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The cool white of the mirror lighting makes his heavy blush appear like a topical rash, crawling down his neck and arms in a fashion more relatable to dermatitis than Bowie.
“C’était un très beau spectacle,” Alex says, wiping his sweaty face with a hand towel. “Tu sors avec nous ce soir?”
“Pas ce soir,” Lestat replied absently. Alex leaned into his space, dropping the towel in his lap, grinning, teasing, and rancid.
“I can’t convince you?”
Lestat picks up the towel with pinched fingers and tosses it aside, offering a genial smile.
“Not tonight, my mayfly. I have interviews to do. Enjoy yourself.”
Alex shrugs. “Suit yourself. See you tomorrow for a sound check?”
“You will.”
The door shuts, and Lestat waits.
Impatient, he asks, “Well?”
Claudia slinks in from the edge of the mirror, hair twisted away from her face, a patterned suit adorned in beetle wings crunching with each step she takes. She pauses at the vanity, staring down at Lestat, and then at the Vogue magazine in front of him.
“You dress quite nicely for figment of my imagination,” Lestat offers.
“And you dress quite garishly for a dead man,” she replies, frank. “Off-putting, wouldn’t you call it?”
“It’s chartreuse.”
“You pamper the dog and hide the piss stains.”
“High journalism deserves high fashion.”
“It is self-pandering, biased, collegiate-style interviews with no guidance, all done by a man with a hard-on for vampirism since the 70s. A far throw from journalism.”
“Of that we agree.” Lestat flips over the magazine and pouts at himself in the mirror. “The blush is too much, isn’t it?”
“You look like a boil.”
“Thank you, Claudia.”
“Pas de soucis.” She watches him wipe away most of the rosiness, leaving him with his natural flat complexion. “You never taught me to do my makeup.”
“No one ever taught me either,” Lestat retorts. “It is something you learn as you go along, or from watching our mothers and sisters in mirrors—the perfume on each pulse point, pinching cheeks and biting our lips for that natural flush only to add another layer of powder—it is all an act of religion.”
“I would watch you,” Claudia says. “Sometimes.”
Lestat looks at her through the mirror, a quick glance. Her suit is replaced by a flowing, pink dress, reminiscent of dolls.
“I know,” he says simply.
He scrunches his hair between his fingers, lining his lips, then re-lining them again, only to take it off. He tries a wing—too gauche—and smudges it around his eyes in retaliation.
“There was an odd period of my life where mortal life still occupied a large amount of my thoughts,” Lestat tells her. “I would never hold my own child, still wet with their mother’s blood; I would never watch them grow and change; watch each finger lengthen and feel each bone grow strong—I would imagine reaching into the mouth of my child and feeling along their gumline, where the roots of their teeth maintain until they dissolve." Lestat looks down at his own hands, slender fingers, and forever-smooth palms. “I did not remember much of that until you died, Claudia.”
“I was so little,” she whispered. “Runt of the litter, me. Why didn’t you just put me down?”
Lestat watched her face, her cherubic cheeks, and the sharp point of her chin. He sees himself in her eyes; he sees the same hate.
“Who am I meant to be?” she asks quietly.
“Claudia. Just Claudia."
“Claudia du Pointe du Lac,” she says. “Claudia de Lioncourt. I am the monster you both made of me. A perfect tragedy.” Her face tilts, slipping, sliding like blood. “Everyone’s mirror but my own. I wanted to live.”
“You would have lived a short life.”
“It would have been mine. And you would have lived, too; wife, baby, roots.” Her eyes begin to bleed, and he turns and catches them in his palms, flesh melting into flesh. “You and me, Lestat. A good tragedy for the stage, you think?”
There is a knock, and Lestat is alone, hands mid-air.
Daniel is extraordinarily mediocre—but in some respect Lestat understands the appeal.
“Metacritic gave my debut album an 82,” Lestat continues, “because what abundance I claim in the genre of theatrical rock is let down sorely by my vocal and production’s refrain. Life, I find, is one platitude after the next—my Eurovision controversy, for example. The media rode me to hell and back with that one.”
“You threatened to—” Daniel glances down at his notes—"literally and figuratively dismember the European Broadcasting Union.”
Lestat waves a hand, blasé. “C’est ridicule, they will not allow me to represent my country because I do not own a birth certificate. I am a vampire! I blame the Italian parliament for bringing it up. They claim I modelled myself after Måneskin.”
“And who would you say inspired you most to achieve a musical career?”
Lestat pretends to think.
“Joan of Arc.”
Lestat stalks the stage, robe against his skin like water to shore—the crowd roars and roars, swelling under his attention, and he grins, implores—
The bass begins. Slow. Alone.
“Have you ever dreamt,” he begins, “of the sun being kept anywhere else but with you, and your lover laughs at you—like it is a funny thing to do. You ask that love of your life why the match if there is no fire, why the dog, why the house, why the teeth—and so you are dreaming that the love of your life is right across from you, and the sun is kept away from you, and the earliest edition of the overture that accents you will forever taint you, and the love of your life says, ‘Mon cher, I must be having a stroke!’”
The drums thunder in.
“‘A stroke!’ you exclaim. ‘Yes, yes,’ he says, ‘for all I smell is burning toast!’”
The screech of an electric chord melds with the screams shattering in the crowd.
“Darling,” Lestat says, low and deep, “love of my life—we’re vampires holidaying in Morocco, and you’ve just thrown our daughter into the fireplace.”
“Tell me about when I was a baby.”
“I did not know you as a baby, Claudia.”
Her ballroom dress smothers them as they lay on the hotel bed. Dawn is still hours away, and sweat still clings to Lestat from the show; he stares at the hotel ceiling, indifferent to change.
“Make something up,” Claudia requests, firmly placing her head under his hand like a needy dog. Dutifully, he wraps his fingers in her curls.
“You were a fussy, fussy baby,” Lestat regales. “Always shitting yourself at inopportune moments—as is your right. In your formative years of 5 and 6, did you finally understand the Rougarou was a lie your father would tell you to get you to eat your vegetarians.”
“Vegetables, daddy.”
“Vegetables, of course.”
“Did I eat ‘em?”
“You fed them to the dog, ma fée.”
They laugh quietly together. Downstairs continues the hounding of reporters and fans of The Vampire Lestat alike—lights like flash cartography through the tinted glass windows.
“You were assaulted while you were gone,” Lestat says in the sudden quiet. “I could see it on you.”
“You were angry with me,” she replies. “You could see it on me but explaining why you could see it was a line you weren’t willing to cross.” Claudia sniffs. “Funny how you can be so old and so powerful, and a little thing like that can ruin you forever. Maybe it was meant to happen to me that way. Same way it happened to you.”
“Why does it even matter?”
“Because it matters to you,” she spat, sitting up. His hand pulls through her hair, but she cannot feel it. “Because it is all you ever think about—you cannot control yourself. Perpetual victim, perpetual perpetrator. The ground revokes its consent each time you step foot on the grass, but still you walk.”
The words are not Claudia’s, nor the voice, and Lestat is faced with his own reflection in the mirror above the bed when she disappears.
“You have daughters. You must know what it is to look at them and see only the worst of yourself reflected.”
“There’s the best of them, too,” Daniel replies. “What was the best of Claudia?”
Lestat—it takes him a moment to consider the question, to reframe Claudia in his mind as not only the push pin keeping himself and Louis separately together, but as a girl.
“It has been so long since I ever considered childhood and what that entailed. It was only when she died did I realise—” he stops. “It was only when she died did I see a glimpse of the child she once was and realise she was her own entirely, and entirely her own without my influence. It may not have been a happy existence, but I would pick her clothes. I would help her eat. I would teach her things as they were taught once to me.”
“You provided mentally; Louis provided emotionally?”
“Yes, and it was hard for her to understand that it was not interchangeable. Louis and I provided equal nourishment for each other, and Claudia, separately, provided an outlet for Louis. It was why I never spoke explicitly of Gabrielle. A child’s mind is already so impressionable, I would not have wanted her to get the wrong idea.”
“Like you did, when you were young.”
“Yes.”
“How old would Claudia have been at the end? 50?” Daniel asked. “50 years of infantilisation. She was a woman, Lestat. She died a woman, and you call her a child still.”
“Everyone is a child to me. You are a child.”
“You play on this ground, then you play by mortal rules.”
Suddenly, tears burst from his eyes, his chest convulsing with sobs—and then laughter. Daniel physically recoils in his chair, and Lestat tugs the neon scrunchie out of his hair, smearing glitter and tears across his cheeks as he wipes each undereye.
“An interviewer accosted me the other night after a show,” he reveals. “She grabbed my shoulder and asked me in the most grating accent—'Lestat, what a unique eyeliner that is! Could it be the new Clinique range or perhaps Charlotte Tilbury?’ I grabbed her hand and leaned close, and I told her, ‘Corrine, I have been crying for 11 hours straight.' I then slit her throat with my fingernail and let the local stray animals maul her body.”
The room is silent.
“It is a nice colour,” Daniel reasons. Lestat beams.
“Come on, Les, I promise I’ll be quick.”
Lestat’s body paint smears further the longer Alex drags him. He sighs, scrolling through his phone. Tonight, his fans adored his levitation act in 8-inch heels. Some argue it isn’t a levitation act if you can see the harness—others point out it is simply the harness of a strap. Lestat favours these fans.
They reach the underground parking lot of the tour’s current hotel, and Alex pops open the trunk of his rental; Lestat is immediately hit by the smell. Much of the corpse is wrapped in a thick, green tarp, and he uses the edge of his sleeve to lift it away from their face. The nose is concave—eye sockets darkened with dried blood. They have been mauled, for lack of a better word.
Lestat drops the tarp and pinches his nose. Groupies.
“I can be a killer, Les,” Alex promises, eager. “Like you. If you turn me—"
“I’m going to have to find a new lead guitarist,” Lestat laments, upwards at the fluorescent light. “I’m going to have to cite creative differences, mon dieu.”
“Les, what—”
Blood from Alex’s carotid artery splinters across the empty parking lot. With a gurgle and bulging eyes, Alex grasps towards Lestat, then promptly falls to his knees, choking.
“Feel better?”
Lestat looks to Claudia, taller in her dark dress.
“Moderately so. Are you going to help me lift the body?”
“I’m a hallucination of your dead daughter caused by your endless guilt.”
“You can still help,” Lestat complains, even as Alex gurgles on. “My dear, one would think you were raised in a barn.”
Alex is lithe enough that his dehydrated body fits perfectly beneath his ensuite sink. Lestat stands back, admiring his work.
“I feel your judgement,” he says.
“You’re making it awful easy to find him,” Claudia replies.
“C’est le but.”
“I need a hug,” Claudia says suddenly. “Could you—”
Her shoulders are frail in Lestat’s grasp, hands too eager in her show of weakness. “You are never so old to ask me to hold you.”
“Never too real, either,” she murmurs. Her fingers crawl his back. “Did you enjoy me?”
“Not always. I would have liked to tell you I loved you as quickly as a father may love their first child, but I occasionally hoped for your demise.”
“Why?”
“Louis brought me joy. I did not always bring him joy—but you would. However misshapen or guilt-stricken, that was a joy I could not compete with, and one I learnt to share as my own.” Lestat pulls back, holding her gaze, still painted in dark blue, silver liner crawling away from his eyes. “It is too late for me to say the things I could have said to you.”
“Say them now."
“No, Claudia.” Lestat touches her cheek, smearing paint against it. “Now, tell me I will be okay.”
“You won’t. You will forever be you. What is okay about that?”
The corset around him is tightened suddenly, and he is leaning on his makeup table, his assistant behind him pulling as far as the ribbon allows. He feels no hunger, no emptiness, and requests her to tighten it again.
He holds the photo in his hand, peeling at the corner. The worst of Alex is still stuck in his teeth.
“Time is too long to allow taboo to affect the course of love and life. My mother felt similarly.”
“And Akasha? Magnus?”
“Both interesting if lengthy portions of my life.” Lestat sets the photo aside, crossing one leg over the other.
“Tell me about it,” Daniel offered.
The interview had run long overtime; Lestat’s lawyer and all the technicians retired in the green room for food and drink. All that remained was Daniel and the camera.
“Be honest,” Claudia whispers.
“They are—” Lestat stops. Drawing on the memories he has already fought with so thoroughly are still as shock-inducing as when he was first there. Be honest, Claudia pleads. But who is there to be honest for?
“Magnus had an affliction of the curious kind,” Lestat began, distant. “I, in the end, was subject to that misery. Not for the first time, he fed from me, and I maintained that I would feel every inch of his fang within me, that I would hold onto that hatred and make him taste it as I bore it.” Lestat paused again. “It is too easy to become lost in the feeling, however. I could hear my heart thundering in my ears and could witness the horror of his pleasured face, but I felt nothing but warmth and sweetness. I fought him harder than I have still ever fought, and it was not enough.” Another pause. “And yet, I find myself here, on this Earth still, and although I would have preferred a choice in the matter, I still would have chosen this course.”
“And Akasha?” Daniel prompts.
“There was a certain hatred that came with myself after my time spent with Akasha,” Lestat said, simply. “Each touch—well, it is sometimes hard to gauge how much strength can be in a single grasp, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Was her strength startling to you?”
“At first. She is not someone you say no to.”
“Victims of abuse often lash out as a result of the abuse they faced.”
“I’m an immortal vampire.”
“With feelings,” Daniel points out, and though there is a mocking expression on his face, his words are sincere and ugly. “As per your childhood and what you suffered at the hands of Magnus, you were in an unsafe environment but still in the role of provider and carer. Did you find yourself re-integrated into this role with Akasha?”
“Tangentially, I suppose.”
“You suppose.”
“Relationships are often that way. A give and take if you will. Volatile, really.”
“You described yourself earlier as volatile.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.” Daniel flicks briefly back through his notes. “‘Being turned feels as though you are a volatile and insatiable monster, with no idea how to control your own power. Repressing it becomes a lifelong chore.’”
Lestat licks his teeth. “Hm.”
“With what others have told me,” Daniel continues, “they haven’t exactly shared this sentiment. With time and age comes self-understanding and so on—the adjustment period isn’t as long and as gruelling as you make it out to be. So, is it the age or the intent of the vampire making its fledgling that affects the lifelong course of their psychological nature, and in turn their violence?”
“I was not Akasha’s fledgling.”
“You were near enough, weren’t you?”
“You’ve certainly done your homework, Daniel.”
“I’ve had time. The night you hurt Louis, was it the lack of control over him and Claudia that caused you to—misunderstand—your strength?”
Lestat smiles tightly.
“I miss her more than I ever knew her,” Lestat said. “And to know Louis is to miss him. That is my burden. Bringing them into this world—I brought Claudia into this world, and I watched her leave it. I was a mother, and now I am not. I was not prepared for that feeling.”
“Can you expand on that?”
“No,” Lestat replies, with the exception that Claudia had simply been the worst of them both and was equally loathed and enjoyed that way. It must be a parent’s misfortune to forever blame yourself for their traits that grate on you the most and then not have the introspective quality to realise self-hatred only hurts those around you most, and blame is the least amount of apology you could do. It will forever be more than how I raised you; it will be how I did not raise you; it will be how you saw me speak to myself and to you in turn; it will be how I never spoke to you.
“I am more than your tragedy,” Claudia says.
“She enjoyed the Olympics,” Lestat remembers.