thevampiremariusderomanusâ:
There was such chaos in the mind and heart of this young mortal whose face bore the lines and shadows of exhaustion, cheeks drawn, eyes dark but glowing with fervent obsession. Once again, Marius felt his heart pull with empathy, and yes, even fear for this one no more than a boy. Marius knew he was in a place out of which nothing good could come. The boy had startlingly beautiful eyes, a rich and uncommon purple, and Marius was drawn to look into them.Â
So, his options were two: give the answers the boy sought or deny him. But really, there was a third option. He could slip into the boyâs mind and make him forget everything. Louis, Lestat, Armand, even him, would be buried so deep that not even the humanâs dreams could revive a faded glimpse. Marius would then gather the tapes and crush them into pieces. But killing him? Not an option to cross his mind. Though touched by madness in the way most mortals who skirted their fringes did, he was not yet lost to it. At least Marius hoped. Such fervent thoughts, though.
Besides, Daniel was not to blame for any of this. He, unwitting and disbelieving, had been led into their world. That young one Louis? He was at fault, and Marius disliked that any of their kind would disclose their existence to the world. And if this Louis must, the least he could have done was leave out the names of others.Â
It had angered Marius to read of Armand, to feel a sense of⊠what? Exposure? That the world had no right to know of Armandâs suffering? Or his cruelty, the details of which had horrified Marius to a deeply-shaken core and left him there, as he read by the fire, filled with overwhelming and suffocating sickness. And when he closed his eyes, he could see that lost boy in his dirty, torn robes beneath the cemetery. Then to recall how he looked in his large red robe- a source of unspeakable grief that too left Marius reeling- there in the shimmering theater, empty but dangerous. And throughout it all, with a pale face so beautiful, too exquisite for any horror to ruin.
Centuries had gone. It was too late.
Marius shook himself from the dawning nightmare and focused on the heat of Danielâs hand over his own. It seemed a good lesson for Daniel to feel his skin, cold and hard, in order to understand how far he was from humanity. That he was a dead thing, animated only by the hundreds of thousands of lives given to him. No, taken by him. He even turned his hand over after a moment to let Daniel see his palm, which bore no lines other than the deeply set crevices that naturally bent with his hand. The tendrils of fine lines found winding their unique patterns on the palms of humans or vampires not yet advanced in age were erased.
âYes, most of us are very beautiful, I think. Either chosen because we are, or made so by the blood which makes us immortal. My name is Marius and you must never tell anyone of me,â he instructed. âHide me deep. I could make you forget, you know. Would you like me to do that? There is no need for you to carry around this dark knowledge, not with the way it will inevitably eat at both your soul and sanity until neither are left. Iâm not going to kill you because I do not kill the innocent, not for any reason no matter how justified it might be. Do you really want to suffer this lunacy any further?â
Daniel watched the immortal across from him and he bit his lip slightly. The last meeting with an immortal hadn't gone very well, and while he'd rather not die, he hadn't been able to stay away. What was this immortal's reaction to him? It was hard to read his expressions, even harder to read than Louis had been. He looked down as Marius flipped over his hand to look at his palm, and in awe, reached down to lightly trace over the deep-set creases.
"You have no fingerprints," he observed softly. "Is that... is that something that happens to all vampires?" He had to admit, he hadn't been looking too closely at Louis's hands, after all. He'd been so caught up in the story... he looked back up at Marius then, searching his face. But no, he had no wrinkles, no lines of any kind on his face either. As if made by marble. Louis had small creases in his forehead, and at the corners of his eyes, but Marius... he had none at all. Not on his hands, nor his face.
It made sense that they were all beautiful. Of course, who would want to live forever if they were unfortunate-looking? Staring at themselves in mirrors for hundreds of years if they had the slightest flaw. Or perhaps vampires weren't prone to being self-conscious? Were there ugly vampires? Never tell anyone? His brow furrowed slightly. He looked down at the cassettes on the table before him. The book he'd published had given him what funds he needed to travel to Paris to search for Armand.
Though he looked back at Marius as he frowned. Forget? No. He pulled his hand back away from Marius's hand, recoiling slightly. "I can't forget. No... no, I can't forget. The books, I'll remember. I wrote a book. I would have but to read it and remember." He shook his head, bowing over the table, pressing his face into his hands, which slid up over his head and into his hair. "I can't forget, why would you care? Whether I go mad or not, I am nothing, I am just... some nobody off the street."
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