Work Text:
Paris
1950
Louis and Armand’s footsteps bounced off the ancient stone and faded. Lestat stood silent, chewing on the jagged shards of his grief with a stoicism that felt antithetical to his nature. Nothing could be done concerning that particular matter; Louis would cling to the most spiteful choice no matter what, and that was fine. Truly fine. C'est bon.
A pang of hunger tore through Lestat, and he became keenly aware of how long it had been since his last hunt. The aches were becoming hard to ignore, and he thought about taking the edge off with a rat, as a tribute to the strong-willed, infuriating love of his life, but only for a moment before he remembered what he was setting out to do. Lestat would hunt, and he would feed, but there was work to be done. Lestat sighed wearily and ran a hand through his hair before climbing the stairs to the music chamber.
The stench of mildew, neglect, and rot clung to the chamber, but Lestat was accustomed to the olfactory assault; the whole lair wore that stench like a heavy cloak and had done so for as far back as he could recall. The chamber was scarcely bigger than a servant's bedroom, but it hadn’t been designed for entertaining the masses.
He walked past the sagging pianoforte – it could sooner carry a baby than a tune – and felt shards of wood snap beneath his feet as he walked over the shattered remains of a violin. The instrument he sought was a brass gramophone that stood shining in one corner of the room, shaming the other objects with its relative freshness. Lestat had stolen it from the theater on a whim not long ago. No one would miss it.
The gramophone held a fresh pressing of some songbird or other, Lestat couldn’t recall. He’d nicked a stack of records from the theater as well, taking a vindictive bit of delight that they’d all been labeled as Santiago’s property. It did not matter. They all played the same song, despite their labels.
Lestat turned the handle of the player until he met resistance. He sat on the overstuffed wingback chair across from the player and plucked a small notebook and pencil from his breast pocket. The crackling static from the player soon gave way to a heavily orchestrated melody that was faint and rusty to the ears, as though it was playing from another room entirely. The pang in Lestat’s stomach twisted and roiled as her voice chimed in, thick with put-upon cheer:
There's nothing more adorable than a happy baby bird
And a happy baby loves to sing with a voice that can be heard
There's just one thing that makes her sad
In fact, I think it makes her mad…
Anyone who wasn’t Lestat might’ve been alarmed by the sound that filled the air – something akin to a serpentine hiss – and the sight of gusty whirls of ash that fell from overhead, gentle as a first snowfall. He raised his eyes to the particles as they danced gray and white before his exhausted, watery eyes. He smiled as he felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder. He turned his head and kissed the scaly, flaky back of it. The bitter taste of ashes coated his lips and stung his eyes as specks of her stuck and clung. Penance.
Hail Claudia full of grace; blessed art thou amongst women and (the sunshine calls her out to play… Well, you know what I'm about to say)–
“Hello, Claudia.”
The hand slid from his shoulder. A few moments passed in silence, save for the jaunty, tinny crux of Claudia’s humiliation as it warbled away on the gramophone and the hiss and sizzle of her skin.
Trees and bees and big rainbows
No, I don't like windows when they're closed!
She stepped before him, and he regarded her with reverence. She was horrific. Great and terrible. Trapped for eternity in the agony of her final moments, and stuck in a sunbeam that had turned hoary with the essence of her charred flesh. Lestat took some satisfaction over seeing her ebony curls, which had grown back in patches since their last meeting. The hand that touched him moments earlier had been a jagged stump of char when last he listened and wrote. It was working.
“Are you ready, Mon enfant sombre ?” He inquired with a small, sad smile. She nodded and smiled back, the effort causing her cheeks to crack and flake. Lestat had to bite his cheek to keep from scolding her.
Caution, mon cœur, he wanted to cry out. You will ruin our progress and our hard work. She was stubborn, though – even more so than Louis, and Lestat had no right, no claim on her that permitted him to become paternalistic. His sole purpose was to serve her, to cut down and sacrifice those who profaned her name and made her a spectacle. He was a supplicant before a deity, wanting only absolution.
“Anaïs… and… Paul Aubert,” Claudia rasped, and Lestat was grateful her tongue had grown back. Reading lips had never been his forte, and the previous two sessions had proven frustrating for them both, even though it’d succeeded.
“Good.”
“Bruno… Noe.” Her eyes fluttered close as the music began to lose its pace and take on a warped quality.
“I can do more; the night is young. Tell me.”
Claudia's voice dropped until it resembled, to Lestat’s ears, a polite rustle of dry leaves. Incomprehensible to human ears, but Lestat distinctly heard her utter the name ‘Mouche Babin’. Lestat ducked his head and jotted it down.
No, I don't like windows when they're closed...
“Thank you, Claudia.” He lifted his head when he received no response. She was gone, along with the unearthly hissing. The song was over. The gramophone’s crank ceased rotating, and there was nothing but dreadful, suffocating silence in the room with Lestat. This was fine. He had his list, and he wouldn’t be lonely for long.
*****
Anaïs and Paul Aubert resided comfortably in Arcueil. Their home was a two-story, brownstone villa, fortified inside a fence of spired wrought iron. Lestat flew above their defenses in a fluid movement with a graceful leap but stumbled upon landing when he landed, tripping over a toy ambulance that’d been left to the elements and obscured by night. Evidence of their status as parents did not phase Lestat. These people could be sainted in their child’s eyes, but it did little to protect them from the vengeful hand of righteousness, and Lestat served a thirsty god. Also, it was bad parenting to allow brats to litter the yard with expensive toys so carelessly.
A quick flight around the perimeter told Lestat the windows and doors were locked securely. It would’ve been all too easy for Lestat to rip a door from its hinges, or pull a windowframe from its stone prison… but what was easy wasn’t necessarily elegant or discreet. He floated to a window on the second floor, and spied a menagerie of stuffed toys inside a pastel paradise of a bedroom; all impractical frills and fancy. His heart twisted painfully in his chest as his mind tripped backwards in time, to the early days with Claudia. She’d been the darling of his dark soul once; sweet, eager, and filled to the brim with a love he eagerly returned.
He rapidly tapped his nails along the pane, mimicking the sound of heavy and unexpected sleet. A moment later, a little girl appeared before the window, her eyes half-lidded, and a doll with black curls and a blue dress clutched to her chest.
“Ouvrez la fenêtre,” he cajoled hypnotically.
She obeyed wordlessly, unlatching the window and pushing it open before stepping aside. Once inside, he thanked her and took a moment (with her permission) to admire her doll. A dark porcelain face peered up at him with rust-colored eyes rimmed in blue to match its fussy dress. He was staring down at Claudia. Baby Lu. They’d profited off of her shame with an eagerness that staggered Lestat.
“Enjoy him, Louis,” he muttered bitterly.
“ Quoi?” Chimed the spoiled moppet .
“Dire ‘pardon’, ma petite. Se coucher.” Lestat walked away towards the door, the doll still clutched in his hand.
“ Ma poupée!”
“Va te coucher!” Lestat barked, bearing his fangs at the child. The girl scurried to her bed and buried herself beneath a mountain of pink floral and white lace.
Lestat tucked the doll into the pocket of his trousers, and silently made his way down the corridor, following the nocturnal thrum of two minds who were at rest, but not completely silent. He discovered the master suite with ease. Finding the door unlocked, he stepped in and found his first two sacrifices.
Anaïs and Paul Aubert slumbered deeply and with a great deal of noise between them. Paul’s snores echoed through the room, sounding for all the world like a grumbling bear with a proficiency in whistling. Anaïs did not snore, but her thoughts reverberated through Lestat’s mind; a litany of misery and dissatisfaction. The light in her life had extinguished within the smoldering ruins of the theater. The world had no flavor now. She was almost certain she hated her child only marginally less than she detested her husband.
On Paul’s nightstand was a lime-green Philco radio. Lestat went to it, giving the thing an appraising look.
“Follow the bouncing ball,” he uttered before switching it on. The machine whirred and emitted a prolonged burst of static, intense at first, but then soft and retreating as the string section of the Theatres des Vampires Orchestra broke through the white noise. Despite Paul’s proximity to the radio, it was Anaïs who awoke with a violent start at the jarring sound.
There's nothing more adorable than a happy baby bird
And a happy baby loves to sing with a voice that can be heard….
Lestat was upon her in an instant, clapping his hand over her mouth to cut her off mid-scream, and then dragging her out of bed to the middle of the floor ( There's just one thing that makes her sad; in fact, I think it makes her MAD ) where the ashes began to fall from the sky, and the sound – a static unrelated to the radio – filled the air, mingling with the cheery music and the muffled sounds of Anaïs’s ratcheting distress.
When she's locked away like an old duvet
Like a love that's lost its enchantée
And the sunshine calls her out to play
Well, you know what I'm about to say…
“Je la vois venir, Anaïs. Regardez!” Anaïs struggled in his arms, something he could’ve put an end to with a light flex and some added pressure, but he was in a playful mood. He let the canary beat its wings against his paws.
Claudia dragged a Chippendale chair across the room, taken from an escritoire in one far corner; she set it before Lestat and Anaïs and sat, placing her white-and-black scabbed hands on her knees and primly crossing her ankles. Paul continued to snore.
“Enjoy the show, ma fille. ” Lestat bared his fangs, pulled Anaïs’s hair so the white column of her throat was taut and exposed, removed his hand from her mouth, and tore out her throat with his teeth before her shriek had time to reverberate through her vocal cords. His feeding was frenzied, as he worked against time and her rapidly slowing heart.
A tweedeelee-tweedeelee-dee
A tweedeelee-tweedeelee-da
A feedeelee-tweedeelee-wee
A feedeelee-tweedeelee-da
His ears twitched and registered that Paul no longer snored. He tore his fangs from Anaïs’s throat and shoved her towards Claudia, her almost corpse landing in a heap before the chair. Lestat could hear the bubbles frothing in her destroyed throat as he turned to Paul, who sat on the bed with his knees drawn to his chest, and his face buried against them as he visibly trembled.
Trees and bees and big rainbows
No, I don't like windows when they're closed
(She don't like windows when they're closed)
“Je parlerai anglais pour ma fille, Paul; I want her to understand the show.” He approached slowly. The man stayed locked in his cowardice. The white bedclothes beneath him darkened with the damp evidence of his terror.
No, I don't like windows when they're closed...
“Come now Paul, this really is embarrassing. My daughter traveled a long way for this show, and you are boring her.” Lestat cupped Paul’s face and pulled his gaze upward so the man could see the face of his killer; pale, beautiful, terrible, and still dripping with remnants of Anaïs’s trachea. Paul’s lower lip trembled uncontrollably as his mouth opened wide and tried to expel a scream, but the shock had robbed him of the ability to form sound – it came out as a raspy exhale. Claudia giggled.
“Hold that pose; it’s perfect,” Lestat cooed before tightening his grip and separating Paul’s head from his shoulders in one elegantly fluid motion. The spray landed salty and metallic on Lestat’s lips.
“Look, mon cher. ” Lestat held Paul’s head aloft. The lips moved slightly, and the eyes did a few sweeps back and forth, but the expression of terror remained much as it had when the man still drew breath. His heart soared when Claudia’s eyes twinkled with an old, familiar gleam that once existed when she was his. He was back in that car in New Orleans, teaching her how to drive. They were dancing. Hunting together while Louis sulked with his rats.
“That is a man who can take direction.” He rolled the head towards Claudia with the grace of a skilled bowler.
******
“JE NE LA VOIS PAS! AIDE S’IL VOUS PLAIT!”
“English! Speak English in front of my daughter you rude little toad!” Lestat roared as he stalked his prey. Bruno Noe crawled away with an admirable speed for someone no longer possessing calf muscles. He left twin snail trails of gore across the scuffed and warped floorboards of his garret as he inched futilely toward the door. Claudia sat in one corner, making the Baby Lu doll dance across her lap as she observed the scene with gleeful eyes and raised eyebrows that’d regrown in the time it took Lestat to fly from the Aubert residence to Montmarte.
“I DO NOT SEE HER! PLEASE HELP ME!”
Lestat leaped onto the man’s back, straddling him and effectively pinning him in place. The man struggled to catch his breath. Struggled to seize the wind that’d been knocked out of his lungs. Lestat looked to Claudia with askance.
“Kill ‘em, Uncle Les.”
“A song first, Claudia.” Lestat leaned forward, his chest pressing against Bruno’s back like a lover. “Sing to her like she sang to you,” he hissed against the struggling man’s ear.
“P-please…”
“Come now, I’ll help you… There’s nothing more adorable than a happy baby bird…”
“Nuh-no… I cannot…” Lestat lowered himself and dug his knees into the mounds of shredded flesh that were once Bruno’s calves. Lestat felt and heard something snap as Bruno’s scream ricocheted off the walls, echoing into the night and fading into a gargling sob.
“SING!”
Bruno’s mouth worked noiselessly for a moment and then produced a facsimile of a tune:
“Twee… dee… lee… dee…” he moaned, unable to continue. He vomited.
“Dreadful,” Lestat spat out disgustedly. There was nothing he despised more than a terrible singer. He snapped the man’s neck.
*****
Lestat was beginning to feel like his old, jolly self again as he soared away from Paris and made his way toward St. Denis, where Mouche Babin waited. Lestat saw the man in his mind’s eye and grinned with anticipation. The bald man in the top hat, sitting in the cheap seats; Lestat remembered him well. It was he who made this whole thing possible – well, Claudia and her impressive speech, actually, but her pointing out Mouche and politely requesting he remove his top hat… well, now from then on they were in business, as the Americans said.
Mouche Babin owned a little pig farm on the outskirts of the city – which was divinity to Lestat. Corpse cleanup was a hassle on the best of nights, but pigs? Lovely. Greedy little industrial vacuums.
Lestat landed softly and checked his pocket watch. He was still making good time despite the unexpected stop near the ruins of the theater. A small pack of groupies had chosen that night to hold a vigil. Their faces were covered in white grease paint with exaggerated, red-painted lips and black eyebrows. A quick read of their thoughts showed they’d been present during Claudia and Madeleine’s trial. The fools had even brought along a pocket radio. The funeral dirge that’d been playing on some station or other had cut out abruptly when Lestat appeared before them, but they’d all been so star-struck they hadn’t noticed. He lured them down into the pit that had once been the cellar and dispatched them with an almost bored swiftness as Claudia looked on. They shared a mass grave with the charred corpses of rats now. He kept the radio.
But, on to Mouche Babin; Lestat hoped the man still owned his fine top hat.
Louis once had a book (shocking!) that he’d read aloud to Lestat one quiet night in the early days when they’d both been too drunk on love to want to venture out of doors – some variation on Homer. Lestat, having the disadvantage of not being a native English speaker, and relatively uneducated, found himself struggling with the passage:
For though we tumble down the wall,
And fire their rotten boats and all,
I’ll eat my hat, if Jove don’t drop us,
Or play some queer rogue’s trick to stop us.
“What is this about eating a hat?” He’d asked, lifting his head from Louis’s lap. Louis ceased stroking Lestat’s hair and rested his fingertips against the crest of his cheekbone. In those days, Lestat’s little lapses into ignorance were a source of delight and not ammunition for an argument. Louis’s smile was soft and thoughtful.
“It’s an idiom. It means a possibility is remote – unlikely. The writer is so confident that it will not happen that he claims he would eat his hat if it did.”
“That would be gruesome – eating a hat. Surely it would kill a mortal man.”
“Mmm,” hummed Louis. He continued to read.
The mental image had provided Lestat no end of delight, as did most of Louis’s literary ‘idioms’. Decades later, he vibrated with excitement as he took the empty slop bucket to the water pump and filled the thing. He whistled as he breezed through Mouche Babin’s unlocked front door and into the kitchen to transfer the murky water into a pot, put it on the stove, and set it to boil.
The top hat was easily the most immaculate article of clothing Old Babin owned. The thing stood sentry above a battered armoire in the man’s bedroom, a relic of a formerly prosperous life. Lestat was able to retrieve it without disturbing Babin’s slumber. He took it to the kitchen and began to tear it apart, dropping piece after piece into the boiling water, giggling as he worked. He wished he could summon Claudia in that instant, and let her be a part of the prank, but he knew starting the music too early was risky, and might upset the meticulously planned flow.
Lestat was not a chef, but he felt that ten minutes in boiling water was sufficient for a decent hat soup. The steam rolling off the top of the pot held a vaguely chemical aroma that burned the fine hairs in Lestat’s nose upon inhale as he carried it into Babin’s bedroom and set it on the sideboard. He plucked the radio from his pocket, turned the volume switch to the highest setting, and switched it on with a soft ‘click’. The string section exploded through the silence with such bombasity that Babin fell out of bed at the startling sound. The sound of his body hitting the hardwood floor, a thud followed by an almost imperceptible crack, sent a wave of giddiness up Lestat’s spine.
“The soup is on, Claudia.”
“We just say ‘soup’s on’, Uncle Les.” Her voice was clear, true, and dry; just as he remembered. He turned to gaze at her. Both of her arms were completely smooth and unblemished. It had been a truly successful night for them, and he knew it was only a matter of time before his beautiful child would be whole again.
“Qui est, Claudia?” Babin muttered, his voice thick with fatigue sat on the edge of the bed and blinked several times.
“Never you mind, sir,” Lestat replied. He sat on a chair near Babin’s side of the bed and held the pot between his knees. “You’ve been very sick, and I am here to tend to you.”
“Sick?” Babin inquired in English.
“Ah, yes, terribly.” Lestat stirred the noxious mixture. “The kind of sickness that drives a man to Paris so they can pay an exorbitant fee to watch women burn up on stage so they can laugh at their misfortune – but Claudia and I have the remedy.” He held the pot up to Babin’s nose. The man gasped and gagged at the scent.
“What is that swill?”
Lestat shrugged. “It’s my recipe, and quite simple to make. Just a bit of hot water, the things the pigs didn’t touch, and your grandfather’s top hat you so obligingly removed so my daughter could get a good look at your face… some salt and pepper for taste.”
Lestat clocked the exact moment recognition registered on Babin’s face. The man gasped and attempted to flee, but Lestat stuck out one foot and tripped him. Babin fell face-first onto the floor. Lestat set the pot on the floor and pounced, landing on the man’s back with the grace of his surname. He flipped Babin onto his back and grinned down at him.
“I cannot… I cannot eat that,” Babin sobbed. “It will kill me. These old hats, they have – please, they are crawling with Mercure. ”
Lestat placed one forefinger against Babin’s lips and shushed him. He reached over and pulled the pot to his side, humming along with the music as he ladled a generous portion of soup. He curled his forefinger into Babin’s mouth, past his teeth, and pulled, dislodging the man’s jaw just enough so his maw stayed permanently agape. He dumped the soup into the void with a flourish. His eyes never left Claudia’s as he pressed the gurgling, panicking man onto the floor. Delight came off of her in waves, and for a moment he imagined she was bathed in a heavenly golden light. Her ashes glinted and sparkled like jewels.
“Why can’t it always be this way?” Lestat found himself asking. Claudia gave no reply but laughed heartily when – after a few more mouthfuls of mercury and top hat stew– Babin began to convulse and froth at the mouth.
NO, I DON’T LIKE WINDOWS WHEN THEY’RE CLOSED!
******
Lestat’s remaining time in Paris was taken up with contemplation of his existence, and swinging a vengeful sword at Claudia’s behest. Gradually, Lestat replaced contemplation with anticipation. He conjured her twice a week, knowing they would soon exhaust their supply patrons… and where would that leave him? He did not know. He’d heard stories of apparitions requiring closure to ascend (or descend) to their eternal reward, and perhaps that would happen with his Claudia. Another part of him, the one that still hoped, wondered if she would become whole in every sense of the word, and not just a beautiful ghost. Perhaps she’d want to stay with him and help take the edge off of his lonely hours. He did not deserve it, this he knew, but every creature was entitled to a bit of longing from time to time.
It was around the Summer of 1951 when Claudia’s list of names took Lestat away from Paris. He spent a short amount of time in England and Scotland, and then when Summer gave into Autumn, he found himself back in the States, picking off Yankees on the East Coast. The Winter of ‘51 found him in New Orleans, tearing the throats out of a well-to-do couple in the Garden District, when Claudia said:
“That’s all there is. There isn’t anymore.”
Lestat had anticipated this. He looked up from his kill to see Claudia, unmarred and smiling widely, standing in the spotlight of the unpolluted Sun without a hint of suffering, her yellow dress clean and rivaling the light that bathed her.
“You are free now?” Lestat queried, his eyes stinging with tears as he grappled with the keen ache in his chest.
Claudia’s laugh was gentle with a sardonic edge. “Sure, Uncle Les.”
Lestat frowned. “Is everything alright? I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me, mon cher. ” He looked down at the bodies at his feet, their faces fixed in twin expressions of terror. Lestat’s shirt was wet with gore. The blood in his mouth suddenly tasted like ashes.
Because it was raining ashes.
He looked up to see Claudia, grinning at him with a lipless, crumbling mouth. She was every bit that terrible, crisping specter of agony he’d seen at the theater, dissolving before his very eyes. Only this time she was incandescent with a twisted sort of happiness that chilled him like nothing else had done before.
“I did everything you asked!” He cried. He reached out and grabbed her hand – it crumbled and sifted in his grasp, pulling upwards into the gray light.
“There’s nothing you could’ve done,” she rasped. Her grin split wider as the essence of her wit, her very tongue disintegrated and danced away on the breeze. Soon there was nothing left. No Claudia, no ghostly spotlight, even the ashes vanished.
No forgiveness.
“C'est bon,” Lestat whispered as he stood. At least he had fun.
He went home.
End.