Chapter Text
The story always ends in Paris.
Paris was where all prospects of life after death died in Louis’ mind. Claudia and Madeleine—giddiness at their future of companionship to complete evisceration in a mere twelve hours. Lestat—quipping specter curdled to vengeful wraith. The coven—the promise of camaraderie burnt to ash. In their early days, Armand filled the space carved out from the cruelty of his maker and left unfilled by an ungrateful child. After the trial he had been reduced to nothing more than a tool for Louis—penance for Claudia’s execution, reprisal for Lestat’s participation, an outlet for his grief. Louis left Paris as little more than a ghost haunting the world with his melancholy. While they traversed wondrous landscapes and revisited their aging mortal friends, they dragged the cadaver of their love with them, and every day Armand reminded himself that it was all worth it if it meant having the phantom of his companion by his side, that one day, they would outlive the tumultuous past that brought them together, and something new would emerge reborn from quiet, as God bore life from the primordial darkness.
Now Louis is gone. Over seventy years of companionship rendered meaningless with one oversight.
He lies where Louis left him until the sun has set before attempting to move. Though he has triumphed over the sun’s fire in his age, its powerful light does affect him still. The darkness of night revitalizes his strength, reawakens his thoughts tempered by malaise. He pulls himself upright with the Cloud Gift, rolls his shoulder back into place, and assesses the damage.
Broken glass and tattered pages litter the floor of the reading room, and there's a pile of melted plastic on the table that had once been Daniel’s computer. He finds his iPad hidden beneath the mess, the screen cracked.
The first thing he sees are updates from their private jet, currently taxiing on the runway of the airport en route to MSY, confirming the worst of his fears. Louis is not just leaving, he’s returning to his maker—the fool who’d passed the Dark Gift to a child at the whim of his fledgling, who’d crossed an ocean to find his companion, only to give him away, who’d hidden away the gifts Armand had taught freely.
The second thing he sees are the updates on a first class flight to JFK that was scheduled to depart in five minutes, only the ticket has now expired. The passenger had missed the check in.
Armand refocuses his mind away from Louis and back to the apartment. The servants have all left, but there’s still clinking of cutlery against dishes. He follows the sound, stopping at the doorway of the dining room.
“You’re up finally.” Daniel is sitting at the head of the table, picking food from an assortment of serving trays laid before him. “The chef you hired got the first few courses finished before ducking out. Figured I’d go at it buffet-style. I’ve got this cauliflower quiche-thing, lemon cous-cous, some sort of bean salad. Pretty sure this here is supposed to be saffron rice pudding. Hey, does asparagus make blood taste funny too or is that just a piss thing?”
The boy is as charming and eloquent as ever.
“It does, same as with garlic. I doubt you’d come across any vampire so discouraged by the taste that it saves your life.”
“Probably not. If there’s vampires eating rats out of the garbage, I can’t imagine rotten egg tastes any worse. But at least you get to go out with a petty bang,” he retorts, taking a test bite of the asperges en vinaigrette de betterave before spooning it onto his plate.
“I’d have figured you would’ve gone for the squab pastilla,” Armand muses,”…savory man that you are.”
“I’ve spent the last two weeks with savory, and I’ve built up enough soy sauce and mercury in my body to last a lifetime. If I never hear the word ‘umami’ again, it’ll be too soon.” Of course, he hadn’t much of this lifetime left.
“Must I express how unwise it is that you remain here when the rest of the staff have already departed?”
Daniel shrugs. “Probably on par with accepting the offer to visit the lair of a vampire that tried to kill me fifty years ago. You invited me to dinner, I’m eating dinner, and you’re the one Louis told to leave, not me.”
“Did he not? I can think of a burnt laptop and flight reservation that suggests otherwise.”
“Yeah well, I don’t respond to that passive-aggressive shit. Besides, I still have follow up questions that need answering.”
“To what end? Louis is gone. You’ve achieved everything you set out to accomplish without even starting the book. You’ve won. What more can possibly expect to gain other than humiliating me further?”
Daniel stares at him. “Holy shit. I knew you two were full of yourselves, but did you really forget about the incoming vampire apocalypse? It’s not about you. Hell, it’s not even about Louis. It’s about the story.” He breaks into a gleeful smile. “Humiliating you? That’s just a bonus.”
“Be that as it may, your computer is destroyed. Do you intend to recite Louis’ story solely from your pristine memory?”
The smile somehow manages to grow increasingly smug. “I get why Louis thought setting my shit on fire would kill the story—seems to be his go-to problem solver, really—but I figured the Steve Jobs brain melting tablet would have taught you how remote servers work. Every note I’ve made and conversation recorded here is saved to the Cloud, not to mention wherever the Talamasca copied the files to.”
“The terms you agreed to explicitly stated you were not permitted to share any materials beyond the security of this building without our review first. And I have not consented to my story being published. Your work here is rife with legal complications that would stall publishing indefinitely. That is if you can even find anyone willing to publish this rhyparography.”
“Oh, someone will—all I need is one. And the only contract I’ve signed was with Louis where I write his biography in exchange for the ten million bucks he just gave me. It’s not my problem that you couldn’t help inserting yourself into the story.”
“…He will not be happy about this.”
“Is he ever? Honestly, what’s one more broken promise gonna do at this point?” By now, Daniel has accumulated a sizable pile of food on his plate. There’s no microphone, no pen or notepad at his side, only the fork shaking in his hand. “I ask my questions, I get my answers, I leave. It's as simple as that.”
Lies. All of it. Nothing is ever simple with Daniel Molloy, and he has never been one to leave things be. But Louis has left him here, alone, with the man he brought into their home to tear it apart once again, who remains in the ruins left in his wake. Why? What could possibly be left to destroy?
As Daniel digs into his melange of a dinner, Armand settles himself into the chair at the opposite side of the table, wincing at the pressure on his broken spine. “Go on then. Ask your questions and be done with this.”
“Why is the Great Convergence happening?” Daniel asks between bites of food.
“This has already been explained to you.”
“Covid fucked up everyone’s life and ADHD is on the rise. I got that part. Not what I’m asking. Why is the response to make more vampires? What’s the end-goal? What’s going to happen when the predators outnumber the prey?”
“Is every question you ask going to be a matryoshka of inquiries?”
Daniel doesn’t respond to the jab, waiting with an expectant stare. Armand sighs.
“There’s no grand scheme in the works. The fledglings of this era are as impulsive as the human populations they spawned from, and with no knowledge of the laws to guide them. They think themselves higher beings and wish to indoctrinate their peers into their exceptional existence. Those of us who have roamed the Earth for centuries see the problems they create, but find ourselves greatly outnumbered. We are at the mercy of the children of this new age, watching from afar as they run amok.”
Daniel chuckles. “Even the crazy old renaissance vamps hate millennials. Poor kids can’t catch a break.”
“It’s Louis' opinion that a proper account of the inhuman challenges our kind faces will deter mortals from vampirism. He hopes to scare off the curious ones drawn to the macabre and preserve some semblance of human and vampire existence alike.”
“You don’t agree.”
“You’ve spent over two weeks listening to his story in greater detail than any of your readers ever will. You’re still here, aren’t you?”
Daniel chews quietly for a few moments. “Maybe humans aren’t the target audience at all. You said it yourself back in ‘73—he was imagining how Lestat would respond if he ever read it. Perhaps the real goal is to sway the lonely vampire to look elsewhere for companionship instead of condemning their loved ones for eternity.”
“Were that true, the intent is equally flawed. A human’s value is little more than a pet, and the urge to feed in tandem with overwhelming loneliness is difficult to ignore, especially in the young. Most do not possess the discipline to resist their nature and will give in regardless of the consequences.”
“...But it’s the younger ones that think they’re exceptional?” Daniel takes another bite of asparagus. “And with all of your experience and discipline, you have no interest in stopping the end of the world as we know it?”
“I’ve persisted through many apocalypses in my time, as I will through the many more that come to pass. Children of indulgence are fragile creatures. I see no reason to interfere in these matters when their destruction is imminent.”
“I’m sure Claudia would have appreciated the sentiment.” Another bite of asparagus. Armand’s nails dig into his palm. “Louis’ story spans forty years. The time between then and now is over seventy, nearly twice as long. I got the gist of how the first twenty went—Louis plowing through every tweaker in a mile radius while you waited at home like the dutiful servant you pretend to be. What about the fifty years after San Francisco?”
“The early years of Louis’ existence as a vampire were fraught with grief and calamity. I saw to it that the remainder of it would pass with ease. In spite of a few small hiccups that were dealt with accordingly, I would say I accomplished that.”
Daniel makes a face. “Small hiccups like telling him his daughter never loved him.”
“Dealt with accordingly. I removed his memories of the incident, as was requested of me—“
“So you say.”
“—but he needed more time to recuperate from his injuries.”
“How much time?”
“We are creatures not of the living. When eternal life cannot provide, it is death that mends us. In such cases, we are pulled to the Earth to bury ourselves among the deceased, where we fall into deep sleep. Our bodies cease all functioning, the need for blood temporarily stalled. How long it lasts varies, but we either awaken when we are recovered, or we simply…do not.”
“Hm. Like inducing a coma for detox. And how does the boring, manipulative house-husband spend his nights when maitre is six feet under?”
“I carried on with the work Louis left behind. The art sales continued, properties sold, profits increased. By the time he returned, we’d accrued enough capital to expand into other business ventures. Over time, it became easier to acquire ethical blood sources, as you’d no doubt put it, and by the turn of the millennium, he stopped killing entirely. And then he brought you back and ruined everything we’d accomplished. It seems giving him everything he wanted simply wasn’t enough.”
The smile is finally gone. “Everything he wanted…except Claudia.”
“…Hm. I suppose such effort means little to those that only desire the unobtainable. As I said, children of indulgence will always destroy themselves.”
Daniel bites his cheek, grip tightened around his fork. Armand can see him flipping through his notes in his mind, considering which question would cut the deepest. He braces himself for whatever he lands on. How many others have you seen ‘destroy themselves’? How much longer would Louis have lived if he stayed here? And where has Louis gone off to, anyways? None of them answer the real question—why the both of them are sitting here now.
“How did I get the tapes?”
And there it is. “Ah, yes, this surely will be necessary for your readers to understand—“
“There was no address on the box. How’d you get a key?”
“Why not ask your informant at the Talamasca? Surely they would have documented the delivery.“
“I’m asking you.”
“And why is that? Why presume that I orchestrated your being here?”
“Why not? When’s the last time Louis made a decision himself without you butting in?”
“Had the decision been mine, those tapes would have been burned decades ago and you’d be back at your apartment alternating your days between your jigsaws and watching yourself on television—“
“So we can agree that you were stalking me?”
“—but of course, we cannot be expected to question poor Louis for dragging you back into this, no, not even when it was him that brought you into this mess all those years ago. The blame lies solely in my hands, allowing you to leave that house alive—“
“How would you know what Alice was thinking when I proposed to her? She sure as hell didn’t say any of that to me. Not knowing how to communicate like adults was the thing we had most in common.”
He cannot help but laugh. “And now it is your shortcomings as a husband that I am faulted for. Should we throw your sub-par parenting into the fray while we’re at it? Was it my hand that guided you to your dealer on your daughters’ birthdays? Or into another’s bed on anniversaries spoiled by arguments and a wandering mind? Yes, lay your miseries at my feet to soothe your soiled conscience—“
“Tell me again how long Louis slept for.”
“Stamp your foot and cry about how unfair it is that you cannot escape the aftermath of your own decimation—”
“That is, oh, that is rich coming from you!”
“Years I’ve given you to, far more than you ever deserved, more than enough to evolve past the empty, hopeless wretch you were in San Francisco, yet even now you’re—“
“How long have you been—?”
“—still that petulant, frightened boy searching for anything—“
“Me? You’re the fucking coward who can’t—”
“—anything you can use to bite and claw your way to filling that bottomless hole inside of you, but you have nothing in your repertoire of cruelty that can withstand the breadth of eternity, because you are merely an arrogant child trying to rewrite the very nature of life and death by questioning everything your mortal mind cannot comprehend. Go and write your silly book, waste your final years making your edits, enjoy the horror in the eyes of your peers as they declare you insane, and watch them perish alongside your daughters and wives and all the rest of your fellow humans in spite of your endeavors. Then you too will die, ragged and defeated, knowing your work here will have achieved nothing, just as it never has before.”
“Fine!” Daniel slams his hand down on the table. “Let’s do it this way—I’ll tell you how the story goes, and you can point out all the parts where I got it wrong. You knew about the trial plot right from the moment Santiago discovered the diaries. You shielded the crews’ minds during rehearsals so Claudia wouldn’t hear the plans and played the role of the unsuspecting victim while watching from the sidelines. Once you decided Louis had completely lost interest in any prospects of companionship, you spent your last months together mourning him as you prepared Lestat for the show.
“How did that conversation go, anyway? ‘Hey, guy who fucked me and dumped me after I kidnapped his boyfriend and drove him to suicide, why don’t we kill your pretentious ex-husband and obnoxious daughter so we can team up and fix my failing coven again? It worked out so well the last time!’ If all had gone according to your plan, Louis’d be a jar of ashes you cry over when you need to feel sorry for yourself and Lestat would be fucking your brains out while Santiago watched from a cage in the corner. But then the trial happened and Lestat pulled his magic trick on the crowd as a big ole ‘fuck off’ to you, and you realized your only options left were between sucking Santiago’s tiny dick until some new schmuck came along to save you or patching things up with Louis before he starved to death. So, you set him free, wiped Santiago’s memories of any involvement you had, and stood by and watched Louis destroy all the remaining evidence.
“But of course, you couldn’t just end it there. You had to parade him back to Lestat one last time before taking him away for good. You want to tell me this was about you giving Louis everything he wants? Watching him drug and drain a thousand men, letting him fry in the sun, and scuttling him off to the other side of the world? Killing Claudia?! It was never about making Louis happy, it was about making Lestat suffer! And now you’re here, in this weird fucking modern art museum from Hell, pouting like you’re the victim in all of this, because you can’t just accept that you fucking lost.”
There is silence between them then. The building sways, a low rumble.
“Wow…You’ve got nothing to say to that, huh?”
“What difference would it make? Fifteen sessions on the record, hours dissecting every sentence and rearranging the words, and as always, it is mine that are disregarded. You will write the story however you desire, regardless of the truth within its meaning.”
“Nothing is ever disregarded, asshole. There’s plenty of shit that doesn’t make it to the final print, but I’ve still got every lie you’ve told me right in here,” he says, tapping his head. “And saying it into a microphone doesn’t change the fact it’s not real. If you want people to know the true story, then tell me the goddam truth.”
Another wash of silence. Another groan.
Daniel scoffs. “Or don’t. Keep playing the victim. Review bomb my Goodreads if it makes you feel better. Hey, maybe I’ll write a sequel, and then you’ll get to whine about how miserable and unfair the world is. I’m sure everyone’s gonna want to know what happened to the little bitch that Louis—“
Daniel doesn’t get to finish. The fork in his hand clatters to the floor as his body lifts out of his chair, hovering in the air. His foot kicks the table, a plate shatters. His hands grab at the invisible force pulling him up by his neck.
“Do you say these things to me because Louis ordered me not to touch you? Or was it the little mercies I offered when you pushed him too far that convinced you of this weakness you’ve imposed upon me? In your desire to paint me as the cruel yet weak creature of your narrative, why is it always the latter that you seek to unravel in me with your incessant questions?”
Armand stands from the table and picks the fork and broken porcelain off the ground, setting the knocked-over chair into position at the head of the table. With everything back to its proper place, he glances up at Daniel, who stares him down with silent curses that he would surely be shouting had he any control of his voice.
“If I truly am the demon you believe me to be, could I not enact whatever vengeance I pleased upon you now and erase all traces of it from your memory once I was finished? But what would it matter if I did remove them? For fifty years, you have lived as a testament of my love for Louis, and still he leaves me here to clean his mess, as though nothing has changed. Am I meant to believe that I will win him back if I keep his fascinating boy alive for another hour or so? Must I prepare myself for another seventy years of apologies that will go unforgiven?”
Daniel drops to the ground. The fall is only a few feet high, but his legs slip out from under him, earning a low groan as he hits the concrete. His body drags across the floor, following Armand as he stalks back towards the sitting room.
“Should I offer my blessings to Louis and his maker, accept that our companionship is well and truly over? How am I to prove it to them? Shall I throw you over the balcony and watch you crash into the ground below? Or would dismembering you one piece at a time be more appropriate? What’s another haughty journalist torn to shreds for their hubris?”
Armand takes them past the remains of the reading room, the balcony door sliding open ahead of them. All the while, Daniel claws at the floor, scraping over the glass shards that scratch his arms.
“You are an infestation. No matter how many times I purge myself of your presence, you seek to torment me once again. Why did you come here? Why couldn't you leave? Why must I watch you die to be rid of you?!”
“Why don’t you tell me, dammit!” Daniel shouts, voice hoarse and desperate. “When I met you, I was a junkie living paycheck to paycheck and hopping between bars to score whatever I could to keep me alive. You know what I was gonna do after I was done with Louis? Find another bar, probably suck another dick for some cash. Not go to rehab and try to turn my life around. I have no clue how the hell cocaine got switched out for a good lead and vampire soap operas, because I can’t remember all the shit the two of you put in my brain that made me this way. You made damn sure of that. So you look into my head and you tell me what’s going on in there, because I haven’t got the faintest fucking idea!”
Armand stares down at him, the rage waning again. The boy is shaking all over, and it’s not his condition that’s causing it. Chest heaving, heart pounding. Sweat mixes with the small streams of blood rolling down his bruising arms. He is scared. He is human, nothing more, and yet…
“I can’t.”
“...Okay,” Daniel nods between heavy breaths. “Okay. That’s…Why not?”
“I don’t know,” he replies quietly. “I thought it would be different, once I left, that your body and mind would return to the way it was before.”
“Before what?” Daniel asks, unblinking eyes glued to Armand standing over him.
“It was so quiet the last time. It took everything I had to reach into that abyss and find your thoughts again, until I could feel the grooves of your brain between my fingers. For years, I wondered if I would ever have the chance to feel the inside of your mind again. But then you stood before me in this room and there was…nothing. Not even a whisper.”
Armand kneels down, earning a small flinch from Daniel. His eyes still do not leave him, his breath steadying.
“Is it because you are not real, a specter like the ones Louis spoke of? Perhaps you died all those years ago, and am to suffer an eternity of your aspersions for it.“ Daniel shivers as Armand’s hand falls against his head. His fingers lace through the curls of his hair. “Were that the case, could I not crack your skull open right here and see your mind for myself?”
For the briefest of moments, a familiar glow simmers in the boy’s eyes. Fear gives way to hunger, as it had in those early years of their game. His pupils are blown wide, making them appear almost violet in the darkness of night. To have those eyes on him again, exchanged from the cold, grim blue he had become accustomed to, holds him tight in a welcome embrace.
The moment passes as soon as it comes. The next, he’s struck by a dull pain stabbing into his face, throwing him to the floor. The blow is hardly the worst he’s been dealt, but the sudden shock is enough to grant Daniel time to scramble away from his control.
Armand withdraws the blade of broken glass from his cheek and spits out the pieces that cracked against his teeth. Blood pours over his tongue—his own from his punctured flesh, and Daniel’s from where he’d gripped the shard too tightly. Years it’s been since he’s tasted that cocktail, awakening his thirst once again. The rage from before reignites as though it had been doused in kerosine.
Armand storms through the apartment, following the scent of blood and adrenaline. “Your impulsive arrogance has failed you once again. Stripped of the security I have graced you with for half a century, and once again it is you that runs and hides, coward that you are!”
He leads himself in the guest quarters. He knows Daniel is here, the heavy pounding of his heart pulsing throughout the room.
Armand lifts the bed first, but only the rug lies beneath. He tries the bathroom, the closets, even cupboards under the sink. “You seek to ruin me, to showcase my cowardice, my weakness!” he shrieks, ripping through every door and drapery in his sight. “You wish to present me before your audience, to sneer at the failed covenmaster, the declawed housecat. Will they still laugh when it is your rotting corpse on display—the failed journalist laid bare for the world to see?!”
There’s footsteps behind him. He picks up the desk beside him and throws. It crashes against an empty wall. A flash of movement disappears back down the hall. Armand follows it, listening to the vibrating air. There’s a crunching of glass beneath feet and stifled gasps. When he returns to the reading room, the floor is smeared with scarlet, a trail of blood leading past the dining room, where the patter of frantic steps running up the stairs to the foyer echoes through the walls.
In a quick flash, he dashes across the apartment and lands at the top of the stairwell, just in time to catch Daniel stumbling towards the elevator.
“REST!”
Daniel stiffens at the command, though the force of his body cannot be stopped by the mind alone. There’s a wet crunch as his head slams into the concrete wall and a hard thud as he collapses on the floor. Then there is quiet—no more questions, no more screaming, not even his heart beat can disrupt the silence. The only sound left in the entire apartment is the reverberation of groaning steel.