Chapter 2
The journey from the Théâtre des Vampires had been arduous. Though night had fallen, Lestat's injuries made swift travel impossible. They moved through the shadows of Paris like wraiths, avoiding the main thoroughfares where curious eyes might linger on their strange procession—a man carrying a child, accompanied by a red-haired woman and a badly burned figure who could barely walk unassisted.
Louis supported Lestat's weight as they navigated the labyrinthine streets, Claudia and Madeline following close behind. Occasionally, Lestat would gesture in a particular direction, guiding them through the city with surprising certainty for one who had spent so little time in Paris.
"How much farther?" Louis asked as they passed the outskirts of the city, the buildings growing sparser as they entered the countryside.
"Not far now," Lestat replied, his voice strained. "There's a property... old acquaintance... owed me a favor."
Louis wanted to ask more questions—who this acquaintance was, how Lestat had arranged this sanctuary, whether they would truly be safe there—but he held his tongue. Lestat was in no condition for interrogation. The burns that covered his exposed skin were severe, and Louis knew from painful experience how debilitating such injuries could be for their kind.
Behind them, Claudia remained uncharacteristically silent. Since their escape from the theater, she had barely spoken, her eyes distant and thoughtful. Madeline stayed close to her, protective as ever, but even she seemed subdued by the night's events.
After another hour of travel through increasingly rural terrain, they came upon a lane nearly hidden by overgrown hedgerows. Lestat straightened slightly, pointing down the narrow path.
"There," he said. "At the end of this road."
The lane wound through a small wood, eventually opening onto a clearing where a stone house stood, its windows dark, its gardens untended but not yet surrendered completely to wilderness. It was a modest dwelling by Lestat's usual standards—two stories of weathered gray stone with a slate roof and a small stable behind it—but it exuded an air of solidity and isolation that was precisely what they needed.
"Whose house is this?" Louis asked as they approached the front door.
Lestat produced a heavy iron key from his pocket. "No one's, anymore. The owner died two decades ago. No heirs. It's been empty since then."
"And yet you have a key," Louis observed.
A hint of Lestat's old sardonic smile appeared through his injuries. "I always have a key, Louis. You should know that by now."
The interior of the house was musty with disuse but surprisingly intact. Furniture draped in yellowed sheets loomed like ghosts in the darkness. Lestat moved with growing confidence through the rooms, pulling covers from chairs and tables, revealing a modest but comfortable dwelling frozen in time.
"There are bedrooms upstairs," he said, lighting a lamp with hands that trembled slightly from pain and exhaustion. "And a cellar below that will serve for emergencies. No servants, obviously, but that's for the best right now."
Louis helped Madeline uncover a settee in what had once been a drawing room, and she settled Claudia upon it with gentle hands. The child vampire looked even smaller than usual, her golden curls disheveled, her perfect doll-like face solemn and tired.
"We need to feed," Louis said quietly to Lestat. "Especially you. Your injuries—"
"I know," Lestat cut him off. "There's a village about a mile from here. Small, isolated. I'll go."
"In your condition?" Louis protested. "Let me—"
"No," Lestat's voice was firm despite its weakness. "You stay with them. I know the area, and I have enough strength for this." Seeing Louis's skeptical expression, he added, "I've survived worse, as you well know."
Before Louis could object further, Lestat had slipped out into the night, leaving the three of them alone in the dusty silence of the old house.
---
Lestat returned an hour later with a village girl, disoriented and entranced, her eyes vacant under his hypnotic influence. Louis and Madeline fed first, taking only enough to sustain themselves without killing the girl. Claudia, always the most efficient of them, drank next, leaving the majority for Lestat, who needed it most.
When Lestat finally sank his fangs into the girl's neck, he drank deeply, the healing power of fresh blood flowing through him, knitting together his burned flesh, easing the worst of his pain. When he finished, the girl was dead, her life sacrificed to fuel his recovery.
"I'll dispose of the body," he said matter-of-factly, lifting the lifeless form with ease, his strength already returning. "There's a stream on the property where the current runs swift and deep."
He disappeared again into the night. When he returned, the worst of his burns had begun to fade, though he would need several more feedings before he was fully healed.
Claudia had settled into an armchair, her legs tucked beneath her, watching the adults with unnervingly adult eyes. Madeline hovered nearby, uncertain of her place in this strange reunion.
"There are bedrooms upstairs," Lestat announced, addressing Madeline directly for the first time. "Second door on the right should suit you and Claudia. It's clean enough, and the bed is large."
Madeline glanced at Claudia, who nodded almost imperceptibly. "Thank you," Madeline said, her voice formal and cautious. "It's been a trying night for all of us, but especially for Claudia. She needs rest."
Lestat's expression remained neutral as he looked at his creation, the child vampire he had made on a whim so many decades ago. "Yes," he agreed, his voice carefully empty of emotion. "She should retire for the day. Tomorrow night, we can discuss our next steps."
Claudia slid from the chair, her movements graceful despite her exhaustion. She paused, looking up at Lestat as if about to speak, but he turned away, busying himself with adjusting a lamp that needed no adjustment.
"Come, little one," Madeline said softly, taking Claudia's hand. "Let's find our room."
Louis watched as Madeline led Claudia up the creaking staircase, disappearing into the upper darkness of the house. When he turned back, Lestat had poured two glasses of wine from a dusty bottle found in the house's stores.
"It's probably vinegar by now," Lestat said, offering a glass to Louis. "But the ritual is comforting, isn't it? These little human touches we cling to."
Louis accepted the glass, studying Lestat over its rim. The older vampire looked better than he had earlier—the blood had done its work—but he was still far from his usual immaculate self. His clothes were ruined, his hair singed unevenly, his skin mottled with healing burns. Yet there was something in his demeanor, a quiet resolve that Louis had rarely seen before.
"Why did you do it?" Louis asked finally, setting down his untouched wine. "Why did you save us? Save her, after what she did to you?"
Lestat's eyes grew distant. "I hardly know myself," he admitted. "When I followed you to Paris, it was with vengeance in mind. I wanted to see you both suffer as I had suffered." He paused, running a finger along the rim of his glass. "But then I saw her there, about to burn, and she looked at me and called me..." He trailed off, unable to say the word.
"Father," Louis supplied quietly.
Lestat's mouth twisted in a bitter smile. "She never did that before. Not once in all our years together. She was too clever, too aware of what she was and what I had done to her. She hated me for it, I think. As she should."
"Yet you saved her," Louis persisted. "You risked your own destruction to save someone who tried to kill you."
"I'm not known for my rational decision-making, Louis," Lestat said dryly. "You, of all people, should know that by now."
Louis leaned forward, his eyes searching Lestat's face. "There's more to it than that. There always has been with you."
Lestat met his gaze for a moment, then looked away. "Perhaps," he conceded. "Or perhaps I simply couldn't bear to see my creation destroyed by anyone but me." He set down his glass and stood. "You should rest too. The east-facing bedroom has the heaviest curtains. It will be safe when dawn comes."
Louis stood as well, unwilling to let the conversation end. "Lestat—"
"Not tonight, Louis," Lestat said, his voice suddenly weary. "I've played the hero enough for one evening. Don't ask me to be profound as well."
With that, he turned and headed for the stairs, leaving Louis alone with his thoughts and the untouched glasses of ancient wine.
---
Claudia stood by the bedroom window, gazing out at the moonlit countryside while Madeline prepared their bed, shaking out musty sheets and plumping long-unused pillows.
"He won't even look at me," Claudia said softly, her child's voice at odds with the adult pain it conveyed.
Madeline paused in her domestic efforts. "He's injured, little one. And the night has been difficult for all of us."
Claudia turned from the window, her perfect features arranged in an expression of contemplative sadness that no human child could have managed. "It's more than that," she said. "He saved me, but he hasn't forgiven me. Perhaps he never will."
"Does that matter to you?" Madeline asked cautiously, sitting on the edge of the bed. "I thought you hated him for what he did to you, for trapping you in a child's body for eternity."
Claudia was silent for a long moment. "I did hate him," she acknowledged finally. "I still do, in many ways. But..."
"But?" Madeline prompted gently when Claudia didn't continue.
"But he came for me," Claudia whispered. "When everyone else had abandoned me to my fate, he came. Not Louis, who claimed to love me above all others. Lestat." Her small hands clenched into fists. "I don't know what to do with that knowledge. It... unsettles me."
Madeline opened her arms, and Claudia came to her, allowing herself to be held in a way she rarely permitted. "Perhaps," Madeline suggested, stroking Claudia's golden curls, "you don't need to do anything with it tonight. Rest now. The future will still be there tomorrow."
Claudia nodded against Madeline's shoulder, her ancient eyes closing with exhaustion. "Yes," she murmured. "Tomorrow."
---
Lestat showed Louis to a bedroom at the end of the hall, a spacious chamber with heavy velvet curtains and a large four-poster bed. Like the rest of the house, it had the feel of a place frozen in time, preserved but unlived in.
"This should serve," Lestat said, lingering by the door as Louis inspected the room. "The curtains are thick enough to block the dawn."
Louis nodded, running his hand over the carved footboard of the bed. "Lestat," he began, turning to face his maker. "We need to talk about what happens now."
Lestat's face hardened almost imperceptibly. "What happens now is that we rest, recover, and decide where to go next. Paris is no longer safe for any of us."
"That's not what I meant, and you know it," Louis insisted. "I'm talking about us. You, me, Claudia. What are we to each other now? After everything that's happened..."
Lestat's laugh was brittle. "After your child tried to murder me, you mean? After you left me for dead and fled to the other side of the world? Are those the 'everything' you're referring to, Louis?"
Louis flinched but held his ground. "Yes. After all that. You could have let us die tonight. You didn't. That must mean something."
"Must it?" Lestat leaned against the doorframe, his posture deceptively casual despite the tension radiating from him. "Perhaps it only means I'm a fool who makes the same mistakes repeatedly. Perhaps saving Claudia was merely another in my long line of impulsive decisions I'll come to regret."
"I don't believe that," Louis said quietly.
Lestat studied him for a long moment, his expression unreadable. "You know," he said finally, "for someone so quick to believe the worst of me throughout our years together, you're suddenly very eager to ascribe noble motives to my actions."
Louis looked away, unable to deny the truth in Lestat's words. "You're right," he admitted. "I've been unfair to you. Many times."
"Yes, you have," Lestat agreed, but there was more weariness than bitterness in his tone now. "And yet here we are."
"Here we are," Louis echoed. "So what now, Lestat? Can we... rebuild something from these ruins? The three of us?"
---
Claudia had crept from her room, leaving Madeline in their bed, drawn by the sound of voices. She stood now in the darkened hallway, her small form pressed against the wall beside Louis's open door, listening to the conversation within.
"Rebuild?" Lestat's voice was incredulous. "You're asking if we can return to playing house like we did in New Orleans? The three of us a happy family again?"
"Not like before," Louis said. "But something new. Something honest, this time."
Claudia held her breath, waiting for Lestat's response.
"I saved you because she asked me to," Lestat said finally, his voice low and pained. "Because in that moment, seeing her about to burn, hearing her call me 'daddy' for the first time... I couldn't let her die. But that doesn't mean I've forgotten what she did, what you both did."
"We thought you were dead," Louis began.
"You hoped I was dead," Lestat corrected sharply. "There's a difference."
There was a long silence, broken only by the soft creaking of the old house.
"I don't know if we can fix this, Louis," Lestat continued, his voice softer now, vulnerable in a way Claudia had rarely heard. "Some wounds don't heal, even for our kind. The girl I made, the child I gave you... she tried to cut my throat. She poisoned me and left me to die. And you helped her."
"I know," Louis's voice was barely audible. "And I'm sorry."
Lestat sighed, a sound so human it made Claudia's chest ache. "Sorry doesn't erase the memory of her hands on the knife, Louis. Sorry doesn't wash away the taste of the poison she fed me. I see her face when I close my eyes—not as she was tonight, frightened and calling for me, but as she was then, cold and calculating as she watched me suffer."
"Then why save us at all?" Louis asked. "Why not let the Théâtre des Vampires finish what Claudia started?"
"Because I'm a sentimental fool," Lestat replied, and Claudia could hear the self-mocking smile in his voice. "Because despite everything, you're both still mine. My creations. My responsibility." He paused. "My family, God help me."
"Then there is hope," Louis said, and there was such naked longing in his voice that Claudia felt a twist of something like jealousy.
"Hope," Lestat repeated the word as if testing its weight. "I don't know about hope, Louis. But there is tomorrow. And the night after that. For now, that will have to be enough."
Claudia heard movement and pressed herself deeper into the shadows as Lestat stepped into the hallway. He paused, looking back into the room where Louis remained.
"Rest well, Louis," he said. "Dawn is coming soon."
Claudia waited until Lestat had disappeared down the hallway before slipping away from her hiding place. She moved silently back to her room, her mind churning with what she had overheard.
*He saved me because I called him daddy. And now he sees my betrayal every time he looks at me.*
The realization burned in her chest, a pain more acute than any physical injury. She had believed herself so clever, so justified in her rage against Lestat. She had plotted his death with cold precision, seeing it as her only path to freedom from the eternal childhood he had cursed her with.
But now, hearing the pain in his voice as he spoke to Louis, understanding the depth of her betrayal through his eyes, she felt the first stirrings of something unfamiliar—guilt. Not for attempting to kill him, precisely, but for the manner of it. The intimacy of her betrayal, using the closeness he had permitted to deliver his destruction.
Claudia slipped back into the bedroom she shared with Madeline, who still lay in peaceful repose on the bed. The doll-maker had been her choice, her substitute for the family she had rejected. Yet now that family had reformed around her, damaged and uncertain but present nonetheless.
She climbed onto the bed, settling beside Madeline but remaining apart, wrapped in her own thoughts. Outside, the sky was beginning to lighten with approaching dawn. Soon they would all be claimed by the death-sleep of their kind, but for now, Claudia remained awake, contemplating the ruined bonds she had never valued until she had destroyed them.
*He saved me because I called him daddy.*
The words echoed in her mind as she felt the first heaviness of dawn approaching. Despite everything—her hatred, her resentment, her cold calculation—some part of her had reached for him in her moment of greatest need. And he had responded, revealing a truth she had never allowed herself to see: beneath all his cruelty and caprice, Lestat cared for her.
It was this realization, more than anything, that followed Claudia into her daytime slumber—the understanding that in her quest for freedom from Lestat, she had gravely underestimated the bonds that tied them together. Bonds that, despite everything, had proved stronger than her hatred.
As the death-sleep claimed her, Claudia's last conscious thought was a question she had never before considered: what if, instead of breaking those bonds, she had simply asked Lestat to change their nature?
The question remained unanswered as dawn silenced the thoughts of all four vampires in the secluded house, each isolated in their private darkness, yet bound together by blood and history and the uncertain promise of nights to come.