Chapter Text
It was decided, they were going to kill Lestat. They were going to kill Lestat. Louis replayed the phrase over and over again in his mind as he struggled to come to terms with what it meant — they were going to kill Lestat.
As the weeks went inexorably by, Louis was haunted by the image of Lestat’s powerful body rendered cold and lifeless. Louis saw it every time he closed his eyes — Lestat’s striking blue eyes blank and unmoving, his beautiful golden hair scattered around his pale face, stiff and devoid of its usual splendour.
Louis startled awake almost every day, his heart hammering in his chest, his back covered in cold sweats, consumed by guilt for a crime he had not yet committed. In those moments, Lestat just held Louis tighter, tenderly kissing his brow and whispering soothing words into his ear until their heartbeats were in sync again. Louis wondered what Lestat would do if he knew what nightmares haunted Louis’s sleep.
They were going to kill Lestat, and Louis’ heart was already breaking at the thought. He was already mourning as Lestat lovingly gazed up at him from his place on the piano bench. Louis’s heart shattered every time Lestat pulled him closer to steal a kiss, overjoyed by their rekindled passion. Lestat did not seem to suspect that Louis's love was an act, a mere ploy by Claudia to keep Lestat distracted as they plotted his demise.
That was the lie that Louis told himself every time he gave into Lestat’s demanding touches and his seductive gaze. In truth, from the moment Louis had allowed himself to open up to Lestat again, it was as if the dam broke. All the feelings he had been suppressing came rushing back. Louis fell head first back into a treacherously familiar pattern as Lestat's mirrored eyes beckoned him like a siren song, inviting him to drown himself in their inscrutable depths.
When they were alone together — with Claudia gone for long hours under the pretext of having to go further out of town to hunt — Louis would forget himself, forget all about Lestat’s shortcomings, about Claudia’s anger, about his despair. In those moments, nothing about Louis’s kisses was feigned. Nothing about his sighs of pleasure as he and Lestat embraced was a pretence. For a moment, there was nothing but Lestat’s firm slight body on top of his, Lestat's powerful yet gentle hands caressing his skin, Lestat’s warm, plush lips kissing him fervently as if he too could sense that the moment was one of the last few that the two of them would share.
Afterwards, when Louis was faced with Claudia's falsely placid face that hardly betrayed the silent mutinous rage that was simmering within, Louis was once again consumed by guilt. He hated himself for allowing Lestat to make him forget, even for brief a moment, why he and Claudia were doing this.
After a month of careful preparations, the night of the ball finally arrived, as inevitable as the solid ground after a long fall. They had starved themselves for days in anticipation of the feast, and hunger was driving Louis to distraction. His throat ached raw as his eyes spun aimlessly around the crowded room, his ears drowning in the cacophonic thrum of so many pulses.
Lestat walked in, so self-assured and radiant in his kingly garb. He was more beautiful than Louis had ever seen him. It was as if Louis was seeing him through his guileless human eyes again. He just stood there, utterly transfixed by Lestat’s otherworldly beauty, his desire to carry their plan through weaker than ever
Nevertheless, Louis executed his part without fail. He identified the unfortunate humans that would serve as their final feast in New Orleans and pinned them with an amaranth flower — a scarlet x that marked them as lambs for the slaughter.
For a moment on the balcony, Louis’s resolve was almost completely undone. Lestat was speaking of New Orleans, his voice trembling as he reminisced about the city’s fierce yet fragile beauty. For Louis, the city no longer held anything worth feeling mournful about —His family was gone, and the Azalea was nothing but a burnt ancient relic that only a few people still remembered.
Louis kept his gaze resolutely forward as Lestat spoke of the silky warmth of the rain, his voice vibrating with barely contained emotion and his eyes gleaming with unshed tears. The whole time, Lestat stared at Louis, his beautiful eyes searching, pleading. For what, Louis was not sure. He just knew that he desperately wanted to throw himself at Lestat’s feet and beg for his forgiveness for the betrayal that was to come. Louis would have gladly submitted himself to Lestat’s wrath and offered his life's blood as penance. He would have done anything to take away the boundless pain that flickered in Lestat’s pale eyes.
But Louis reminded himself that Claudia needed him. His sweet Claudia, his redemption. Claudia whom Louis had condemned to this wretched life in an attempt to assuage his selfish guilt, Claudia who was now trapped in this mockery of a family just as she was trapped in her unchanging childish body as her mind continued to grow.
Louis had failed to save his family. He had failed to save his business. No matter how hard he fought, he could not prevent his damnation from laying waste to everything he had once cherished during his mortal life. Louis vowed that he would not let Claudia become yet another loss. It was too late to free himself from Lestat’s grip — his heart and soul were already irreparably compromised—but he could still free Claudia, even if that meant giving up his twisted selfish happiness.
Claudia’s plan had worked, she had outsmarted Lestat and beat him at his own game. She had beaten Lestat at the intricate chess match that the two of them had been playing for months, and in which Louis often felt like a helpless pawn.
Lestat knelt on the floor, his hand clutching at his chest as he retched torrents of blood. Claudia laughed gleefully, mocking Lestat and taunting him in a cold voice that brought a shiver down Louis’s spine. She looked fierce and terrifying — fury and vengeance personified as her little heart-shaped face twisted in the mockery of a smile.
“You must think me a fool uncle Les,” she spat out, circling Lestat like a hunter that had their prey helplessly caught in a steel trap.
Louis was too stunned to move. His vision was beginning to blur, and the blood that he had gorged himself on earlier was threatening to come pouring back up. Claudia described to Lestat just how easily she had outmaneuvered him and Louis was at a loss to understand what was going on, how Antoinette was a vampire, and how Lestat had known their plans the entire time, or at least what Louis thought was the plan. As Claudia told Lestat about poisoning Tom, Lestat looked almost proud of her — his infant death, the evil of his evil. She was not such a disappointment after all. Louis was once again stuck by just how similar they were, and how things would have been so different if that similarity had not driven them so far apart.
Louis stayed frozen at the back of the room, clutching at the wall and heaving as if his lungs had forgotten the simple act of breathing.
“Have your goodbye,” Claudia said to him as she exited the room without a second glance. Louis heard her footsteps as she moves downstairs, no doubt to begin cleaning up the leftovers of their gargantuan feast.
For a while, there was no other sound in the room besides Lestat’s laboured breathing and Antoinette’s pained groans as she struggled to remove the rod that was impaling her to the floor.
“Louis,” Lestat called out, his blood-stained hands blindly searching.
Louis kept himself out of reach, carefully avoiding Lestat as he moves with slow, unsteady steps to the wardrobe where his cane was. Louis grasped it in his blood-sleeked fingers and turned to face Lestat’s huddled form.
“Louis,” Lestat called out again, sounding more and more frantic. “We are joined by a cord, a cord that you cannot see but it’s real. It is real.” Lestat’s voice was trembling, each word sounding like it took great effort. And yet Louis had never heard him more sincere — not since that night in the church when Lestat had offered him the dark gift
With trembling hands, Louis unsheathed the knife from within his cane. He had begged Claudia to be the one to do it — he did not think himself capable of it, of ending Lestat’s life. But Claudia had insisted that it needed to be Louis who delivered the final blow. “It will him hurt more, coming from you,” she’d said.
Lestat looked up at Louis with pleading eyes, his chest heaving in an unsteady rhythm. Louis took several deep breaths and tried to steady himself. This time, he did not try to hide from Lestat’s eyes. Instead, Louis let all the anger, all resentment he had felt for Lestat all those years burn through his gaze. He forced himself to recall how helpless he felt as he lay broken in his coffin for months, to recall the sheer terror he felt as Lestat let him go and watched him plummet to the ground. Louis thought of all the nights he lay next to Lestat, listening to Claudia’s mental pleas to run away together. Louis would not let her down, not this time.
Louis let Lestat see it all in his eyes, his resolve to save Claudia at any cost. Lestat's watery gaze turned from pleading to silent resignation. All the fight seemed to bleed out of him and his shoulders dropped in meek surrender.
“I have loved you, with all myself,” Lestat said. This time, his voice did not tremble.
Louis drew nearer, kneeling on the floor behind Lestat’s and wrapping his arms around his trembling body. He allowed himself to listen to Lestat’s heartbeat one last time, to feel his heaving chest expand and collapse.
Lestat raised his head and rested it against Louis’ chest, offering up his neck without any other resistance. “Je t'aime Louis," he said calmly, "and I’m glad it was you, here with me, à la fin.”
Louis felt a sob threatening to overtake him. He closed his eyes and held Lestat tighter as they swayed together gently. Tears streamed unbidden, down Louis’s face, adding streaks of red to his already marred face.
Louis heard Claudia coming back up the stairs, no doubt wondering what was taking so long. Determined not to disappoint her, lifted the knife to Lestat’s willingly offered neck, readying himself to press the sharp blade into his pliant flesh. Lestat sighed when the cold steel touched his skin, but he made no gesture to fight Louis off. His arms stayed hanging limp at his side.
It all happened so fast after that. Antoinette managed, with one sharp pull, to wrench out the fire poker that had been immobilizing her to the floor and she was gone out of the room in a blur. Louis lifted his eyes to the door, his thoughts disoriented, unsure whether to chase after her or to stay here and finish this—Kill Lestat so that Claudia may finally be free.
Louis heard it then, Claudia’s scream coming from the other room.
“Claudia?” Louis called out, a sudden panic rising in him.
All of his hesitations melted away when no response came. Louis scrambled to his feet, abandoning Lestat in his kneeling position. He let the blade he had been holding clatter loudly to the floor as he rushed out of the room.
Antoinette was facing the window, an ornate sword gripped tightly in her hand and steadily dripping blood on the wooden floor. At her feet was Claudia’s decapitated body, surrounded by a puddle of blood. Louis recoiled as he saw her severed head a few feet away. That sword usually hung above the mantelpiece; Louis vaguely recalled. Lestat had brought it with him from the continent and it belonged to some marquis or another, a distant ancestor of his.
“What’ve you done?” Louis asked, barely above a whisper and he felt as if all the air had gone out of his lungs.
His voice sounded as if it was coming from somewhere else, somewhere deep underwater from where it reached Louis’s ears distorted and muffled. Antoinette had turned to face him, the bloody sword still clutched in her hand. Suddenly, all the anger Louis had been forcing himself to bring forth just a moment ago, as he struggled to kill Lestat, now all came rushing forward like a huge current overtaking his entire body and making him vibrate out of his skin.
He saw the sudden fear on Antoinette’s face as she took him in. She abandoned the sword and tried to make a run for the stairs but Louis is blocking her path. He easily caught her and ferociously slammed her back into the room, knocking down a table and the candelabras that had been on it. Antoinette tried to scramble back to her feet, but Louis did not give her the chance to do so. He sprung on her, slamming her so violently into the wooden floor that it splintered all around them.
Antoinette valiantly tried to fight him off, her sharp nails clawing at Louis's back as he repeatedly struck her face and her body. But she was a new fledgling — a few months old at the most. Her feeble preternatural strength was no match for Louis's decades of vampirism now combined with the gallon of human blood coursing through his body. She was no match for Louis’s blind fury and certainly no match for the decades of frustration and simmering indignation that she had elicited in him.
For years Antoinette had always been there, lurking in Louis’s periphery like a shadow that haunted his marriage to Lestat and doomed it to fail from the moment she entered their lives. Antoinette screamed and called out for Lestat, but he did not come. If he had, Louis would have fought him too, killed him or gotten killed by him, it did not matter anymore.
When Louis’s hands stilled, Antoinette was unrecognizable — she had been reduced to a bloody pulp of torn flesh on the splintered floor. Louis knelt over her, his eyes examining her mangled face. He felt no remorse, he felt no guilt, he felt nothing. The only thought that came to him was that maybe he should have done this a long time ago — it would have spared him a lot of torment and humiliation. Probably not, Louis knew that even without Antoinette, Lestat would have still just found some other plaything to taunt Louis with.
Lestat had chosen Antoinette only because she was on hand and eager to please. Still, Louis felt no sympathy for her as he looked at her cracked skull. He felt no catharsis either from knowing she was dead — or as close to it as their kind could be. He just felt nothing.
Louis was broken out of his trance-like reverie by the acrid scent of smoke. He turned away from Antoinette to look around the room. A candelabra had fallen over during their tousle and had ignited the heavy draperies that flanked the barricaded windows. A long column of flames was now steadily climbing along the wall, turning the floral wallpaper black in its wake.
“Louis,” Lestat called out from the other room.
Louis ignored him, crawling to where Claudia’s body is still lying. Her head was still a few feet away, her blood-soaked curly hair strewn haphazardly around it. Maybe Louis could still fix this, maybe he could make her whole again. Maybe Claudia could still come back from this.
“I did some reading Louis, and there are four ways to kill a vampire, even one as powerful as Lestat…” Claudia’s singsong voice came unbidden into Louis’ mind, a conversation they had several weeks prior, during one of the rare moments when they allowed themselves to communicate with only their thoughts. A conversation where once again, Louis had tried, in vain, to dissuade Claudia from following through with her plan.
Louis told himself that all of Claudia’s notions about vampires were mere theories, myths and legends read in ancient dusty tomes that did not apply to the flesh and blood creatures that they were. Before tonight, they had not even known for sure if any of these theories would prove to be true against a creature as powerful as Lestat. Still, Claudia had been determined to try. And now she was gone. Claudia was gone.
Louis staggered to his feet again and walked over to where Claudia’s severed head lay. He took it delicately into his hands and walked back to the rest of her body, trying not to recoil at the grotesque, nightmarish version of her familiar face that was now staring back at him. Claudia’s eyes had rolled to the back of her skull, and her skin, now emptied of all its blood, appeared stonewashed and shrivelled. Louis sank back to the floor, his hands still cradling Claudia's head. He is not sure how long he stayed there, sobbing quietly.
Louis felt a hand pull at him from behind, and for a moment he thought Antoinette has somehow managed to get up again. Instead, Louis saw Lestat standing over him. He looked pale and was still holding himself hunched over, but Louis could feel the strength in his grip.
“Louis, mon amour,” Lestat said, with what seemed to be an unbearable struggle. “The fire, we must leave, you must come with me.” His voice was barely audible over the flames that were now roaring a few feet away from them.
“No!” Louis wrenched himself free from Lestat’s grip. “I can save her. I have to try” his own voice sounded hoarse and just as thin.
Lestat looked down with something akin to pity in his eyes as Louis attempted to place Claudia’s head back onto her severed neck. After a moment, Louis heard him walk out of the room. Louis did not care, let him leave if he wanted to. Louis did not care anymore whether Lestat lived or died. Killing him had never been Louis’ plan anyway, it had been Claudia’s. It had all been for Claudia—to free her, to give her the happiness that her tragic life had denied her for so long. And now she was gone. Claudia was gone.
The smoke was now thick in the air. Louis could feel it prickle his eyes and scrape at his lungs as he inhaled. The fire had now fully consumed the curtains, and they fell with a thunderous crack, spreading a great plume of black dust and sparks around the room.
Claudia’s body continued to slowly ooze blood onto the floor, getting more and more shrivelled by the minute as Louis looked on helplessly. When Louis let go of Claudia's head, it rolled limply to the side and stayed there, motionless. As a last-ditch effort, Louis attempted to reach out to Claudia with his mind, to somehow rouse her back into consciousness. All that came back was nothingness, just an empty black void.
Louis heard Lestat walk into the room again. He has changed out of his bloody white clothes and was now wearing a dark suit with a travel coat over it. Looking at him now, one would have guessed that only a few moments ago, he had been rendered helpless, at the mercy of Louis’ blade.
“You must come now Louis,” Lestat pleaded, kneeling on the floor next to him, but carefully staying clear of the puddle of blood
“I can’t,” Louis answered, more faintly now, staring vacantly at his hands that were now covered in Claudia’s blood.
“You must Louis,” Lestat said, putting a firm hand on Louis’ shoulder. “The entire townhouse will be ablaze within the hour; we cannot stay here. I have the car packed and ready at the back but we must hurry Louis.”
“You ain’t hearing me Lestat, I’m going anywhere with you, not without her.” Louis tried to summon some of the righteous anger he had felt before, but none of it came.
Lestat sighed heavily and stood up. Louis expected him to leave again, to get away from this room and leave Louis to burn. Maybe the fire would cleanse him, maybe its warmth would make Louis feel less numb. Instead, Lestat placed his hands under Louis's arms and hauled him to his feet before locking a strong arm around his waist. Louis tried to fight him off, but Lestat seemed to have regained all his unknowable strength. Louis on the other hand, felt as though the last of his drive had deserted him. He felt spent, feverish, teetering on the edge of losing consciousness.
Lestat all but carried Louis down the stairs and into the vestibule. The fire had begun to seep in through the ceiling in places, and the walls and ceilings were blackened with soot, but the smoke was less overwhelming. Louis inhaled the clean air gratefully as Lestat put him down and began to unceremoniously rip off his blood-soaked clothes. He moved so quickly that his pale hands looked like ghostly blurs.
“Louis, people are already gathering at the gate and the fire marshals will not be far behind. I would rather we are long gone before they force their way inside.” Lestat spoke in a calm, steady voice as he pulled a shirt over Louis’ head, bent down to help him put on a pair of dark slacks and then wrapped him into a travel coat, similar to the one he had one.
A roar comes from upstairs as a part of the blackened and ruined plaster ceiling gave in, collapsing with a dull thud mere feet from where they were standing. Lestat quickly carried Louis through the back entrance and onto the curb where the blue rolls Royce was waiting
1132 was now fully ablaze, the flames licking their way out of the barricaded windows and onto the bricked facade. Louis could faintly hear the excited chatter and screams coming from the main street, on the other side of the house, but as much as he strained, he heard nothing from inside. He tried once more to reach out to Claudia through their mental connection, even as Lestat hastily ushered him into the car and closed the door behind him.
“Claudia, please…”
But Louis received only silence in return.
Lestat got into the passenger seat and took a moment to steady himself, breathing heavily half folded over the steering wheel. It seemed that the effort of their escape has taken a toll on his already weakened body. A distant party of Louis was reassured by this somehow, by the fact that Lestat, despite all his power, was not completely invulnerable.
Lestat collected himself after a few moments, started the car, and they drove out of the small back alley onto the main street. They drove past the mass of people that had gathered to watch the inferno that had been their home. Not one spared a glance at the dark car making its way down Rue Royale. Louis closed his eyes and slumped against the cool leather seat, drowsiness threatening to overtake him.
"Do not worry mon amour," Lestat said, resting a hand on Louis's knee, "you can have a rest once we are safely on the aeroplane."
Louis wanted to push Lestat's hand away, he wanted to scream, wrench the door off and jump out of the car, but he did not have the strength anymore. Instead, he kept his eyes closed as they made their journey to the airfield, praying for the oblivion that was threatening to take him to finally arrive.
