Santiago: two
Rage simmered within me. Anger in my veins, hot like human blood,
brought my very flesh to life. I stood there, in the bushes outside St. Elizabeth's, my whole corpse trembling as I fought against the tsunami of emotion inside me. Armand was dead, and Lestat must pay--Lestat and Louis, the pair of fiends who had stolen the one thing I had ever truly valued.
Before I brought myself under control, two mastiffs charged around the corner, barking and growling. I swung around to face them, prepared to snap their canine necks just for irritating me, but at the sight of me, they both skidded to a halt uncertainly. For a moment we stared at each other. I took a step towards them, and the two huge dogs turned and ran with their
tails between their legs, whining and yelping in fear.
I laughed out loud for a long time, not caring if I was heard. Lestat was in this building--let him come out and face me if my laughter woke him. Woke him. Then, it sank in as well that the grand Monsieur Lestat had lost his marbles. He was lying there, inside on the chapel floor, having visions of some sort. Any mortal strong enough to lift an axe might go in and take his head. The thought of that doubled my laughter. Oh, achieving my
revenge would be easy indeed! But then, the following thought silenced it. What fun would it be to go in there and put an end to Prince Brat if he didn't know why I had done it? He had to be aware, when he went, that he was dying for his murder of Armand.
I cursed aloud.
If I wanted to kill him...I'd have to wait for him to awaken. Perhaps I'd wake him up myself. I had a good idea of how to do it...and literally kill two birds with one stone. All I had to do was find Monsieur de Pointe du Lac. I'd bring Lestat a gift: Louis's head on a plate.
I wondered if Louis was in New Orleans. I'd have to investigate. I'd gathered that at very least, he was not at St. Elizabeth's, now at the moment in any case. Still, I'd heard rumors of places to look for him in this town, and I was not particularly in a hurry. After all, what use was having immortality if one didn't have a little patience?
Tomorrow night, I decided. Tonight, what was left of it, I was going to hunt. What better way to soothe away the thoughts of Armand's death?
As I began walking away down Napoleon, a tall, slim figure with long black hair, dressed all in black, with too-white skin and too-bright eyes, I let myself remember, so very briefly, how it had been before Armand's interest in me waned. Ah, those debauched nights in Paris at the turn of the century--the nineteenth century! What fun we'd had! How those moist brown eyes had gazed at me in adoration, the auburn locks tumbled
boyishly across the forehead, and how he had made me feel as though I were the strong one, the wise one, when he was already four hundred years older than me, give or take a century.
And then I remembered him looking at Louis with that same expression, and my anger returned like a fist to the gut. I pushed the memories aside. He had betrayed me, my Armand...and I should have seen it coming. Yet, I'd thought that after love had died, friendship had remained...maybe Louis had convinced him to let me burn with the others. Maybe Louis was at fault. Now that Armand was dead, I would never know...and so I would take my revenge and believe that perhaps somewhere within that ancient
boy a shred of emotion for Santiago....his Beloved Death...had
remained...until he met the sun.
By the time I got back to the French Quarter, where I had stowed my coffin in rented rooms on the Rue Royal, I had parlayed my anger into bloodhunger.
Time to hunt. Time to find a sweet innocent and make a mockery of their life. There enough hours left of the night to have a little fun with a new friend. However, it was going to be a short-lived friendship.
Laughing, I turned the corner and headed for Bourbon Street, looking for...company.
