above the inferno, raw with anguish. “My god, Louis, look what she’s done to us!” Oxygen starved pants grew ever faster, trembling on the edge of pure panic. The world blurred, dimming, and then black.
Silence.
Dirt.
And then, a rhythm. Out of the earth, deep and rising, a pounding of vibrations that carried vigor and hope.
“I am evil, evil!” My scream tore through the crowd, swallowed by the blinding glare of the lights. No faces, only brilliance. Only the flood of pure adrenaline surging through me. Blood-sweat slicked my skin, fangs gleaming on the jumbotrons. And they love me. The bass throbbed, a living thing inside my ribs, as I rose from the stage, arms outstretched, pale and commanding.
“You are all my children. Tonight, we are one body, one soul.” Fading. The lights dimmed.
"Why are you showing me this? What’s your point, Lestat?" His voice was distant, tugging me back to the lavish embrace of the Pulitzer’s gilded room. I blinked, vision swimming, vaguely aware of how ruthlessly determined David was, how wholly intent on draining me dry. That’s right, take it all, I thought, fingers threading through his dark waves, as if in silent permission.
”Why show you these things?" I smirked. "Why not? You’re my only friend, after all." He said nothing. Only tightened his grip, binding us closer as we hung, suspended, intertwined.
A woman’s voice, deep and husky, calls out my name. Not a cry, not a command. Just an acknowledgement. Her accent is thick, French laced with the old-country lilt of Italy. She used to tell me stories of Naples, Gaeta, Rome, how she missed them, how they lived within her even here. But she will not stay. No. She drifts like smoke, untethered, untouchable, dissolving before she can be held. Slipping beyond the reach of my thoughts.
Nicki. Nicholas, lost in the frenzy of playing his violin.
The endless black ocean stretched out in all directions, swallowing the horizon. My second most regrettable mistake, though hardly the last. The devil’s road teaches harsh lessons; some souls are not meant for this world. Though I can truly imagine his fate was set long before my undoing, its course indifferent to my hands.
”I am the devil, David. You were never wrong.” I said, pulling him into my embrace. I take what I want, without hesitation, without discretion. Cradling his larger frame against me, I marveled at the fragile warmth we shared.
“Needing you was never in doubt. Wanting you was absolute. But beyond that, I knew… you would be extraordinary.”
His heart pounded against my chest, and he continued to press soft kisses to my ear.
David paused and brought his face up to meet mine. He looked hard into my eyes for a long moment, caressing my hair with a few fingers and furrowing his brow with a somewhat troubled expression, before he began to softly speak.
“I thought I knew who I was, before you. But I think, if I were being honest with myself, that I’ve been yours from the moment we met,” he punctuated this with a few kisses to my cheek and down my throat. “I don’t know what that makes me… besides completely and utterly daft,” he trailed off, letting out a little resigned, half broken laugh.
I watched the gradual realization dawn over him that we were in fact no longer suspended in the air. I saw him glance around and down at the blood soaked sheets beneath us, the only literal dark spot around the otherwise pristine room.
Louis once said to me, “You hurt everyone you love. That’s your curse, not the Dark Gift.” I’ve never heard truer words.
My love runs black and red. A venom in the veins of those I hold dearest. It poisons. It chokes.
Beyond the heavily draped windows, Amsterdam stirred. The slow symphony of a world waking hummed in the distance. David again met my eyes with a soft sigh and a somewhat relenting smile. He needed sleep. The morning light shifted, nearly imperceptibly, and he let his head fall to my shoulder. He’ll leave me tomorrow, I thought, twisting a brown curl around my ashen, ice-cold finger. The realization burned in my chest, and tears gathered, stinging my eyes and threatening to trace unwanted paths down my cheeks.
On top of me, his breath rose and fell in slow rhythm, his limbs heavy in the stillness of our deathlike slumber. No one would disturb us. I glanced toward the drapes once more, assuring myself my young fledgling was safe from the coming light. I had another hour, just one more hour to hold him like this before the sun claimed me too. Leaning close, I whispered to him with every ounce of tenderness I had left, “To be loved by me is to be kissed by death and told that it is devotion.”
...Claudia...do you love her, like a sister, a daughter, a companion
At what point? Relationships are entirely transient. She was all of those things, in turn. First, a daughter who needed care. By the time she had spent 18 years in the blood, that role no longer fit her. She wanted to be a sister, an equal, but I still saw her as a fledgling. My creation. And after she nearly succeeded in killing me, she became something else entirely. Not a child, not a companion, but an instrument of my undoing. But at no point did I not love her. “Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young.”
