Santiago: one

The news that Armand had died filtered down to me slowly.

I was in Mexico, where I had lived for decades, watching my attempt to recreate something from a century past slowly crumble and rot. How could I have thought to recreate Le Theatre des Vampires, and here, of all places. I had started out with a vision of the Gilded Era and meant to bring it into the "modern" age...something Armand had always claimed I was never able to do...and instead of a classical if macabre programme, I had found myself running something more along the lines of a strip club. I blessed beautiful, dark-eyed girls with the Dark Gift, and their bounteous charms drew an unending menu of patrons that no one ever missed.

Ever since the night Louis had attempted to remove my head...and I indeed let him imagine he had done so after he wounded me...so close to sunrise, it seemed the easiest way to preserve myself at the time...I suppose I had harbored a hope of seeing Armand again. Often I thought of killing him myself...never mind Monsieur de Pointe du Lac. After coming to America, I had searched for him a bit, but eventually my dream of building my own stage upon which to strut and fret once more overwhelmed my desire for revenge.

Now, it was rotting, and for the first time in years I wondered how Armand was, if he was still with Louis, if he ever thought of me at all--the bastard. How could I have thought these simpering girls, who knew nothing except how to serve a drink and to please a man (though mind you, these are important skills for a woman to possess) would ever replace the likes of Estelle, Celeste...my dead beauties, burnt to cinders.

How Death had fallen. How Armand would have laughed if he could have seen what I became.

Vaguely the thought of burning down my new palace of pleasure, of slaughtering my fledglings the way Armand had allowed done to us, entered my head. I became preoccupied with it, spent evenings sitting and watching my swaying girls seduce their prey while I meditated on how to take their lives.

One night, so entranced, I hardly noticed when a passing tourist on his way to his death dropped a newspaper on my table. "Veil of Veronica," that meant nothing to me...I had never believed in God, not even during my buoyant and short human lifespan. Armand and I had argued about God's existence or lack thereof many times. Yet the article went on...the fires...the people said to combust...combust...catch on fire when stepping into the sun...the sun...

No. Not Armand.

I had to know. I left Mexico immediately and headed for New Orleans. I never looked back, but I left the bar standing. Days later, I heard it had been torched, razed to the ground, that none of the dancing-girls, my little vampire tarts, had been found. I couldn't bring myself to care. Once more, all my fledglings were dead. But none of that mattered, if Armand was, too.

Still in love with him, Santiago?

Hell, no! But if he is dead...shouldn't I be the one to have killed him?

Damn him, damned red-haired devil, who had always been my weakness.

I had been to New Orleans upon my arrival in North America a century earlier. It had changed and grown into a modern city, but it still held enough of the old world that it might embrace a vampire like a long lost lover. No wonder they all gathered here. The buildings of the French Quarter were painted the colors they had been a hundred years past. Gas lamps still flickered, suspended in shadowed doorways. And the over-ripe plants, the lush vegetation...that never changes, never dies out but keeps rebirthing itself, always fresh, always growing...unlike ourselves.

With so many of our kind in the city, finding out if Armand...Louis...Lestat (the only vampires I had known who still might be alive) were here would be simple enough. I hoped Lestat had been one of those idiotic enough to burn himself up in the sunlight. He'd always been an insufferable prig--with no sense of humor whatsoever! Louis, I hoped was alive, for I meant to have his head on a plate...perhaps stuffed and mounted for my bedroom wall.

The delights of the French Quarter and the stunning array of potential meals it held distracted me briefly, and as I walked beneath open windows and below wrought iron balconies, I could practically hear the tenants of the buildings crying out for me, for Death. How Armand would have liked this, I thought, my mouth twisting in a wry smile. He always liked to imagine his sleeping beauties were eager and willing for his embrace. I liked a bit of a struggle.

Thoughts of Armand reminded me of the duty at hand. I turned from the French Quarter and searched for the old convent known as St. Elizabeth's...it would be easy to hide there, to listen to the voices of vampires within. I had always had the ability to dive into the minds of the others.

And I stood there...just outside the gate...and heard someone whispering of Armand's death...

Gone into the sun?

Gone?

Lestat did this, I thought. He brought back that cursed veil from...from wherever he had gone.

He will pay. Dearly.

Two