Lestat laughed. "Edward, I know you love John's girl, but you can't seriously think about being with her permanently, can you? Let her be with what she's meant to--"
"Lestat de Lioncourt," the vampire breathed, tightening his one-armed grip on Edward just to see him gag. "And I can hold you because I'm more powerful than the d.amned werewolf venom mixed in your blood." He shook Edward violently, making the man's head snap back and forth alond the tree's bark. "And I don't like being asked questions," he added softly.
"Better," Lestat gasped, catching his breath as he held Edward by the throat three feet off the ground. He could hear the thick, heavy tree creak as Edward smashed against it. "Don't worry about her," he whispered in Edward's face, showing his fangs. "John won't kill her. I'm just getting you out of the way."
Lestat acted faster. He materialized out of the tree's shadow and lunged forward himself to catch Edward around the waist, yanking him back from John before he could transform. "No you don't," he hissed in Edward ear, half dragging, half floating them at breakneck speed into a thicker part of the forest.
Lestat moved up a few shadows, reaching out to John's mind. If you don't want him around and need her alone any time, I can take him, he channeled, hoping the man wouldn't show it in his face.
Lestat smiled to himself. I like him already.
Lestat saw them now, and melted into the nearest shadow, knowing that if he shifted to his state neither of them could smell him. He found a tree and leaned against it, hid body now literally the outline of the shadow cast on the grassy, muddy floor. This shall be fun, he thought, playing with the lace on his cuffs, sensing John nearby already.
"Yes?" Susan said from the kitchen. "I've got some food ready if you and Mary are done." She smiled at him as he leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen once more. She didn't notice the color in his cheeks and the pinkness in his skin. "That was lovely, what you played," she added now. "Yes," Lestat murmured. "Your daughter died from amazement." Susan smiled. "She doesn't like the piano, but I told her ladies play, and she must be one." Lestat laughed, remembering what a "lady" Rome looked like in his eyes: dead, drained, slumped, and torn against a tree in the forest... "Mary, dinner!" Susan cried again, and sighed when there was no response. "That girl needs to learn some manners," she muttered, walking over to the kitchen doorway. Lestat hung in her way, and he grabbed a lock of her hair as she tried to move slowly past him. He inhaled the scent, a strong smell of sweat, flowing blood, and (a small groan escaped his lips) that indescriable smell of a woman alone. "You smell intoxicating," he whispered, running one finger along her throat. Susan laughed nervously, his spell not complete over her yet. "Thank you," she muttered, her words a little slurred. "I'll... I'll get Mary..." Susan walked to the back room, opening the slightly closed door. Mary was still balanced there against the piano key's edge, her head lolled on her small chest. "Mary, honestly, get up," Susan chided, and reached out to touch her shoulder. Mary slid off the piano bench with a dull thud, her head smacking the corner of the piano, her hair falling back to expose the blood running down her neck and her little pink dress. Susan shrieked, her piercing scream rebounding off the small room's walls ten times louder. She turned to run-- -- only to find Lestat leaning in the doorway. His arms were crossed over his vest, a solid smile on his lips, which she now could see were outlined in red. "You..." she began, shaking so much she was barely able to speak. "Devil!" she screamed. "Enough of that, dear," Lestat soothed, and Susan's arms immediately fell limp to her side, her sobs deafened by his spell. He touched the side of her face, his warm hands gliding to the base of her throat, along her shoulder... each vein screamed at him to bite, tear, taste, swallow... "I told you that you smell wonderful," he murmured, pulling her roughly against his body, his lips the lightest touch on her neck muscles. He lightly kissed her shoulders, her neck, her cheeks, her lips, each time he came in contact with her skin projecting the longing and restraint he had to hold to not bite deep, deep into her flesh and draw out the sweest, most amazing liquid in the world... Lestat moaned, unable to control himself: he sunk his teeth slowly, very slowly into Susan's neck. With his spell completely over her, she only let out a small cry that sounded more like pleasure than pain. He drew the blood as deeply as he could out of her, the taste not as sweet as Mary's but more... sensual, filling... he let out another groan along her throat, blood slipping out of his mouth and down the corner of his lips and her dress. It lasted longer this time, and Susan did not fight; rather, she did exactly what Lestat loved: she clung to him, pulling herself by the front of his vest tighter than he had yanked her to him a few minutes ago. Lestat almost growled when her heart started to fail, her eyes closing and her skin transulcent now. He let her go, pulling his teeth out of her sweet flesh reluctantly. He let her fall to the floor next to her daughter, and he wiped the blood all over his mouth onto the back of his hand, licking every drop off that he could. "Quite the Godsend, wasn't I?" he laughed, running his tongue along his teeth slowly, still enveloped in the taste, his mind reeling, his body full, his lungs gasping... He shook his head finally, leaning over the grand piano to see his reflection in it. Stepping on Mary slightly, he ran a hand through his hair, fluffed his collar, and grinned, seeing that almost all the blood was licked off his teeth. "Now," he began, leaving the room, his stride happy and confident, "Off to see John... and the other sorry exuses for monsters in this city."
"This way," Mary said, leading Lestat into a small back room that consisted of a couch and a grand piano that took up over half the space. Lestat sighed, the beauty of the instrument bringing back many memories... but he shoved them away. "Why don't you play me a song, Mary?" Lestat said as she sat on the piano bench, positioning himself next to her. "I'd love to hear what a sweet..." he lingered on the word, "... little girl like you can play. "You first," Mary insisted."I'm not very good." Lestat frowned, but couldn't help himself being drawn to the keys, placing his long, white fingers along them as if he were carressing a lover. The smooth white ivory keys were so soft, the black wooden sharp under his nails. "You won't know this," Lestat murmured as he let the first chord ring out in the small room. Then the memories came back: "I've lost a lot," he had spoken, running his fingers eloquently on the piano keys. The curtains slowly fell back, showing both those monsters of vampires what the swamp had done to him. "I fed off the crocodile..." he whispered through his chapped, swollen, water-filled, grey lips. "They did not touch me... the squirrels, turtles, eels... all the abudant life of the Mississippi. And then... slowly, Lestat became like himself again... He had paused then, striking a low, minor chord on the piano, lifting his gaze to Claudia. His lank, matted hair hung in front of his bulging, cramped, bloodshot red eyes. "Claudia," he had whispered venomously. "You have been a very... very naughty girl..." Lestat hit that chord now, and Mary seemed captivated, unable to say anything till it finally completely faded in the air, leaving the room silent as the grave. "That was amazing!" she breathed. "Let... let me show you mine." Her small fingers glinted on her side of the piano, playing a tiny, arranged, watered-down version of a Bach tune. Lestat's eyes fell away from her tiny hands, falling now on her neck. The small veins pulsed there, just under a delicate curl, and he grinned, his eyes golden, his teeth pointed. All the anger from his memories still deep in his conscious, he gripped Mary's small shoulders and brought the nape of her neck deep against his fangs. She cried out, a small shriek that was covered by her fingers hitting a dischord on the piano. He put a hand over her small mouth, her young blood enough to make even his experienced head spin. She flailed her arms against him, her eyes rolling back in her head as faded an ugly shade of whitish-grey. Lestat gasped as her small heart stopped and he released. "That," he muttered to himself, licking the drops off of his lips slowly, "was something I haven't done in a long time." He stroked the top of her curls indifferently as he head slumped against her chest. She looked asleep. Swallowing as deeply as he could, he remembered why he didn't usually find children: their blood was too intoxicating and there was very little in her to sustain him. "Susan," Lestat called, wiping his mouth, relishing the aftertaste, and stood up, walking toward the kitchen.
"You have a lovely home," Lestat began, watching the curve of the mother's hips as she walked forward into the kitchen. "I didn't catch your name, my dear." "Susan," the mother said over her shoulder as she stepped to the stove. "My daughter is Mary. Every night I make her play the piano for an hour. We... well, now I have her take lessons every other day, and, since she didn't have one this morning, she plays what she knows now." Lestat leaned against the doorframe leading into the kitchen and nodded politely. "I can play," he began, remembering all the times he had done so... with Claudia... after her attempted murder of him... for Louis... for himself... by himself, almost always... "Really?" Susan exclaimed, turning again from the pot of water she was now heating on the stove. "God, you are a blessing! Mary!" She called. The tentative notes echoing from the back room stopped and little footsteps made their way to the kitchen. "Yes, mama?" she asked from the hall, and then stopped when she reached Lestat. "Who is this?" "This, my dear," Susan began, is an angel! He found our money in the market and brought it back here to us! He's going to join us for dinner and he plays the piano. Isn't that right, Mister...?" she faded off. "Lestat," he spoke. "Lestat de Lioncourt." "Oh, a Frenchman!" Susan began, fluttered and smiling. You're husband may have left you for a whore, but you're not so innocently chaste yourself, woman, Lestat thought, turning now to Mary. "Well, Mary, I heard parts of your scales," he said, getting down on his knees and smiling at her. Her grin back was very shy. "Would you mind showing me what you know?" Mary glanced at her mother, who nodded fervently. "Yes, Mister Lestat," Mary said, and walked to the back room. Lestat followed.
Lestat glided through the shadows of the streets of Rome, ignoring the people that walked by him. What's odd is I can help all of them, depending who I like more or who I'd like to eat, he laughed in his head. Ah, he sighed mentally, suddenly seeing something intesting. A small child was walking down the street, holding her mother's hand, no doubt on their way home from the market. The little girl looked only four or so, dressed in a small gown that was a light pink, bows on its hem and tied in her light blonde bouncing curls. She held a small basket in her other free hand, full of different kinds of fruit. The mother (Lestat groaned with hunger in his mind) was breathtakingly beautiful. Her attractive, curvy, slender body was cased in a sun-colored dress, a white cloak covering her hair, the same shade and style as her daughter's. They seemed to be heading to the south end of the city where there were many appartments and houses set up for middle-classed citizens. Lestat followed them closely, drifting in the nearest shadow and easily hearing their conversation. "Mary, dear," the mother scolded. "You've got to hold your new dress up, sweetheart! It's getting dark the streets are dirty from people's feet today!" She let go of her mother's hand and did as she was told. That's it, Lestat crooned in his mind, his mouth watering as he stared at the child's neck just visible under her curls. Let go of her mommy now... you won't have her much longer... "Mama," Mary began now as they turned to a side street filled with small homes. Lestat grinned, her voice even sounding tasteful in his ears. "Tell me where Papa is again." "Enough, Mary," the mother chided, stopping at a house and pulling a small ring of keys out of her pocket. She opened the door of the nearest house and they stepped inside. "He left to see his... his... friend, Cynthia... they... they aren't coming back..." "Oh, dear," Lestat said, materializing out of the shadows and standing by the door. "This is a tradgic woman... she must need a man in her life." He stepped up to the door, straightening his vest, shirt, and hair once more, and knocked. "Good evening, miss," he began politely when the mother opened the door a crack, his smile making her ease her suspiscion easily. "I couldn't help but notice you in the market this evening, and you dropped this." He plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled out a bag full of Italian coins. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed, widening the door. "I did not know I dropped it! That is all my savings. Good sir, thank you so much!" She took the pouch from Lestat and returned his grin. "Anything to help a sweet lady," he murmured, bowing slightly, his tone sinking deeper, more seductive. She opened the door wider. "My daughter and I have not yet eaten supper," the mother began now. "After the wondeful deed you've done the least I can do is give you a hot meal!" Lestat chuckled deep in his throat, sighing with pleasure. "That, miss," he began, "would be a Godsend."
"I'd love to see you try it," Lestat teased, trying to provoke him. "I need to know more about these two and those around them before I can tell you how to undo them obviously. But first..." He eyed the horizon, his gaze shifting back to liquid gold. The was finaly disappearing, the moon rising and the night swallowing the world once more. "Now it's my time... I'm still hungry, John, as I'm sure you can tell. But don't worry. If you can't get her alone before they leave, so be it. I will feed and then follow them. I suspect I shall see you at their next stop!" With that, Lestat turned and stepped into the shadow of the nearest tree, disappearing into it, becoming part of the breeze and the shade of the night. With a soft, handsome chuckle, he was gone.
"In time," Lestat soothed, sensing John's tense attitude. "Are you planning to see her before they leave?" I'd love to see how she reacts to him, he thought, sneering in his mind. Entertainment I haven't had in over fifty years!
Lestat thought to himself. I don't know the name Van Helsing or Dracula... wait, the Dracula! The legend... the myth... Louis spoke of? Impossible! "It's called love, John," Lestat spat back at the man. "It strikes between the most unlikely, that is it's trademark, and, yet again, it is thwarting those that cannot feel it. But you must understand something..." He walked back over to John, focusing to change his eyes to pitch black. He smiled his still slightly stained teeth when he saw the other man shiver. "Love changes when you've had all your blood sucked dry and then replenished through the hypocritical act of drinking from the attacker... or if you're a... what did you phrase it? 'Dog?' Well, yes. The point is it, changes. Do you understand?" He paused, letting it sink in. "When a person becomes as they are...as we are, love is different. It isn't the same as mortal love even though it can exist." Like Louis and Claudia, he thought. Not his lover, but his beloved was how he phrased it. "Therefore, immortal 'love' can be broken, John. It only takes detroying one of them, physically or mentally, and then she's yours. But that is something I don't think you understand or are capable of, and that's why... I need to show you how."
"That's lovely," Lestat brushed off. "Now why are she and Edward close? Where are they going?" He thought of other times he'd tried to push a fellow vampire, to get what he wanted, to help ruin others, to make himself happy, or just for the hell of the thrill, and it never seemed to turn out. Perfect! he remembered screaming. Just perfect! Burn everything we own! Shut UP, Louis! He shook his head and waited for John's response.
"You expect me to give you information out of my mind for no price!" Lestat cried, his eyes flashing from molten gold to black and back in an instant. "John, John," he muttered, and then stopped, his nostalgia taking over his mind again. My martyr! he had shouted while laughing hysterically. My philospher! My God, this causes for a celebration! "I will tell you," he began aloud now, not aware if he had stood there thinking for a second or a minute. "But not now. I want to know more about this boy she's with... who's with him... the story must be told! Watch the sun! Half an hour!" He predicted, sighing once more.
"As I said," Lestat began. "I don't share. I've tried partners, companions, lovers, in a vampire-sense, of course... but they don't work. If you really think this girl that hates what she is so much..." But he faded off, chuckling in his mind, Louis, Louis... merciful death! How your love your precious kills! He cleared his throat, shaking a beautiful, curly strand of hair from his molten eyes. "If you think this girl that hates what she is so much needs to be bound to you, so be it. And I... seriously, seriously doubt you will find anyone else that knows like me how to get her to do what you want... whenever you want... under any circumstance."
Lestat smiled to the city. "I knew someone very similar to her once," he reminised quietly. "He broke, though, just as you want her to. And," he added, turning to pierce John with his eyes, which now shone molten gold instead of bright, clear, perfect blue, "I know how to do it."
"A century and a half," Lestat waved off with his white hand, as if the phrase were a nasty, useless bug. " 'Tis nothing to me... you'll feel the same way soon." He leaned against the nearest tree now, still not turning to look at John. "What has she been up to?" he asked, wanting the other man to speak something as the sun took it's time setting.
Lestat turned his laugh into a cough lightly, pulling a handkerchief out of his vestpocket and grinning. "I am everywhere, my friend!" he expounded twirling the handkerchief around airlessly. "You shouldn't be surprised... travel is my life now, and I was bound to see what my fellow... men were up to. You see..." he began, unable to pass the opportunity to show off. "Vampires like us two are hard to come by nowadays. In the beginning, they only made a few classics like me. I garuntee you that you'll find plenty of Mericful Death's out in Rome, Paris, London, New York, New Orleans... they have all started to... to soften!" He pronounced the last word loudly and angrily, as if it were a mouthful of venom that he had just spat into the muddy ground. "There were days when European vampires were the most bloody, vile, heartless b.astards of our kind in the entire world! They... are nostalgic; they long for the mortality they lost! This..." he gestured around to everything in the woods, the dead girl, the city beyond them. "This is all a gift! The world, all in it! And the only way..." he stepped back up to John's chest again, inches from him, "... the only way to enjoy the giftest to the fullest, most perfect, most adventurous, most wonderful, most... exciting way is through being what we are." He went over to the edge of the forest now, the trees thinning out into a clearing and a sloping hill down into the city. The light of the sun was just inches from his boots, and Lestat swung his foot by it dangerously, his brilliant grin shining on his face again. "Do you not agree?" he whispered, not turning around.
