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Lestat was laughing.
Not politely, not indulgently—laughing with the full-bodied, musical arrogance of a man who thought he had seen and heard enough for ten lifetimes.
“A black egg,” he said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “Armand, mon cher, if you are going to insult me, at least do it with more finesse.”
Daniel joined the conversation with deliberate nonchalance. “It wasn’t black like paint,” Daniel said, shrugging. “More like… obsidian. Or wet stone. Hard to describe unless you were there.”
“I was there,” Armand said softlyhis hand squeezing Daniel’s in an affectionate gesture.
Lestat stopped laughing.
Benji sat cross-legged on the floor near the window, his back against the radiator, a cigarette pinched between two fingers with practiced ease. Even in his immortality, he had never entirely given up the habit. It didn’t give him the same satisfaction it once had as a mortal, but he liked the feeling of it—and that it made him look older.
The vampire boy looked twelve in the way museum artifacts looked young: technically correct, spiritually misleading. His curly hair fell into his eyes; twenty years in the blood had sharpened his expression, turning him into something beautiful yet horrific, neither boy nor adult, but something in between, forever frozen in his youth. Just like his entitled, auburn-haired guardian.
He exhaled the smoke slowly, watching it crawl through the air and vanish through the half-open window.
“This is ridiculous,” Lestat said, though his gaze never left the child vampire. “You cannot simply invent a—what? A mythological poultry situation—and expect me to—”
“He hates being called a situation,” Daniel said.
Benji looked up. “I don’t hate it.”
Armand’s hand rested lightly on the armrest of his chair. He hadn’t moved since Lestat arrived. He rarely did, when waiting for something to land.
“Tell him,” Armand said, not looking at the boy but at Lestat.
The boy sighed, like a man asked to repeat himself for an idiot.
“They panicked.”
Lestat’s smile tightened. “Oh?”
Daniel snorted. “He means we panicked.”
“After,” Armand added, “we found the egg.”
Silence.
The boy stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe, flicked it out of the window and stood. He was small, but he moved with an assurance that scraped against Lestat’s nerves. Too still, too deliberate. He met Lestat’s eyes without challenge or fear.
“I don’t remember hatching,” the boy said. “If that helps.”
“That does not help,” Lestat snapped.
The boy shrugged.
“I remember waiting in a comforting darkness.”
Louis sat in a chair in the corner of the room, a book in hand, with the presence of a ghost. He didn’t look up from his novel even for a second, and if one didn’t know him, they might get the impression that he didn’t even register the conversation happening around him.
A rather ridiculous conversation, even so.
Lestat turned to his lover with an almost pleading expression. “Louis, mon coeur, won’t you help me? You allow them to make fun of me like this?”
Louis still didn’t look up. He turned the page of his book at an all-too-human pace, his smooth voice quiet and comforting as always.
“Lestat, there are things in this world one can’t exactly explain. And love and hope were always the best ingredients for all kinds of miracles.”
Lestat looked absolutely unimpressed by the words of the black-haired vampire.
“Traitor.”
Daniel rubbed his face. “Look, we’re not saying you have to believe it. We’re just saying—”
“—that you do,” Armand finished, a devilish, delighted glee flickering in his eyes.
Lestat felt it then. Not belief. Not yet.
Unease.
Because the boy smiled—not like Daniel, not like a child—but with a brief, precise expression that belonged unmistakably to Armand.
And Lestat hated himself for noticing.
True, the boy’s physical appearance differed wildly from his two claimed fathers. But there were signs. Lestat noticed them once in a while: the way Benji’s expressive face could shift from cheerful and lively into a blank mask of judgment, a frighteningly perfect imitation of Armand’s trademark expression which Daniel referred to as the resting-bitch face.
Benji was a smartass and seldom knew when to stop, which reminded Lestat of Daniel on far too many occasions.
Curious and almost reckless in his inquisitiveness at times—the same careless energy Lestat knew all too well from a certain blond reporter.
And the smoking…
Lestat shook his head lightly, still in disbelief. He had to end this here. He feared he would lose his mind if he didn’t leave.
With an annoyed huff, Lestat rose from his seat.
“If you three want to make fun of me, come up with something more plausible. You cannot make me believe that nonsense. I’m disappointed. Especially in you, Armand. I thought you would be my worthy adversary and now you try to ensnare me with fairy tales.”
Daniel rubbed the back of his neck innocently, while Armand continued to stare at Lestat without blinking, his face a perfectly unreadable mask. If Lestat’s words affected him in any way, he didn’t show it.
*
It should have ended there.
It should have stayed a joke—an elaborate performance, a cruel delight shared between old friends and old enemies, if Lestat still liked to think of himself and Armand that way.
Instead, Lestat found himself awake at dawn, staring at the ceiling, hearing the word hatched echo in his mind like a dropped coin that never stopped spinning.
He heard the boy’s voice. I remember waiting in darkness.
He had seen Benji and Sybelle after they were turned, hadn’t he? At the house in New Orleans, with Marius. Marius was their maker. Wasn’t he?
On the other hand, he hadn’t actually witnessed their turning, and everything from that time was fuzzy anyway. He had been risen from his comatose sleep only for a single night, enchanted by Sybelle’s piano playing, before sinking back into slumber at the chapel once more.
Lestat had missed a great deal in those years. He had wondered, from time to time, how Armand—of all vampires—had come to care for two vampire children. But he had been too occupied with himself to truly question where they originated.
And hadn’t Armand and Daniel already broken up when he met Armand during the incident with Memnoch? Armand had been wandering alone, his fledgling nowhere in sight. They must have parted ways before that. Or perhaps not. Lestat wasn’t sure. His memories following everything with the spirit were clouded and disordered.
On the other hand… no one had said when this alleged vampire egg was found, as they put it. Lestat had met Benji in the nineties as a teenage vampire, so it was possible the egg was older. Perhaps it even dated back to the eighties, when they were still together and—
“Non! C’est impossible!” Lestat tried to will his spiraling thoughts to a halt.
There was no way that damnable little red-haired devil and his minions were going to get inside his head like this. Armand delighted in meddling with minds in every possible way, and Lestat would not fall for his tricks.
*
The following night, Lestat snapped.
They were all in the living room again. Benji sat on the arm of the couch, laptop balanced on his knees, microphone glowing softly. Recording. Always recording.
“What is he doing?” Lestat demanded.
“Rough notes for episode seventeen of my new podcast,” Benji said without looking up. “It’s about unreliable narrators.”
Daniel winced. Armand watched Lestat carefully now.
“You are not,” Lestat said, advancing, “a metaphor. Or a miracle.”
Benji glanced up, one eyebrow raised. “Didn’t say I was.”
“You are a child. A vampire child made by an ancient vampire. Nothing more.”
“Allegedly.”
Lestat laughed sharply. “You expect me to believe that you were what—laid? That you emerged fully formed from some ancient, funereal—”
“—shell?” Benji supplied. “Yeah.”
“That is obscene!”
“That’s birth,” Benji said. “You should look it up. Honestly, I’m shocked that you of all people never considered something like this. Don’t you know more about vampires and their origins than any other being in the world by now?”
“See,” Benji said, closing his laptop and adopting a distinctly didactic tone, “if two vampires love each other deeply and share blood—much blood—in a very intimate way, it might happen—”
“Stop with that nonsense!” Lestat whirled on Armand. “You let him speak to me this way?”
Armand’s expression did not change, though a small twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed a smile threatening to break through. “I don’t control how he speaks to whom. He may speak to you as he wishes.”
That did it.
“Stop,” Lestat said. His voice cracked through the room like a whip. “Stop this performance. Stop him. Tell me it is a joke. Tell me you are not—”
He gestured helplessly at the boy.
“—playing at creation.”
Louis had almost soundlessly risen from his usual place on the corner and was at Lestat’s side now, easing a hand to his shoulder.
“Calm down,Lestat.”
“Louis! They are inventing monster-children!”
Daniel opened his mouth. And closed it again.
Armand stared.
Lestat stared back, horror and anger blooming hot and vivid in his chest.
Benji put the laptop aside. The room felt suddenly smaller.
“You’re the one who keeps making it mythic,” Benji said. “I just live here.”
Lestat took a step back, pressing his fingers to his temples, the urge to scream clawing at his throat.
He could picture it. Black shells. Cracking. Something waiting inside. This was ridiculous.
“I quit. You win. I believe you—at least I believe you are somehow the spawn of this devil.” He pointed at Armand with an exhausted gesture. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be capable of such cruel jokes. Give me a rest.”
“Enough.” Daniel’s voice cut through the room, followed by a light chuckle.
“I’m sorry, Lestat. It never should have gone this far.”
“Oh, it definitely should,” Armand deadpanned smoothly.
“I knew it!” Lestat’s voice rose almost to a screech. “I knew you were telling lies and fairy tales!”
Benji smiled back at him. “Though you believed it. If only for a few moments, maybe—but you did.”
“I—” For once, even Lestat was at a loss for words.
And that was what finally broke Armand’s infuriatingly neutral expression into a broad grin.
“You are so much like them, Benjamin Mahmoud!” Lestat shrieked. “You don’t look like them at all, but please! You are annoying and infuriating, and at the same time so charming and captivating it makes me love and hate you all at once! And what’s with the smartassery? The sarcasm? It’s like Daniel imprinted all of his most unnerving traits onto you!”
Armand’s grin faltered, giving way to a warm expression as his gaze shifted to Benji.
Daniel dissolved into wild, howling laughter, bending double as blood tears filled his eyes.
When the laughter finally died down and the room fell silent, Benji approached Lestat, who still looked furious.
“I’m sorry,” Benji said softly. “It was just too tempting.”
Lestat rolled his eyes, letting out a small huff.
“But it wasn’t all a lie.”
That made Lestat turn back to him with a frown. “Oh, come on, you—”
“No. I’m not making fun of you anymore. It’s true.” Benji shrugged slightly. “I didn’t hatch from a black egg laid by Armand or Daniel or whatever you were imagining… but they are my parents. You know, Armand and Louis were the only true parents I’ve ever known in my life.” With a small grin he added. “And lately Daniel is doing not a bad job too.”
Benji first looked at Louis before he turned to Daniel and Armand, whose faces flickered with shock before softening into something gentle and understanding.
“You all kind of are,” Benji continued. “I mean, Armand is definitely my favorite dad,” he added with a chuckle. “My dybbuk. But Louis, Daniel… even you. You’re my family too. And if every one of you chooses to see something of yourselves in me, I’d call that a wild success in parenting.”
Lestat stared at Benji, grey-blue eyes wide with disbelief.
“And it’s also true that I waited,” Benji said quietly. “I didn’t have anyone. The world wasn’t exactly kind to me. I had Sybelle. At first she was my responsibility, then my best friend, and eventually my sister. But I waited for a family to find me. I had already given up on that for both of us when family actually did find us, in the shape of a black-winged angel who rescued us.”
Louis looked at Benji, his gaze soft and steady. “Some children are born alone long before they are born at all. That doesn’t make them miracles. It makes them survivors.”
Benji’s face broke into a wide, radiant grin. “And I couldn’t wish for a better family than all of you.”
It took Lestat a moment to absorb it all. Then he lunged forward, wrapping the boy tightly in his arms.
“I love you, you infuriating nuisance.”
Benji smiled against Lestat’s chest. “I love you too, weird uncle.”
Lestat stepped back and straightened slowly, smoothing his coat as though nothing at all had happened.
“Very well,” he said. “I was deceived.”
Daniel wiped his eyes, still gleaming with blood tears from laughter—and perhaps from Benji’s speech as well. “You were devastated.”
“Temporarily,” Lestat snapped. “By three creatures whose greatest talent is sustained emotional vandalism.”
Benji grinned. “So… no pocket money?”
Lestat paused, then smiled, dangerous and delighted.
“Oh no,” he said. “If you are going to claim my legacy, my dear boy, then you will suffer for it like family.”
Armand laughed softly.
And to his own surprise, Lestat realized he meant it.