Chapter Text
It’s all Lestat’s fault, as many things are.
… Or perhaps it all started with Gremt. Gremt, who sought to assume human form; Gremt, none-too-pleased to be stuck in it. “Gremt Stryker Knollys”, whatever that means; Gremt who came forth through the bees. Gremt, the bane of Cassiodorus, or Gremt who perhaps set him free.
One way or another, it was Lestat’s little jaunt which later provoked the interest and note of Teskhamen. (Teskhamen, who crawled razor-clawed from a pyre; Teskhamen, in love with a ghost.) Teskhamen, who now knew of Raglan, and Teskhamen, who remarks, as an elder, that his bleeding-heart fledgling should perhaps have helped less. Not sure how; doesn’t matter. Raglan is dead, but the story lives on.
“A ghost can inhabit a vampire, then? A vampire’s body?” Teskhamen had on that night asked.
“Obviously,” David had then said in turn. He relishes them, David, these off-and-on moments of nigh-expertise. “Raglan would have remained in Lestat, even if the host body had passed away. Which is to say, for all intents and purposes, he operated as a disembodied human spirit—a ghost—during the course of events.”
“What then of the silver cord?” And that had been Louis, beautiful, cherished, who is always on about that.
Louis had been on that night present, and as is often the case, by happenstance first and foremost. Figures had gathered and he had not left. He had thumbed through a volume of Rimbaud from which countless page darts protruded like scales, glinting in limited light.
“—But the body must be vacant,” my grand-sire pressed.
“No, not necessarily. When we vampires ‘walk’ in one another’s minds, as Akasha did so often with her itinerant caretaker, your fledgling Marius—” they’re none too fond of each other “—we do so via precisely the same mechanisms. We possess some paranatural enhancement, but foundationally, it’s unchanged.” Something in David’s harsh gaze would be dangerous, were Teskhamen new to the Blood. He is not. “Lestat and Raglan briefly co-inhabited Lestat’s body, if you care to recall, but it was Lestat alone who compelled Raglan’s ouster. It has been some millennia since you were human, Teskhamen, but speaking from a spiritualist’s perspective, we remain a far cry from gods. There are rules, even for us, and practices we hold in common. My research explained this quite thoroughly. I trust that you have retained it in the archives.”
“So you might have a vampire and a vampire, or a human and a vampire, and the vampire may be either guest or host. Is that an accurate summary?” Gregory, then: forever even-tempered, unflappable in ways I deem extreme. Gregory, whose voice is clear, and we find ever-present.
David nodded. “That’s right. And there are a number of purely human conditions as well, though they need not concern us.”
Something had flashed in his hardened eyes—the eyes of Teskhamen, the root of my line. “Then we could produce bodies for them. For our disembodied. Why was this not proposed sooner?”
“The original occupant has a uniquely strong tie and can, at will, eject any invader,” David replied, his tone clipped. “That’s all made clear in my sire’s account. That, you claim to have read.”
“So, provided the body is never deliberately abandoned, a ghost can inhabit a vampire’s body, but never supplant the original consciousness?” Gregory is more concise than I have come to expect from the ancient. In his mind I observed it, the shameless taking of notes. “And may nevertheless be displaced if the original consciousness returns?”
“I imagine that is why Gremt eschewed such a notion. Something I’d have thought would be primarily in your realm of expertise, Teskhamen. You’ve known him some time, have you not?” David crossed tawny arms that long ago he’d seized. To him, I, on this matter, defer; his talent, I think, is self-evident.
Teskhamen had only tilted his head, as if having faintly detected a tune played far-off. “You were only meant as an interim figure. I never suspected you knew useful things.”
“That must be correct,” Zenobia interjected, having pitched aside the haggard husk of one wholly-tapped mortal. “Otherwise, why go to such lengths to produce an inferior form? They slide and strobe, the ghosts do; I have seen them dissolve. It seems very cobbled-together. It lacks our strength, our consistency.”
“That body would be innocent,” Gregory reminded her.
“But his Hesketh, his Magnus—they are not innocents; what qualms could they have?” she had asked. “And your long-suffering Gallant, Teskhamen—he had tasted the Blood. He who on his deathbed praises the vintage would have, in his youth, surely taken the Gift.”
“There are other options. There are artificial bodies now, those that Kapetria—” Avicus began.
“I will kill them,” I said. “I will kill any such body. I will reduce it to ash and no part will survive.”
Gregory had laughed, boisterously.
Teskhamen waved his hand. “No reasonable person wants something like that anyway. You’ve all noticed it, haven’t you?” He had taken a short glance at David. “Ah! Suppose not. Never mind.”
That is how it started, this at our new Court. Of course. Of course. Lestat’s modern coven, amassed under his family’s eaves and his loveable, swaggering rule. Like him it is curious, and—like him—courageous. Like him, it’s so full of ideas.