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“You hungry yet?” Claudia asked, glancing back.
Madeleine nodded. “Very much.”
“Good. Me too.” Claudia turned down a corner. “Are you ready for your first? It’s… important,” she said, stumbling over the last word, unsure of what else to denote the occasion.
“Is it?” There was a hint of a tease in Madeleine’s voice, but nothing more. Her eyes were wide and bright, taking in the world around her as though it were brand-new. And, Claudia remembered, it was. When Claudia had been turned, she was so young, and so near-death, that the transformation of the world around her had barely registered. She could hardly recall how things had looked before. But Louis talked about it sometimes; the way the world seemed to glow anew the night he’d been turned.
“Yeah,” Claudia said, “or it was for me. Louis and Lestat took me out that first night, dressed up in fancy new clothes, out in their car to a boulevard, where Louis tried to convince me to eat some poor drunk.” She smiled, letting her fangs slip out. “Instead, I pounced on a cop. Got a long lecture after that, let me tell you.”
“We can’t eat cops?”
“We shouldn’t,” Claudia said. “We have to avoid those who will be missed. Any notable deaths. Most of the time, anyway,” she added, remembering her first hunt with the coven.
They kept walking, until they reached a seedy-looking bar, on the very outskirts of the city. Outside it, a man was hollering belligerently at a pair of unimpressed young women, a half-empty bottle in his hand. He stumbled over the pavement. Claudia nodded towards him.
“Wait ‘til he gets into the shadows, then grab him.”
Madeleine eyed him. “Will he taste good?”
“Not the best,” Claudia said, “but if he’s drunk enough you might get a buzz.”
“Oh,” Madeleine said approvingly. Claudia grinned and sauntered closer to the bar, letting Madeleine follow. They slipped into the alleyway, and waited. As if on cue, the man wandered their way mere moments later, drinking the last few drops of his bottle, and hiccupping. The second he had fully entered the dark, Madeleine pounced, grabbing him by the shoulders, pushing him up against the alley wall, and letting her teeth sink into his neck. The man flailed for a moment, but then went still.
Claudia watched as Madeleine’s nails pressed against the man’s cheek, creating small indents. She watched as droplets of blood spilled past Madeleine’s lips, staining her chin, dripping down her neck to run over her collarbones, the messy eating of a newborn vampire. She watched as Madeleine’s skin grew pinker, as it began to glow, reinvigorated with fresh blood. She watched as Madeleine’s eyes fluttered closed, as she held the man’s neck ever closer to her, drinking as much as she could, lost in the ecstasy of the kill.
Claudia watched, and waited, and then pulled Madeleine back right before the man’s heartbeat stilled. Madeleine looked at her, eyes wide, covered in his blood.
“Gotta stop before they die,” Claudia explained. “Otherwise they take us with them. It’s tricky. But you’ll get the hang of it.”
“Oh,” Madeleine said. She took a hesitant step. “Ah. It is too bad. He must have been a man who could hardly handle his liquor. I am barely even tipsy.” She tossed Claudia a little smile, and continued down the alleyway. “What about your dinner?”
“I’ll find something,” Claudia said, catching up with her. “I got plenty of options, don’t worry.”
Claudia’s dinner ended up being a woman they passed on the street, who separated from her friends to walk home alone. Madeleine watched, this time, as Claudia ate.
“So how do you know when to stop?” she asked, after Claudia pulled back.
“You can hear their heartbeat,” Claudia said, “feel it too. You’ve just got to pay attention, that’s all.” She glanced up at the sky. “Come on. Night’s nearly over. We’ve got to find someplace to sleep.”
Still on the outskirts of the city, Claudia found them a locked cellar belonging to an elderly man. She tore the lock off, and they tucked themselves between cobwebs and wine racks to sleep while the day passed them by.
Once the sun set, and they awoke, Claudia led Madeleine upstairs. Together they listened to the elderly man’s heartbeat slow and stop, Madeleine releasing him just before. After, they stopped at his kitchen sink and Claudia wet a rag to wipe the blood from Madeleine’s face. Madeleine watched her the entire time, bright eyes never leaving Claudia’s face. Claudia finished, and then cleaned up the kill as well. They were heading out of town, but one could never be too careful. She felt Madeleine’s eyes on her back the entire time.
Madeleine watched as she cleaned up. Madeleine watched as she grabbed a few things to take with them. Madeleine watched as she headed to the front door.
They went on their way.
Claudia had dinner just as the world turned even more rural around them, houses becoming further and further apart. She and Madeleine stopped in the woods, and Claudia built a fire to clean up her meal. She sat next to it, warming her hands. Madeleine sat next to her, eyeing the fire with a hint of suspicion.
“Fire… is it not dangerous for us?”
“It was dangerous for you as a human, too,” Claudia said. “But yes. It’s one of the only things that can kill us. It’s deadly. But it’s also useful.” She nodded to the remnants of her dinner.
Madeleine hummed in understanding, and a quiet grew between them. Claudia’s thoughts wandered, back to Paris. She wondered what Louis was doing, and then stopped wondering, shifting her thoughts instead to Madeleine, revisiting her turning in her mind. A question emerged, one of many she had yet to ask.
“Was that your sister I saw?” Claudia asked. “In the casket, with her mouth sewn shut, I mean.”
“Yes,” Madeleine said. Her voice had a twinge of fragility; a wound that had yet to entirely heal. She drew her knees up against her chest. “Aimee. She was a delight. Not the brightest girl, mind you, but I loved her all the same.”
“Am I…” Claudia hesitated. “Do you see me as—”
“No,” Madeleine said quickly.
“Good,” Claudia said, relaxing. “Good, ‘cause I’ve already been a sister to one vampire, and I’m not really looking to do it again.”
Madeleine smiled, knowingly, but it faded a moment later. “You are your own person,” she said, “and so was Aimee. I would not ask you to take on the role of someone who I lost. I would not want someone else in the space where her memory lives, in my mind. She was my sister, and she is the only one who will ever have been my sister. She deserves that, as do you. To live as yourself without being cast in the role of someone you’ve never met.”
Claudia considered those words. “Never thought about it that way,” she said.
“I know,” Madeleine said. “So, no, that is not what you are to me. And I am glad of it.”
“Me too,” Claudia said, and smiled. It was silent, except for the crackle of the fire between them. She felt the strangest calm wash over her. When was the last time she had felt so utterly comfortable with another person—another vampire? She understood Madeleine in a way she had never understood another vampire, having seen her life during the transformation. And Madeleine had read her diaries, and therefore knew her life in turn. They were equals in that respect, Claudia realized. No secrets from the past. No hidden backstories. Just full, simple understanding.
Her thoughts remained with the turning, with the night that she gave Madeleine her diaries to read, and she looked back across the fire at Madeleine, at the way the flames reflected in her bright eyes, and made her red hair burn.
Claudia looked back towards the fire, and took a deep breath. One quiet moment passed. Then another. She leaned back on her hands, playing with bits of dirt between her fingertips. She tried to build the courage to ask the question that had been rattling around inside of her since that first night.
“So, then,” she started, hesitantly, “that first night I brought you back home, and Louis asked what we were, and you said—”
“Not yet?” Madeleine smiled, and wiped a smudge of blood from her lips. “Well, I didn’t know,” she said with an innocent shrug. She hummed under her breath. “I know my inclinations, but… reading your diaries, it was all boys. I wasn’t sure what to think.” She raised an eyebrow at Claudia.
Claudia bit down on a smile. “Alright, fair enough. I guess I never considered it, back in New Orleans. But Paris is… things are different, here. I’m different.”
“Hm,” was all Madeleine offered at first.
“Well, how did you know?” Claudia asked when the quiet stretched a second too long. “Does it feel different to you? Being with a boy, or with a girl?”
“I knew when… oh, I was young,” Madeleine said. “Before the war started, fifteen, perhaps. Still in school, even. There was another girl in my class with the most exquisite smile. I thought about it constantly, even after the war had begun. I didn’t know why at first, but I figured it out.” She shrugged and looked over to Claudia. “And you? Your glorious Parisian moment of awakening?”
Claudia hesitated. There was a sudden press of emotion against her chest, a wave of that special kind of anxiety she hadn’t felt since Charlie. “I looked through a shop window,” she said carefully, “during a blackout. I saw the candlelight, first. And then I saw you.”
Madeleine blinked. She looked down for a moment, then back up at Claudia, the fire lighting up her eyes.
“When I was talking to that vampire. The one who refused to turn me,” she began slowly.
“Armand,” Claudia supplied. Madeleine had not spoken much of their conversation before, other than the parts she had shouted to Claudia in the moment. Claudia had to admit, her interest was piqued. She shifted her body to fully face Madeleine.
“Yes,” Madeleine said. “Him. He asked what I was going to do after you threw yourself in the flames.” Her eyes flickered back to the campfire in front of them. “He said it was inevitable. You were made too young. You couldn’t last.”
A spark of anger. “He was wrong.”
“I know,” Madeleine said, “and I told him that. I told him he knew nothing, and that you wouldn’t, because now you had me. And I could only hope that I am what you need to navigate this life together.”
Claudia pressed her lips together, not sure if she was trying to stop herself from bursting into tears or laughing with a giddiness of finally having found what she was looking for. Maybe both. “You are,” she said. She leaned over, and took Madeleine’s hand, giving it gently. The two sat there like that, in an ever-comfortable silence, for another hour, until the fire died away.
Dawn approached, and Claudia led Madeleine to a field to show her how to bury herself away for the night.
“We’ll get coffins soon,” she promised. “Once we find a place to settle down. Until then, this is what me and Louis did while we traveled.”
“The sun is that dangerous?” Madeleine asked, looking at how deep Claudia was digging.
“Just as much as fire,” Claudia said. “More. I felt it once, years ago. We’re not meant for the light anymore, you and me.”
The next night, they emerged, and Madeleine was hungry. Claudia could see it in her eyes.
“Let’s hunt,” she said, and Madeleine agreed. They made their way through the woods, and happened upon a tiny village. They strolled through the streets, eyes aglow. Madeleine spotted someone first—an older woman, tending a garden attached to an otherwise silent house.
“Go ahead,” Claudia said, and watched as Madeleine waited until a cloud drifted over the moon before grabbing the woman and dragging out her of the torchlight, into the shadows.
Watching Madeleine feed was an exquisite gift all of its own, Claudia thought. Getting to watch the one you love be so reinvigorated by just a simple meal, watching their skin come to life, watching the blood drip down the corners of their mouth… Claudia could do it forever. And she would do it forever, she remembered. This was the life afforded to vampires with companions. This was the life she had been missing out on since she was fourteen years old.
Claudia found her own victim while Madeleine brought her body back into the woods. An old man who had dozed off on a park bench covered in shadows. She simply sat next to him and drank. He didn’t wake until just before he died, and Claudia watched the life dim from his eyes. She dragged the body away, and met Madeleine deep in the woods, where they disposed of both their meals.
The fire was bigger this time, and brighter. Madeleine didn’t say anything. She just sat next to Claudia and stared at the flames, as if hypontized.
“Everything alright?” Claudia asked, nudging her shoulder.
Madeleine looked at her, eyes slightly unfocused, as if coming out of a spell. “Yes,” she said. “Perfect.” Her hand found Claudia’s once more, and Claudia delighted in the heat that washed over her from the simple gesture. She averted her eyes from the flames as the flesh began to melt off the bones, preferring instead to look at Madeleine. There was mud in her hair, which was messily braided and tossed over one shoulder. She had blood and dirt stained on her lips and cheeks. She had the faintest dash of freckles over her nose. She glowed in the firelight. And her lips were pink, underneath the blood and the dirt.
“Madeleine,” Claudia started, and then stopped. A rustle from a bush nearby. She stood up. Someone’s here, she thought.
What was that? Madeleine stood as well. An animal, or…?
No. Claudia could hear the terrified murmur of someone’s thoughts, just behind the bushes. “Who’s there?” she demanded.
Another rustle, and a young man stumbled out of the bushes. There were leaves in his hair, and a rabbit's leg stuck out of a sack slung over his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said, a heavy French accent dancing around his words. “I didn’t mean to—to listen in, on your, ah…” He trailed off as he glanced into the fire. His expression froze. “Que diable?” he whispered. “Pourquoi—why are there—” His voice pitched up, and cracked.
Next to Claudia, Madeleine took a step closer. She glanced over, a determined look in her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” Claudia asked the boy sweetly. Wait, she thought.
The boy had begun to stammer in fast-paced French, before turning his head towards the edge of the woods. “Aide!” he screamed. “Help! Please!”
Now, Claudia thought, and Madeleine pounced. The boy went down instantly, squirming underneath her until Madeleine pierced his neck. She drank for a moment, and then looked up at Claudia.
“Come on,” she said, her mouth full of blood. So Claudia stepped around the fire, kneeled on the other side of the boy’s body, and drank with Madeleine. The boy’s blood was sweet and filling, a candy syrup over her lips. Claudia drank slowly, letting the moment with Madeleine drag out, letting the boy die slowly.
Finally, she pulled back, and looked at Madeleine. In that moment, they were mirror images. Cheeks freshly warm, lips dripping blood, eyes bright. Claudia stared at Madeleine until she couldn’t bear it anymore, and moved the boy aside. She lifted a hand up to Madeleine’s cheek, and let it rest there, warm. Madeleine caught her gaze, and nodded. Claudia reached her other hand up, and brought Madeleine down into a kiss.
She hadn’t done this in a while, and she was clumsy, she could admit that. But once she adjusted, once Madeleine slotted into place, it was a new sort of paradise. Madeleine’s warmth, pressed up against her. The blood mixing between their lips, making the kiss sweeter. Claudia’s fangs slipping back out, accidentally pricking Madeleine’s lips.
Madeleine’s blood, especially, was rapturous. Claudia would live in the moment of Madeleine’s turning, if she could, drinking in Madeleine’s life over and over for eternity.
Madeleine reached up and held a hand against Claudia’s neck, bringing her even closer. She exhaled into Claudia’s mouth, and Claudia smiled against her lips. She took one last moment to taste Madeleine and the blood swirling between them, before she pulled back.
Madeleine’s pupils were blown wide, and the blood was smeared across her face. Claudia was sure she looked the same. She was breathing, heavily, though she wasn’t sure she needed to. It just felt right.
“I’m so glad it’s you,” Claudia said. “This is all I ever wanted.”
Madeleine reached out, cupping Claudia’s face with her hand. “I’m so glad you found me,” she said. Je t’aime, she thought.
Claudia leaned in to kiss her again.
Ten minutes later, they tossed the boy onto the fire, and watched him burn away with the others, arms around each other.
“What will we do after this?” Madeleine asked.
“Wander,” Claudia answered. “Find somewhere to settle down, with easy hunts, and maybe a nice view.”
“Mm. Perhaps near a pub, if we ever want something strong to drink,” Madeleine said.
“And nowhere near a theatre,” Claudia added. Madeleine laughed, the sound bright and cheerful.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “We will avoid the theatre like the plague.”
“We’ll stay away from Paris,” Claudia said, “but France ain’t all that bad. We could find somewhere ‘round here. On the outskirts.”
“I know some good spots,” Madeleine said. She tucked her face into Claudia’s neck and hummed sleepily.
“Do you?”
“Plenty. Ask me tomorrow, though.”
Claudia dug them another hole as dawn approached. She tucked herself in between Madeleine’s arms as they waited for the sun to take its turn. The world turned, and Claudia stayed right where she was. She was finally where she needed to be.