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Post by Lestat on Aug 19, 2020 3:03:12 GMT 1
Downtown New Orleans. Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Midnight.
The vast marbled lobby was a cool oasis with its sumptuous furnishings and vases of flowers. The warm Louisiana rain pattered loudly outside.
The immortal undead are a vicious band, but our lives are still full of mundane practicalities. We’ve got to dispose of a dead thug, collect a forged passport or pick up a new shirt from our favourite tailor. And we’ve also got to pay hotel bills.
I almost never stay here at the Ritz and with good reason. I’ve got property here, and most notably that old house on Royal Street where I have lived, more or less, for two hundred years. I can already imagine its rain-slicked balcony and the ever-present scent of jasmine and old sin. When I arrived from Paris I could have gone straight there, of course, but I didn’t. For one thing, I knew Louis wasn't home.
Still, I’ve enjoyed the Ritz. I liked the bathroom that’s brighter than a new dawn. I liked the complementary slippers and the soft, white bathrobe. I loved trying out the assortment of little soaps and the bizarrely-colored potions. I went through the mini bar too, just to marvel at all the tiny bottles there. I boiled the kettle to watch the steam rise and opened all the cupboards to see what was inside.
Now it was time to shimmy. Pay up, get out. Hit that fragrant air. Maybe a stroll by the great old Mississippi where the old docks once were. How I love the summer rain! Then onwards to find Louis in whatever godawful desolate hole he was shivering. I’d come here for a reason, after all. I don’t intend to apologize, but I really do yearn to see him.
I checked out the delectable being who was tallying up my bill. Her face had the androgyny of the young. A defined jawline, high cheekbones and a sweet pout of a mouth. I’ve already fed well, but how I would like to sink my teeth into that pale flesh and pull on the precious thread of life beneath.
“I’m very sorry, sir.” It was the Delectable Being. She corrected herself immediately, replacing my credit card on the counter in front of me. “Monsieur. I’m sorry, monsieur. We can’t accept this card.”
“Why not?” I stared at the black AmEx as if she had handed me a snake. There should be twenty million dollars of credit behind it. Actually, I didn’t know. A lot anyway. A largesse of ill-gotten loot.
Ok. I handed her another card. Then a third. And the last.
“I’m so sorry.” She sounded embarrassed. She was? I was the one getting irritated. A bespeckled bystander in an ill-fitting suit watched from the lobby. I glared back.
“Cash?” Yes, cash for the fine suite and the dry cleaning and all the extras. And who carries about this sort of cash tucked casually in their pockets? Vampires do. I handed over a great wad of bills.
She smiled brightly. Her warm hand brushed against mine. Yes, that’ll do nicely.
On the corner of Canal and Dauphine I drew out my cell phone and used the trippy magic of the modern age to conjure up my credit card details. I’d use the laptop, but I’d left that on the streetcar.
What in the name of hell did I spend twenty million dollars on? Even I can’t find a suit that snappy.
I checked my bank accounts next. Water dripped from my hair onto the little screen.
Empty. Nada. Big fat zero.
All of them.
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Louis
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Post by Louis on Aug 23, 2020 17:55:32 GMT 1
“Full house,” he said, proudly laying his cards out on the table for all to see.
I threw my three of a kind on the table and fell back in my chair, defeated.
The scent of liquor and cigar smoke hung in the air. Carlos Romano smiled broadly, scooping the chips into his arms. Five million dollars gone in the blink of an eye.
Perhaps, if I had been able to read his mind, the game might have gone in an entirely different direction, but that is just another of these preternatural gifts that I have been unable to master. I can turn it on and off, but that is as far as it goes. My mind is either flooded by a torrent of words and images that I can hardly decipher or there is complete silence. I’ve found no place in between which I might have been able to use to my advantage.
I’d been joining into this weekly poker game for some time now. It takes place in a lavish home in the Lakewood neighborhood of New Orleans. Carlos was a shady individual. I knew this much for certain. He was extremely wealthy from ill-gotten gains. This was the sort of man that Lestat chose for a hunt.
I didn’t care about any of that. I was here for the game.
“Good game, Monsieur Lacoeur,” I’d almost forgotten my own alias until he stood and circled the table, placing his hands heavily on my shoulders. “I hope you’ll join us again next week?”
I shrugged his hands off but nodded in spite of myself. Of course, I would be back.
I left the house, heading toward the streetcar stop at Metairie and Pontchartrain. This would take me home to the Garden District past Xavier University where I was bound to find easy prey before the night’s end. It was Saturday, after all. What else did students do but move from one night club to the next in the wee hours of the morning?
Just as I expected, a group of young people boarded at one of the French Quarter stops. Two men and three women; all laughing and quite intoxicated. I watched them from a distance as they recounted the evening’s adventures and conquests. Each one of them departing at a different stop until only one was left behind.
She was beautiful, in her youth. She had dusky skin and long black hair. Her eyes were closed as she leaned her head against the handrail, likely wanting nothing more than to get out of those high-heeled shoes and crawl into bed.
We both departed the streetcar at the Hotel Indigo. I was several blocks from my home, but that’s not where I was going. I followed her through the streets of the Garden District.
At the click of the lock I realized I had taken hold of her in one quick but fierce movement. My fangs were poised to pierce the tender flesh of her throat, yet something I can’t account for made me meet her frantic stare. Her large dark eyes gazed wildly up at me and I saw a mix of terror and blind wonder there.
I could distinctly hear her heart as her life's blood thundered through the warm flesh beneath my fingers; blood that I desired with every ounce of my being, but I could not do it. Her scream pierced the night and as she struggled against me one razor sharp fang nicked her delicate skin. For a brief second, I tasted her blood on my lips. In sudden shock I released my hold on her and watched in blank silence as she stumbled away from me and ran off into the dimly lit streets. I listened until I could no longer hear her declining footsteps. A small part of my soul vanished with her.
I arrived home a few short hours before dawn. The back door which I used to enter the old house was covered in thick wisteria vines, which I pushed aside. They grew inside as well. The house smelled of mildew and the decaying floorboards creaked beneath my feet. It was the exact opposite of the pristine house I’d been playing cards in on Bellaire Drive. There was no electric lighting and the furniture was rotting away.
Taking a seat on what was left of a sofa, I leaned back and closed my eyes contemplating the losses of the night. Both involved a lapse in that self-control which I try so desperately to maintain. I felt weary and utterly defeated.
I must have drifted into a mortal slumber as a voice I hadn’t heard in years slipped into my mind.
“You’re pathetic, Louis.” He sounded both young and ancient all at once. “It’s best that you stay away from him. He’ll never want you like this.”
The voice was that of the auburn-haired cherub and he was referring to Lestat, of course. Lestat and I had parted ways under less than favorable conditions months ago. If I never saw him again, it would be too soon, so why would the disembodied voice of Armand make me believe otherwise? Why should I question my own convictions?
My eyes opened and I leapt to my feet. The room was dark and as empty as a tomb. No one was in the house, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was no longer alone.
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Post by Lestat on Aug 28, 2020 17:52:54 GMT 1
If he doesn’t want to be found, he can vanish for years. When I say found, I mean found by me, of course. I can’t read his mind because I made him what he is. And he appears in public so rarely that I also can’t find flashes of his pale and stoic face in the covetous thoughts of others.
Tonight was unexpectedly different. I found him in the head of some grizzled accountant who’d seen a slender figure moping his way along Bellaire Drive, remarking to himself how someone so very young and naive - I had to laugh at that - could be coming out of such an opulent house.
Then I found him again on the Streetcar. The woman was staring and who could blame her, even with his head thrown back in picaresque despair. Bright as the coldest star, it seemed that Louis was everywhere.
I moved through the wreckage of a door. The scent from giant magnolia was intoxicating, which was just as well as the scent from inside the house was distasteful and stale. A window was broken and wisteria has crept through it into what was once a grand hallway. A chandelier held on for dear life to the crumbling plaster of the ceiling, while more twisting foliage dug into the brickwork. Water dripped onto my head and I heard the scurrying of rats. I ducked through another rotting doorway.
He was standing in the middle of the room like a statue and even more bizarrely he was wearing a very good shirt. I recognized it immediately. It wasn’t new. God forbid he’d ever wear clothes from the present century. But it was crisp and clean and on the pocket his initials were picked out in a sharp monogram. I'd given him that shirt.
His hands hung lifelessly at his sides like those of a plaster saint. His eyes were hidden in shadow, giving his starkly white face the appearance of a skull. He hadn’t seen me, I was sure of that.
What an awful, cluttered unbearable little hole this was. Books were piled to the ceiling on one side. The red chair was still there. My red chair from the old nights when he used to escape to this damp hellhole and I would deign to visit. I threw myself into it and shook the rain from my hair.
"Are you going to light a fire or shall I?"
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Louis
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Post by Louis on Sept 30, 2020 0:30:01 GMT 1
I was startled by the sudden creak of the chair and the sound of Lestat's voice, but not completely caught off guard. It had been several months since I had last set eyes upon him, but I was not unaccustomed with his occasional desire to check in on me, no matter what else may have captured his attention.
This time, it had been a mortal lover by the name of Mateo. The boy had caught Lestat's eye when he and I had been spending time at our property in Southern Italy and, as usual, his interest soon turned to obsession. Mateo was nothing more than a petty thief, but Lestat saw something in him that no one else did. At first, I thought it was merely his dark eyes, chiseled jawline and wavy brown hair, but as nights passed and the boy continued to survive Lestat's affections, I realized that this was something more than a passing interest based on physical attraction and lust.
At first, I ignored it, as I always do. I turned down numerous invitations to join the two of them at the theater, opera or on whatever extravagant outing they had planned for the evening. Eventually, Mateo began to spend the day in our guesthouse while we slept. This made me immensely uncomfortable despite the fact that he was well aware of who and what we were and had been warned to stay away from locked doors during daylight hours. Our safety was now at risk and for what? Lestat called it love, but I know him better than that.
The straw that broke the camel's back came when Lestat had the nerve to tell me that he was considering giving Mateo the Dark Gift. I listened to the pros and cons of it all as if he had not just plunged a knife into my back and I was on the first flight out of Sicily the following evening. I often wonder how long it was before he noticed that I had gone.
"Are you going to light a fire or shall I?" There was some emotion that I couldn't quite place in his voice. It wasn't the sarcasm that I was so familiar with. There seemed to be some genuine annoyance there, but I couldn't tell if it was aimed in my direction or at the world in general. Did he somehow know of the activities I had been involved in these past few months? How could he?
I turned to face him and found his expression equally difficult to read. He ran his fingers through his dripping wet hair and propped one leg up on his thigh tapping at the leather of his boot impatiently.
"What are you doing here?" I couldn't take my eyes off of him even though I genuinely had no desire to see or speak with him at this moment.
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Post by Lestat on Oct 15, 2020 11:36:31 GMT 1
“What are you doing here?” How I do love catching him off guard.
I concentrated on the meager collection of firewood and papers in the hearth until a flame spring into life. It was sweltering outside in spite of the rain, but the whole place reeked of damp. Louis’s sweater probably smelled of mould, old books and gloom. I resisted the urge to check.
“I should ask you the same thing,” I said, settling back in the chair. “Exactly what are we doing here when we own a house with a roof that doesn’t leak?”
I didn’t wait for an answer.
“Are you still sure we don’t need to employ an accountant?” I inspected my nails. “You seemed quite certain you could handle it yourself.”
He looked away as I got into my stride.
“You were insistent. ‘Cher, I can handle all our financial affairs. We have no need of any mortal help. It’s wasteful and too great a risk...’ I can still hear your voice. Can you hear it too?”
Yes, there. A little twitch of the mouth. It’s practically invisible, but I know the signs. I leaned forward.
“I know how avidly you love to pour over your dusty ledgers, the duller the better.”
At that, I saw his hand tense. I jumped to my feet.
“You!” I pointed at him. “You are in total command of it, yes?”
Behind me, the fire caught hold, the flames leaping as if for dramatic effect. One of the damp logs gave an almighty crack.
“Then tell me why it is that I am broke?!”
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