Santiago: four

Back in my small rooms on the Rue Royale...they are fine, luxurious quarters, if not spacious...I have no need for a townhouse or a mansion in the Garden District...I sat alone, waiting for what passes for sleep among the damned to claim me. My mouth still tingled with the perfumed flavor of my prey's life. How delicious she had been...how tender her struggles. Had she died hating me, or loving me? Was it all the same thing, anyway?

I thought about how random it all was, and then I wondered about that, as well. After all, I had hand-selected this woman for death, like a greedy tourist choosing his own lobster to be boiled alive, screaming as this woman had screamed. And as the tourist might pick the lobster with the biggest claws or the cleanest shell, I had chosen my dinner for her auburn locks...and when I explored the thought even further, I realized that I had chosen many of my meals for the same reason.

And until this moment, had I not even realized? No! After all, who remembers what they had for lunch a year, a week, even a day ago? It struck me as funny, and I began to laugh out loud, the sound seeming to fill my chamber. Oh, Santiago, what a mockery you have made of yourself, for all you love to mock the others...others such as Lestat, and Louis...pompous things, full of themselves and their suffering, and their petty love affairs.

And then again, there was my own suffering, which I pretended to embrace, my own petty love affair with L'Enfant de la Mort, nearly two centuries in its grave...and the boy himself with no grave save a scorched mark upon the steps of a cathedral in New York. Why hadn't I gone to New York? Perhaps the thought of seeing the place where Armand had cast himself into the sun would have brought up too much anger for me to control. I might have gone truly mad, blindly slaughtering anything that crossed my path... I did not want to do such a thing, for then I should certainly be destroyed myself, and Armand's death would never be avenged.

I knew that Armand wouldn't even *want* me to avenge this death which he'd chosen for himself, especially not against those he had considered friends...and I certainly did not put myself or expect him to put *me* in that category.

Not that he was putting anyone in any categories any more. It was still damned hard to think of him in the past tense.

And so easy to think of him in the past...

He was a mirthless thing when I found him, so many years ago--a sad, solemn cherub, perched over a doorway like a gargoyle. It was part of what attracted me to him, perhaps--the big, wet, brown eyes, the pouting little mouth. He was statue-still, and I thought immediately that he ought to be cast in bronze and set in a fountain somewhere...yet the thought of a pigeon crapping on his fine head was too crass even for one such as myself.

It was Paris at the turn of the century--the nineteenth century--and I was still young, for a vampire, at any rate. I hadn't been in Paris long, but I was already in love with it, planning to make it my own. I had no idea how many other vampires were here already--or that Paris belonged to *him.*

Even in darkness, Paris was filled with light. It had shops and theaters and buildings that were more magnificent than any I had even seen...and mortals here possessed an effervescence found nowhere else. From society matrons to common street whores, they were all delicious, and they seemed, somehow, to expect Death, even to welcome it. That was sweet...but I liked it better when they screamed.

I dressed in black and romped in the streets. I did my best to give my victims what they expected--what they, even unknowingly, desired. I was much more considerate in those days, I suppose. I wore a cloak lined in blood-red satin, carried a cane with a silver wolf's head on the top. I was a gentleman killer. My performance, whether for the demoiselle or for the street urchin, was flawless. I was wasting my talents--until I met Armand.

I had been in Paris perhaps a fortnight, and never had sensed him following me before, although later he claimed that he had been, indeed. This night, just as I had selected my audience of one, I saw from the corner of my eye the faintest, most definitely deliberate movement. I turned my head, not the least worried that the prey might see me too soon and bolt. If she did, catching her would still be easy enough.

And there he was, sitting above that doorway, staring as if he'd never seen a creature such as myself, when it was perfectly obvious to us both that we were of the same nature.

I didn't allow him to know that he had startled me. I merely smiled slowly, confirming his unspoken question with a glimpse of my fangs as I lifted my hat in a gesture of respect. This was a gesture I have seldom used--I have ever had little respect for anyone, but I didn't know yet what to make of this silent watcher.

I admit I was attracted to him, in some strange way which I could not have explained then and probably could not explain now. As a mortal, I had never loved men...as a vampire, I had thought my lust for flesh had been transmuted completely into a lust for blood. What on earth could another of my own kind offer?

Yet I knew somehow, that this angel-faced boy did indeed have something that I wanted, even if I was not yet sure what.

Smirking, I turned away to let him watch and learn who *I* was. Fluidly, I floated down the alley after my prey. My mind brushed hers as I delved into her thoughts in order to taste her fear. I helped increase it, allowing my footsteps to fall loudly on the cobblestones. Her heartbeat and gasping for breath increased, as I began to give chase, and she began to run.

Laughing aloud, I cornered her in the alley, and the girl fell sobbing to her knees, begging me not to harm her.

"Please...do not hurt me..."

I laughed, taunting her, mocking her tears. "Ah, but you should consider yourself lucky! Tonight you are Death's bride!"

And then, incredibly, I felt a nudging against my own mind. The other vampire was invading my thoughts! For a moment I was angry...but then I opened my mind to him, let him taste whatever memories and visions he pleased.

This was the first time of many, many times that I submitted to his will. The first of many times that he watched in approval as I killed. And when the girl was dead, the corpse sprawled and broken on the ground, he came forward and kissed her blood from my mouth...

I came back into myself, alone in my rooms on the Rue Royale, with my hand upon my lips. I shook my head as if to clear it....and yet, I could still feel the impression of that ancient kiss on my mouth.

I bit down on my lip until I tasted my own, cold blood...and fell into the sleep of the dead with its flavor on my tongue.