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“‘I know what it feels like to burn, to feel the smoke choke the life from your lungs, to feel your flesh boil and crack. I never thought I’d have wished it on anyone. But the truth is, diary, I was glad to see him burn, burn like the Devil he is. Ain’t nobody deserve it more.’” Daniel finishes his narration and sits back in his chair, delicate book propped open on his knee. “Well that’s certainly poetic. She’s a regular Shirley Jackson. She could have had a career in creative writing for sure.”
The rich, dark leather of the chair’s armrest is butter soft beneath the pads of Louis’ fingers. The breeze carried in through the open balcony door carries with it the heavy salt scent of the ocean. The sound of early morning commuters begins to filter through the predawn silence. The night sky is beginning to brighten over the distant line of the horizon.
Louis focuses on keeping his breathing steady. Focuses on the breeze. Focuses on the traffic.
“So,” Daniel says, huffed on an exhale, and the book makes a telltale thump as it's placed on the nearby coffee table. “You finished burning the body. Then what?”
Then what? Then we left, he wants to say. We took our bags and we walked out of that courtyard and we boarded the train and then the steam liner. We left that city, that life, behind to seek freedom and answers across the Atlantic. We didn’t look back, he wants to say.
Then what? Then he stood in the ruins of the courtyard, the ground churning like turbulent water beneath his leaden feet. He had smelled the thick, rancid smoke as it coated his mouth, his nose, his throat. He felt the blood still coating their clothes begin to go tacky and stiff; Claudia’s delicate white underdress stained and ruined beyond repair. He watched the way he - the body - thrashed, a struggle in appearance only, nerves still firing in vain. Watches until the movement stops and all is silent but for the cracking of the flames. Watches Claudia’s face work in the dark, lit umber by the dancing fire, and her eyes are filled with triumph, with satisfaction, with finality. Feels her hand clutch his, the delicate points of her nails in his flesh.
Remember this, his face as it melts.
The first burnt orange rays of morning light begin to bleed between Dubai’s highrises. Dawn rapidly approaches.
“Louis,” Daniel’s voice prompts, and Louis’ head snaps to him, sitting forward in his seat, eyes narrowed in intrigued regard like a hound on a scent. Louis’ hand is tacky now with fresh blood. The pain of nails, his own nails, biting into the meat of his palm feels muted and far away.
All at once it is too much. He breaks from the man as the window panels begin to shutter closed to block the anemic sunlight, feet carrying him to the safety of the shadow of the hallway. Rashid lingers to handle their intrepid guest.
“Mr. du Lac will retire now. Further questions will keep until tomorrow evening.”
“Bullshit, we’re not done here,” comes the expected protest, entirely impudent.
Judging by the echo of his next words, Rashid has placed himself in the entrance to the hallway. “I will not repeat myself, Mr. Malloy. Feel free to peruse the diary collection at your leisure. Your morning meal will be ready at seven o’clock. If there is anything else you require please let staff know.”
The protests, predictably, continue, but Louis can pay it no mind. His feet have carried him to his rooms without conscious thought.
“Thank you, that’ll be all,” he says to the shadow lingering at the end of the corridor.
“Louis- ”
“That’ll be all.”
He closes the door with finality. He cannot bear to be cajoled or, and he feels his lip curl at the thought, coddled. Not now. Not about this.
Not while the unending picture show in his mind plays on ceaseless repeat images of Lestat’s face as it brightened in a tremendous, radiant smile, as it twisted in snarling fury, as it liquified under the intense heat of the furnace. One image nauseatingly superimposed upon the next like a child's grotesque flip book. Not for the first time he curses the clarity of his vampire mind.
Restless, his feet carry him in circles, loops, figures, across the floor; repeated, familiar patterns around its central feature. The fine carpet will need to be replaced soon, such are the marks of constant wear. He considers, cruelly, making a nagging note to Rashid, who still lingers in the hallway despite his clear dismissal.
Instead, Louis allows himself a distraction. His fingers alight on the ornate, finely crafted lid of the only material item other than the diaries taken from Rue Royale those years ago. The polished wood still gleams despite its advanced age, such is its meticulous upkeep. He opens the lid of the music box and lets its tinkling melody play into the heavy silence.
It calms him and enrages him in equal measure. The beautiful delicacy of the song juxtaposed with the sting of the knowledge that it was composed for someone else, some other dark haired lover of centuries past. Someone who Lestat, many decades later, was even then pained to mention. Lestat, who destroyed his master recordings of Louis' own cruelly calculated composition but kept this, the only item considered important enough to make the long trip from the continent. He wants to listen to its fragile, heartsick song every night until its every hill and valley is carved into his mind like braille. He wants to smash the box into kindling so he can forget it ever existed.
It evokes the same feeling in him now as its creator; as terrible as he ever was alluring.
He’s overtired. He knows this. That's why he's reacting this way. He hasn’t been sleeping well, when he does sleep at all, and when he does he is plagued by fitful dreams and if he's feeling a bit more… fragile than usual, well, it's to be expected. He just needs to work harder at keeping himself in check. He sits down heavily in the room’s solitary chair - presses his palms firmly into the hollows of his eyes.
It doesn’t help.
He remembers the feeling of Lestat’s large hands on his face, the back of his neck, as though the touch is burned into his skin's memory. The wisp of his hair in Louis' face, the tip of his nose running gently along Louis’ cheek, his throat, his belly.
His own nails leaving patterns of scratches and bleeding punctures in Lestat's fine skin.
How at times, and only if Lestat was in a very particular mood, the type of exceedingly rare mood where he was languid and affectionate without intention or distraction, he would lie down with him, his golden head on Louis’ lap, those liquid blue-gray eyes blinking slowly up at him, and listen to Louis read aloud. Allow the fingers of Louis' free hand to sift through that fair hair and soothe him into a doze.
How his fits of foul temper would sweep over him so suddenly at times as to be likened to summer storms, as intense as they were swift moving. The black clouds of rage rolling in to blot out the clear skies of his disposition, and the only thing to be done was to seek shelter until it passed over.
The sound of his laugh, first low and warm and full of promise, and then loud and jarring, harsh in its madness. Of his pet names, always accompanied by a crook of a smile and a glimmer of fond amusement. Of his sighs, his hot breath in Louis' ear; murmured words in the close dark. Of his shocked gasp cut short to bloody gurgles. Of his pleas for help. Of his agonized screams.
Of the way Louis' name sounded as it rolled off of his tongue and lips. As though it wasn’t an entirely common, pedestrian name. As though it were instead something to be revered.
How ugly he made it sound when he spat it in anger.
How nothing in the world ever made as much sense as when they were pressed close in the quiet dark of a shared coffin, the space far too small for two men of their sizes to ever fit comfortably. And yet fit they had. And he cannot recall ever sleeping more soundly, more contentedly, than when curled into the circle of Lestat's embrace, half on top of one another, twin heartbeats echoing in quiet harmony within the paneling of their close quarters. The way it drowned out everything that existed outside of them.
How he sat across a room from him and gazed upon a stranger wearing Lestat's fine clothes. How even though a fire blazed within the hearth every night, warmth had ceased to exist between them.
How his beautiful mouth could pour honeyed words as sweet as sugar and vitriol of the cruelest nature equally. And Louis never did learn to predict which he might expect to get when it opened.
How it felt to fall.
What his living flesh smelled like as it cooked.
Louis reaches to fumble with the music box's lid, stopping the rotation of the cylinder abruptly. The last plinked note hums itself into silence, the song unfinished.
He puts his face back into his hands as though he could somehow shield himself and he can feel the puff of his own labored breaths channeled into his ears. He desperately tries to refocus. Focus on the interview, its outcome, the reason he's doing all of this, lancing his wounds for the masses.
What had the last question been? Then what? Then what then what thenwhat? Focus on what Daniel needs to know. Try to predict what information he will demand instead. Distract. Redirect. Divert and deflect away from the detestable, probing questions he knows will come. Questions he doesn’t want to answer. Questions he doesn’t know how to answer. How did it feel?
How did it feel to irrevocably sever the tie between maker and made, sire and progeny, a blood bond created to endure? How did it feel to try and fail to hide your bloody tears from your sister? How did it feel, the knowledge that you had wanted him dead, wanted to do the act yourself, wanted to hold his cruel, impossible life in your hands and snuff it out? Suffocate it like he had yours. Not quickly but slowly, agonizingly, deliberately. How did it feel to have to admit to yourself in the depth of the lonesome dark that despite everything he did to you you still wanted him alive?
Relief and shame coiled like twin serpents, taking each their turn to strike. Vindication and regret. Hatred and, yes, love.
He draws himself up and goes to the center of the room, to its somber focal point, the sleek coffin lying in this mockery of a wake, its occupant in seemingly endless stasis, unable or unwilling to awaken.
His fingers run along the groove of the polished black lid. He makes a mental note to clean off the smudged fingerprints later. He wonders idly if the book's publication will finally be the spark that wakes him from his long sleep. It would be fitting for a narcissist like him, hearing all those people out there speak his name, form their little opinions based on Louis' words alone. He would have to wake, if only to hear them speak of him so salaciously. He will be furious, Louis thinks with a humorless chuckle, furious that Louis is not here to be refuted directly.
And that's what this is really about, isn't it? That's what he cannot bring himself to admit. That this book will be a warning, yes, certainly. A somber warning of what's to come if precautions are not taken. But it is also his suicide note. For better or worse. Because he will never be able to deliver it himself. Because in a few months time it will be all that remains of him in this world, save for a few lingering memories in the minds of his kind.
And so -
He presses his palm to the casket lid. How badly he wishes to open it - look at him just one more time.
When he is gone, who then will read to him? Who then will speak to him and curse his name? Who will safekeep his heirloom? Who, when all that will be left of him is a book left to collect dust in his place.
Who else could possibly have cause to hate this man more than he? Who else could ever attempt to love him as deeply?
He bows his head and allows the sturdy wood to take some of his weight. Only for a moment.
He draws one last deep breath.
He steps back, forces his hand to be steady. He sits back down in the chair - leans to lift the lid of the music box once more.
There's no sense dwelling on all that now. He's already set things in motion that cannot be undone. The book will be published, he is certain of that. The only thing he can do is stay the course.
The music box's song begins to slow.
He picks up the book he last left propped open on the armrest. He begins to read.
"'Si on me presse de dire pourquoi je l'aimais, je sens que cela ne se peut exprimer qu'en répondant: parce que c'était lui, parce que c'était moi.'"