Archive of Our Own

Part One

Lestat strode across the room, towards the window, hands clasped low behind his back. He looked like a predator lying in wait, like a lion who knew his prey was in sight, and was merely taking this moment to enjoy the truth of it.

For a long time, Lestat stood there against the dim light from Divisadero Street and the passing beams of traffic.

Daniel could see the furnishings of the room more clearly now his eyes had had time to adjust; the round oak table, the chairs. A wash basin hung on one wall, with a mirror. He set his brief case quietly on the table and waited for some kind of cue from the one who had invited him here tonight.

"How much tape do you have with you?" asked the blond vampire, turning now so the boy could see his profile. "Enough for the story of a life?"

Daniel bobbed his head eagerly in response. "Sure, if it's a good life. Sometimes I interview as many as three or four people a night if I'm lucky. But it has to be a good story. That's only fair, isn't it?"

"Admirably fair," Lestat answered. His voice was rich, warm, seductive.

Daniel ducked his eyes, pretending to fiddle with his interviewing material for a moment until that keen, blue gaze moved from him once more.

Lestat huffed out a short laugh at the boy’s show of nervousness, then continued. "I would like to tell you the story of my life, then. I would like to do that very much."

"Great," said Daniel. And quickly he removed the small tape recorder from his brief case, making a check of the cassette and the batteries. "I'm really anxious to hear why you believe this, why you..."

"No," Lestat interrupted, shaking his head abruptly, blond hair flying in all directions. "We can't begin that way. Is your equipment ready?"

"Yes," said Daniel, equally abrupt. He was willing to be led by this vampire, by Lestat. What a strange name. If he did something to anger or upset him, would he walk away? Drop the pretence of believing this, that he was actually a vampire?

If he was being honest with himself, Daniel could barely think the word to himself without wanting to chuckle. But he was a professional. He’d been at this a long time. And if he laughed now, chances were he’d never hear the story Lestat had decided to tell.

Daniel narrowed his eyes as he watched Lestat in the moment when he gazed out of the window again. Viewed that profile, that straight nose and fair, pale, pale skin.

A goth, Daniel thought, explaining away the pretence at preternatural to himself. There were plenty of those around here; he’d interviewed plenty of them himself.

None of them had been convinced they were actually a vampire though.

Lestat turned to him again, quickly. Daniel hadn’t seen him shift to indicate he’d been about to turn. "Then sit down. I'm going to turn on the overhead light."

"But I thought vampires didn't like light," said Daniel. If he was being truly honest with himself here, he was having a bit of fun at Lestat’s expense. Maybe even catch him out. When Lestat glared at him, Daniel backed off quickly. "…If you think the dark adds to the atmosphere."

Lestat was watching him with his back to the window. Daniel could make out nothing of his face now, and something about the still figure there distracted him. He started to say something again but he said nothing. And then he sighed with relief when Lestat moved towards the table and reached for the overhead cord. At once the room was flooded with a harsh, yellow light.

And Daniel, staring up at the vampire—revealed all too clearly now—could not repress a gasp. His fingers danced backwards on the table to grasp the edge.

"Dear God!" he whispered, and then he gazed, speechless, at the… vampire? For the overhead light brought Lestat’s features out into sharp relief in a way that the dim lighting of the bar they’d recently returned from had not.

And Daniel… he started to believe.

The vampire was utterly white and smooth in a way that make up couldn’t explain. It was as if he were sculpted from bleached bone, and his face was as seemingly inanimate as a statue, except for two brilliant blue eyes that looked down at the boy intently like flames in a skull. But then Lestat smiled almost wistfully, and the smooth white substance of his face moved with the infinitely flexible but minimal lines of a cartoon.

"Do you see?" Lestat asked softly, though his lips curved in the beginnings of a laugh at having already taken such a response from this boy.

Daniel shuddered, lifting his hand as if to shield himself from a powerful light. His eyes moved slowly over the finely tailored black coat he'd only glimpsed in the bar, the long folds of the cape, the black silk tie knotted at the throat, and the gleam of the white collar that was as white as the vampire's flesh. He lifted his eyes back the vampire's full blond hair, almost a halo of waves that were still in disarray from his recently shaking his head.

"Now, do you still want the interview?" Lestat asked him, when Daniel didn’t speak for a long moment.

Did he ever. Oh god, this had actually just become the interview of his life after all. If just this sight of Lestat could convince Daniel—a self proclaimed sceptic—then imagine what the details of this interview could do for others!

His mouth was open before the sound came out. He was nodding, empathically. Then he said, "Yes."

Daniel’s voice sounded almost a croak. He could not believe this. He knew people who would kill for the chance he’d just been handed for being in the right bar at the right time. His fingers fumbled with the tape recorder. Daniel looked up, hoping Lestat hadn’t noticed.

There was a gentle amusement in the vampire’s blue eyes at Daniel’s expense. Ah. He had noticed then.

Damn.

Lestat sat down slowly opposite him and, leaning forward, said gently, confidentially, “Don't be afraid.”

Daniel wasn’t afraid! Was that what Lestat made of the fumbling?

“Just start the tape,” Lestat continued in that same confidential tone. And then he reached out over the length of the table.

Daniel recoiled, sweat running down the sides of his face. Okay, maybe there was a little trepidation mixed in with the excitement. Maybe. The tiniest fraction.

Lestat’s lips curved again in that smile, almost as though he wanted to do more. As though he wanted to laugh, but didn’t want to startle Daniel with the sound.

Then Lestat clamped a hand on Daniel’s shoulder and said, "Believe me, I won't hurt you. I want this opportunity. It's more important to me than you can realise now. I want you to begin."

Daniel could believe that. Opportunities he understood. This would be an opportunity for both of them.

He clicked the tape on.

Lestat remained silent. Daniel realised he didn’t understand that the tape was going, the interview was ready to start.

“You can speak,” he said, clearing his throat afterwards, feeling awkward to explain something so basic to someone like him.

“I am The Vampire Lestat,” the vampire said immediately, almost as though the words had been at the very tip of his tongue and he could hardly wait to speak them. Well, Daniel supposed, he didn’t need to any longer. “I’m immortal. More or less. The light of the sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire-these things might destroy me. But then again, they might not. I'm six feet tall, which was fairly impressive in the 1780s when I was a young mortal man.”

Daniel squinted over his glasses. Was he six feet tall? Daniel hadn’t brought a tape measure with him or anything, but, had Lestat actually been that much taller than him when they’d stood side by side?

Didn’t matter. Lestat’s height wasn’t actually the point here. It was a small detail for later, in editing. He pressed his lips together against interrupting him.

In any case, Lestat was already on a roll.

“It's not bad now,” Lestat mused, seemingly unaware of Daniel’s thoughts. “I have thick blond hair, not quite shoulder length, and rather curly, which appears white under fluorescent light.”

Not quite, Daniel thought to himself. They were sitting under a florescent light right now, so Daniel had the time to stare at it and consider this supposed ‘fact’ for himself.

“My eyes are grey, but they absorb the colours blue or violet easily from surfaces around them. And I have a fairly short narrow nose, and a mouth that is well shaped but just a little too big for my face. It can look very mean, or extremely generous, my mouth. It always looks sensual.”

Okay, this was definitely going a bit far. Much longer, and Daniel really would have to seriously consider interrupting his spiel. He cleared his throat, shifting slightly in his chair across from Lestat, hoping Lestat would get the actual point without Daniel having to say it.

“But emotions and attitudes are always reflected in my entire expression. I have a continuously animated face.” That continuously animated face or, rather, the eyes in it moved to Daniel then. Daniel adopted a most innocent expression in response.

And then Lestat heaved what seemed like a long suffering sigh. Daniel winced for the microphone, picking up that burst of air in the recording.

“My vampire nature reveals itself in extremely white and highly reflective skin that has to be powdered down for cameras of any kind.” Lestat put a gentle emphasis on the word vampire, knowing that was what they were both sitting here for.”

Daniel nodded. This was it. This was exactly it. What was sitting in front of him right now. The visage that had so shaken him.

“And if I'm starved for blood, I look like a perfect horror skin shrunken, veins like ropes over the contours of my bones. But I don't let that happen now,” Lestat continued. “And the only consistent indication that I am not human is my fingernails. It's the same with all vampires. Our fingernails look like glass. And some people notice that when they don't notice anything else…”

Daniel sat back more comfortably in his chair. Yes. This was what he was after. This was exactly it. He could see the form of the whole interview unfolding in front of him now.

**

“… But I wanted to tell my mother what she had given to me in telling me to leave the Auvergne for Paris, how it was to hear the choir in Notre Dame, to push into the jam-packed cafes with Nicolas, talk with his old student cronies over English coffee, what it was like to get dressed up in Nicolas's fine clothes-he made me do it-and stand below the footlights at the Comedie-Francaise gazing up in adoration at the actors on the stage.”

For a moment, Lestat paused.

“This really happened, didn’t it?” Daniel whispered in breathy wonder.

Given the stilted start they’d had, Daniel had watched him with a return of his early scepticism when Lestat first chose to go back to the 1780s for his ‘human’ origins. But, since listening to the details of an adolescent wolfhunter in the 18th century, followed by a young adulthood amongst the Parisian theatres of the time…

“You’re telling me something… that’s true.” Either that, or he was the world’s best historian. Daniel might have asked him what college he’d gone to. He looked old enough to have graduated. Just.

"Yes," said Lestat, looking at him without surprise. "I want to go on telling you."

So please don’t interrupt, was the silent censure that came along with the words. Daniel pressed his lips back together firmly as Lestat went on talking about his young… boyfriend, Daniel might have called him in this day and age. ‘Partner’, if he was trying to be covert.

Nicolas de Lenfent. Daniel had had to clarify the last name when Lestat first spoke it. It had sounded close enough to ‘l’enfant’ to Daniel’s very rudimentary French ear, and what he knew could not be right.

In actual fact, as Lestat’s story unfolded, Nicki gave to Lestat his wardrobe, tutors, his readings – although Lestat was the first to admit to his own illiteracy in that time. Daniel was beginning to develop a strong suspicion Nicki was the sole reason Lestat had grown from wolfhunter into gentleman actor.

Daniel wondered whether Lestat would have welcomed such an observation. Given the way Lestat had just shut him down, he rather doubted it. But he wrote a note about it to himself. So he wouldn’t forget the thought later when he relistened through these tapes.

“What I didn't tell her, my mother, was that we had to walk up six flights of stairs to our rooms, that men and women brawled and screamed in the alleyways beneath our windows, that we had run out of money already, thanks to my dragging us to every opera, ballet, and drama in town.”

As Lestat’s eyes passed over Daniel and returned to the window, deep in memory again, he showed only the faintest continuing interest in Daniel. Daniel, who was starting to feel some silent inner struggle. It would have been just the same to Lestat, he thought, if Daniel hadn’t been here. He could have been anyone with a recorder. Or no one.

Certainly no one special. No different to how Daniel had been viewed his entire life.

Daniel took a quiet breath in and tried to calm himself. This was not about him, he reminded himself. It had never been so hard to remind himself of such during any interview in his past.

“And so was Nicolas though no decent orchestra in the city would hire him, and he was now playing solos with the little bunch of musicians in the theatre where I worked, and when we were really pinched he did play right on the boulevard, with me beside him, holding out the hat. We were shameless!”

Lestat offered a soft chuckle at the memory, while Daniel sat in front of him, feeling painfully aware he’d never so much as stepped outside of the States.

“It was really Paris!” Lestat reminisced fondly. “It had polished wood flooring, and even a tiny little fireplace with a new chimney which actually made a draft. So what if we had to sleep on lumpy pallets, and the neighbours woke us up fighting. We were waking up in Paris, and could roam arm in arm for hours through streets and alleyways, peering into shops full of jewellery and plate, tapestries and statues, wealth such as I'd never seen….”

**

“…It must have been three o'clock in the morning; I'd heard the church bells in my sleep. And like all sensible men in Paris, we had our door barred and our window locked.”

Daniel noted the change in Lestat’s tone immediately; a tone that had been whimsical with nostalgia for most of the past hour. Lestat had warned him almost at the beginning, after all, that emotions and attitudes were always reflected in his entire expression. The same was clearly true with his tone of voice.

Lestat’s blond brows lowered over his nose. This memory clearly caused him some pain, even now.

“I opened my eyes. Or I thought I did. And there was someone standing in the room. A tall, bent figure with its back to the little hearth. Embers still glowed on the hearth. The light
moved upwards, etching the edges of the figure clearly, then dying out before it reached the shoulders, the head. But I realized I was looking right at the white face I'd seen in the audience at the theatre, and my mind, opening, sharpening, realized the room was locked, that Nicolas lay beside me, that this figure stood over our bed. I heard Nicolas's breathing. I looked into the white face.”

Daniel’s fingers tightened around the pencil he’d occasionally made notes with, without thinking of it. The tension in this part of the story was clear even before the rest of the words came.

White face, Lestat had said. White and smooth, as if sculpted from bleached bone. Daniel didn’t need that much of a description this far into the interview. His mind already filled the details in for him.

Lestat went on to describe the being—the vampire—speaking to him, without ever moving his lips. Black eyes, quick and calculating, the smell of mouldering clothes. With the effect of Lestat’s words, and Daniel’s immersion in the story, he almost felt he could see things clearly as Lestat’s memories of them.

“I felt its hand close on the lapel of my coat. I was torn forward. I was drawn off my feet
across the room. I shouted for Nicolas. I screamed, ‘Nicki, Nicki!’ as loud as I could. I saw the partially opened window, and then suddenly the glass burst into thousands of fragments and the wooden frame was broken out.”

Lestat’s blue eyes looked up to Daniel’s then, as though he remembered him sitting there after all this time; as though he finally felt some mild curious as to his response to the tale thus far.

Daniel licked his lips, realising just how heavily he’d been breathing.

"So… he sucked your, blood?" Daniel asked, even as he tried to force his own breathing to slow. He wanted this part on record in as much detail as Lestat would give him. He wanted what Lestat would say next to be absolutely irrefutable.

"Yes," Lestat laughed freely, not for the first time since they’d both sat down. "He sucked my blood. That is the way it's done."

"But you lived," Daniel pressed.

Lestat inclined his head. "I want to take things in order," said the vampire, for there was no doubt in Daniel’s mind that this was exactly what he was dealing with. "I want to go on telling you things as they happened."

Daniel nodded numbly.

Lestat took to his narrative again slowly, taking care to enunciate each of his words clearly, as though he worried his accent would make any single detail of it unclear.

“I felt its hands close on my shoulders like things forged of metal, and as I went into a last frenzy of struggling, it whipped me around so that its eyes were sight before me, wide and dark, and the lips were closed yet still smiling, and then it bent down and I felt the prick of its teeth on my neck. Out of all the childhood tales, the old fables, the name came to me, like a drowned thing shooting to the surface of black water and breaking free in the light. ‘Vampire!’ I gave one last frantic cry, shoving at the creature with all I had. Then there was silence. Stillness.”

Instead of heaving breaths, Daniel suddenly held his.

“And I realized I was no longer breathing,” said Lestat, almost as though he knew that was exactly what Daniel himself was struggling to do in that moment. “Yet something was making me breathe. It was breathing for me and the breaths came with the rhythm of the gong which was nothing to do with my body, and I loved it, the rhythm, the way that it went on and on, and I no longer had to breathe or speak or know anything.”

Lestat didn’t speak again for a long moment after that.

Daniel leaned forward. He could barely stand to be patient at this point. "But… did he leave you for dead?"

"Well, he drained me almost to the point of death, which was for him sufficient," Lestat murmured consideringly. "Never had I known the thirst I was suffering now. My whole body thirsted. And I was so weak. And I was getting a little cold. The room moved when I moved."

"But your strength… the vampire…?" asked Daniel, not able to articulate what he wanted to say, knowing he would sound on the tape like an ignorant fool.

Lestat didn’t pause for him to find his words. He continued, “And as my eyes moved slowly over the dusky corners of the room, I saw him there. He leaned to rest, it seemed, upon the thick stone frame of the window, one knee bent a little towards it, the other long spindly leg sprawled out to the other side. His arms appeared to hang at his sides. And the whole impression was of something limp and lifeless, and yet his face was as animated as it had been the night before.”

Daniel nodded twice, silently encouraging Lestat to continue this time since it seemed he would anyway.

"I was out of my mind," Lestat explained. "I did things I could not have done in perfect health. The scene is confused, pale, fantastical now. And then I slipped into a web of radiant dreams. A catacomb I saw, a rank place. And a white vampire creature waking in a shallow grave. Bound in heavy chains he was, the vampire; and over him bent this monster who had abducted me, and I knew that his name was Magnus, and that he was mortal still in this dream, a great and powerful alchemist. And he had unearthed and bound this slumbering vampire right before the crucial hour of dusk. And now as the light died out of the heavens, Magnus drank from his helpless immortal prisoner the magical and accursed blood that would make him one of the living dead. Treachery it was, the theft of immortality. A dark Prometheus stealing a luminescent fire." Lestat sighed. "Do you understand?"

It was a lot of information to take in all at once. Not just a story of Lestat becoming a vampire, no, but also a story of alchemy, and the vampire maker in his own moment of mortality before becoming one of the living dead.

Treachery it was, the theft of immortality. The words struck Daniel, and stayed with him, though he didn’t know why. Not just then. Not yet.

Daniel began to speak, and then he shook his head. “No… I mean, I do,” he said. “I mean, I…”

It was another senseless mess of words. How could Daniel understand, having never gone through anything close to what Lestat described?

“Of course,” Lestat said smoothly, looking away.

“Wait, wait!” Daniel said, in a sudden welter of excitement, distracting him from all the things he didn’t yet know. “The tape is almost gone. I have to turn it over.” This, at least, he knew well how to do.

Lestat watched him patiently as he changed it.

“What happened then?” Daniel asked. His face was moist, and he wiped it hurriedly with a handkerchief pulled from one of his pockets.

"By that time I was greatly changed," Lestat said, his voice now slightly detached. It seemed almost distracted.

"What was this change?" asked Daniel, trying to bring him back into the story alongside him.

Lestat sighed, as though the telling of this part of the story in specific detail was almost too onerous for him. He leaned back against the chair and looked at the walls, reminding Daniel by that look of the room in Divisadero Street where they both still sat in the present. Finally, he drew himself up.

"I saw Magnus as I could not have seen him before. He was radiant. And then I saw not only Magnus had changed, but all things had changed. Food, drink, and security in conformity I’d held before. They were in cinders. All of them."

It didn’t make sense to Daniel, not in any tangible way. But it was also clear Lestat would say no more on it. So Daniel moved on, face tense with a mixture of confusion and amazement. "And so you decided to become a vampire?" he asked.

Lestat was silent for a moment.

"‘Decided.’" Lestat shook his head. "It doesn't seem the right word. Yet I cannot say it was inevitable from the moment that he stepped into that room. No, indeed, it was not inevitable. Yet I can't say I decided. Let me say that when he'd finished speaking, no other decision was possible for me, and I pursued my course without a backward glance.

"‘Ask for it, child,’ he said, his face no longer the grinning mask, but utterly transfigured with compassion. He looked almost human, almost naturally old. ‘Ask and you shall receive,’ he said.”

It was beautiful. There was a beauty and a wonder to the story Lestat wove for him. Before this, if anyone had ever spoken the word vampire, Daniel would have thought devil, or demon. Night walker, cursed never again to see another sunrise.

But this version, it felt like a becoming. Lestat had been one kind of person in life, but this was a transformation, one greater than Daniel could imagine. Only by the coming of this Magnus had Lestat been able to become who he was truly meant to be.

"Do you miss it?" Daniel asked then in a small voice, as though the answer to this question could burst the small bubble he could already feel growing around him.

"Not really," said Lestat. He didn’t so much as pause to consider it. "There are so many other things. But where were we? You want to know how it happened, how I became a vampire."

"Yes," said Daniel, once again eager. "How did you change, exactly? What happened to Magnus?"

“Magnus…” Lestat said slowly, drawing the name out, as though it had been a long time since he’d heard anyone else say that name. "‘Listen carefully,’ he said to me. ‘For I'm about to leave you. And there are things you must know. You're immortal now. And your nature shall lead you soon enough to your first human victim. Be swift and show no mercy. But stop your feasting, no matter how delicious, before the victim's heart ceases to beat. In years to come, you'll be strong enough to feel that great moment, but for the present pass the cup to time just before it's empty. Or you may pay heavily for your pride.’ ‘But why are you leaving me!’ I asked desperately. I clung to him. Victims, mercy, feasting… I felt myself bombarded by these words as if I were being physically beaten.”

Victims, mercy, feasting, yes. This was more in line with what Daniel had expected from the outset yet, strangely, he found he wasn’t offput by it now.

“Astonishing me, Magnus snatched up two twigs from the wood and rubbed them together so fiercely they were soon burning with bright small flames. This he tossed at the heap, and the pitch in it caused the fire to leap up at once, throwing an immense light over the curved ceiling and the stone walls. I gasped and stepped back.”

Daniel’s eyes widened, and he urgently glanced at the tape recorder to ensure they required no changing. That not a single word of this desperate accounting would be missed.

"‘Not the fire.’ I flew backwards, flattening myself against the wall. ‘You can't go into the fire!’ Fear was overwhelming me, as every sight and sound had overwhelmed me. It was like every sensation I had known so far. I couldn't resist it or deny it. I was half whimpering and
half screaming. ‘Oh, yes I can,’ he laughed. ‘Yes, I can!’ He threw back his head and let his laughter stretch into howls. ‘But from you, fledgling,’ he said, stopping before me with his finger out again, ‘promises now, after I am burned up,’ he said, snatching my wrist, ‘and the
fire is out, you must scatter the ashes. Hear me, little one. Scatter the ashes. Or else I might return, and in what shape that would be, I dare not contemplate. But mark my words, if you allow me to come back, more hideous than I am now, I shall hunt you down and burn you till you are scarred the same as I, do you hear me…?’"

**

Daniel took another cassette from his brief case and, begging the vampire’s pardon, fitted it into place, “I’m afraid I asked something too personal just now. I didn’t mean…” he said anxiously to Lestat once they were recording again.

The vampire's face looked more weary, drawn, than when they had started. His cheekbones were more prominent and his brilliant blue eyes enormous. The two of them had begun at dark, which had come early on this San Francisco winter night, and now it was just before 10pm. The vampire straightened and smiled and said calmly, "We are ready to go on?"

“Yes.” Daniel spoke to him almost breathlessly.

There was a short, mirthless laugh under Lestat’s breath. “You wanted to know how I knew others of my own kind were lying to us. Don’t worry, Daniel. I can only say it is clear when another immortal enters into your mind to play tricks with your very thoughts.”

They had covered the vampire ability of the Mind Gift on a previous tape earlier on in the interview, so it came as no surprise to Daniel to hear Lestat describe it this way now.

“I saw then a small figure appear. Compact it was, the figure of a young boy, not a man. I ached for it to be Nicolas, but knew immediately that it was not. It was smaller than Nicolas, though rather heavier of build. And, need I say, the creature was not human. Gabrielle made some soft wondering sound. It sounded almost like prayer in its reference. The creature wasn't dressed as men dress now. Rather he wore a belted tunic, very graceful, and stockings on his well shaped legs. His sleeves were deep, hanging at his sides. He was clothed like Magnus, actually, and for one moment I thought madly that by some magic it was Magnus returned. Stupid thought. But his face was shining white, and perfect, the countenance of a god it seemed, a Cupid out of Caravaggio, seductive yet ethereal, with auburn hair and dark brown eyes.”

Lestat stopped, as though captured for some reason by something about the memory of this first meeting. Daniel sat forward, his eyes wide. Lestat was frozen, staring off, lost in his thoughts, his memory.

Daniel looked down suddenly, as if this were the respectful thing to do, before glancing back up again at Lestat, his own face as distressed as the vampire's when the story didn’t continue and Daniel didn’t understand. He even started to say something, but stopped himself.

Finally, Lestat turned towards him and studied him. Daniel flushed and looked away again anxiously. But then he raised his eyes and looked into the vampire's eyes one last time. He swallowed, but he held the vampire's gaze.

Slowly, the tale continued once more. “I looked at him, and nothing so startled me about him, this inhuman creature, as the manner in which he was staring. He was inspecting every detail of my person. He was only a few yards away, and the soft inspection yielded to an expression that was almost sublime. And the voice I'd heard before came out of this creature, summoning me again, calling upon me to yield, saying with indescribable gentleness that we must love one another. There was something naive about it, his sending the summons as he stood there. I held fast against him. And yet I felt such a longing for him, such a longing to fall into him and follow him and be led by him, that all my longings of the past seemed nothing at all. He was all mystery to me as Magnus had been.”

Daniel frowned, not understanding, really, this part of the story. Yes, he understood from Lestat’s telling of it, the power of the Mind Gift. What he didn’t understand was why Lestat lingered so especially on it, especially after the excitement of the flight just past. To Daniel, this moment of the story seemed dull, stunted. More than once, the vampire had compared this creature to Magnus, but even Daniel could see the differences inherent between them. Surely Lestat, who was telling the story—who had lived the story—could see the same.

There was some other reason Lestat was lingering on first meetings with this creature.

Unaware of Daniel’s rising bewilderment, Lestat went on, “The anguish of my immortal life pressed in on me. He said, ‘Come to me. Come to me because only I, and my like, can end the loneliness you feel.’ And silently he approached until he was standing no more than two feet away. And in a voice very unlike a human voice, he spoke. ‘Magnus,’ he said. It was unobtrusive. It was caressing. ‘He went into the fire as you said?’ ‘I never said it,’ I answered. I tried to penetrate his mind. He knew I was doing it and he threw up against me such strange images that I gasped. What was it I'd seen for an instant? I didn't even know. Hell and heaven, or both made one, vampires in a paradise drinking blood from the very flowers that hung, pendulous and throbbing, from the trees. I felt a wave of disgust. It was as if he had come into my private dreams like a succubus.”

A pause. Then,

"Is this what you want?" Lestat whispered. "Is this what you wanted to hear?" He moved the chair back soundlessly before walking again to the window.

Daniel sat as if stunned, looking at his broad shoulders and the long mass of the cape.

Lestat turned his head slightly. "You don't answer me. I'm not giving you what you want, am I? You wanted an interview. Something to broadcast on the radio." He turned his head slightly, as though it mattered, suddenly, what Daniel thought, even as he reminded Daniel he was even at present giving him exactly what they’d agreed.

That it was Daniel’s fault he didn’t understand the dramatism of this moment. Of this… nameless character from Lestat’s past.

At the same time, looming over him, was the reminder that Lestat didn’t have to be here. He could leave at any time. He didn’t have to share any part of this incredible story with Daniel. And Daniel wanted to appease him. Desperately needed to do so.

"That doesn't matter. I'll throw the tapes away if you want!" Daniel rose. "I can't say I understand all you're telling me. You'd know I was lying if I said I did. So how can I ask you to go on, except to say what I do understand… what I do understand is like nothing I've ever understood before."

He took a step towards Lestat. The vampire appeared to be paying all his attention down into Divisadero Street. Then he turned his head slowly and looked at the boy and smiled. His face was serene and almost affectionate. And Daniel suddenly felt uncomfortable. He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned towards the table.

Then he mentally berated himself. Why had he done that? It wasn’t the first time an attractive—yes, Daniel could admit to himself that this vampire was attractive—man had looked at him. Was it because Lestat was a vampire? A monster? A creature of the night?

He didn’t have an answer for himself. How could he? Finally, he looked at Lestat tentatively, then said, “Will you… please go on?”

Lestat turned with folded arms and leaned against the window. "Why?" he asked.

Daniel was at a loss. Had he really ruined the remainder of this interview so utterly? No one would want to hear something left so unfinished.

"Because I want to hear it." He shrugged, smiling a little to himself as he said it and realised it was true. "Because I want to know what happened."

"All right," said Lestat, with the same smile playing on his lips. And he went back to the chair and sat opposite Daniel and turned the recorder just a little and said, "Marvellous contraption, really… so let me go on. The chase that ended in Notre Dame was only one such time Armand attempted to play tricks with my very thoughts. Allow me now to tell you the other.”

Armand. And so Daniel was given a name for this latest character from Lestat’s tale.

**

"And that's the end of it. There's nothing else."

Daniel had sat mute, staring at the vampire. And Lestat had sat collected, his hands folded on the table, his narrow, red-rimmed eyes fixed on the turning tapes. His face was so gaunt by the end that the veins of his temples showed as if carved out of stone. He sat so still that only his blue eyes evinced life, and that life was a dull fascination with the turning of the tapes.

No, Daniel hadn’t been able to believe it. That wasn’t the end of it. It couldn’t be.

Lestat had laughed at him outright when Daniel first stood up and demanded Lestat make him into what he was.

“Ah, but that wasn’t our agreement, Daniel. You should have been more careful at the beginning of things if you wished to make a different agreement.” He’d waggled his finger in Daniel’s face, made a whole show of tutting at Daniel.

Those blue eyes had been shining with laughter at Daniel’s expense. Daniel had suspected all of that laughter to be a way for Lestat to separate himself from the melancholy ending of a story that saw Lestat burying himself into the ground after Armand threw him from a tower—Magnus’ tower—after Louis and Claudia had first tried to kill him.

Wow, talk about burying the lead. The apparent love of Lestat’s life, revealed succinctly in the very last fraction of the entire interview.

Lestat had still been laughing, almost uncontrollably, as Daniel had grabbed up his tapes and stuffed them angrily into his brief case. He’d tried it all. Shaking him, yelling, pouting, begging. None of it had moved Lestat, not in the slightest bit.

Daniel’s brain was awash with the story that had filled so much of the night and into the early hours of morning. He’d been through so many emotions. Disbelief, curiosity, wonder.

Yearning.

It had been yearning that filled him up to the chest, while Lestat had made a show of yawning before taunting him still further. “You’ll need to try something more convincing than this if you truly wish to change my mind. And Daniel, you are fast running out of time. The sun is soon to rise.”

“I thought, you said you fell in love so easily! That is the story you told. You made me believe it!” Daniel could have wept with his frustration and need.

“Now, Daniel,” Lestat said, speaking softer than he had for some time. “You are forgetting one important thing.”

“What?” Daniel demanded desperately, as though this would finally be the secret that allowed him to be turned.

He was doomed to be disappointed.

Daniel’s gaze was trained on Lestat’s full lips as he uttered the words the words slowly, “Only once have I fallen in love in a single night, desirous enough to immediately make that one as I am.”

Lestat bit Daniel then, and god that hurt, hurt like nothing else Daniel had before experienced. Lestat wanted it to hurt, he realised only afterwards. To scare him away. But the hurt he’d experienced in the bite was nothing to waking up and realising he’d been left behind.

So now Daniel was on the road, driving fast towards New Orleans and the Rue Royale, where Lestat had mentioned his time with Louis having been, before he too had gone off to Paris.

Magnus, dead. Nicki, dead. Claudia, dead. Another interviewer might have paused to express a shred of sympathy for a long life peppered with so many grave losses. Was that what Lestat had been waiting for? The thing that might have convinced him to do as Daniel asked?

He might never now know.

Instead, Daniel was thinking there wasn’t a single other vampire from that story he could have easily followed up to verify the story, unless he wanted to book a ticket to fly off to Paris in the hopes of finding Armand in a tower, or else in some catacombs beneath a cemetery.

For the moment, Daniel was keeping that in his back pocket on the chance that he couldn’t locate Louis and was desperate enough for another lead.

Right now, he was on his way to become someone. These were the last days, Daniel was determined, that he remain be no one special. He was about to become viewed as vital, someone other than the way he’d been seen his entire life.

With the story Lestat had told him, Daniel now knew there was something out there waiting for him. A way of transforming into someone more. Alchemy and transmutation. Daniel was on his way to becoming something more than he’d ever been able to believe.

Part Two

Food tasted like ash in his mouth. It had been this way for Daniel since shortly after that night in Pompeii. Since after the first time Daniel had been gifted with his first taste of Armand’s blood.

In the back of his mind, Daniel dimly remembered something from Lestat’s interview, all those years ago. Something Lestat had said that had come back into Daniel’s mind again only recently.

“Food, drink, and security in conformity I’d held before. They were in cinders. All of them.”

It had been so perfectly encapsulated. Reassuring, in a way. Daniel wasn’t the only person to have come across a vampire who had ever felt this way. He needed to hold onto that. That he wasn’t the only one. Because the more isolated he felt in his experience, the more he was noticing he was beginning to doubt his own reality.

Armand had been the one to warn him of that once.

At least Magnus had done the curtesy of turning Lestat into a vampire quickly. Unlike the way Lestat had left Daniel.

Or Armand.

It was true that, for the first time, with Armand, Daniel experienced the sensation of being special to another being. There was no one in Armand’s life who came close to the place Daniel had taken in it. He was his first human beloved. The first human to know his name… and live.

In hindsight, it had been clear in Lestat’s story that he had been completely taken by the vampire Armand. Equally clear had it been that Lestat was unable to reconcile what Armand would have taken from him with his own desires. Even so recently as half a dozen years ago, and Lestat still hadn’t quite been able to articulate the confusing push and pull of feelings he held towards Armand.

Daniel had always thought it a strange part of Lestat’s narrative, especially since it hadn’t been as though Lestat was any stranger to relationships between men.

Thankfully, Daniel had experienced no such hesitations since Armand entered his life like a hurricane in a teapot.

Yet, for all of Daniel’s transparent willingness to be with him forever, Armand still refused to make him into a vampire. Sometimes, despite Armand’s protestations, Daniel felt like he was little more than his plaything.

He could have run away, could have forsworn the world of carpets and limousines and private planes, of liquor closets stocked with rare vintages and dressing rooms full of exquisitely cut clothing. Of the quiet overwhelming presence of his immortal lover who gave him every earthly possession he could want.

But, deep in his heart, Daniel knew that would solve nothing. He didn’t want distance from Armand. He wanted the ultimate gift, the connection between maker and fledgling. Every part of him screamed at him, and Armand, for that one thing.

None of that would change even if Daniel took himself to the opposite side of the world.

And so Daniel thought of the interview tapes. He had them still. He’d published them as a book some while ago, long after he first found Armand. Daniel would have been independently wealthy on the sales from that alone, even if he hadn’t had the money Armand insisted on showering him with. But he still preferred the tapes over the book. They were the more complete retelling.

Daniel hadn’t included, in the novelised version of the interview, the memory Lestat had been able to take from Magnus’ mind during one of their early blood exchanges.

“A catacomb I saw, a rank place. And a white vampire creature waking in a shallow grave. Bound in heavy chains he was, the vampire; and over him bent this monster who had abducted me, and I knew that his name was Magnus, and that he was mortal still in this dream, a great and powerful alchemist. And he had unearthed and bound this slumbering vampire right before the crucial hour of dusk. And now as the light died out of the heavens, Magnus drank from his helpless immortal prisoner the magical and accursed blood that would make him one of the living dead.”

Maybe Lestat had given Daniel something anyway, something he could use after all these years…

Lestat had asked him whether Daniel understood him at the time. He hadn’t. Daniel could hardly bear to listen anymore to the uneducated stutterings of his previous self who had just begun to have the world opened up in front of him. It had been painful even then, but it was so much worse now.

To remember how little he’d understood.

“Beloved?” Armand’s querying tone took Daniel out of his own head.

“Yeah boss.”

“Are you well?” Armand’s brown eyes looked over him slightly narrowed and Daniel forced himself to smile.

“Just can’t wait to see where you’ll drag me off to tonight!”

Armand was of course so delighted to hear it that he put aside any wonderings that might have necessitated an unpleasant conversation. Daniel already knew how Armand didn’t like to talk of Lestat or who he’d once been to Armand.

Only when dawn came did Daniel allow himself to return to the thoughts from earlier in the evening.

Magnus, Lestat’s maker, had drunk from another vampire in the hour before dusk and it had been enough to turn him into one of them. That couldn’t be enough. Daniel had drunk from Armand multiple times and he was still… exactly what he was.

What if there was more to it. More than Lestat had known to tell. Because the story of a human being turned into a vampire almost always involved the human’s blood being drunk almost to the point of death.

Daniel hazarded a glance to the unconscious Armand, deep in death sleep and wholly unknowing of the direction of Daniel’s thoughts. Could he do this? Could he actually… chance his own death on the off chance that he would succeed in making himself a vampire without having to wait any longer for it to be given?

The crucial hour of dusk…

Yes, that should be part of it. Because, while heavy chains and shackles may have been a common part of medieval life, Daniel had no idea where he could find anything of the strength that could be expected to hold one like Armand. Daniel wasn’t even sure he wanted to restrain Armand in such a way. That on top of taking the blood from him by force? It was too much, surely.

Also, if he remained unbound, on the chance that Daniel found himself lying in a weakened puddle of his own blood, Armand would not only wake in time but be free to finish what Daniel had started.

It was the perfect plan. And, it being only just after dawn now, Daniel had himself the full day to set about his plan.

That was important too. Now that he had begun thinking it, he knew himself well enough that he’d not be able to keep it from Armand after.

Right. What was he going to need? A knife and the veins in his wrist. Too quick? Would the blood slide out of him from that artery too fast for him to make good his plan? What was a slower artery? And one that wouldn’t then clot…

Daniel held his forehead between thumb and forefinger for a moment. He should have thought, in the 70s, that it was even remotely interesting to interview just one medical practitioner.

Forget someone that he could ask in the present. Any and all of his human contacts had slowly whittled away over the last decade of the time he’d spent with Armand.

He could hardly walk up and down the streets just… hoping the right person came along. That would take too much time.

Daniel could feel himself at the very beginning of a rising panic. He couldn’t have made the decision only to be stymied so early on in the planning. Think, Danny, think!

Okay. He had the time: Dusk. He had the instrument: Knife. He had the resource: Armand’s blood. As much of it as he could swallow. The taste was quite familiar to him now. He thought he could swallow a lot.

And so that was at least three quarters of his plan already made for him. All he needed to do was a little bit of research to fill in what he did not yet know. And research was actually something good Daniel was. At least, if his researching skills hadn’t completely atrophied since he’d stopped using them.

While Armand slept, Daniel went to the local college library, straight to the shelves for 611 in the Dewey Decimal System for human anatomy.

The answer came to him surprisingly quick, after the library doors opened for the start of day. Daniel had allowed himself a short nap on the steps, grateful for once to Armand’s meticulous sense of dress where he was concerned so he hadn’t been mistaken for a homeless person. A librarian had very politely and gently woken him after she’d opened the doors.

Even a campus library was quiet first thing in the morning, and so Daniel was uninterrupted as he slowly taught himself the differences between arterial and venous blood. Classically, the artery moved away from the heart, the venous towards. This was the difference in blood flow. Daniel knew within moments of finding this that it would be venous blood he would aiming to start flowing—blood that was a dark purple in colour, rather than the bright red, swift flow of arterial blood—that night before dusk.

It also occurred to him at some point that this was probably also information that would serve him well once he finally became a vampire.

The panic was long gone by the time he stopped at a street food vendor for what he thought—hoped—might be his last meal as a human. The thought of it made him smile despite the relative lack of sleep as he found a park bench. He hadn’t enjoyed food for months, but each bite of this roll he savoured as though the very ambrosia of the gods had been laced into it.

He should have done this months ago. There had been no excuse for it. Think of all that time not whining to Armand about everything he wanted, and instead simply taking it. As any other self respecting vampire would do.

Was this what Armand had been waiting on him to do? This whole time?

It was almost easy for Daniel to convince himself that was exactly what Armand had been waiting on.

“You'll torment me forever, won't you, and then you'll watch me die, and you'll find I that interesting, won't you?”

Oh, how pitiful Daniel sounded in his own memories. It hadn’t been Armand tormenting him, but his own self. Daniel wouldn’t have turned him either, had he been Armand! How patient Armand seemed, almost as if—the way Daniel was deliberately remembering it now—Armand was waiting for him to come to this very realisation.

“I'd rather die than see you die, Daniel.”

This was harder for Daniel to interpret but, in his current fever dream, he convinced himself that this was all the more reason to believe there was no danger of his dying in Armand’s arms tonight if he did manage to go too deep, to cut the artery rather than the venous vein.

“Then give it to me! Damn you! Immortality that close, as close as your arms.”

“No, Daniel, because I'd rather die than do that, too.”

It would be all right. It would all be all right.

This was the last full day Daniel need suffer through as a mere human. He could find some pleasure in that now, at the very end. He would never need to run away from Armand again, or become anymore desperate than he was right now.

Daniel didn’t sleep again before dusk. Perhaps he should have. But he was nervous. Nervous and excited. Exhilarated by the thought that this would be the last time he would appreciate the sun in the sky at midday, at 2pm, at 4…

All too soon, time was careening towards dusk. Daniel took a deep breath in, then let it out as he returned to the home Armand had made for them both.

Armand was still yet in his death sleep when Daniel returned. Of course he was. He would not wake earlier simply because of Daniel’s plans.

Quietly, Daniel took his time washing the sharpest knife he could find in the kitchen. He’d already planned where he would cut, both a primary and secondary slice in case the first did not bleed enough on its own.

His heart was thundering in his ears. He desperately did not want to die. Not without the promise of coming back as he had dreamed all these years. His fears were telling him there was a very real possibility of something going wrong.

Daniel determinedly refused to listen to it.

On quiet feet—no time like the present to learn to quite literally walk through the world as silently as Armand did—Daniel made his way to the blacked out room where Armand habitually slept through his days. Far nicer than any imagined catacomb where, centuries ago, an alchemist named Magnus had done the very same thing Daniel would now attempt.

The knife would be helpful in releasing Armand’s blood from his body also. Daniel’s blunt teeth would need to worry against the skin to keep it flowing, while that immortal wound attempted to stitch itself back together.

He had his time: Dusk. He had his instrument: Knife. He had his resource: Armand’s blood. As much of it as he could swallow.

And now, too, Daniel had knowledge. Venous veins and the deep, almost purple blood that would tell him he’d succeeded in his task.

Location? Who needed a sterile environment when he was about to become immortal?

Daniel took another breath in. Let it out slowly between his teeth. And then he began to cut. First Armand, revealing that weeping elixir of immortal life, and then himself while the euphoria of the blood lessened some of the immediate horror of his self mutilation.

He drank deep, moaning in the back of his throat at the first taste of Armand’s blood as it hit his tongue, the walls of his mouth, before skating down the back of his throat. It never got old, the richness, the depth in the taste. Daniel swallowed it as fast as he could, large mouthfuls and greedy. There was urgency to it that he had never been given the space before to feel.

And, there was no Armand above him, encouraging then compelling him to slow down, or pulling it away when he didn't. “Savour it, Daniel…”

No. There was no savouring to this moment. Only the sheer and compelling purpose. This would be Daniel’s birth into the undead! His moment of bloody becoming.

And Daniel couldn’t deny that there was something intoxicating in the fact that he was taking in this moment from an Armand who couldn't deny him from wherever it was vampires went to in the death sleep.

Daniel began to feel light headed then. He didn’t allow himself pause at the realisation. Yes, that was expected, due to the blood loss. His own blood loss, not counting the blood entering into his body from Armand. It meant the cuts he’d made against both thighs were succeeding in bleeding him out at a speed commensurate to the blood he was taking in.

He would come close to death, right towards those gates at the end of a mortal life, and then…

That was too far in the future to think on. There was only now for Daniel to enjoy the moment he knew he’d succeeded in the plan he had set in place. The vampire Daniel.

No. He couldn’t… surely he could change his name after being what Armand was! Yes, he knew deep within himself he could do anything now.

And then, at the same time he thought that, two strong hands curved almost into claws reached up and dug hard into the flesh at both Daniel's shoulders. The sensation was followed almost immediately by a hiss that held a harshness Daniel had never heard from Armand.

**

“Daniel. My stupid Daniel.”

“Did it work?” Daniel’s tongue felt like a sluggish thing in his mouth, while Armand’s voice seemed to come from very far away. Had Armand moved to a different room after the death sleep released him? Had Daniel? “Did I do it right?”

Actually, Daniel wasn’t sure he said that last part out loud. He didn’t feel his lips moving around the words. And Armand didn’t reply to him. Which was odd, actually, cause even when he thought words only in his head, Armand had always been easily able to take them from him.

Had Magnus felt like this after he’d taken from his own immortal creature? Funny, Lestat hadn’t lingered on the way his maker had felt.

Maybe he didn’t know.

Daniel thought he would have liked to know how Magnus felt in the aftermath of doing this thing, had he been able to talk to him now. The only other vampire Daniel knew of who had taken his immortality into his own hands. Who had taught Daniel, long after his death, the way to do the same.

Instead, Daniel laughed a little, a huff of sound under his breath. “How can something that is dead truly die, anyway?”

It was a question Daniel should have asked Lestat at the time, really. Yet another of the questions from his interview that Daniel was only capable of conceiving of afterwards. How had Magnus been so sure he would die just because he wished it?

Daniel thought he recalled from the story of Magnus a sense that he had been worried he would not be successful in his attempt. That Lestat be incredibly careful with the instructions that had been given to him, so Magnus couldn’t come back.

Where were his tapes? Daniel thought he would have liked to go back to that part again now. To review them again in the face of his first clumsy attempt at alchemy.

And then, oh god, then it was awful, as his insides felt like they needed to be on his outsides. Immediately.

“Your mortal body is dying,” Armand intoned, and Daniel couldn’t read anything into his voice right then. He was far too busy having the lunch from only a few hours before repeating on him in the most violent way possible.

It was a confirmation that what he had done had worked. This was the beginning of his vampire life! He couldn’t help but giggle a little, gasp out a cackle, even as his body heaved.

Daniel's mouth was likely a mess when he next looked up at Armand. Blood mixed with vomit and, behind it all, the biggest shit eating grin that had ever fallen upon the face of a newly made vampire. Fangs! Did he have fangs now, instead of teeth? Daniel pressed both forefingers against his canines, searching to find the answer.

Armand gazed back at him only a moment before he turned his face to look away.

It was hard, so hard, for Daniel to find it in himself to worry about what Armand was feeling.

“But don’t you see?” Daniel said, letting out uncontrolled laugh that might have been more fitting from Lestat at the same time as flinging his arms out to either side and staring up towards the ceiling. “All decisions are made like this! In trust that it will be better than it was before. But none of us know for certain. Dear God, we are lost, I tell you!”

Daniel came to a stop abruptly, as though something only then occurred to him.

“Can I still say ‘God’? Is that wrong to say?”

“I would say… that depends,” Armand murmured his voice still so carefully mild. When Daniel peeked his way, he found Armand hadn't returned to look at him.

It didn’t matter. Daniel lost interest in the question he’d been asking anyway. This… this was a new life. A new world. And he was gazing at it from entirely new eyes. There was so much he just hadn’t been able to see before now.

Yet, inside, there was only so much Daniel could gaze at.

“We need to go. Hunt! Now.” There was hunger in Daniel’s tone of voice that surprised even him as that last word come out. His gaze darted around the home he shared with Armand. There were, of course, no humans in these rooms.

His mouth split again, in a small smile this time. He could feel the dip of a fang against his lower lip like he hadn’t felt it before.

“Armand, the sun is down. Won’t you take me out?”

Armand did look at him then. “You will need to feed,” he agreed.

Daniel nodded several times, almost bouncing on the toes of his feet in his eagerness for the next step.

“I’m sure you can figure it out.”

Daniel just stared in the face of Armand’s cold words.

“What?” he asked.

Armand waved a hand in his direction. “You have figured out all the rest, Daniel. This should be simple for you.”

Daniel took a step towards Armand, then stopped when he saw the dangerous flare in his brown eyes. And he realised, for the first time, Armand was angry with him.

No, more than that. He was furious.

“Armand…” Daniel started. This hadn’t been part of the plan. Armand was supposed to have been proud at him for his resourcefulness. Not… enraged. “I want to go hunt with you.”

Armand’s eyes flashed. “You have not thought at all what I want.”

Daniel blinked, eyes wide. Though he had not moved, and though he was so much shorter than him, it seemed as though the force of Armand towered over him and left Daniel feeling very, very small.

There were no words that immediately came to Daniel in the wake of Armand’s fury, and so they both just stood there.

Soon enough, Daniel couldn’t stand the distance any longer. “Please,” he said, with a single, stumbling step forward.

Armand took a step back. It took Daniel some conscious thought to do it, but he stopped moving. Eyed Armand with new wariness.

Still, Armand didn't speak.

That wasn't necessarily strange in and of itself. Armand typically preferred using the mind gift over speaking words out loud. He loved to look into Daniel's mind and then reply to things Daniel hadn't even said.

Oh.

Oh.

"Boss..." Daniel started, taking another instinctive, fumbling step forward, this time with arms outstretched, before Armand's quelling expression stopped him in his tracks. He was feeling unsteady, sure, but he still had control over his limbs. Mostly. He just wished his head would clear.

It was a struggle to remain serious and focused on Armand when the lighting in the entire room was completely from the way Daniel was used to it looking. There were shadows moving where Daniel had never noticed them before. Sounds that had been frequent, and even then mostly muffled, came clearer to his ears. Even the smell of the air in the house they shared was more potent. Mostly... he could smell himself. Did he still smell like that, or was he like Armand now? Barely there smell, neither of the living nor of the decay of the dead?

In another time, Daniel would have opened his mouth to ask that very question. He wanted to laugh in giddy delight, cause all this new information for his senses was just another reminder that he had succeeded in what he'd tried to do tonight. He was immortal! One of the blood! Exactly like both Lestat and Armand!!

All of this was exactly as Lestat had described. Food, drink, and security in conformity he'd held before – all of that would be next!

A short laugh escaped Daniel's mouth without him meaning it to, before he not only cut it off but also pressed both of his hands firmly against his mouth.

None of that stopped the final arrival of Armand's quiet wrath.

"You are so very happy with yourself." They were the damning words out of Armand's mouth.

"I..." Daniel started, moving his hands from his mouth only slightly to make the answer. Before realising he had no idea what to say.

And, all the while, Armand just stared, those deep brown eyes seeming to penetrate into his soul.

If not his mind.

That thought gave Daniel something for him to decide to say. "I know you liked talking to me mind to mind. I understand we've lost that."

"Do you." Armand's voice remained grim.

"But, think of everything else we've gained!" Daniel exclaimed, perhaps more forcefully than he would have without Armand's clear and ongoing disapproval.

Armand's eyes flashed and, in his expression for just a second, there was an emotion Daniel had never seen when Armand looked at him. Disgust.

He broke eye contact with Daniel abruptly, leaving Daniel unbalanced and unsure if he'd seen it at all. Armand's youthful face set into a scowl made him look petulant on the surface, but Daniel knew well the monster underneath the visage. He didn't think Armand would strike him. Was he really that mad?

"What have I told you? Time and again?" Armand asked, his voice a quiet, deadly command to answer.

Daniel blinked. Opened his mouth then shut it again. It took his mind a moment to catch up. He wasn't feeling so good all of a sudden, and it took him a moment to draw forth the answer that was relevant to this particular situation.

"That you made a vow," Daniel said quietly, and this time without bravado. "You'd never make another into..."

"Into what I am," Armand interrupted him coldly when Daniel trailed off, at a loss of which pronoun to use. 'You' would have been appropriate until tonight. But as of now, this night, what they both were was the same.

Daniel nodded, miserable that Armand couldn't, or wouldn't, share with him the elation of this moment as he'd hoped.

And then, quite suddenly, the contents of his entire stomach rebelled again.

He felt quite hot and wretched all over. Just when he thought that he'd stopped heaving, it came upon him again, and again, until it was only dry retching that was left.

"God damn," Daniel uttered under his breath, wincing.

It was then, with surprise, Daniel felt a cool hand against the middle of his back. Sympathy, Daniel thought, now when he least expected it.

When he next managed to stand upright, Daniel was hungry. He thought he was hungrier than he had ever been in life as a human. But he managed to hold that back for a moment, just long enough to gaze back at Armand.

Armand's expression was still blank, but that was better than fury, or even the disgust Daniel thought he'd so briefly seen. He could take Armand's blank stare. He'd been taking that on and off for more than five years.

As they watched each other quietly in that moment, Armand's mouth opened once, but he seemed to think better of it for nothing passed his lips.

Daniel couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“Lestat said…” Daniel started then, but he didn’t get far.

“Oh, Lestat said.” Armand’s face was flat, had long since gone blank. If Daniel hadn’t been so taken with the euphoria of the moment, he might have noticed the signs of it earlier than now. Would it have made a difference? he wondered. “Perhaps you should go find him.”

The words were so clearly enunciated, so stark, they were as cutting as the knife Daniel had used to cut them both so recently.

Daniel shook his head. “This is what his maker did,” he whispered. “That's how I knew... I knew it was possible.”

Armand's brows lifted in surprise, then just as quickly lowered.

"Lestat." The name was almost a hiss out of Armand's mouth. His eyes narrowed before he reached out, grabbing onto Daniel's arm as though he might suddenly run away before he could answer Armand's question. "When was this?"

"During the interview," Daniel was quick to answer. "You know, before I came looking for Louis and found... well... you."

Armand's lips pursed. He huffed out a breath and shook his uncut auburn head as though he himself couldn't believe what he was about to say. "Well. I can't very well leave you here, alone and without guidance for the length of your transition. I'd be no better than Magnus."

If he’d been asked beforehand, Daniel would have said very quickly that this wasn’t the way he’d imagined the way his first night of immortality would go.

If he’d been asked beforehand, perhaps they would have found the flaw in Daniel’s logic. Because Magnus… Magnus had never stolen the blood of a vampire who was known to him.

Magnus had never stolen the blood of a vampire who loved him.

Daniel stared back at Armand. Armand gazed down at Daniel's puddle of vomit for a moment as though choosing to stay with Daniel was of the greatest inconvenience to him. He still held onto Daniel's arm and Daniel was swiftly coming to realise that, even as a newly made vampire, he had not even near the same physical strength as his maker. This wasn't helped by the disorientation and the hunger rushing through him. He couldn't have pulled away if he wanted to. Not that he wanted to. Even this amount of physical contact between them was better than nothing.

Armand looked back to Daniel, his eyes half lidded.

"First, you do need to hunt," he said curtly. "Then, I think we will find Lestat. We will show him exactly what has been the results of his reckless story telling."