Title: Louis Blue's Beautiful One

Author: Kris

Feedback at: myost@charter.net

Fandom: Vampire Chronical

Pairing: Nicolas/Louis Lestat/Armand

Rated: X

Achrive: Please

Summary: 15 Year old Louis encounters important people in his life Nicky, Armand, and Lestat for the first time, and Henri too.

Warnings: full of rape, evil sex, and plot twists

Warning 2: Underage sex 15 year old with 23 ? year old

Catagory: Adventure

Website: http://louis3004212.nstemp.net/

Note: I just wanted to dedicate this story to the beautiful 18th century works of Francoise Rene de Chareaubriand who was a popular author of Louis' times.

Louis Blue's Beautiful One
by Kris

"Once again, my dear Louis, I must express my gratitude to your father for granting me an increase in my allowance so that I may keep my humble flat in the city," Alexandre said earnestly, fiddling nervously with his silver and mahogany walking stick. "I do admire your dear papa. To give up all of this to live amongst the savage wilds of New Orleans. He always was such a romantic man what with his great admiration for the noble red man. He got that from reading all those novels by Francois Rene de Chateaubriand."

"Not at all mon uncle," Louis said, "Oui, my father says the noblest of all men all those who live in gratitude to nature, and who have an awareness of God without bothering to try to figure out what God is," Louis said without irony of his father who made his living harnessing the very wildness of nature he claimed to admire to irk out a living from growing indigo. He took a polite drink of coffee, holding in his long fingers a fantastically, egg shell thin, china cup chased with gold along its delicate rim, and handle.

For any other fifteen year old the handling of such a fine, frail piece might have resulted in a bout of a nervous attack. Louis' graceful fingers was the perfect accompaniment to the rich, daintiness of the cup.

Are you enjoying your stay in Paris?" asked Madam D'Aulnoy solicitously. She looked regal in her elegant frock of pink and rose laces.

"Oui, Madam," Louis said with a half smile on his face.

"I hope to discover for you a wife soon my dear boy. A young man with your virtues should be blessed with an equally virtuous girl," she teased, making a deep show of a sentimental, motherly sigh.

You mean a young man with such a bountiful amount of money shouldn't be allowed to slip through the world without a wife, Alexandre thought sourly to himself. His corset hurt his ribs dreadfully, and it had no effect on keeping in his opulent belly which hung over the fine cloth of his breeches. His shaved head sweated rudely under his fashionably powdered wig. He thanked his stars over and over again that his older Brother Valmount de Pointe du Lac once again had the good taste to unburden him out from under his gambling debts. Rather than wasting all of the money on everyone he owed; he promptly turned over much of it to the use of his many mistresses. It was a bore to be honorable to riffraff. He was good enough to pay his debts owed to the great men he gambled with, but tradesmen or the sons of merchants he gambled with or had other dealings with he held an aristocratic disdain for reckoning up his bills with the likes of them. One of whom was an angry young man dressed in not too clean of laces, silk and a brocade great coat which must have cost his much put upon dear papa a small fortune. Nicholas de Lenfent.

Why should I pay him? Alexandre thought coolly, "When he doesn't pay his own father any debts of gratitude a proper son would naturally be willing to pay with the coin of his obedience?

"Who is that handsome young man who is frowning so furiously at us?" Louis whispered.

"A nobody, he's been disowned by his family. He's a never-do-well who cavorts with actresses and actors," Alexandre sniffed, "He even performs with the violin in plays of commedia dell'arte at a disputable theatre."

"Does he play well?" Louis asked.

"And how would I know that young man? I am not a frequenter of such places," Alexandre haughtily said. His cheeks went red above his jowls, thinking of an actress Luchina, who he kept as one of his mistresses. A flighty, long legged, sixteen year old girl who was of such a bawdy nature she had to pinch her cheeks hard to make herself blush.

"I should like to go to this theatre," Louis whispered.

"Impossible. Certainly not. Non. What are you saying? This is most outrageous of you!" Alexandre stuttered. Then he started to laugh at the good natured, happy appeal on his nephew's face.

"We shall see." He gave in, patting his hand affectionately, thinking, After all, it is best he goes to such places with me while he is young, so when he is older and married he will not be impressed with them.

Louis leaned back blissfully on the beautiful tapestry of birds in flight on the ornamental chair he occupied. Everything was exquisite right down to the gilt chair legs.

The talk went about fast and serious about Diderot's great encyclopedia which not only contained magnificent technical studies and drawings but also held within its pages the blasphemous message that man could improve his lot with reason rather than pinning his
hopes on an antiquated God and religion.

He tried not to make obvious his countrified ways by keeping his mouth steadfastly and prudently silent. Through, even in his most rustic moments on the trip one which moment for example, when he let out a whistle of gleeful appreciation during the opera "Orfeo ed Euridice" at the part where Orfeo brought back Euridice back from hell, he still managed to have an air of sweet and natural sophistication which he in his modesty was quite unaware of.

He tried not to smile at the bevy of belles laughing and whispering behind their elaborate fans, signaling to him they wished to have words with him. One in particular, a Mademoiselle Helen, was a very ravishing, catcher of all the eyes in the room. The talent she displayed while playing the piano appealed to Louis' great appreciation of music. Between glancing at her, and then hurriedly glancing back at the girls, he found himself also trying not to stare openly at Nicholas.

He never saw a man who could manage to have such a disagreeable sneer of cynical weariness on his face and yet have the glamour of a renaissance biblical young David. His rich brown curls was tied back carelessly by a fine black ribbon. It seemed as if he held his smiles to be so very dear and valuable to himself, that his smiles were simply too dear to just be thrown away on just anyone. He judged him to be twenty years old.

Madam D'Aulnoy gave a small wave of her hand heavy with dazzling rings this gesture signaled a call for silence.

"I have here," she said to the well dressed personages who loved to frequent her salon. She held up a thin leather bound book, "Catherine Bernard's fairy tale, "Riquet with the Tuft". Who would like me to read it?"

"Oh, non. Not I. I must declare not, spare me," said Monsieur Charles de Pointe O'Chene in an overly contrived genteel voice, "I won't have it," he whined sitting worshipingly at her skirt. "She writes of men as being ill-tempered fearsome trolls. Women as hapless creatures. When all of humanity knows all men are made to be honorable princes if their ladies who rule over them be but dutiful, and benevolent princess."

He flashed a grin at Louis with his great yellow horse teeth.

Louis looked down at his white lace shoes, annoyed, thinking, "Why must he and so many others look at me in such a base unnatural manner? Do they suppose me to be unnatural?"

"If it be women who dictates the disposition of men by their actions, I dare say all women be rogues, since there are nothing but too many knaves in this world," Madam D'Aulnoy said swiftly.

"Any lover of yours," he said, "Would be a god by the virtue of you being a goddess."

Good humor restored, Madam D'Aulnoy delighted her guests with a reading of the fairy tale.

Once she was done, Mademoiselle Helen daringly addressed herself to Louis, "Would you care to accompany on the piano. A duet, perhaps?"

"Mademoiselle," Louis lied, "I play no instrument."

"Do you sing?" she said smiling.

"Oh, do show yourself off my dear boy," his uncle insisted, winking at the pretty girl, while he calculated in his mind the worth of her family, not much, but there was the title which went along with her name which had to be considered.

Going to the piano with her, Louis whispered in her ear. She gave a little disappointed frown, then dutifully played a solumn hymn.

Through the choice of the music was trite to those who found such themes to be blasé next to the brilliancy of the humanist's fashionable philosophy of enlightenment which touted the sentiment that if there was a God, He long ago abandoned man to nature, and He needed no worship, all were none the less transported to heaven by the beauty of the young man's compellingly moving voice.

Modestly, at the end of his song, Louis accepted their applause. Trying not to embarrass himself with too clumsy haste; he made his way back to the safety of his seat only to be halted in his progress by Nicholas.

"You sing like a rare angel," he whispered in his ear.

"Merci," Louis said timidly, feeling shy from being confronted by such flattery from such a bold faced young man.

"Oui, my nephew is not with out his talents," Alexandre said breathlessly from the effort of getting out of his chair to go to his nephew's side.

"Oui, and we know how much you appreciate the talent of young people," Nicholas said with irony, "You sir, you owe me twenty five francs. Should I have the authorities throw you into debtors prison?"

"You would not dare," Alexandre thundered in a low voice, "You, sir, have no proof of what you are saying!"

"Monsieur, " Louis said embarrassed, "might I make a wager of twenty five francs with you?"

"On what?' Nicholas said insolently.

"Shall we go to the billiard room?" Louis said, leading them both to the room off to the side where sat a billiard table. Taking a cue stick he said, "I bet I can make the eight ball fly into the side pocket."

Louis hit the ball, purposely to make it miss. While it flew across the table, he heard Nicholas say. "I bet you a kiss against your twenty five francs you can't hit the eight ball."

The cue ball hit harmlessly against the side of the billiard table.

"Pay up my friend."

"I bet you twenty five francs," Louis said going for his pocket.

"And I sir, bet you a kiss."

"A kiss then, and let's be true friends and speak of this no more," Louis said, going to kiss his rough cheek.

Nicholas reared his head locking his lips with his in a kiss which was distinctly uncomfortable to Louis. It was a kiss which somehow made itself to be everything to him which he considered to be ruthless and passionate in his secretive nature. Looking soulfully in Louis' eyes, Nicholas said. "I would like the two of you to be my guests tomorrow night at Renaud's."

Before Alexandre could give a cutting retort of refusal to Nicholas, Louis said, with his burning lips, "I would be delighted."

They went back into the sitting room where Madam D'Aulnoy was reading a tale of "The Palace of Revenge" about a couple in love with one another who are cursed to spend all eternity with each other, and soon grow to be sick of each other.

"What a sad story," Louis said to Nicholas.

"It is unbelievable," Nicholas said in a voice of painful longing, "If I were to be gifted with all of eternity to be with my lover, I would never fall out of love."

(2)

Louis, Alexandre, and Nicolas passed through the narrow Boulevard du Temple.

"So how is it?' Nicolas whispered in Louis' ear "that you came to be, my fine, New World innocent, to find yourself in the dismal labyrinth of the Old World's wicked ways? Haven't you heard of the traps laid out to snare innocents such as you? These traps wait for you around every coner."

"What a dour thing to say," Louis said, tripping through the mud in his velvet slippers and his silk stockings. "My father requested I make an acquaintance of myself with the culture Paris so richly has to offer." Louis smiled, "Though I may seem to you an innocent savage, my father would not have me grow to be remain so. Only men born to their red skin, or without titles have the luxury to live wildly as hunters, and trappers in the New World. I'm afraid I have to fill the role which pinches any young boy's toes. I have to be a gentleman who can at least count to ten, have a workable knowledge on how to properly address a pretty young lady, and can tell the difference between a microscope and a telescope," Louis said, gently made fun of Nicolas.

"I would have loved to have given your uncle the beating he so richly deserves. The twenty five francs I have lost was well worth our kiss of friendship," Nicolas said, taking him by the wrist.

Alexandre took Louis firmly by the other wrist. "Come alone, come alone," he said starting to get suspicious, tugging at his nephew. "I did agree to this calamity, didn't I? We may as well not stand here in this damnably cold weather."

All around Louis could spy children in rags, barefoot, freezing in doorways. He was no stranger to the sufferings of children. The slaves on his father's plantation were almost as exposed to the merciless chill of winter as these street children. The difference was his father had a compelling motive to keep his slaves' children alive. On the plantation there was a house where slave women toiled to keep the African population in wool and calicos. There was also a kitchen to insure corn bread, beans and cured chitterlings for the field hands' meals. And cabins where slaves lived where they could build up fires. In winter the toil was less. Paper money was not the main thing which kept a plantation going. A drop in the stock market could make once upon a time assets on paper disappear. Flesh was solid; it was collateral to the great planters. No one looked after or cared for the survival of the valueless urchins of Paris. The less of them the better.

"Alexandre would it be all right if I gave a bit of change to some of the more needful ones?" Louis asked, pitying a child whose head was wrapped in a bloody rag, another who leaned wearily on crutches. And still another who had horrible chilblains on his feet. They all were affected with chilblains, but this poor child's sores ran with a sickly pus.

"Don't be such a soft hearted fool!" cursed Alexandre, "Those wounds are made up. The boy coughing there. He is pretending to be sick. Would you have us torn apart by these wretches?"

Once they got to the House of Thespians, Alexandre guiltily noticed the sad look on his nephew's face.

"Oh foolishness," he said exasperated. Then he whispered to Louis handing him a small pouch, "Have at it, boy. Throw them a good one."

Louis' beautiful face broke out into an exuberantly boyish grin. Turning around away from his uncle, he dug into the pouch, throwing coins out into the streets. Little ones, and older boys ran at the money, wrestling with each other. The sickly ones stood by mutely watching. Their faces solemn and dull.

"Oh my" Louis worried seeing a child slap a smaller one for the gain of a coin.

"How dare you, sir," Alexandre yelled, noticing the hungry children were starting to crowd forward for more, "How dare you, nephew, steal from me!"

"Steal!" Louis said confused.

Swinging his walking stick into the gathered young beggars, he scatted them to slip and fall in the muddy shush puddles of the street.

"Uncle," Louis said baffled.

"Never mind my dear" Alexandre said, pressing his thin gloved hand. Then he lied at the children, winking at Louis, "My nephew is a fool, to take my money and toss it at you! I am not a fool! If I see a one of you waiting for us outside when we depart tonight, I will bump your heads on the cobblestones till your pates be as soft as mashed pumpkins. There will be no more money from us. Not tonight. "

"For a scoundrel you contain a soft heart in that bread pudding of a body of yours," Nicolas said, opening the door for them

"Bread pudding!" Alexandre snorted , his voluptuous lips trembling like overly stuffed indigent pillows. "Why are you not scrabbling for coin along with them?"

"I have a patron," Nicolas said bitterly.

"So I see," Alexandre said loftily, noticing the newness of his violin case which he knew from all the gossip he heard, contained a Stradivarius, and money! The man was always flush with money, the finest velvet coats adorned his slender body and his head held the best of wigs.

"Oui, you have good patron," Alexandre said cuttingly, "I patron a few chosen actresses myself. For their talents of course." Alexandre hoped the brutal disdain in is voice would be properly hurtful to the musician. He did not care for the growing familiarity of Nicolas' manners he was adopting towards his nephew. This grown man who was in disgrace with his family. He noticed the fiend was frankly taken with Louis' sturdy, boyish legs which were of such an elegant curve in his stockings. The way he looked at his nephew scandalized Alexandre to the depths of his libertine's sensibilities. He would never owned up to anyone the possibility he had a soul. He hadn't thought Incolas to be of the sort who would have an eyes for a shapely, young, dewy faced lad. Now he could only wonder and be concerned for his nephew's well being.

Louis wished his uncle was not so unkind

I can tell by the sadness in his fantastic brown eyes he is tragically unhappy over an affair of being fatally wounded in his great heart. Louis thought, wanting to lay his head on the fine, hand-crafted, edged with gold, Italian lace flourishing at Incolas' throat so that he could provide him with the comfort he instinctively felt the man needed.

Incolas could feel the boy's sympathy. And it hurt and humiliated him like a vicious slap to his trembling face. It humbled him more than his uncle's scorn of him. He had a angry desire to take the boy by his thin shoulders, and give him the good shaking which he so richly deserved for pitying him, and for guessing the truth about him

"Those poor boys and girls who did not get any coins," Louis whispered his lips starting to chap from the coolness of the winter evening.

"Nonsense my boy. If you think in those terms you will turn everyone away who needs help. Those boys were of the ability to help themselves and for this the coin you invested in them will go further than if you had wasted it on sickly, helpless children. " Alexandre said.

Louis shook his head feeling like he had committed an act of injustice somehow without meaning to.

Incolas felt his dislike for the boy grow a little stronger. He knew it was a dislike built upon the boy's innocence, and once Louis lost his mopy sentimental streak, he would lose his dislike and grow to be affectionate with Louis in time. Nickels was sure of it. He wanted to taunt Louis, but instead he opened the door for them to enter, and before Louis' eyes the world became magical. Smoke from cabalarias with their pin point flames floating in the dark room shone the way. A small stage with a painted back ground of a plaza was in the back of the wide room

"Let me introduce you to our lustrous and lusty paragons of thespians," Nicolas said mockingly, leading them to a dressing room

There bright in the gloom was a man of pure gold, Louis thought, A man which rivals all the flames caught on fires on wicks, and all the bon fires in the world set to roar to honor saints on their days. He lowered his eyes to the the visual assault of women in various modes of undress. The tender mounds of their breasts peeked out from above open bodices, and lace. They powdered the beauty of their dainty faces, and also applied powder to their breasts which were raised to be high by the tightness of their corsets. He took in a deep breath of their powder, perfume, and their body odor and promptly sneezed. He was fascinated to see so many near naked feminine breasts. Actors already dressed crowded the room. All attention was focused upon the golden man.

Nicolas ran to him, throwing his arms around him as freely as any lover, asking in hushed hurried, shameless tones for explanations of his absence and of his current where abouts.

Louis held his breath at such a naked bold display of love on Nicolas' part for the monstrously pretty man. He waited for the man keeping himself stiff and unyielding in Nicky's arms, his lips pressed against Nicki's throat, he waited breathlessly for him to kiss Nicky's lips.

Instead he shoved Nicky away. Louis wanted to melt into hot tears. His eyes opened wide in repulsion of the man for the sorrow he caused his new friend.

"Monsieur Lestat de Lion court," Nicolas said, recovering his composure, introducing the two.

"Have you adopted a son while I was gone?" Lestat said in a humorous voice which made Louis to be the center of laughter. "You haven't been long from your nurse maid's tit have you lad?" Lestat said tossing his head to look at Jennette who was pulling up a stocking on her shapely leg.

"Saucy," she giggled, pulling up a velvet garter which was gaudy with ribbons and small yellow rose buds.

"I know what kind of sauce I have, and the pretty duck I'd love to baste it with," Lestat said, laughing, thinking sadly, wanting to scream: And my sauce be the red of dying men. I could kill you all with my demonic thrust, even my lovely Nicky. All I wanted to do was pull him away where no one could see, and kill Nicki over and over gain, even this foolish young boy with his bright red ears. I could kill him.

"The play is about ready to start," Renaud said, peering thought the curtains at the seats of the theatre starting to fill up, ""In your places sirs, mademmoselles, to your places, I insist."

"I would like to go on the stage first, and say a pretty speech, sing a song," Lestat said in a low voice, "For the sake of remembering old times."

He glanced at the young boy was was readying himself to make his retreat with his uncle. To Lestat's surprise he felt more than just a blood lust for the boy.

Why who is this little one who would dare stir the amorous attentions of a murderer? Lestat thought bitterly. His face, the bones, once fully grown into his promise, will prove to be even more ravishingly handsome than it is now. His eyes are spirited fox eyes, tantalizing and mesmerizing, full of luscious, thoughtful, soulful looks. He's a noble looking personage who is more suited to be hunting in the crisp, wild woods rather then out here amongst the sewers and catacombs of Paris. Such animals as he are too young to have his innocence taken away from him Such a fine animal is too lovely to be impaled in the savage garden, Lestat thought gloomily. He thought of Armand, an innocent appearing boy too. More beautiful than this boy could ever possibly ever hope to be

Louis took a seat with his uncle. He watched as the golden man strolled across the stage to face the audience.

He's arrogant, simply too arrogant for any kind words to be applied to him, Louis thought resenting him for the ugly stain of disappointment on Nicky's face. He said, "Who is that bold fellow who seems to think all the world was born to scrape and bow before him?"

"Nothing of the sort," Alexandre said complacently, "He's the son of a marquise. And old, but a poverty stricken, noble line. He was never proud and mocking like this before. Rumors like witches on broom sticks have been flying about him.. That he has acquired a rich wife, or he has found a treasure chest. He's quite the man of which all sorts of fiction is made up about. He has grown aloof more so now with his newly acquired wealth, perhaps he is also a bit sharper with his tongue which he uses like a master in verbal duels with any wit who dares to challenge him. Mais, by dear Louis, he is not what I would call a braggart he is merely distancing himself from a group of acquaintances he now knows to be improper for him. He's been generous with these old friends of his, more than I would have been. He knows the ties must be broken. The more exposure nobility has to commoners the more their contempt for us grows. The people in the street talk of Marie Antoinette as if she were but a common harlot, and why? Because she boldly goes out into the public garden so all of us can see her act as silly and as common place as any maid going on an outing. "

Louis sighed, he could sense the terrible loneliness in both of then men, and he couldn't understand it. It defied his young unformed mind, went beyond the scope of his understanding, leaving him with no reasonable explanation why these two should be so lonely. It was so gloriously obvious to him they loved each other. Or the world would end in an explosion of the rape of all logical thought if they did not love each other. Didn't they?

Louis' chest and throat hurt him with tears for the both of them Didn't they love each other? And if not; why in heaven's name not?

Beneath the hard white of what Louis supposed to be make up on the exterior of Lestat's face he saw the endless tenderness Lestat had for Nicky.

"Play for me, my beloved amour," Lestat couldn't stop himself from saying to Nicky.

Lestat sang a love song, accompanying with the wild purity of his voice in harmony with the frothy, plaintive vibrations of the tautly stoked strings of Nicholas' Stradivarius. Voice and violin passionately serenaded each other.

"It is love then!" Louis marveled in a happy incredulous voice.

"I must go to relieve myself," Alexandre said, his bladder tight and painful. His intestines were as gassy as a cow's.

"Oui, Louis murmured blissfully.

Oh, love sick youth, Alexandre moaned to himself He had before they took to their seats, given Luchina payment for her services for later in the evening. He could tell she was reluctant. She had her bright eyes on a penniless young actor who had very lovely long hair. He saw the struggle on her young face. Practicality won the argument. She took his money, nay, she took it gratefully. A man's beauty may warm the eyes and the moist place between the thighs, it can even stop a monthly bleeding and fill up a belly with child. But her beautiful object could not fill her pocket, nor keep her in pretty things so dear to her vivacious heart. She was too poor for a baby, and would prefer her stomach to be full of vittles rather than a brat. Better a rich kind patron she didn't love, rather than a beautiful actor she did love, who could slay her with his wandering eyes if he ever decided he liked the charms of another. Once she had the gold coin in her hands, she couldn't help notice the improvement in Alexandre's looks.

Alexandre left the theatre rudely poking people with his walking stick to make way for him, he could have relieved himself in the straw strewn about inside of the theatre if he only had to make water. He decided he would give Luchina to Louis for the night. Sure that would cure Louis' preposterous thoughts of any fanciful crushes he may have for Nicki or Lestat.

He went his way to the side of the building, removing his wig so he could scratch at a scab which lice had left on his scalp. His gut let out a thunderous fart, he said rudely to a radiant youth in fine clothes, "What pray tell are you looking at? A poor old man at his labors? Away with you before I show you out of my necessity the whiteness of my ass."

(3)

Suspiciously Alexandre looked through his oval, rheumy eyes at the well dressed boy. Rich in favors he might be, but there was something not right about the boy. Armand shook his head which was graced with bountiful auburn curls running down his compact shoulders. He seemed to hover above the ground. He was as silent and as celestial as a guardian angel. The smile on his innocent and slightly parted rose bud lips was a smile of welcome and spiritual benevolence.

Alexandre grunted wearily, turned his board back on him, pulled down his breeches, and pulled up his great coat, and then proceeded to take a long healthy shit.

Slamming his hands over his cherub's eyes, his nose wrinkled in utter disgust at the base animal smell in the air. Armand sighed in exasperation.

Letting out a gasp of gratification, scratching at the hair of his pimply butt, he took a hankie from his pocket, giving himself a quick wipe. Tossing the handkerchief away, he pulled up his breeches. Looking over his shoulder at the pretty boy behind him, he curtly said, "A good night to you, sir."

"Hold you! Haven't you any sensibilities at all" Armand said angrily, "Look at me!"

Armand thrust out his chest, posing as an angel who was ready to part the clouds which contained the universe, so he could fly to the golden gates of heaven: His sure abode.

"I prefer to trade with those who be of the cloven type, and be without a stem to monkey around with. I have my own cock which I can play with," Alexandre said grumpily, walking away. "I have no need for a spare."

"Wait, wait," Armand said confused, "Sir, haven't you noticed the halo about my pale face? Doesn't it mean anything to you?"

"Must be a trick of the light over our heads. Now ruffian, I take you to be no better than a common cut throat. I tell you what, I already distributed my wealth tonight amongst the two legged, rat spawns of Paris. Go cut their slim, childish throats for the wealth I gave them for the sake of my dear nephew's soft heart."

Armand gently rocked gaily on his heels. His head twisted around like an owl's. He looked as if his neck had been broken. "I am sure you have wealth of another kind to satisfy a cut throat such as I."

"Oh rape, and murder," Alexandre snorted, his jowls turning as red as a Tom turkey's. "Do you mean to say sir, you're going ravish me? I'd rather have a good go with a she-goat than the likes of you."

Running at him on all fours, Armand leapt at him as agile as a cat pouncing on a plump, velvety mouse. He ripped into the tender fat of his neck, biting hard to get into the vein. He felt as if he were hugging a round, huge, oaken cask of fine ale to himself.

He's killing me, Alexandre thought in dismay at the bite. My God, he thinks himself to be some kind of beastie in the woods.

Beastie? Armand thought growling.

Ah, this "Hangman's Toy," he's even filed his teeth into fangs to make himself look unnatural, and now he is draining me, drinking, drinking. The knave is sucking. Ah well, Alexandre thought relaxing into a hurricane's eye of calmness. Suck then. Sir, you are of a superior strength. I bow to your perverted pleasure for what else can a man do when he is over powered?

He thought of his dear little Marie-Jeanne. His illegitimate daughter. He never saw her. As soon as she was born he had her sent to a family of honest farmers. Then at the age of five she was taken to a convent for an education. He had arranged with part of the money his brother had sent him to provide a dowry for her. She was set to soon marry a tradesman. She was fifteen to his age of thirty five. A good match, through she never met her future husband, or her father. He supposed she would hate her dear papa, if they ever did meet. No matter. He didn't love her, through he was fond of the idea that there would be some living part of himself on the earth after he died. He thought of his illegitimate son, Jamie, a colored boy, sent away to live on his brother's plantation. He didn't matter as much of course, such a son would never go far. He did love his brother's family through he very seldom had much discourse with them. What with being continents away. He hoped Louis would have the brains to attach himself to Madam D'Avelo. Louis being the son of such an excellent father; he had no doubt of Louis' brains. Through he was a mite sentimental for a lad. It may land him in trouble. Oh, the devious ways of the world.

While the boy hung at his throat, slowly consuming him, savoring him, he thought about how he was a living feast soon going on to becoming a dying one. He thought of all the favorites he liked to see at his table: Sea turtle soup, wild morel mushrooms in a garlic butter sauce, a good lamb shank basted in cream and sherry, a lovely red wine, and hot toasty bread right from the oven with a bit of olive oil and herbs, and oh, oui, a nice slice of apple pastry with cinnamon, and cream, more cream please? He adored pastry. The world is a lovely place when it smells of pastry!

Of course beyond the delights of a loaded table, above it all was a good cock fight. He pictured in his mind two bold fine roosters--lean and well muscled. Their clawed feet honed to razor sharpness, their beaks gleaming in the smoke of candle and pipes. The birds throwing themselves at each other's glossy purple- black plumage. Red coming out of their feathered breasts, and then more red streaming down sodden feathers. The one he bet against was bleeding the most. He picked to win the rooster, Jack of Gables. He was a winning bird. A fine bird, who would win him a thousand francs.

"Kill him, kill him Jackie. I chose so right. I chose so right when I chose you,' he mumbled in Armand's hair.

"How sir, at the ledge of your life, when you are about to fall, all you can think about is eating , pissing and gambling?" Armand cursed, "You're dying, you fool. Haven't you one edifying thought for God?"

"I am a deist, sir, I believe in an abstract concept of God. I believe He might have by design, or accident created the world. And now that He is done, He has the good taste not to meddle in the affairs of His creation. And I must say, sir, he isn't giving much of a thought to me at the moment. Now is He? "Alexandre gasped. He felt hot, smelly fluid run down his thigh, "Ah, but the spinter muscle doesn't work for a dying man, nor the lungs, the brain, and without these I am a dead man without a soul to do my thinking for me. Finish your meal up sir. I would not be an invalid. My only regret is I ended my days as a meal. It's inhuman of you to treat me a fellow man so."

"I am not a human being, nor have I ever been a man," Armand flashed his fangs at him, "I am a vampire."

Alexandre smiled indulgently at his murderer. He wondered where he last saw a face like that? Oh, oui, Bedlam. Where he went last month to view all the insane men and women at their antics. So sure he was of Armand's insanity, Alexandre didn't bother to go insane himself.

"Do men drink blood, sir?" Armand said indignantly, "I am not crazy. I am a monster. A supernatural monster. Understand this if someone as absurd as I exists all things are possible including the existence of a God," he said in a dreadful voice, "And God and all his saints are
watching and judging you, and I am his angel, an angel commissioned by the devil, and I am here to take you to an untimely hell through the jaws of an untimely death. Now off your backside and onto your knees! Fear God, curse him if you will, but you will fear God. I have been sent here to be a torment to you!"

"You, along with bad breath, toothaches, burned food, soured wine, bed bugs, fleas, and untrainable hounds who will not hunt are a torment to me. Not at all sir. You are not above nature. Look sir, if you say you are not a man, it impresses me not at all. Some say I can trace my ancestors back to babbling baboons. You sir, your ancestors came from the genes of vampire bats."

"Vampire bats!" Armand said astonished.

"Oui, there is an explanation for everything under the sun. Thanks to science there is no mysteries. You sir do as bats do in nature. You either fancy yourself to be a vampire bat, or you are a different species of man not yet captured and studied in a laboratory. Scientists will label you someday, sir, as being a "Vampires-battus-homo-sapianus."

Armand backed away, his hand to his bloody mouth, "You eighteenth century men, are you so enlightened you can't believe what is before your very eyes?"

"I believe what it is rational to believe. What is at first not rational, I can make rational," Alexandre said proudly, clutching at the blood draining from his jugular vein, pouring in a steady stream down his vest and coat. "I need not take your word for an explanation. As if you were a pope, or a priest. Especially since you sir, you make no more sense to me than when a village priest tells me Saint Francis could fly."

Armand flew up in the air, hovering over Alexandre.

"Well, saints preserve us," whispered Alexandre, "I'm so close to death, I'm hallucinating. You bad man, lunatic, vampires don't exist. I am having a stroke from your villainous attack on me. This is the dealings of a dying brain."

Screaming in utter frustration, feeling totally isolated from humanity and the very dirt of the earth, Armand flung himself down on top of Alexandre, tearing into his soaking wet throat, causing the man to yelp in indignant pain. He killed him quickly, muttering to himself over and over again, I do too exist. You rational men, you Lockes, Voltaries, Diderots. All of you armed with your Encyclopedia's. I understand you not. And you won't even try to understand me. You'll be the death of me!"

He threw Alexandre's dead body into the gutter.

"Swine," he whispered his angelic eyes were little eruptions of despair. "I killed you , but the ideas you lived by they live on and on. And there is no place in the world for monsters like me in the philosophies which are building up around me. Is killing all men the only way to kill a man completely? If I don't learn to understand this new age of yours will I die? Is it better to die then? As an angel, as a devil of a gilded age of belief and devotion rather then to live on in this cold world, and to be thought of as being nothing but an impossible, and a ridiculous concept for only superstitious fools to believe in?"

Armand downheartedly strode to the theatre. He opened the door to the rat-trap house, and stood in the door way, staring with all his show of innocent splendor at Lestat. Love, hate, horror, and despair all were wed in his heart for this beautiful man singing on the stage. Part of him wanted to embrace him as any lover would embrace the embodiment of his dreams come true, another part of him wanted to drink him down to the point of almost death, then slay him with a saber, burning him to curl into a piece of moist ash.

"Where is my uncle? Louis thought twisting around in his seat. Tearing his eyes from Nicky's and Lestat's duet, he started to get up. He fell to the squalor and filth of the straw on the floor. All around him was an assault of noise, physical noise so loud you felt you could touch it with your hands. The noise hammered at his ears and mind with the violence of flying fists. He and all those around him withered in pain as if they all had been pulled by the strings of their guts to a place of torture. All of this pestilent noise was coming from somewhere deep from the bowel's of the golden man.

His wild blond hair was flung back from the nobility of his face. A horrible distorted nobility of a prince gone mad. His screams parodied the love song which he had been singing only minutes before. It was a love song meant to rip and tear, to drive the world to hate him.

The bones and pads of the flesh in his hands pressed firmly against his ears was proving to be no match for the ranting gale of this storm of noise which was even causing his heart to race to bursting.

Through he could swear he could soon kiss his ability to ever hear again good bye, he still could see. The sight of Nicky weeping, his now silent violin pressed against his chest, smote poor Louis' heart, sending it into an anguish which was above the pain raging in his head. The golden man was crying tears which Louis marveled at. These tears were red. Poor man, Louis thought. The blush and makeup on his cheeks has stained his tears to appear to be blood.

Nicky threw his arms around Lestat. Lestat's faces exploded into a swelter of a furnace burning white flames of murder.

Kill you, Lestat thought, All I can do is kill you if not from the earth than from everything which makes you yourself.

He yelled at Nicky "I can't love you anymore. And I don't."

Bellowing protestations of anger and sorrow surged out of Lestat's lips. He felt ready to tear Nicky's arms from right out of his sockets. The same way he felt Magnus tore him out of the arms of his loved ones. Loved ones who could be his no more. Instead he calmed himself down enough to gently shove Nicky away, he said , "My one true love we must part. I can not love one such as you. I must love another who is like myself."

"Like yourself? What are you then? " Nicky whispered.

Nicky ran away from the rest of the musicians and from Lestat. He pulled Louis up from the floor to lean against him.

Green eyes wet with clear tears of sad compassion locked into his brown eyes which were weeping colorless tears of pure rage.

Nicholas cursed his best curse, then he ran out of the threate, almost bumping into Armand, who sidestepped away from him just in time. He pulled Louis to come along with him into a seductive nightmare.

(4)

"Stop, stop," Louis begged, almost losing a slipper to a filthy puddle. "We mustn't leave," he implored him, trying to be heard over the monstrous oaths erupting out of Nicky's mouth. Curses he was sure even the devil would be startled by. He quickly crossed himself to ward off the evil eye. "My uncle. We must stay here, and wait for my uncle. I am afraid for him."

"Devil take your uncle. The devil take your fear. Your uncle is probably as we speak fiddling with some foul creature's pudding between her swarthy legs."

"Sir!" Louis cried out, embarrassed at Nicki's fiendish lack of delicacy, "My uncle would never abandon me of his free will."

"He hadn't abandoned you. He's left you in my care. His own kind, that filthy aristocrat. The devil take Lestat, and all of his own kind," Nicki wept piteously. People were leaving out of the theatre. Terrified looks on some of their faces. Some were whispering nervously of witchcraft; others were explaining to each other that the man must of had some small devise sewn into his clothing. Something to magnify sound which he employed to play this stupid prank upon them all. And that the man should be ashamed of himself.

"Non, it was witchcraft, the aristocracy is full of witchcraft, of corruption. They do filthy things, kill the babes of the poor to use what little fat they can find to cut out of their corpses to work their wretched spells which do not work but in their twisted minds. They feed upon us common folk like blood thirsty fleas," Nicki screamed at people walking by.

"Sir, sir you are distraught," Louis said, taking gulps of sour air to calm himself down.

"Fleas, Louis, they drink our blood till we're too dead to satisfy their greed. Then they hop to their next victim. Tormenting him with a thousand bites, crawling at man's flesh. Their bodies bloated with stolen blood. The aristocracy is nothing but fleas I tell you. They belong to a circus," Nicky screamed. He headed for a splendid, high strung, black horse. The horse was huge and beautiful enough to belong to Satan; who everyone knows to be a lover of good horse flesh.

The spirited animal tried to shy away when Nicky grabbed at his bridle.

"Sir, this, this cannot be your horse. I beg of you sir, leave it be," Louis said in a horrified voice, grabbing at his fine, silk great coat.

Nicki rudely shook his hand off. Putting his hands to Louis's chest, he angrily shoved him back, cursing him for being nothing but a tit fed suckling.

"It's his horse, his! He stole my heart, and then he stomped upon it with the fine heel of his boots into the Parisian mud," Nicki sobbed, "Surely, he owes me the use of his horse to escape facing him."

Louis almost turned away to run and look for his uncle. The look of fatal suicidal despair on Nicki's face would not allow him to leave Nicki to his own devises.

"Let me go with you sir," he said throwing his arms around him. "Let me help you!"

"Proper little Christian are you?" Nicki sneered, mounting the horse. His face became demonic, he reared the horse up. Louis gave out a cry. He feared Nicki meant to trample him. Raising his walking stick to protect himself, he screamed for help.

"I thought you wanted to be my little saint in my hour of need," Nicki laughed at him, calming the horse down by digging his heels into its flank. "He said I was a saint, he lied about me to myself. Telling me I took nothing and made it into something to share with the world. Never, I play only for me, Nicki. Wait, here comes the great man."

"Nicki, please, I'm sorry. This wasn't fair of me. To have done this to you. I didn't have to, not in this fashion. I should have written you instead. Nicki, I'm married to a woman of standing in the colonies. She is my one true love. We can never see each other again. I'm sorry. I should have written you," Lestat lied, slowly coming towards him to grab the reins of his horse. "Don't curse me Nicki, wish me well."

The hell with you and your rich bride. I bet her to be a lice ridden old woman who has buried three husbands and whose breath stinks of fish and tobacco," Nicky spat out, grabbing Louis by the hand, pulling him to be behind him.

"Ha!" Nicki yelled racing away into the cobbled boulevard. Beggars scrambled to get out of his way else risk being ran over.

"The hell with you," Armand said in a radiant voice. He came out of the theare. He snaked his arm around Lestat's waist; his breath was reptile cold on Lestat's neck.

Lestat drew away from him, though his instincts demanded he run to him, run into his arms, to be devoured by Armand's lustful thirst.

"Ah, Lestat," Armand said glumly, "Perhaps, non, I see it in the stars. And the stars know better than to lie to me. There is no perhaps about this. You and your Nicki will be in hell. All of you. Unless you submit along with that woman you call Gabrielle to my power. I am the one you need to cause you to forget the hell of loneliness you are in even when Gabrielle and you share the kiss of blood. She is no fit match for you."

"You, you come with too many attachments," Lestat said with desperate humor, "You would have me be one of your wretched fools for God? I don't believe in God. Why should I believe we can be companions? When you would have me kiss the cross of a God you hardly believe in yourself, before you will allow me the use of your own sweet lips? You whore for God my exquisite one. Abandon your coven to live at my side, be my lover. Go to masquerades with me. Let's go to balls. We will dance with beautiful women. All of whom with their feminine perfection will rival and conquer the ancient charms of Helen of Troy. We will out wit mortals who gamble with us at cards. Let me dress you in tawny browns which best brings out the dazzling brown of your old man's eyes resting in your youth's noble face. Let me take you to operas, to ballets. We shall go to the salons of great hostesses and speak to men and women of reason. The great philosophes. Listen to their tales of new inventions. Look through their microscopes. Come over to my religion of worldliness. Surely, my sweet little monk, you must be weary of the other worldliness you insist upon being a slave to."

Armand hissed in anger, "Everything, everything for you has to be seeable, touchable, useful for you to believe in. You and the men of your century are bringing the old world to hurt and chaos. Without God to center us all in our preordained places where is the hierarchy between nobility and of the common man to go to? One man for himself with no breaks on his spirit from God or the aristocracy and the world will turn upside down into anarchy."

"You are a fool. Peasants will behave in a manner which is best for them, with or without the blessings of God. What? Uneducated peasants would trust themselves to run their own lives? To run the state of their suspicious souls? They were born to remain the children of the Great Men of the world. And men of standing will shepherd their flock with science and social reforms to make for a more compassionate world. No, Armand, the starving rabble living out their hand to hand existence have no time to turn the world upside down on us. Let me take you to a salon, now my dear. Listen to men who would transform a world to be run by reason rather than ran by superstition," Lestat said, the seduction of all the rude pleasures which can be found in the world rang out in his voice.

"And where does the devil belong in this brave new world of yours?" Armand said bitterly.

"We don't belong," Lestat said sadly, "We have no function in human being's lives anymore. The devil is dead, Armand."

Armand snarled, running away from Lestat, cursing him, and desiring him as badly as any man can desire a voluptuous creature he knows can only lead to his earthy and spiritual pollution.

Louis and Nicki traveled speedily through Paris. Louis pulled his cloak over his face, the world was going too fast by to even look at. Finally, they were out of town and in the black deepness of a forest.

Florescent eyes peeked through the woods at them. Owls made rustling noises with their great wings beating at the night sky. Unearthly cries came out from their sharp beaks making Louis quiver and hold tightly on to Nicki. Death was dealt out underneath their strong talons as they captured small mice to consume. Nicki and Louis raced through the crunch of leaves. Bare branches scratched at the sky like a witch's long nailed fingers.. The night was moon less. Nicki reigned Lestat's horse to a large lake. He pulled Louis off the horse.

Louis gave out a cry of alarm. Sure his friend meant to drown them both. Twisting his arm behind his back, Nicki dragged the struggling youth forward. "I hate him, I hate him," Nicki sobbed, "I really hate him. Him with all his trumped up goodness. He talked me into leaving the safety of my world, my father's world. Where I could blame my father's tyranny for all my failings, and not have my limited talent thrown into my face. And now he's deserted me to go back with his fellows. The landed and the titled. The bastard."

"Sir, stop, please stop," Louis screeched in pain. No match for Nicki's superior strength.

Nicki pitched him forward to fall on the ground. Louis laid there quietly listening to Nicki's crying.

"Sir," Louis said weakly, his stomach and chest hurting him. He wanted to laugh at him. He hated to admit it, but he wanted to laugh and laugh at Nicki. The whole idea of being this upset over the loss of a friendship with another man seemed ridiculous. He wanted to laugh and laugh because he felt so wretched and so nervous. Instead, he started to cry, cry softly into his hands.

"You weep for me then?" Nicki said, hugging Louis to him, "How kind of you to weep for me."

"I, I'm not kind. I'm, sir, this is the height of folly on your part to be so afflicted."

"Baby, stupid baby, what you do you know about anything?" Nicki snarled.

"I, I don't know, I'm sorry," Louis sputtered.

"You never had a lover have you? You know at all what it is like to love someone? To be a failure, a failure at everything. I could take it. Take the the greatest disappointment of my life that I want going to be nothing but a pretty good fiddler as long as he, he and I, and now, yet another disappointment. It's over for me."

"Non, it is not," Louis said firmly, "So you are not a great virtuoso, and you are nothing but a pretty good fiddler. Did it ever occur to you it's because you only play for yourself? No man without anyone, without even God can be a man inspired. A man who insists on being alone even in a forest of people will become bitter and vaporous. Music should reach out like a hand, however the intention may be, be it a slap, caress, a gentle stroke, music must reach out like a hand in your mind reaching out to another human being if it is to mean anything at all to you, or to anyone else. No wonder you are miserable; if you only use your talents to please only yourself. Your talent has been only feeding on itself. It can not grow on this sort of diet!"

"But, my lover," Nicki stammered.

"Find yourself another lover," Louis said firmly.

"You know what I really would like to be,? Nicki whispered, his fingers hot on Louis' face, touching and pawing at him. "I would like to be a loup garou. I would like to be a man-wolf and tear out your throat and lick your blood."

"Sir," Louis said paling.

"I would like that, to howl at the moon. Howl out my pain to make it heard. Look at the lake. See, there is lights in the lake and in the woods. Will O' The Wisps, and Jack O'Lanterns. They tempt us to travel into the briar patches, and the muddy water so a loup garou can devour us. His long nose buried in our ribs, devouring out our hearts and lungs. Look Louis, there are faces in the water. Ghosts of people who have drowned there. They reach out with their skeletal hands to snare us. Look, Louis, see the witches haunting these woods. They bring along with them their own bon fires to burn themselves in. Look there is a witch hiding behind that tree, Louis. She is holding a child, she is burning, burning with her child. Smoke is coming out from her hair and mouth."

"If a loup garou tries to harm me, I would cut him with my knife, and the down pour of his blood would tun him back into his man's shape, perhaps sir you need to call for a surgeon to bleed you, to lessen the pressure on your brain and heart."

"Perhaps you are right," Nicky laughed bitterly, "Perhaps you're right, I need a new lover."

He reached between Louis' legs rubbing the silken cloth between them.

"Stop," Louis gasped embarrassed, never had a man, nor a boy his own age touched him there with such rough familiarity.

"With you it is all fine talk. Like it was for him. You are nothing but a baby after all," Nicki sneered jumping off of him.

He went to his violin case, pulling out his instrument. He drew the bow along the strings, sawing away wildly, then gently upon its fine beauty. His curly brown hair waved in the breeze, his thin body swayed along with the tender notes of the music. He looked as glamorous as a vision sent down by the muses to inspire men.

Louis sat with his knees pulled up, shivering with cold. The water had a mist rising above its surface. As much as he believed in the need to grow up to think the way a rational man thinks, Louis guiltily believed in God, saints, and in fairies. He trusted there was such things as ghosts, and witches, loup garous, and mermaids, and he loved them all with a boy's thrilled, innocent love. He could hear the voices of a thousand witches flying on broomsticks in the seductive weave of Nicky's violin. He could see ghosts dancing in the fog, elegant dancing ghosts smiling at him as they did the minuet. The spirits of the lake were applauding Nicki. If only Nicki could see how valued he was in the real world, and in the other world, the world of spirits, which most people refused their imagination to see or acknowledge. He felt guilty for not giving Nicki what he needed. Comfort. He never needed this kind of comfort. The young, pretty mistress his father bought for him was more like a sister to him after their one night of hurried coupling. They embarrassed each other with their inexperience. There was no love or passion on either one of their parts to smooth over their clumsiness.

He crept over to Nicki putting his arm around his waist. Louis' silk great coat with rose and mauve flowers embroidered into the material pressed against the finery of Nicki's coat. He closed his eyes with his head pressed against Nicki's shoulder.

Nicki stopped playing. He carefully laid the violin in the tall grasses. He took Louis' great coat off of him to fall to the cold grass, he undid the buttons of his ruffled shirt reveling Louis' chest which was breathing hard with anticipation and excitement. He undid his breeches, pulling them off along with his slippers. He paused to admire the nudity of the slender young teenager whose erection was throbbing in his hand. Catching his lips, kissing, and kissing him over and over again, their world was a spin. Louis' kisses were awkward and unsure. He didn't quite know what to do with the tongue pressed between his teeth. Nicki stroked Louis' cock into bursting wetly into his strong fingers. Then Nicki stripped off his clothes. He pulled Louis to his knees.

"Lick my fingers for all your worth child," Nicki demanded.

Louis did as he was told, drawing his tongue on the warmth and length of his fingers. He felt the invasion of Nicki's wet fingers inside of him.

Louis gasped at the excruciating pain of having his anus opened, ripped apart by Nicky's huge erection. Tears ran down his eyes as Nicki's body rocked against him.

It started to feel good, but it didn't feel right. Louis started to fantasize about a boy who was a year younger than he. A boy he met in church. He fantasized the boy was beneath him, his weight was holding him down, the boy was moaning in pain and pleasure, crying out his name. And he was touching the boy's secret parts, fondling him roughly, dominating him, biting his throat, his face buried in the boy's thick red and brown curly hair, pinching his nipples, doing unspeakable things to the boy who was tied to his bed.. Bloody marks on his back, thighs, and back side, his wrists bleeding onto the sheets, roses and thorns in his hair. And the boy had bright brown eyes, and let him lick at his blood, and let him bite his legs, and every scream of pain that came from his full heavy lips were really a sigh of pleasure, and adoration. His flesh was hot with slaps, moist with blood, moist and alive. Then magically the boy's skin was free of blemishes and wounds, but not free of blood. And through he was a boy who hid his true self in secret, he could not hide the honest love he had for him, even if he could only show it in the dark, away from condemning angry eyes. He was not pretty, but his flesh was warm and strong, tender and marvelous, and smelled strangely of blood and he was passive to being aroused by pain and passionate kisses and touches. And in his great brown eyes rested love, rebellion, and shame. He put his hand to Louis' face and sighed, then he laughed abandoned in a mixture of sorrow and happiness to their great sin. Louis touched his finger to his red lips, and to his perverted excitement the boy's mouth was fanged like an animal's. He loved the boy unlike any love he had ever loved before, and he wondered if the love he felt for the boy was a true, lasting love or was it nothing but the lust of a feverish mind and body? Louis moaned in delight, thrusting so hard at the boy in his dream he almost pulled himself off of Nicki's cock. Nicki had to thrust faster to keep up with Louis.

With a moan of sweet anguish, Nicki ejaculated into Louis at the same time Louis ejaculated into his imaginary boy.

"You are not a baby," Nicki murmured, as they both stated to dress.

"Nor, are you," Louis said his body feeling delicious, and tingling. He brushed off the grass from his body. The slivers of grass was like a caress of decadent sharpness. The air around him smelled sweet of earth, evergreens and mist. And through he knew his clothes was stained with grass he did not care. All Louis wanted was to dream again.

Screams erupted slicing apart the peace of the night, screaming, ugly, wailing, screams and curses. Quickly Nicki and Louis rolled to a ditch. Their eyes wild with fear and confusion. Louis crossed himself, pulling out the rosary from his pocket, kissing it, asking the forgiveness of God, promising he would never ever fantasize about the boy again.

Two specters rode on hot, lathered, white horses, tense terror was on their faces.

"They are gaining on us, Henri," the woman wailed, "All is done for my love."

"Stand your ground Paulette. My dear daughter. Now," The man tuned his horse sharply around.

Paulette, followed his lead. She said indignantly, "I am not your daughter, Henri!"

From nowhere a band of monsters, ugly half starved monsters appeared, their claws slashing, their fangs tearing at the night air. Their clothes were filthy and stunk of tombs and graves. The moans were anguished and bitter.

Henri ran at them, smacking them with his walking stick. His frightened horse kicked its hooves at the mob. Louis held his breath at the singular graceful beauty of the man. He had his fine blond hair tied back from his handsome face with a blue satin ribbon. He was dressed almost too fashionably. His shoes boasted silver buckles and were of fine leather. Even in his anger you could tell from his face he was a man more used to expressing kindness and gentleness with his ready smiles rather than rage.

Paulette raised her sword in her dainty gloved hand, urging her horse to trample the rabble. Her red hair hung in loose curls down her open robe dress, and her bodice. Her tall-crowned hat had fallen off her pretty head miles ago. The vampires bit and tortured the poor animals with their horrid strength, biting and ripping their flesh into ribbons. Leaping backwards off their horses so the poor animals could escape, they crouched in a clearing, on guard, ready for the onslaught.

"Tonight," laughed a young hag, "Is the night we cut you up, and catch you for your coffins. Child killer, lover of Protestants. Accused ones."

Paulette's face went pale as snow. Her breasts heaved with contempt. She said swiftly, "You should talk! The child's death was an accident! Do not call my Henri a child killer, or I shall run this sword up your, your, you know perfectly well where, mademoiselle." she smiled coolly, "Your heart of course!"

(5)

Henri raised his sword to the advancing group of vampires.

Eleni, a filthy female with black tatters for a dress, her plumb white breasts exposed like a pearl on top of ashes, ran at Paulette and Henri with her torch.

With deft skillful strategy Paulette waited till the flames almost were close enough to touch the combustible silk of her open skirt, then she swiftly drove her sword under under the softness of Eleni's neck, driving the steel upward till it hit the upper palette of Eleni's mouth.

Screaming outrageously, Eleni flew back. She cursed at the pour of blood turning the whiteness of her breast a flaming red.

"Why bother attacking them?" cried out a boy, "Simply set the grass on fire. They'll burn to death."

"The grass is wet," a girl said mockingly.

"All the better. For wet grass makes for a slow bonfire," laughed another boy, named Rene. "Light the fuse. Would that Armand would let us use gun powder. I could get some. Think of the show it would make!"

"Non," said Sal, sternly, a stalk raving, hollow cheeked, saintly looking vampire, "We must deal with the lawless ones quickly. You know the master has his reasons. We are to abstain from impure chemical combinations made by men."

"Protestant lover," sneered Collette, "What gave you the right to interfere when those unchuched ones who were being hung for treason? Killing a baptized catholic boy!"

"The Protestants I saved weren't even sentenced to die. Not by a court of law! They were the victims of a lynch mob. There was no treason on their part, it was nothing more than a land dispute which they were being murdered for," Henri said flatly, "When I fired into the air, my horse jumped and I ended up firing in the crowd. I did not mean to kill that little boy. What does it matter to you, fair one? What I did as a mortal man?"

"It matters to me," muttered Collette, her face in the light of the fire appeared to belong to a species of serpent's rather than to the ranks of vampire. "Protestants kill the supernatural aspect of God by denying his physical presence during the mass."

"It's too close to home, my pretty? If Protestants deny the possibility of the flesh being in the transformed host, they'll soon deny the physical existence of your master the devil? Tell me has Satan ever put his cold rod up that burning bush of yours?" Paulette said snidely, "Has his blessed cloven foot ever kicked that fat backside of yours?"

Collette wailed dashing at Paulette with her torch.

Jumping out of the ditch, Louis scrambled to protect Paulette.

"Leave her alone you cowardly villains. You outnumber them. You both have my services for what my services are worth to you," Louis said, smacking Colette as hard as he could with his walking stick.

Louis' hair stood up on his young neck.

I never seen such horrors, Louis thought. For a second he went dizzy with fear, and he almost swooned. Then his courage took over and he was ready to war against all these monsters to the death.

Collette dropped her torch. She stood with her mouth open wide. The irony of it all tickled her. She started to laugh. The others all broke out into jeering laughter, swinging their torches like bells. To see a mouse protecting cats from other cats.

Paulette put her hand on Louis' shoulder; Henri put his hand on the other shoulder, they both pulled Louis behind them.

"You, for what it's worth," Henri said gallantly, "You have my protection, sir."

"And mine too, young boy," Paullette said, wiping a sentimental tear from her eyes, trying to put a brave show on her face, convinced they were all three going to die together.

Nicki crawled quickly out from his hiding place to crouch by Louis' side, grabbing his hand, he pulled Louis down.

"Young one, this isn't your fight. I must take you back to your uncle. We're unarmed. What good are we to these people? We'll only get in their way. I couldn't live with myself if you were harmed. It's my fault you are here in the first place. We must leave. This must be nothing but a dream," Nicki wiped at his face with his sleeve. " Look at them. How can they be real?"

"I will not allow these ruffians, these foul creatures to molest a woman," Louis said angrily, springing himself up to stand in front of Paulette.

Nicki jumped up, throwing his dagger at the boy who was closest. To his terror the dagger went right through the boy's eye. The boy laughed, pulling it out, blood streaming down his face in hot currents.

The boy grinned at Nicki, then licked at the blood on the dagger as if it were the sweetest of sugars.

Throwing Louis to be out of her way, Paulette thrust, and parried, doing her best to keep the flames at bay.

Jabbing his sword right through a girl's neck, making quick swift turns of his wrist, Henri almost succeeded in making her to be a headless monster.

Louis screamed. The woman kept right on the fighting with her head bobbing up and down on her chest, hanging by by meaty tendons and muscle.

Henri , thought Paulette, We cannot keep this up any longer.

Swiftly, she cut off part of the trim of her dress which was ignited with flames.

Henri, before I die, I must tell you I love you. I'll always love you. If only you could have loved me back. How happy we would have been, my dear one.

It's not over yet, Paulette. Listen to my thoughts the both of you. Do not say a word out loud. Young one do you have a cross? Or do you, sir? Henri thought

Oui, I have a rosary," Louis thought, But how will that help? He swing his walking sick at a torch knocking it out of a vampire's hand. I'll give it to you.

"Non, non," Henri thought impatiently, They'll think it to be unclean if I banish it about. Hold it up. Tell them to stop.

Louis pulled out his rosary from his pocket. Holding the beads tangled in his hand with the cross plainly visible, he screamed, "In the name of God be gone."

To his terrified amazement Henri and Paulette feel to the ground screaming in agony.

"The pain," Paulette whimpered, "The Christ consumes us with bitter pain."

Henri gasped, kicking, and struggling in the grass. He seemed to have an invisible harpy eating at his vitals. "God's fire from His cross is torturing my poor limbs. I am on unending fire. Burn me good fellows with your torches, cleanse me so my time in hell is a short one, recuse me from this torture."

The boy screamed, "The mortal is a true believer of God. His mind is full of convection. He's a believer in God. And of us!"

The boy fell to the ground weeping, "I beg you, kind boy, put down your cross. The sight of it causes me to suffer."

You do that, and they'll be at your throat quicker than you can take your next breath, thought Henri.

How can your thoughts be in my mind? What is going on here? Who are they? Who are you? Louis thought.

The vampires rolled around on the ground, biting and clawing at their pale flesh.

They are blood suckers, Paulette thought, They think we are too. But we're not. We're messengers of God, Angels. They consume human blood. We drink the blood of animals, Paulette with her thoughts lied to Louis, "Keep the cross on them. They cannot stand the light of day, nor can we. Soon they will have to runaway to their catacombs. And we will have to dig ourselves a grave."

You are not afraid of the cross then? Nicki thought, his mind dipping in and out of sanity. He could see no reality in all of this. He still was determined to question what was happening, and to take it all to be a dream which he could not yet awaken from.

I told you we are angels, thought Paulette, It's the doing of their coven master. He taught them to be deadly afraid of God. He keeps them weak and confused. They must share two to a victim. He does this to keep them unhealthy so he can consign them to the flames whenever his whim dictates it."

The wailing vampires stopped wallowing in the grass and dirt. Slowly, they stood up from the ground. Graceful and lithe in their trance. Their faces turned from ugliness into beautiful adoration and tender love. Their white faces stood a radiant, molten silver in the night like dew on spider webs.

Louis almost dropped his rosary, so bewitched was he of the elegance and wisdom of their smiles on their peaceful faces. They stated to dance in the glade. They all could be creatures of Diana the Goddess of the moon and hunting. Louis thought, why are they acting this way?

I have a good idea why they are acting this way, Henri thought, resisting the lure of music which Louis and Nicki were incapable of hearing, And it does not bode well for us.

The coven vampires twirled around like dancing, rubber dolls. Up on their toes, down to their heels. Contorting their bodies like snakes and spirits. Sweeping their slender shapes on the grass, then leaping in the wind. They danced a Sabbath dance. The torches died to ash. Without words they left like body less shadows down to recede in the darkness.

Oui, it was I, Henri, who made the night music with my night time voice bursting into song which made them dance. Might I apologize for Collette's embarrassing misbehavior, Henri," said a sturdy boy with shoulder length auburn hair, appearing out of the mist.

He was all awash with silver it seemed to Louis. Here is the angel who out of politeness keeps his wings folded so not to startle mere mortals, Louis marveled. He reminds me of the boy in my night time, sinful dreams.

"I will," Armand said in a sage voice, "break Collette's neck for you. She's such a religious bigot. I'm her priest, confessor, and the closest thing to God she'll ever truly know. How dare she harbor loyalty to the Catholic Church a trumped up religion which lent to it self notions from the pagan's? Didn't I teach her that the only church is the church which resides in our own divinity under my rule and the rule of the coven masters? The God of mortals has no longer any notice of her. Colette is both above and below God, yet she still acts out on the violent prejudices she grew up with. I'll break her neck tonight, and when it's healed I'll break it again. Perhaps I'll make a holy ghost of her if I'm so inclined."

"You protest too much Armand against a God. who was once a hero to you. You old cynic," Henri said, getting off from the ground, patting grass from off of his fine clothing, "I suppose you intend to kill us now."

"Kill you?" Armand said gaily, striding over to Louis.

Grabbing his hand Armand squeezed it.

Screaming out in pain, his bones almost breaking, Louis dropped the rosary for Armand to catch with his free hand.

Cheerfully, Armand whipped Louis lightly in the face with it. Armand studied the small wooden figure of Christ. To Louis' surprise Armand kissed it with the reverence of a lover, then he bitterly laughed , tossing the rosary carelessly over his shoulder.

"Listen, we have no traffic with you" Nicki said, "Whatever you are."

"I'm your life Nicki, your God, your master, your fate, get down and worship me mortal, or I will cut your mortal throat from here to there. Try me?

Slapping Nicky to hurtle backwards, Armand stood, waiting to see what Nicki would do.

Spitting out a tooth, Nicky got up to his knees, and on to his feet. He ran to his beloved violin, "Kill me now, cowardly spirit. Let me play you my requiem at least before I die," Nicki cursed.

"Lovely thought. I heard you play. You're really rather good. You'll play for us all later," Armand said, pursing his lips, putting his hands behind his back, "Killing you now would be a bit premature. It would spoil my party. You say mortal this isn't your fight. Really? But what if all of this involved," he made a graceful gesture with his hand, "What if all this all involved Lestat? Now is it your fight Nicki?"

"What have you done with Lestat?" Nicki growled. Every bone in his body was ready to attack Armand.

"I would like to say," Armand said with the pained look of a long suffering lover, "That it was I who was that rich widow that Lestat is supposedly wed to."

"He spurns you then," Nicki said, his hand folding into fists.

"Oui, Lestat spurns me for babbles. Worldly stupid babbles that mere age," Armand hissed, grabbing the new lace of Paulette's dress, "ruins and spoils. I try to explain to Lestat over and over again his world has ended. And he has to take his leave of mortals, and this new age. What is age to us? Fashion, invention, philosophy, it's nothing but shifting sand."

"Is Lestat dead?" Nicki said in a faint voice, "Are you telling me he is now a type of ghost. A type of ghoul? And you've come to collect his immortal soul?"

"Who would have thought you to be so clever?' Armand said, "Exactly Nicki. Lestat is dead." he watched without pity the tears that came to Nicki's brown eyes.

"And I am here to collect him. And you too by the way."

"Me?" Nicki said, angrily, backing away.

"Oui, look at me, the wanton, overly bold, angel of your death. Come now. Am I not a pretty one at least? Open your arms to me Nicki. Open them wide to receive me. Lestat will not stand still long enough to listen to me. I need to bribe him to listen to me. What better bribe than the threat of your life?"

Hesitating, stepping away, Nicki then stood still, opening arms to embrace Armand. Slowly, Armand took long steady steps towards him. Before his lips could part to caress his neck, Nicki spit in Armand's face, twisting out away from him. Nicki tried to run

With one fine blow Armand smacked him on the forehead sending Nicki's unconscious body bulleting down to the ground.

"Now as for you my pretty boy. And you are a green eyed minx," Armand said sweetly, "So Henri he is under your protection?"

Henri said quietly, leaning on his sword , his face tense, "Oui, he is but a child. Even a monster like you can show compassion to a child who is a nobody to you." He brought up his sword, taking a fighter's stance

"And Paulette, he is under your protection too?" Armand asked solicitously.

"Oui," Paulette sad, feeling guilty, raising her eyes in meek appeal for mercy where she knew none would be found.

Grabbing her by her slim wrist, Armand yanked her to his boy's chest, relieving her of her sword, placing it to her white, trembling neck.

"Mercy?" Armand mocked, "I was showed little mercy when I was young. You want mercy Henri? A choice then," Armand teased, "Paulette or the boy."

"Leave her alone," Louis said angrily, 'there is no choice to be made here. I will, I will," Louis said sadly, trying to be brave. "fight you in a duel, sir. You showed my poor friend Nicki little of your honor. Show me the courtesy of a duel, sir."

"Henri, Paulette said gently, "Your honor, my honor."

"Is nothing compared to how much I love you. I cannot allow you to kill my fledging, Armand, by my choosing another over her," Henri said sadly, putting his sword at rest.

Laughing, Armand threw Paulette to Henri's feet.

"Why didn't you just take Louis from us? Why this game?" Henri said bitterly, "You're powerful enough. Why didn't you just murder us? Then leave with him."

"And do my master the devil a disservice? Am I not Satan's saint? Satan adores to tempt, to tease, to humiliate mortals and immortals with such impossible choices like this. How could a weak devil like myself resist? I'll kill the both of you later when it pleases me, and not when it pleases you. I have my own time table," he smiled thinking fondly of Bianca, Henri's maker. Foolish Bianca who wanted to make a kind but befuddled vampire.

"Why not join me Henri? Paulette is welcome to come too," Armand asked, charity in his voice.

"I do not care for your coven's tailor," Henri said, critically eyeing the rags Armand was in, "I think not."

"Foolish, foolish man," Armand said arrogantly, "Clothes do not make the man. Clothes are but an accessory to boast about how much power a man would like the world to think he has. It can be such an empty boast Henri." He smiled at the wealth of Henri's fine clothes.

"Does it have to be this way?" Henri asked quietly, "The torture of outsiders? Cruelty for the sake of cruelty to mortals."

"Henri you do surprise me with your appeal to my conscience," Armand laughed, "What kind of liberal dolt do you take me for?'

Shooting up into the night with the mortals he disappeared.

"I'm sorry Henri. Think of Louis and Nicki as dead. It was foolish and shameful of us to make promises we cannot keep. We are only refugees here."

"I'll talk to Lestat, he'll grant me an audience."

"You will not. Please don't be such a fool. Lestat, he is vain, full of himself and of his power. He'll laugh in your face. He's probably as capacious as Armand. That mother of his, I don't trust her. I loved the baby I lost in childbirth. Gabrielle had seven births. Henri I saw her in a vision. She was holding an infant. A boy. Under water. There were bubbles coming out of his small nose. He was turning blue. He looked unnatural like a sea creature. It was her first born. A nurse, she came. And yanked away her hands. She pulled the baby out. It was a healthy, chubby child with plumb little legs, and arms waving about. Perfect little fingers. It was screaming, and coughing, gasping for air. She slapped the nurse then she ran away. Called it filthy. Now look at what she has become. For whatever reason maybe God does seek out those who are evil to fill the ranks of our race. I have no idea what evil we have done, perhaps we don't know our hearts as well as God knows our hearts," Paulette wrung her hands, "It is the poor boy's bad luck what has happened. We cannot be this boy's nurse. His savior. Are we responsible for the luck or life of mortals? What is our role but to kill them? I made a false promise to Louis to protect him. I thought it didn't matter. I thought death would release me from my obligations to Louis. So out of vanity I lied to him. Louis is dead I tell you."

"Hush, whatever happened to Gabrielle in her mortal life is of no lesson or of any consequence to us. Her act against her child wasn't an evil one, but the act of an unbalanced mind. I think Lestat may prove to have a kind heart. At least we may appeal to his sense of the ridiculous by our asking for his help. I gave Louis my word. Why is it that a vampire has to be killed not only from his days, but from his sense of decency and honor too? This boy tried to save our lives, he stood up for us, and I refuse to forget him."

"He did have the look of immortality on his face. I saw no such feature to his poor friend's appearance." Paulette said soberly, "if it be of your will to try to save the boy, then I will be coconspirator in your cause. But, Henri, I think you are working for the impossible. What of his friend Nicki?"

"His friend is under Lestat's protection and stewardship. I know I'm contemplating the impossible, and in the end, it may be end up being more merciful if I kill Louis myself rather than keeping him alive to be insane. Anything would be better than the long drawn out, creative horrors Armand will inflect upon Louis. Hurry the dawn it is approaching." Henri whistled. Their two white horses appeared. The wound were superficial. Getting onto their steeds they sped to
their coffins.

(6)

Soft velvet lips were pressed to his moist lips. The feel of teeth nibbling on his lower lip, and a long snout sniffing at his breath to check exactly the degree of how alive he was caused Louis to open his eyes and stare right into the beady eyes of a huge gray sewer rat.

"Ahh," Louis screamed, sending the rat scurrying to rattle amongst the dry bones in the niches of the catacombs.

He stumbled up. In the middle of the room was a long black coffin. On the coffin was draped sleeping naked mortals. He shooed away the rats sniffing inquisitively at their venerable flesh. A woman with all most white blond hair had a ribbon tied around her neck which served as her only piece of clothing. Her legs were tucked under her hips, her arms spread eagled wide open to embrace the narrow coffin. A little boy with curling hair was tucked upon the lid. A man twenty years old with shoulder length curly brown hair and fine light eye lashes was propped up upon the wood riding it. Louis blushed trying not to look at the strength of the man's fine back and the curve of his back side. His hands were cracked and callused for such a young man. You could tell he was a common laborer. Louis checked their pulses, unsure what he could do for them. He tried to rouse them, but they would not awaken from their troubling dreams. Their breathing was shallow and labored. They appeared to be drugged.

"Nicki," he whispered. He could hear scratching and sobbing coming from somewhere. The skulls stared back at him in their niches with expressionless eyes.

"I cant get out Louis. I can't breath. I'm going to die."

Grabbing the padlock of the coffin, Louis threw off the slumbering mortals. Pressing himself to lay upon it, he laid his ear flat on to it.

"I can't breath. I can't move. My nose is pressed against the lid. I can't see, I'm blind," Nicki wept, "They left me here my friend to perish."

"I'll get you out," Louis said frantically, pulling with all his strength on the chain. He kicked his foot, and slammed his shoulder repetitively against the coffin. Sobbing, he collapsed on top of it. He could hear Nicki screaming inside, great gasping screams.

Shuddering against it, he head music. Music of harps, pipes and mandolins. It all sounded more exquisite than any musical vibrations he had ever heard before. His sobbing vanished. In to the room which served for the grave of so many, danced a beautiful old woman. She wore a fanciful mask on top of her head in the shape of a feathered loon which half covered her face. Her plunging neckline of her dress reveled her round globes of bountiful, firm breasts. A very pretty vampire with her long , black hair pulled back from her face twirled and twirled in circles into the room, she was wearing nothing but red gossamer silk. Her gypsy eyes were magnificent. Collette came in dressed in velvets all of green. He could clearly see the shape of her young feline body, the curve of her breasts, and the tantalizing fullness of her round hips. He could taste her sweet laughter.

The men were tantalizingly dressed as mermen with silver scales glued to their naked legs, their nether hair dyed blue, sea shells in their hair, they blew upon conch shells. Louis' eyes were dazzled. He wished he could fall into their arms, and be loved, and not killed by them. One, the one that seemed his age, all of fifteen, had his crotch almost pressed almost against his face. He swallowed feeling utterly captive to a dream of arousal which beat against his mind demanding to be appeased.

"What madness is this?" Louis whispered, trying to block their view of the coffin with his body.

"Our kind of madness. I heard you Nicki and your lies. We left you there to perish? Not at all, we drilled air holes with which you could breath from," Armand said in a voice so gentle who could not trust him? "Lestat thought we didn't have our own masquerades."

"Once a month the fist night where there is no moon which is but the cold peek hole of God by which He looks through to spy down upon us, we attire ourselves thus," whispered the mad old woman, "When no one is looking."

"Stand aside boy," Armand said, licking his lips with the point of his tongue. He pushed Louis rudely off the coffin.

Breaking the padlock of Nicki's coffin, he smiled at Nicki, saying kindly, "Excuse this premature burial We promise to get it right next time."

The other vampires broke out in delicate peals of laughter like cracking layers of thin ice breaking on a winter's warm day.

Nicki feel to his knees, his face and body sticky with the sweat he was marinated in. His eyes opening and shutting rapidly in the blinding light. His curly hair matted and stinking. He stunk deliciously of human body odor and other fluids humans shed from their eyes, and their nether parts. The vampires all breathed deeply of the mortal smells which wafted off of him. He smelled better than the scent of pies that they held so dear in their memories for the sumptuousness of their smell.

"So you play the violin? We have no one who plays such an instrument. Would you honor us with your divine talent?" Armand said breezily.

"I will not, I will not, " Nicki said, looking wildly about the room to find a way to escape.

The two vampires dressed in the hood of executioners wheeled in a small wooden cage.

"What a pity,' Armand said ruefully, rubbing his chin. "I so wanted to hear you play for us." He was dressed in tights and a doublet. He looked like he dropped out of the Renaissance. "Put him into the cage. Our little bird doesn't want to make music. He should be kept the for the display then for his fine plumage. Or perhaps we should cook this bird?"

The two vampires started to lay wood around the cage.

"Non, non," Nicki said hoarsely, "Please I beg you."

"I beg you to play for us," Armand said politely with a sparkle in his eyes.

Nicki put the violin Armand gave him under his chin, drawing the bow rapidly across the strings.

The old vampire woman and the fair vampire danced back to back in circles, their legs flying fantastically. The old vampire bent down at the waist to kiss the forehead of the woman on the floor. The mortal groaned like she was having a wonderful dream. She untied the ribbon around the mortal's neck, tossing it with a flourish to the floor. The old vampire's lips caressed her lips, and she ran her long red tongue down to her chin, lapping at her neck. Then she bit. She stretched her arms out in back of her, her rump in the air, her face buried in the woman's neck. She looked like a glorious butterfly drinking nectar from a white lily with gold trim on the edges of its petals. The other vampires took her lead, bending down at their waist like to touch their toes, biting into the woman's flesh. One took a breast, a thigh, a calf. The woman undulated under the fangs biting into her. She made noises along with them, her noises were soft and muffled, there's were of gentle growls deep in their throats. The room had the voice of waves hitting against the beach. Soft lapping liquid noises under the sensuous rich sound of Nicki's violin. Louis closed his eyes his body swaying to Nicki's music, everything was mysterious and wanton to him as she lay there dying.

Then the woman's neck arched back, and she gave out a gasp deep from out from of her extinguishing body. She died in all their butterfly soft arms.

They departed from the dearly departed, delicately wiping their bloody mouths with the back of their white hands. They had the unearthly glow of satellites.

They mingled, talked, danced, playing at charades, they ignored the mortals in the room

They were playing a game called Punishment. A player would have to perform a silly request like leaping into the air and doing seven somersaults. If the performer did not satisfy his or her audience; they called for a punishment to be meted out to them.

The punishment would be equally as silly. A slap on the face with a fan, or being made to bray like a donkey.

Louis was bewildered and in shock. He went to the woman's corpse. Blood was still moist on her flesh. He couldn't believe she was dead. It didn't seem possible that they could dare be singing and laughing, playing their little games while she lay dead on the floor. Nicki escaped into his music. Louis took off his shirt and put it over the corpse. The vampires all stared at the pretty white of his muscular adolescent flesh, the sweet pink of his small nipples. The hairlessness of his chest. With poignant sighs they stopped their lustful viewing of him, and returned to their gossip.

The little boy woke up He ran about the room like a trapped rabbit inside a house. His little arms outstretched as if he thought he somehow could fly out. A laughing lady caught him by his little legs. She drew him to her lips, and he soon had blood on his cheek. The salt from a tear fell into the salty drops of his blood, and she did lick his sweet baby's face. With a languid, sentimental smile the young vampire of fifteen years bit into the small wrist, he removed his mouth to sniff at the bites he made. Tenderly, the woman petted the crying child, smoothing out its curls from it's bleeding face. There was a motherly fascination on her pale face. She admired the child's nudity, his healthy, well formed body. She tickled his baby fat. She laughed when the child tried to slap the fifteen year old vampire when he teased it by pretending he was going to put his lips to kiss his other wrist. She said lovely words to the child, and then her words became nothing but razor sharp fangs, and she dug them into the child's breast and drained the horror and pain from his eyes to be a peaceful, dull, expressionless blue.

Louis fell his knees, he dug into pocket, whimpering.

"Are you looking for this?" Armand whispered in his ear, dropping the rosary in front of him, "I have destroyed it's so called powers."

The rosary was naked of Christ.

Armand took the corpse of the child and put it into Louis' arms. "Pray then for their souls, pray for their souls," whispered Armand, "Come now my eighteenth century boy make yourself useful to us. Be our priest."

Louis stiffened, his stomach turning, his head aching, he wanted to hide the child's body, bury the child so they could no longer look at it with their greedy eyes. He wanted to protect the corpse, but how? He covered it with himself, holding it gently as if to warm it. He looked around the room, for anything, a blanket, a shawl anything. Finally, he crawled with the boy to a skeleton which had a remnants of a gown on its bones. He begged pardon to the body, feeling the dead woman had no more need for modesty as her flesh was no more. He tore off a fragment of cloth from the bones. He covered the corpse up with it. He was numb and he wanted to make believe he was dreaming. His conscience refused to let him drift into insanity, he had to stay clear minded for the sake of the little one's soul, so he prayed and prayed and prayed.

"You are a marvel," Armand said kindly. "What is it in you that would care so much for such a small morsel of flesh? Tell me was he and his kind made only to be served for dinner?"

Louis felt like slamming his fist as hard as he could into Armand's smug face. He closed the lids of the child's still eyes. He whispered, "Who now knows what more he was made for? Oui, if you insist he was born to be eaten. Proud?"

"Do you think I am indifferent?" Armand whispered back. "Think of how aware his mother is of God and of life now that he is gone from her. I am the storybook people are forced to read. I tell them the story of life and death, and they can't escape the passages on my pages."

The young man woke from his slumber. A male intercepted in his attempt of flight. He made the frightened naked man look Nicki full in the face.

Nicki watched his eyes. He had huge planets for eyes. He pulled his bow up the strings in a swaying motion. The male bit into the young man's neck, stroking his back, lazily, murmuring passionate words to him. The vampire declared his adoration and love for him. He promised to be loyal. The man whispered for Nicki to help him. Nicki's body convulsed and he kept on playing. He wanted desperately to touch his rough and cut hands with his smooth hands, he wanted to hold his hands to comfort him. The vampire laughed under his breath and he drank. Nicki watched, looking into the bestial, wet, dumb stare of those sad brown eyes dying. They closed and blinked. Nicki watched fascinated at his face, his nostrils breathing for air, the lips mumbling moronically though he was not moron, his head slumped down as it it were a flower on a broken stem, he hung crucified in the vampire's arms. His feet and his hands were of no use to him. anymore.

The vampire released him to fall to the dust of the earthen floor, He whispered into Nicki's ear, "Such is the cruel ways of love." Nicki gasped. His hands stopped moving. His bow was still. he thought of Lestat and how he deserted him.

"Punishment," the vampires jeered.

"Oui, you deserve a punishment, pretty animal," Armand said wildly, taking Nicki's hands, he took the thumbs and with one quick twist he broke them.

Nicki's scream of pain broke Louis out of his prayerful stupor. Angrily, he ran at Armand, slamming his fist into his groin. Armand picked Louis up as if he were the dead child. He hurled him into the coffin. Then he tossed in the child's corpse. "Make another disturbances and I'll shut the lid on you and your little doll," he laughed. Moving like a cobra, he crushed Nicki's shirking with pain body, covering his mouth with a kiss. He forced Nicki to dance around the room with him. Sensuously, he led him in a rhythmic dance, and each vampire took his turn with Nicki when they passed by. Eleni bit Nicki's throat, sucking it hard. Her hands played hot against his buttocks under his breeches, cupping, and squeezing them. The fifteen year old vampire bit his neck next, caressing his crotch as he drank. Others put their hands up his shirt touching him on the nipples, or slid their hands down to play with his balls. They all bit his throat till it was raw and black with blood and shredded flesh and was bloody as meat sacrificed at ancient altars.

And it was all beautiful. Louis felt dizzy and drunk. The core of his mind pulsed, spinning around and around. It felt like he was moving through he was laying quite still. The white calcium of the skulls amongst their bones glowed like Jack O'Lanterns in the dark corners. The vampires all of blood and moonbeams danced on feet seemly unsolid. The fresh corpses were as blue as a clear peaceful skies. The child, laying on his breast, had lips the mixture of a color of bluebell flowers and cockle shells. The delicate veins of the dead child's face stood out wonderfully like they had been drawn there by a great artist with a blue pencil. His little face was angelic and cold. Nicki was bleeding like a lamb at market. All of it was nothing but beautiful waves of colors and scents flowering in the room. And most of all was Armand. Armand with his elfin eyes, his impish smile, his hair as red as autumn maple leaves. Armand who had yet to drink.

With a merciless explosion the false colors blew up into patches blackness. Only the vampires faces glowed in the light of torches. And nothing was beautiful but they. The bones were ghastly, and smelled of the scent of garbage. The corpses were hideously tragic. The child's dead mouth hung loosely and stupidly. Nicki was nothing but a suffering man, his face angry and twisted with hate and fury that Louis as yet was unharmed. He couldn't believe the injustice of it all. Then his face fell in shamed envy. He ran to Louis, begging for his forgiveness.

The spell was over. They were all wearing their squalid rags laughing at Louis for his frail duplicity for his being so easily duped with beautiful visions. They swing a half dead Nicki out of his arms. Striking him with small riding crops leaving cob webs of blood bleeding on his back which they sucked at.

Going to the coffin, Armand pulled Louis out, keeping his wrists trapped behind his back.

"Put the animal in his cage for his lover Lestat to see. He's the only soul Lestat has I can use to hold over his damnable head."

"What of him?" Eleni, said chillingly, her clear nails rushing across Louis' young face.

"I will have a dinner conversation with this young meal," Armand said cheerfully.

"Wait Nicki, I won't leave him," Louis yelled, breaking sway from Armand, he threw his arms around Nicki's shoulders. A jolt of pain lit up in his throat from Nicki biting him. Something snapped in Nicki. He was half insane.

He shook against Louis holding on to him desperately, whispering in his ear, "The only way I can save myself is to be one of them. Don't hate me. I can't help that I want to live. Please don't let them burn me. I couldn't stand to die that way. Please."

Prying the two apart, Armand effortlessly forced Nicki into the cage, locking him in. He took the violin and threw it onto the rest of the wood. He lit the wood on fire. Nicki struggled hopelessly in the cage while they all laughed at his antics. Smoke was suffocating him, filling his lungs. He fell to the floor of the cage, screaming in choked agony. Armand snapped his fingers causing the flames to die. "We mean business Nicki. We must have your Lestat before he exposes is all with his foolish mingling with mortals. Once he sees you as you are now how can any power you ever had over him exist? How can any mortal remain still attractive to him when he sees how truly insignificant you morals are? It will be by his hand which will be the devise that kills you Nicki."

He turned to an angry Louis who was being held in Eleni's subduing arms, "You really must accept my invitation to lay down on my bed, my young friend," Armand said briskly, dragging Louis amongst the ribaud hootings of the others to his bedroom.

"This has been nothing but a gross masturbation of your egos," Louis snarled, fighting against his unnaturally hard body.

"Isn't that the purpose of entertainment? To pleasure ourselves?" Armand said happily. "Non, you mistake us. This is all an edifying lesson to you. That moral strength, beauty and youth is no weapon when in the clutches of whimsical death. Haven't you learned your lesson? You are unarmed sir."

Forcing him on his filthy cot, he tied Louis' hands with leather strips behind his back. He paced about the room opening and closing his mouth, looking for all the world for the right words to say.

Finally, he stopped his pacing. Armand jumped on the cot straddling Louis. "Tell me about this damnable new age before I lose control of myself and rip you to pieces boy."

(7)

"Explain the eighteenth century to you? Do you, sir, live in a box?" Louis said, shuddering on the cot.

Armand put his elbows to his knees still straddling Louis. "Look around you, boy. What do you think?"

The walls of his private room were lined with book shelves of different titles and authors: Kant, Voltaire, Newton, Buffon's "Natural History of Zoology and Biology".

"Tell me, tell me," Armand yelled, leaping off the bed. Wailing, Armand threw heavy leather bound books at Louis.

Louis wiggled and ducked to avoid being hit. He wasn't quick enough. A heavy bound bound novel, "La Nouvelle Heloise" by Rousseau hit him square on the forehead raising a bump.

"Don't you read these books?" Louis asked pitifully out from under the pile.

"Non, I haven't the time, nor the inclination, and when I do bother to take a moment or two to read this horrible nonsense I become so infuriated I toss the book that I'm reading to slap against a wall! This age hasn't my regard nor my appreciation. I like it not, boy, I like it not. Here," he snarled, taking a white porcelain mask placing it on Louis face. "I prefer not to be distracted by your loveliness while we have our discussion."

"I will wear a mask too," Armand said. He put the same style of an expressionless mask on his face. The masks made both their faces look like the faces of dolls. "Now mortal, we are equals." He said pleased with himself.

"Why don't you like this century?" Louis said in a soft placating voice. He sweated against the hard ceramic mask.

"Why! Why! Why! Because it has nothing to do with me, that's why! Listen to this," he took a book off of Louis' calf and started to read it. "Nature is to be worshipped!" He slammed the book shut, "Voltaire says there is no need for saints, churches, prayers, communion, or acts of worship."

"So?"

"How am I going to control that rabble of superstitious vampires out there, so, so! Without rituals, without the rules of the coven there is nothing to tie us together."

"Sir, I am a poor teacher for you," Louis said, "I believe God is to be revered over his creation. I am not Voltaire."

"Then do you believe I am above nature?"

"I believe you to be a devil."

"That I am, that I am. Very reasonable for you to come to such a conclusion," Armand said bitterly.

"What you did to those people was despicable," Louis said bravely, " I don't believe those people were unworthy of being shown common decency and respect from you."

"Bash! Old age, boils, baldness, the gout, impotency, that's the common decency mortals have to put up with from nature. I was a kind soul to them! At least I was, for the most part, I was quick about killing them! Enough, tell me what this all means?"

"It's, it's just not enough anymore for mortals not to see things beyond the open of their eyes," Louis said weakly, feeling like the princess in the tale "Arabian Nights" who had to entertain her master with a story every night least he behead her. "We need our telescopes to see the stars churning through space in sprawling galaxies."

"Why?" Armand pleaded, "Isn't it enough for you mortals to simply look at the fixed stars in the sky? Why so you have to see swirling stars? Stars which could crash into the earth, crushing it to a hot cinder. Are you not ever afraid of what you might discover? What's the matter with all the old familiar stars you used to looking at?"

"It just isn't enough for us any more to be placid. And the elements. Did you know they could be divided? When you combine oxygen and hydrogen together in a a jar and add an electric spark a bang occurs, and water collects on the sides of the container," Louis said desperately "And fire. It is oxygen united with matter."

"How do you know such a thing as oxygen exists? Do you take it on blind faith?" Armand said smiling a winter cold smile, "Can you see it, can touch it?"

"A bird is put by scientists in a bell jar," Louis said weakly, "The air is pumped out of the jar. The bird flies about and dies. Thus proving a living thing will die without oxygen.''

"Of course people of this century could not take it on blind faith alone that oxygen exists they have to prove it. So the absence of this element proves to cause death," Armand said drolly, "And tell me if we pumped out the essence of all that is what mortals would call the paranormal; fairies, vampires, God, loup garous, what would happen to the little mortal in the bell jar?"

"Some say nothing. Some say the little mortal would create a paradise on earth. You see in his theory Hume states that religious sentiments grew out of fear and hope. But I ask you what did love grow out of but from fear and hope? Isn't fear and hope the mothers of every science Astronomy, biology. Isn't the questions you're asking me based on fear? What are you so afraid of with your curious questions to me?"

"I am not afraid, do you think boy I am afraid of you?" Armand said tightly, putting his ear to Louis' chest, "Listen to your heart, and it will tell you by the degree of the speed of its aggravation who is afraid."

"You are. You are afraid. You had to make such a grandiose show of killing those people. Why? What were you really trying to impress on me? What are you afraid of? So afraid you sought to weaken my courage."

"I'm afraid you'll all humble us. I'm afraid for our very vampire race. The very word vampire will become extinct in every day language. I'm afraid people will no longer have us in their imagination. I'm afraid the more knowledge you obtain the more distance there will be between you and me."

"Isn't that a blessing? Shouldn't you want that? Isn't being anonymous your best defense?"

"Oui, but it is my loneliest defense." Armand whispered, a blood tear running down his face. "Don't you see our acts will no longer be thought of as being acts of God. When we kill a mortal they will no longer attribute it to the will of God, but to, to bad luck. I've been reduced in the world to being nothing but bad luck."

"Man through a social contract works for the greater good of the state and creates as near he can a heaven on earth," Louis said, "Perhaps it's time for you to devils to leap in the fire and leave alone the heaven we mortals are trying to create."

"And what if man breaks his contract? What if the bishops you have go to live in palaces, bishops appointed by the merit of their birth, and not of their goodness, what if a governing body lines it own pockets with money meant for the state?"

"Then the contract is declared nil and void, and the injured parties will seek retribution. It is in the nobility's and the church's best interest to serve the people. They must know this, or they will end up on bonfires."

Armand patted the mask's cheek. "Do you think I'm such a bad fellow?" he asked.

"I don't understand you. Your showiness. Your display of passion," Louis said, twisting his face away. "You are so unreasonable. I can't understand why."

"Did you know I killed your uncle Alexandre?" Armand said gently, "I ate him alive, and only when he died did I stop eating him."

"Why are you telling me this?" Louis cried, petrified.

Armand tore open Louis' shirt, running his hands down on his flat abdomen, up to his ribs, stroking his sweet nipples.

"Stop," Louis growled trying to twist away from the mouth which gave a tight nipple a kiss and a lick.

"I'm not going to stop till I'm done," Armand said, "I want you to know what I am." He wickedly licked down the middle of his chest to the waistband of his breeches. "You explained yourself to me, let me explain myself. How old do you take me for?"

"Eighteen, seventeen," Louis gasped. Armand slid his hands against Louis' hot mortal flesh. Louis moaned his nipples becoming impossibly tight under Armand sharp tongue.

Armand raised his eyes up to him, his head laying against his chest. "I am five hundred years old. I came from out of the Renaissance and we too had our men of talent and learning. We had our Galio's or Leonardo's,"

"Then why fear change?" Louis rasped, "listen to me nothing really changes. Lavoisier's proved that matter cannot be created or destroyed by chemical changes. Water frozen is still water. All the elements in a decaying corpse may separate liquidity, and turn to gas, but the make up of the matter remains the same. Nothing that was there has been taken away or added. It's always been the same with society. It may fulculate into different shapes, but the seek of justice, a moral code to live by, a desire to belong, or a desire to be an outcast will remain forever as long a there is a social animal called man on this planet. I cannot imagine men turning away from their witches, their vampires completely sir. You bring magic into our lives."

"Are you sure?" Armand teased, "Are you sure the world isn't changing too fast for us? We beings who have paintings for faces, paintings which don't change."

"Change fast with the world, sir, the world isn't changing too fast as long as you let go of the past and live with the present," Louis whispered, shivering from the cold of Armand's breath on his chest. Even as cold as his touch was it had the electricity of lightening to it.

"Would you like to live forever?" Armand whispered. He drew his tongue up to his collar bone, licking all around his neck, playing with languid, sensual motions against the hard, tips of his chest.

"I believe in forever," Louis said piously, "What are you proposing, a chance to be like you, a chance to lower myself to sip at the neck of a child. I am not a dammed creature. Why would I be interested in you? Oui, I love men, but that love I do not find to be the love of a damned soul. Let God judge me. I rather not take your gift. I don't need it, for I do not want to love you."

"That could change," Armand said greedily, touching the blue vein of Louis' throat," You may someday find me the sum of all what is beautiful Wouldn't you like to thrust that rod of yours up my hard cold ass. A major change would have to happen to you."

"Sir," Louis said, embarrassed," You talk like, like a common street slut."

"How many sluts have you had?" Armand laughed dryly, "I've had quite a few," he said bitterly, "After a while their language rubs off on you.."

Kissing the cold white face of Louis' mask, Armand's cold breath skated along his trembling skin. Winter was in Armand's pale face, autumn in his hair, his youth was of spring and summer was in the heat of his eyes burning with hungry lust to see the life pump out of the boy, his beloved captive, and then when Louis was almost near death, then what would happen?

Before Armand could find out with a bite, the door flew open, Lestat angrily came in , filling the room with his furious and inventive curses, "How now, you had such little faith in your abilities to seduce me with your wiles you had to punish my lover Nicki for my resistance of you?"

"So what do you make of my handiwork?" Armand said leaning away from Louis. Spite and desire played in Armand's mind.

Back handing Armand across the face to smash against the book cases, Lestat almost pulled out his sword to run through his polluted heart. Instead Lestat laughed at him, laughed hysterically. A cut through the heart with the point of his sword would have been more kind.

"Who is this child you have trapped in your bed? I never had to tie anyone down," Lestat said pleasantly, giving a gentleman's bow to Louis.

"I haven't decided who he is yet. " Armand said rubbing his cheek, "I may kill him quickly, ripping out his arms, break off his head. Perhaps I'll treat him to the drink of my blood and keep him as my slave, whore him out when it suits me. Maybe, I'll make him my fledging and lover."

"Armand whatever you do infuriates me. Trying to make me jealous with this poor toy? Act the fool over you? Kill him and get it over with, we have the matter of your torturing Nicki to discuss. Must you do everything in extremes when you don't get your way?"

Lestat walked over to the trembling boy, putting his hand on his thin shoulder. "Why did you mask him?"

"So I could imagine the expression on his face rather than see it when I killed him," Armand gloated.

"And why are you wearing a mask?"

"So, he isn't privy to the contempt I have on my face for him," Armand sniped.

"Remove your mask for me Armand. Let me see what my eyes long to see," Lestat said in a husky voice.

With a pretty gesture of his hand, Armand freed his face from his mask.

Lestat kept his face immobile. His loins burned for the beautiful boy before him, so beautiful, more than beautiful than anything conceivably on the face of the planet. If only his nature wasn't so weak and overly wrought, Lestat thought, pitying him

Armand drew back infuriated and shamed, "I'll show you how weak I am. See if my hand trembles when I send your mortal lover Nicki to the core of a flaming death."

He stormed out of room. Lestat following him.

"This is your pretty rich widow," Nicki said in a furious voice, pointing from his cage at Gabrielle, "This is your lover now! Your mother!"

"Non, Nicki" Lestat said confused and embarrassed.

"Your mother, your mother, you silly ass. You wretched mamma's boy!"

"She was dying. She was in her death bed," Lestat said haltingly, "I mean Nicki."

"Oh Christ, how evil can you get, with your own damnable mother. Ha! What can you expect of the aristocracy? Everyone knows of Marie Anntonette's unnatural love for her son the dauphin. How typical. If you going to be an evil son of a bitch Lestat, could you at least have the grace not to be so mundanely typical? This incest of yours is right out of a Greek morality tale."

"Nicki , I well, please, what's a loving son to do when confronted with his mama dying?"

"What abut me? I've been dying since the first day I met you. You lout. You were the death of all my delusions of myself. And now, look at you! You deserted me so you could live a whole new life with your fucking mother! You, you who kept telling me about goodness, and how good of a man I was! Ha, you proved to me Lestat evil exists, and there is nothing good about evil. Or about you!"

"Nicki you, your so alive so very young, you haven't begin to live up to your potential Gabrielle, well, she never did anything with her life. I felt sorry for her. You have a life, your music. You have a purpose."

"I never had potential. We never had potential. We hit our glass ceiling. You never were in love with me. All those stupid nights you held me in your arms. The memory of those profane nights are a million times more uglier than this night. For they are a million times more painful."

"Silence Nicki. You have no idea what you are speaking of. Go to him go to your mortal lover. Confront him. Kill Nicki," Armand cried, "Nicky is what holds you to the dining rooms, to the taverns, the salons of Paris. Listen to me Nicky. Stop your ravings. All his nights are spent looking for your face, your gestures in mortals. Oui, Lestat loves you, and it's this love which makes him earthbound. Free yourself from mortality; Lestat kill him. You've been dying to kiss Nicky. With your kiss murder him."

"Non, non, I haven't been dying to kill him. Nicky I will not harm you. I want you to go away. Away where I can't."

"Harm me?" Nicki said, his voice laced with irony, "desert me for another?"

"God, god and god," Lestat swore frustratedly.

"Armand, here is the evil doer Lestat," cried the vampire who looked like a fifteen year old boy, "He breaks the rules by going into churches."

You want to be free of churches?" Lestat yelled, "Free so you may care less about if the building you are in is a church or not? Stop using religion as your crutch to have an excuse to sin. An excuse to sin that's all religion is to you foul self righteous libertines,. You bon livers, you all are voluptuous beings all of this torture of Nicky is evidence of your extravagance and worldliness. Your lewd behavior with mortals, your vicious sensuality at the kills , you're hypocrites. You don't worship Satan, your worship your lusts. You always have and you always will. You made your existence a cheap melodrama. A circus. You use your fear of churches and the devil to do acts of pure malicious arrogance."

"Armand?' the young vampire said aghast at Lestat's words.

"It's true," crackled the old woman.

Gabrielle looked at Nicki as if he we're nothing but a nuisance. Nicki could easily hate her, but he didn't want to.

Armand rocked on his heels, thinking of what Louis said, that nothing really changes, nothing, perhaps everything, he knew he couldn't force Lestat into the fire, not with his power. He knew he had no hope of seducing Lestat to live by his terms. "It's over," he whispered, "Do you hear me Lestat our voluptuous coven with all of it's extravagant rituals is dead."

"You're free then. You've freed yourself Armand," Lestat said quietly, opening the door to Nicki's cage. Lestat could taste lust down in his throat for his thin angry lover. He put his hand into the mass of his gorgeous, filthy hair. Nicky's mortal scent was mixed with blood and smoke. He smelled of the divine incense of humanity. Lestat parted his lips, reveling his fangs.

Nicky touched Lestat's fangs with his finger. His brown eyes filled with resentment and anger. Nicky licked his thirsty lips, falling against Lestat's chest, shutting his eyes, waiting for Lestat's immortal kiss.

Lestat held him. His lust raging to break into the skin of Nicky's throat, his wrist, his beautiful mortal flesh and use him dry. Till he was nothing but a dried up rind with all his juices gone. Dry. It is all dry, Lestat realized to his horror. What he felt for Nicki when he was a mortal man was all dry. All he loved was Nicky's mortal flesh, the red ocean and sea hissing and roaring hidden underneath his skin, his blood, his taste, all he wanted was to use him in the way a vampire could use any mortal to satisfy his sexual gratification and his physical hunger. Any mortal, it didn't matter if he could play the violin, or hold golden conversations with him. Lestat no longer loved the soul, the personality caged in the delicious flesh he was embracing. All he loved and wanted was the flesh. And the hell with the soul.

"Make me like you," Nicky whimpered in his ear, his sweaty, filthy clothes rubbing against Lestat's pristine linens. "Do the magic to me. I'm afraid. Answer my hopes. Please."

Armand laughed, and he laughed and laughed at the misery on Lestat's face. He laughed at the insanity , the desperation Nicky's face. The way his broken hands cling to Lestat like a spider to his prey.

"I leave you and your paramours." Armand said gallantly bowing to a smoldering Gabrielle, "to your devices. Come along my coven," he said with a voice which sounded so deceptively innocent., "My coven no more. Wander all of you to all the corners of the earth to be nothing but rogues. And pray I do not catch you. Lestat is right. He told me once the world is ready for a new evil. And you my pretties, you are old."

Eleni, the boy, and all the others backed away from him in uncertain fear.

The old vampire queen smirked and giggled. "You're right Armand! I am too old!"

With a terrific leap, she fell upon the bonfire. Her ancient body quickly became smoke, ashes, and maniacal laughter.

The other vampires starred in horror as she gleefully killed herself.

Armand was certain, he smiled a sharp smile, that the vampires of his former coven had plenty to fear of him. They smelled of failure, and he was determined to rid his brave new world of these reminders of his old world, determined to throw his lot with Gabrielle and Lestat and even if it came to it, with Nicki too.

"No hard feelings, Nicki?" Armand said pleasantly, "I have a present just for you Nicki. He's in what used to be my bedroom. He's waiting for you to prove yourself to us Nicki. Kill him. Show us you have what it takes to be a vampire. Let us watch."

"But, Armand," said the pretty boy vampire in a forlorn voice, "The good we did. The good you told us we did for God by our being evil."

Smirking at Lestat, Armand said like a barker at the fair. "There is nothing good about us. Lestat has proven that for us. Hasn't he Nicki? There is no goodness in our make up. Everything I told you all was a lie. Only mortals have goodness to them, we have nothing. No identity, we are nothing but what goes boo and the night and leaves a corpse behind us. No matter how many balls at the courts of queen and king's we attend that's all there is to us!"

Lestat turned pale.

Armand's pretty boy's face fell into sad confusion and defeat. He looked utterly lost and soulless. Then a bitter smile twisted his lips.

With an oath, Lestat ran from the room into Armand's bedroom.

"You are a clumsy fool, Lestat are you not?" Armand laughter roared in Lestat's ears. "Look at what you have broken. You broken our way of life. Proud, master vampire?"

(8)

Lestat put his hand under Louis' neck. Louis bit his lips to keep from screaming out. Fear and terror was eating away at his mind, and desire, desire to have those ripe lips which could seal his fate forever, to have them passionately kiss his life out of him. He remembered the cold clammy feel of the boy's bloodless corpse on his chest. Gasping, he tried to pull away, shutting his eyes quickly, afraid if he looked at Lestat for too long his flesh would burn as if he were standing too close to a magnificent fire.

"Sir," he said through a dry mouth which was dying of thirst, "I haven't had a thing to drink all day or night. I beg of you sir, before you kill me. Please at least a drink of water, or do creatures like you hold acts of compassion to be a show of weakness?"

"This may surprise you, but I am a creature who has been known, if but rarely, to show compassion to another. You are afraid of me? Who can blame you after that sideshow Armand put on. From the evidence of the torture inflected upon those poor corpses out there, and from Nicki's condition, I can tell it must have been horrible for you," Lestat said softly, running his hand through Louis luxurious hair, taking a quick smell of his face. "Listen to me, being undead doesn't have to have anything to do with the old legends." he said smiling proudly, "I fill my nights with pleasure and happiness from my surrounds. I refuse to be unhappy. I converse with mortals, and I listen to their views upon the world."

"You know their individual worlds are going to end soon. It must humor you to hear them making such small observations when you see the bigger picture," Louis said sarcastically, "Stop playing with my hair."

"Non, I do not laugh at mortals for their opinions, or for the fact that they will die soon. What a cross thing for you to say. Must everyone be so cross with me?" Lestat pleaded, "I am amazed and gratified by what mortals say to me, and to each other, their plans and schemes is what paints the bigger picture which I, poor me, I have to only sit back and passively admire. Perhaps I envy mortals for they not only live in the savage garden but they also till it, while I only hunt in it. And there are times young man, I would adore to fall on the grass and look up at the sunlit sky with the vintage of grapes in my glass. I would love to have a lover lay down with me, and the two us, we would talk of poignant, seemingly mundane matters such as having guests over, or what color to paint a room. I would love to fight with a lover over finances. Then I would love to make up with him, to humble myself to him. Scrape and bow to him as long as he understood I am a good man, and if only he would love me me back. For that I would worship him."

"You can be nothing but extrordinary now. It's beyond you to be poignantly mundane," Louis said coldly.

"Oui, I am extraordinary. And when my feelings are hurt I can be extraordinary in my cruelty," Lestat said sadly, wondering what he should do with this young prize, "Listen boy there is no water here for you. These creatures, those Children of the Darkness, they don't even bother to bathe in the stuff. Ludicrous, isn't it?" His lips pressed against Louis' cheek sliding to his frightened lips, he could sense and feel Armand had been against Louis' skin. The thought of Armand holding this child made him feel possessively angry and jealous. "I can give you a drink," Lestat whispered against his lips, "A little drink from me to you." He bit his tongue, a drop of blood stood brilliantly red upon it, he gently started to kiss him.

"None of that," Henri said, putting his silver walking stick on Lestat's cheek, giving it a tap. "You promised me you would help me to rescue him. You making him drunk on your blood is not in my plans for him."

"What are your plans?" Lestat said lazily, lolling away from Louis, placing his hand on Louis' thigh, his eyes gleaming with ownership of the boy.

"That is my affair, and you sir, are not going to have an affair with this child," Henri said firmly catching Louis before he fell backwards in a near swoon. "And even if he were not a child, I still would disapprove. What with you having three lovers in the other room vying for your attention, isn't a fourth going a bit overboard even for you? Now you promised me you would do your best to make sure no harm would occur to him."

"You mean I was in no real danger the whole time?" Louis gasped holding onto Henri's rose and silver great coat for dear life.

"Oh, you were in plenty of danger from Armand. Lestat here promised he would protect you once he made your acquaintance," Henri said.

"And so I will," Lestat said lightly, the desire to play the merciful benefactor warring against his desire to have the child in his bed, not to mention the pleasure he would experience from Armand's fury at being flouted and cheated of his prey. Lestat sighed regretfully, knowing it would also give pain to Nicki, and it wasn't fair to put Nicki under any more grief. He had a duty to fulfill with Nicki, and for now he deserved his attention as did that brat Armand. He
would show Armand he could be a tease and a tormentor too.

"Are you going to kill him? Make him your fledgling?" Lestat said jealously, "You know you will have to. He knows too much."

"Non, it isn't my intention to kill him," Henri said patently, "Merci for your help."

"I didn't do much," Lestat said grinning tightly, cursing himself anew for deciding to be so benevolent when Henri came begging to him last night. " It would be fun to fight a duel over him," he teased, wrapping a filthy blacket around Louis' shivering body.

"Fun for you I am sure, but I will pass on your offer. You already promised him to me," Henri said dryly, "And I know de Lion Court to be a creature of honor."

"He is way too young for me, too young to die, and to be resurrected. Let childhood make him a little wiser of the ways of the world before the world decides to gobble him up" Lestat said.

"Am I the right age for you?" Armand said, coming into he room His solemn face tried to look as wise as he hoped Lestat wanted him to be, or at least if not wise, he hoped he looked experienced.

"I haven't decided yet" Lestat said firmly. thinking, How can I love and hate you so vitally all at once? With you there would be no half measures. You would consume my very essence if you could. You would have me be your victim, slave, and your lover. Lestat put his arm around Gabrielle's small waist. He kissed her red lips which were hard and unyielding as rubies. He embraced her with a lover's audor, pleased at the dull anger on Armand's sweet demon's face. "Perhaps I have made my choice," he said whispering into her ear for Armand to hear, "She, my perfect companion, in her pretty dresses."

Gabrielle took his kiss on her lips patiently enough, wanting to tear out of the pretty dress he choice for her to wear that night.. Wanting to exchange her high heeled slippers, for good study boots of which to run away from him into the darkest of jungles where nothing smelled civilized. A place where little boys with their sticky tiny hands did not follow and chase their harried mothers. Little boys who were constant reminders of the horror of her empty life. She kissed him greedily back, vowing she would be his protector from danger, and also from her dreadful bouts of hate for him and his brothers. This manic hate she kept buried deeply within herself. In her mortal life time she treated this malady with the tranquilizing effects of locking herself in her room and reading her life away. She loved him more and more now that they were equals, but she knew eventually her distaste of the civilized world would make her feel a worse feeling than hate for him; it would make her feel colder and colder, and more indifferent towards him. If she stayed any longer she would have no feelings for him at all. The only way to protect him from herself was to leave him.

Storming into the dusty room, Nicki held in his hand a dagger, raising it in the air, he brought it down to slice right through Louis' throat.

Yanking Nicki to hang suspended in his arms, Henri slammed his fangs into Nicki's wounded broken skin.

Grabbing Henri by the shoulders, Lestat sent him flying through the air. He slammed his fist hard against Henri's face. Nicki scrambled for the dagger. Lestat pressed his foot upon it. "What are you doing?" he snarled.

"He, your Little Lord, he told me I had to prove myself to be a killer before I could be transformed," Nicky wretchedly laughed.

"Henri, unite me," Louis said patiently, hiding the panic he was in.

"Oui, the faster we get out of this den of lunacy the better," Henri said, rubbing his broken, but mending jaw, going to Louis cutting the leather cords from his wrists, "I have fresh horses. Can you ride?" he asked putting his hand to Louis' feverish forehead.

"Not yet, I need a moment. All of you leave I want to talk to Nicki alone."

"He just tried to kill you," Lestat said, grudging admiration in his voice.

"I asked you to leave," Louis said his arms across his chest.

"Shall we go then Armand? I guess we can fulfill this young man's request of us," Lestat said putting his arm around Armand's shoulders waist, "Nicki this boy Armand gave you. He belongs to me. Do you understand?"

"I understand," Nicky said bitterly.

"Get your conversation over with quickly, " Gabrielle said with authority. Her vivid eyes china blue in her cold doll's face, The four of them left. It was as if winter departed from the room.

"You were going to miss me. Weren't you? You were just playing with them," Louis said in a slow voice, "I could tell you meant to miss me."

"Oui, " Nicki said, "Perhaps. I don't know Louis there is an ugliness in me which I can't all together blame them for. I want revenge for what happened to me, and I can not collect from Armand or Lestat. Someone else will have to pay."

"Come with me Nicki, come to New Orleans with me, I beg you. You can't want this," Louis pleaded frantically with him.

"Can't want him? Non," Nicki said in a hollow voice, touching his mauled throat, "Perhaps when he works the magic he will love me again. Oh Louis to have been taken to hidden places in my soul and for what? The mere crime of being in love with him?" He fell to the cot. "I love him, I love him so much with such complications that even he cannot realize how much I love him When he lost all his beliefs in the world when he stood forgetting to breath for a while at the site where the witches were burned, I put my arms around him and let him cry. And what emerged from my arms? But a man who only believes in the concept of himself as being a force in the world, and all other concepts: truth which can be twisted, justice which is selective, everything is a morass of subtle lies. Only if only I had any belief about myself left, Louis. I believe in nothing but hurting people. I hunger to protect myself from evil by becoming evil myself. More evil than the evil around me. There's no hope for me."

"Are you sue you want to stay with him?" Louis said, touching his face. Nicki took his hand and brought it to his lips.

"If not him, then I will have the narcotic effects of his blood. You were not bitten. You have no idea of the power which burns, like, like, Louis, like magic gone spinning out of control in your mind. The super human strength, the mantle of possibilities, you become so stunningly aware of when your are dying, that can be yours for the wearing for all eternity if only your murderer chooses you," Nicki said ashamed, " I can tell he's enamored with Gabrielle and Armand. She doesn't love him beyond her own needs, but Armand, Armand would crucify a child with the sure pounds of his mallet into its flesh, nailing it to wood out of love for Lestat. I am alone and driven out. Please, Louis, come with me. I lost the light which used to shine for me. That light came from Lestat. Be now my light in all this darkness."

"I cannot, because to do so would be to slay my true immortal soul," Louis said in a weak voice, "it's pollution Nicky. It's corruption."

"You haven't any visions to see with, to see how clear it is that this is a human beings only hope for survival and more," Nicky said kissing his forehead. Embracing for the last time Nicky's face took upon itself a look of malicious pride. Holding his head high with a terrible dignity, he said, "Whatever is out there awaits for me. Good luck to you Louis, I will remember to now and again play songs for you."

"Good luck to you," Louis said sadly.

Henri came into the room, "Have they all gone, but you?" Louis asked in a hollow voice.

"Non," Lestat said coming behind Henri, "I wished to say good bye to you,' Lestat gave him a suave smile "And to tell you someday on my long journeys we will meet again when you are older."

Louis trembled, his knees folded out from under him. Quickly, Henri went to him, steadying him to stand, "That's enough of your base attempts at conducting a flirtation. You are gong to dive him insane if you push your courtship any further," Henri said.

"This isn't a courtship, it's a declaration of honesty of what the future holds for us," Lestat said, going to Louis and kissing him on the lips. A smear of blood laid on Louis' mouth, burning and begging him to taste it.

Henri took a handkerchief and wiped the stain off.

"I couldn't give you water. Why water? It would only leave you thirsting for more. Water abandons the body after a while. I could of given you more. Everything you drink leaves you thirsting for more."

"I need no more of you," Louis said, looking away from him.

"When you are older I will offer you the choice I never had," Lestat said, touching his throat, drawing his finger up to his lips. Louis inhaled a breath at the part of his lips. He had been forgetting to breathe the whole time.

Coming into the room Gabrielle strolled over to Lestat taking his arm, "We need to get Nicki somewhere safe and warm. He's lost a lot of blood and his brain is twisted and on fire with the burn of what he has seen here tonight. We have to decide upon a solution about what to do with him. It would be a disaster to take him with you on the Devil's road, Lestat He would be a force upon humanity which would unleash itself to main and devour, taking a perverted joy out of making mortals' pain."

As we all do. Why be hypocrites? Shouldn't one plague love another?" Lestat said earnestly, "Oui, we to attend to our Nicki, and deal with Armand,"

"You have my promise to leave the boy alone," Lestat said, smiling mysteriously at Henri and Louis. He then took his leave with Gabrielle,

Henri slapped Louis' face lightly trying to get some sort of awareness on his dull face. "Listen to me, are you strong enough to ride? Simply follow me. I took a passage on a schooner to New Orleans. I also wrote to your parents you had a mental breakdown of sorts over the grief of your uncle's death. They are to meet you at an Inn in town. I'm taking you home."

"How?" Louis said shivering, "Henri, home? How can I ever return to normalcy after this? Home is impossible. Henri, I'll lead him to my family, How can I ever be safe? Where can I hide? He's after me. Once I am a man he will descend on me, perhaps as soon as I leave this catacomb he will be at me murmuring temptations in my ear. I can trust him to come for me."

"A mere infatuation," Henri said impatiently, "One which he will soon forget abut tomorrow, I promise you. This man he falls in and out of love like a young girl who fancies every attractive boy in the room, but skirts away from becoming too seriously involved with anyone of them. Already I heard Armand mention words of his maker Marius to Lestat And I could see infatuation and hunger dwelling in Lestat's dreamy eyes for yet another one to love, then another, and another. Believe me out of the billions of people which make up the weave of this world, you are but one little thread. You will soon blend into the background of his mind. When it comes to true love Lestat for all his experience is the equivalent of a blushing, virginal bride."

Henri helped Louis onto a black horse, aiding him up to the saddle. Getting on his own steed, he galloped into the late evening. Louis could hear a man talking in the whisper of rustling bare branches, and in the dry grasses around him. It started to snow. A light, glitter of white from a patchy gray sky. He could hear Lestat speaking to Nicky, and Gabrielle. He could hear Lestat's laughter between the soft sigh of the wind. The moistness of the melting snow on Louis' face and clothes reminded him of the moistness of blood. He felt like he was bleeding, like he was coated with blood. Strings pulled tight on a violin, being scraped with a bow, sent his head reeling. Screaming, he almost fell of his horse. The gray skies were Lestat's eyes, the snow falling on his face and body was his touch. Cold and wet, making him nothing but blood. His personality draining out to feed his.

Henri turned his horse around, taking him by the arm. Henri drew back away from the passionate disorder on Louis' face. For a moment he debated if he should kill the boy, and escape by himself. He knew it wouldn't be long before an angry Armand would be killing off his coven, and killing all rogues he could lay his hands on. "Listen to me Louis, it will be all right. Once we're out of France his power over you will be broken by the waters which will span themselves between you and him."

To his relief Louis believed him, steadying himself on his horse, riding along with him through the night and falling snow.

They arrived at the docks. Going up the plank Henri met up with the captain of the ship, Louis saw money exchanged and then heard explanations being hurriedly made.

Henri led him up to a luxurious cabin filled with beautiful gilt, expensive, wooden furniture, and a soft comforting bed.

Louis fell into the bed, feeling nothing in the world could be so fine. He rolled in the comfort of the red silk sheets. Then he put his hands to his throat, there in the corner of the room was a coffin. He imagined walls of a coffin closing in on him. The cold child on his chest. The lid slamming shut. Screaming, finding breathing impossible, he struggled in the sheets trying to escape the wood of the imaginary coffin closing in on him.

Henri hurried and pressed his hand to his screaming mouth. "Listen to me, I have to sleep in that. Do you understand? I have no choice. You don't have to. You have to leave me alone while I lie in it. Otherwise I will kill you without meaning to. There is a protective mechanism in our brains which demands we defend ourselves even in our sleep. I'll have no choice but to protect myself. Do you understand?"

There was knock on the door, a cabin boy with curling blond hair, and bright blues eyes came in bringing a basin of hot water. He gave Louis a shy knowing smile, putting a basin of hot water onto a table. He looked longingly at Louis before he took his leave.

"Clean yourself off. You'll feel better in the morning," Henri said awkwardly "I have a nice freshly laundered day shirt you can sleep in. There also is changes of clothing for you in the dresser."

"Where is Paulette?' Louis asked stunned, refusing to make a move to remove his filthy and torn clothing.

"Where is Paulette? She has left me," Henri said sadly.

"Why? What have you done to do her?" Louis asked coldly..

"I am not capable of hurting her. Well, at least not of deliberately hurting, Paulette," Henri said backing away from Louis feeling naked and ashamed , "I didn't love her. I can't love any woman except as a friend or a daughter," Henri said, embarrassed to confide to Louis his own problems so soon after everything Louis had been put through. "You see she felt she was making promises to you on her death bed. Promises she wouldn't have to live up to. It was to her surprise she didn't die. She left me a note," Henri said not looking at him, "She wrote she hoped I would find a lover who would not love me back. And I would suffer for it."

Getting off the bed, Louis felt shaky, almost ready to faint from the pitching of the ship gong out to sea. He put his arms around Henri waist, putting his head in his hair.

Henri patted his back, saying guilty, "She was just a scullery maid in some great man's house. She had been thrown out by her employers for getting pregnant. She was in a dark room when I found her just delivered of a stillborn child. There was this terrible yearning in us both to belong to someone, to be a family. I took her out of need for companionship and out of pity, I played the gallant savior, something I shouldn't have done, I suppose. She was to be the sister and friend I wanted, but," Henri sighed, "that night after Armand took you, she put her arms around me, her flesh entwined in mine, all her limbs into mine, and I could not love her. She bit me, and swore at me, and cursed me with foul, ugly, apt names. And I, I repaid her with the same of the same filthy coin. Except I did not hit her. I just stood stood there taking it from her. I wish I could have loved her, I hated myself for the useless object I proved to be to her."

Louis hugged him closer, "I'm sorry my friend. I can tell you miss her."

"Nothing to be sorry for," Henri said sadly, " Louis your water is getting cold. I'll talk to the steward to send you up a meal with some bracing brandy to go along with it. Please don't gobble your food down it shall make you sick if you do. Then I will give you the newest novella I've finished, perhaps it's too racy for you," he worried.

"I am not an innocent," Louis said blushing.

"Perhaps you are more than you know," Henri said smiling.

"Why aren't you trying to kill me, or trying to seduce me?" Louis said, "You are after all what you are." Then he remembered what Paulette said of herself and Henri that they only hunted animals for their blood.

"I don't believe I'm completely without freedom of choice. What so you want me to tell you. Your eyes are like comets flaring across the sky exploding into green sparks which burn me? Some nonsense like that. Louis, you're only a boy. Now unhand me, so I can see to a meal for you." Henri said briskly, hurrying to go out of the room.

Louis followed him to the door. He nervously stood by it once Henri left. He couldn't believe his ears, he heard sobs coming out from the other side of the door, lonely sad sobs of such desolation it wounded him. He wanted to cry also. He quickly opened the door, but there was no one there.

(9)

It was strange how the sky overhead stood white, simply white like spilled milk frozen to be solid perched above a field of wheat so golden it hurt and stung the eyes when you held it too long in your glaze. Louis kneeled, hidden amongst all the waving golden wheat being pushed about by a light breeze. Insects hummed in the field, calling out to each other with the rub of their legs. The world seemed to have a pulse.

A finely dressed man with hair the color of the wheat rode through the field on a white steed which had eyes of fire. He halted his progress, leaping off the horse. He came to where Louis was kneeling.

Louis could hear his heart beating as soft as the air surrounding them both. His skin was naked like an animal's hide, and he was anointed with sweat and sunshine.

The man's hair curled around his face and neck, and he slipped off his breeches to fall around his calves.

He's enormous, Louis thought fearfully, wondering how he was going to take the width and girth of it into his small mouth. He touched the warmth of it with his lips, the velvet softness of it's rounded head, tasting what made this creature physically a male. He stretched his mouth around it, holding the tip of it, there for moment to take a deep breath, and to smell his masculine aroma which was mixed up with the scent of sunshine and wheat. He slid his mouth down the shaft, and his cock slid quite comfortably inside of him. Thrusting his mouth up and down on it, his own erection semi soft, he felt a few of his desires were being fulfilled in his act of submission. His heart beat faster with his, and the wheat started to sway as if caught in the middle of a maddening conflict. He slid his mouth off, kissing the tip of his cock, tasting the pre- ejaculation cum on his tongue. He cradled the man's warm hanging balls with his hands, playing with the blond hair there with his tongue, and hands, running his tongue underneath the man's sensitive cock.

The man, his hair shining with the burn of sunshine, smiled down at him with a gentle smile, coaxing him to do more.

He ran his fingers through the blond down between the man's buttocks, Their heartbeats were coming out faster and faster. The noise of their hearts seemed to clash against each others. Rain started to spatter, to dance, and to hiss on the dirt. The wheat bowed down to kiss the earth.

Sensuously, he leaned back on his haunches, so the man could admire his aroused nipples and view his hardening cock. He made himself to be a tribute to the man's wandering hands and lips. He brought his head downward to the man's thigh, and he bit. The sky turned to black. The wheat turned to barren soil. And he drew back his head hurriedly away. Blood gushed from the man's wound and splashed him on the face.

"Non," Louis whispered, "Non!" He gave out a muffled cry. Startled, he looked around the cabin. The remains of his meal and an empty brandy snuffer was on the table.

It all seems so out of place, Louis thought his eyes blinking, thinking, The heavy red carpet on the floor. The books, the ornate furniture, expensive slippers, and shoes with sliver buckles on the floor, all of which seems to be surrounding and bearing down upon a simple cherry wood coffin.

"Non," Louis whispered, rolling, mostly falling out of the bed. Nervously, he touched the wet spot on his night shirt. The result of his wet dream. He flung the stained garment off hurriedly, getting into a pair of woolen breeches, and a cotton everyday shirt with ruffles at the neck, and a woolen coat. The breeches itched at his naked skin, but at least they were warm, he put on a pair of white gloves. And a pair of fine new leather boots upon his stockinged feet. Taking the bones and left over broth, gravy and mashed trumps on his plate outside into the gallery way, he walked up the stairs to be up on the deck.

Through the sun shone on the blue Mediterranean sea, the air around him was chilled. The sun made splashes of silver on the waves making it seem almost metallic. A school of dolphins swam by close to the ship. He could see their snouts rising above the water, their great tails beating down the water which parted for them. He could see their dorsal fins riding high on their curved backs, and their curious eyes. Such strange creatures who could not decide, it seemed, if they be fish or mammal.

The sea looks like a living animal today, Louis thought feverishly. What if it really is an animal taking quick breaths and sighs, and the land with all of it's hot spots underneath it. What if it's alive too? What would that make us? Nothing but parasites to it? The sea is not living nor is the land. Both are nothing but sources of substance. Like blood he thought shivering. Like blood is to them

"I cannot, I cannot die," he whispered to his guardian angel who he made a prayer to. "I cannot die then be resurrected into their hell locked away forever from heaven.

He wondered what such a being as a guardian angel would look like. Like them, he thought, Angels would look like them. "There is no sin to being murdered. Suicide is the most unforgivable of all sins," he whispered. "An angel cannot sin."

He spread out his arms like how he remembered the little boy did. The one who was murdered who spread out his arms to fly away from the vampire chasing him. He leaned out against the rail. He willed Saint Michael the archangel, destroyer of demons, to push him into the sea. The breeze seemed to be pushing him back, and he could hear voices chanting above the waves. Armand's voice, he could see Armand dressed as a court dandy, making inane small talk with a beautiful mortal woman at her salon. They were surround by philosophes. Laughter and discussion, news of the day, and the newest scientific theory was running around the dinner table. Armand turned his head from the grande dame, and looked directly at him. His auburn hair was trapped under a powdered. fashionable wig. The great lady wrinkled her noise, wondering what he smelled so pleasantly of. She wound have never guessed the faintly greasy perfume smell emanating from his person came from the tangy smoke from the burning alive of a vampire who once was part of his coven. A slight vampire who died at the age of twenty who lived on after her death for five more years. A girl whose head he cut off before he consigned her to be in an oven. Her vampire juices dancing on the grill as she smoldered.

"My world. It's over," a weary Armand whispered to him.

"Hello," said a young voice behind him. "You really shouldn't hang over the edge that way."

The amber colored dream of Armand popped like a bubble.

"What?" Louis whispered drawing himself from the railing.

"Are you all right?' asked the young cabin boy, an English boy, he could tell by his accent and his lavender eyes, and his freckles on his pug nose, and his hair which was the color of the eyes of daisies. He had a study compact build for a boy of sixteen summers.

"I'm fine," Louis said haltingly, "I was watching some dolphins."

"Aren't they pretty? My name is Phi," he said awkwardly , shoving his hand out for him to shake. "I don't usually talk to passengers. Really shouldn't. Get's to be a bit lonely out here at sea," he blushed, his freckles standing out brown against his sunburned face. Part of his duties was not only to keep the cabins clean, but to service the captain in his nocturnal needs.

"I can take you up the rigging. It's fun. We can go up to the crow's nest. The view from there is breath taking," he urged, "you'll be able to see the coast of France from way up there with a telescope."

It was Louis turn to blush. He looked up at the crows nest rocking in the wind. The sails bellowing out like huge white flags of some mysterious country always in a state of surrender. He heard the wind whistling furiously against the sails.

"Non, " he said shyly, "Perhaps another time."

"Are you afraid?" the lad asked eagerly, "You mustn't be. I'll be climbing behind you the whole way up. I was frightened the first time too. Now it seems natural to me to climb up like I be more monkey than man. You can look through my telescope, and if we stay up there long enough perhaps we'll catch sight of some hunchback whales. The trick is not to think you're going to fall down," He adored the moody green splendor of his eyes which seemed like a wild animal's eyes; serious and cautious, looking out for snares. Louis' face had the softness of a girl's, he wanted to touch that beautiful face with his own smooth face, so much better than the scrapping of the captain's rough, red beard.

Louis knew what the warmth of Philip's eyes signified. The significance of his standing too close to him. He admired his sailor's jacket with its huge brass buttons, he wished wistfully he could have a jacket like that, and his canvas pants covering his long lanky legs, and his curved buttocks. He more than longed to play with him, roughhouse, and talk with him, listen to his adventures of being out to sea. He was dying to ask him if he had ever seen a pirate ship, or a sea serpent. How he wanted to be put into his ordinary world which was extraordinary to him. And if he really wanted, perhaps they could be lovers for a short while.

Before he could say yes to all these good things, he imagined the boy's pores beginning to bleed. He saw tiny specs of red on his face as if a paint brush splashed him, and all the dots became a merging of heavy black and red blood. The blood as if it were solid petals to a flower opened and reveled the face of a white skull.

Louis' legs shook. The wooden ship trembled beneath him. The sky overhead seemed to pitch and roll along with the sea. He looked over the rail, and the starling blue of the ocean tuned into a deep red color lit up by a full dreadful moon which devoured the sun, and white dead faces blossomed on the red canvas of the sea. Dead faces with mouths to eat.

"I don't feel well," Louis said in a faltering voice, " I don't, you'll have to excuse me."

"Wait," said the perfectly pretty, and disappointed youth.

Hurriedly Louis ran panting like a mad child, a possessed child running into his cabin, slamming the door shut behind him.

The room seemed to be spinning, spinning around the coffin, he remembered what Henri said that he dare not go close to his coffin least he forfeit his life. His curiosity played on his nerves like cursed Pandora's nerves were stretched to the breaking point when she played longingly with the lid of her box where all men's miseries lay trapped.

And like Pandora his curiosity overruled his better judgment. He approached the box. He put his hands to the coffin lid, slowly he pried it open. The coffin lid seemed to start to open by it's own volition, screaming he backed away, he tripped over a shoe, dashing his head hard against the edge of the small table. The world around him was snuffed out like a candle.

(10)

He felt soft gloved hands patting his face gently. He looked up into two shimmering turquoise eyes, a firm mouth, a face with hair which was way too pampered to be considered manly. "Louis what happened?" said the apparition.

"You, you were," Louis cried bolting up, "You were coming out of your coffin."

"You did a very foolish thing, young man," Henri scolded, "Didn't I impress upon you not to go near my coffin?"

"I thought you said you had free will," Louis said unreasonably.

"So I do, to a certain extent. My dear child, not while I'm sleeping. I have no more free will than any somnambulist has. Louis." His face twisted as if a hot knife had been put to it, "I must leave you here for a while." He looked hungrily at the blood coming from Louis' wounded head. Before he could stop himself he licked the blood on the towel which he used to staunch the wound. Embarrassed, he dropped the bloody cloth to the floor. "I must leave."

"To kill someone," Louis said through clinched teeth.

"Louis!" Henri said hurt.

"Paulette, she told me an untruth when she told me you kill animals for their blood."

"Louis, please," Henri said reaching for his silver walking stick.

"Lies, all lies. Correct me if I'm wrong," Louis demanded.

With a cry of anguish, Henri dropped to all fours. Appalled, Louis backed away, putting his arm up to his face to ward him off.

Henri cocked his head listening intently. Then he crawled forward, slamming his fist with lightening speed into the floor board of the wall, pulling out a squealing fat rat.

"Get away," Henri ordered hoarsely, "Do you hear me get away."

Louis watched fascinated, held in a morbid spell, watching his some what effeminate friend drive his mouth into the struggling beast, crushing its small bones, ripping its throat open, the animal struggled and kicked in the air till its movements became nothing but spastic, sporadic jerks.

Henri released his mouth upon the animal's cold body. "Listen to me carefully," he said in a thick voice, "And I shall save your life. There are fleas on this animal which contains the plague."

He sniffed at the air, "I can smell plague which has rested long in human blood. Listen to me closely, I can kill these rats, and oui, I will be driven to kill these rats, but if I kill only rats, the fleas will seek new hosts, and more men will die of plague, and carry their disease to New Orleans. What would you have me do?"

"The plague," Louis said horrified.

"Oui, come here," Henri ordered, "Take off your clothing except for you breeches."

Quickly, Henri examined his arms and back for bites. "If you please inspect the rest of yourself. I found no bites. Louis from now on you must be sure after eating do not leave your food in the cabin for any length of time. I will fix the hole I made. I stress upon you to keep yourself clean. I'll mesmerize the rats to stay away."

"But the rest of the passengers."

"Are safe as long as there is plenty of rats to feed upon . Only a few kitchen helpers are infected so far. I must feed Louis. I'll kill the rats I sense plague fleas upon. Perhaps, I can get rid of the threat of an out of control plague if I target those beasts. But, as God is my witness you must understand and forgive your poor friend, I must eat."

"Why, why are you so kind to me? Why am I so different?" Louis pleaded.

With a sigh, Henri leaped on top of his coffin, sitting on his haunches, his hands pressed against his chest, his back leaning forward, his head jutted out.

Louis' mouth twisted in disgust. Henri appeared to be something abnormal and wicked, yet beautiful too. His posture made no earthy sense to him. He looked like an angelic gargoyle on the church of Notre Dame. He turned away from him sickened and repulsed.

"Look at me now," Henri said in a compelling voice.

He turned around to find Henri sitting cross-legged quite naturally as any human would sit on a wooden box. He appeared to be nothing more than a pretty androgynous male. A satin beauty patch of a cupid was on his cheek.

"You think me to be such a fop, don't you?" he said with a sigh, "Guilty."

"Henri," Louis said putting his hand into his cold one. "You haven't answered me. Why?"

Why am I so kind to you?" His blue eyes shone like clear human tears "Ours is such a lonely, desperate life at times. One looks after himself if he is to survive night by night. The night before I was to be guillotined for accidentally killing a child I agreed to leave my humanity behind me because I felt humanity deserved to be left behind. And what I have found since then are beasts in a garden which can be just as bad and sometimes just as good as any mortal man or woman. It's such a heavy burden to be just another cross humanity has to bear. When you popped up from your ditch, waving your little stick around challenging Armand's coven, oui, I was amused, but more so your gallantly towards me and Paulette, made me feel worth while. Imagine! Someone standing up for a monster like me."

"You're not a monster," Louis whispered, kissing his cheek.

"Oui, I am a monster. And Louis it's time to feed the monster."

"It was you, wasn't it? The one who was crying outside the door."

Looking humiliated and humble Henri said in a small voice, "I didn't hurry away fast enough. You weren't meant to hear me."

"Henri if you love her so much."

"Non, what saddens me is I miss her companionship. I didn't love her. I loved how she kept loneliness at bay, through often we did nothing more than fight, we did have moments where we were comfortable with each other enough to carry on a civil conversation. It's better for me to travel alone for a while. I didn't take her to force her to be my lover, nor would I allow her to force me to love her. Out of my solitary wanderings I found her and pitied her for the manner in which her life was ending. There was nothing more between us. I would never take a human being to be my lover. There is too much complication between a fledging and his or her maker. Perhaps it's the high price makers extract upon their fledglings to pay. The price of their families, their humanity, consigning them to a world which is often dangerous. Perhaps it is too ridiculous for makers to expect their fledglings to love them. All I seek from a fledging is their company for a short while at least. I must leave now."

Louis watched him disappear like a magician prankster into the thin air.

Dreading to be left alone in the room with the coffin, he hurried out running down the gallery, climbing up on to the deck.

He felt small and all alone. The water lapped against the hull. He wondered what it would be like to fall into the icy cold waters to be so completely submerged and hidden from the cold sparkling eyes he felt were watching every move he took.

"None of that," Henri said firmly, putting his hand on his shoulder.

"He wants me. I dreamt about him. He was beautiful, so beautiful, and all I wanted to do was to drink him in," Louis whispered, "When the time comes I will be too lost to say non to him. I know it."

"Louis, what else do you see?"

"Dead faces like yours playing in the waters. I hear Nicki's violin above the sounds of the sea. I see people becoming corpses before my very eyes."

"These visions are not caused by Lestat Certainly not Armand. He would not dare, not while you're under de Lion Court's protection. These visions are being caused by your faith and your disbelief. You believe in everything that has happened to you. And in everyone you met. But a part of you wants disavowal them. To deny their existence, and forget it ever happened, or to believe it to be a nightmare. This is what causes mortals to go insane when they have any dealings with us. I want you to entertain yourself only at night with me. There will be times you will imagine me to be a mortal man. Then reality will bring you tumbling down, and you'll start to question what is real and what is not. I will assure you of what I am. During the day sleep and read. Come back with me to the cabin."

Louis followed him to his coffin. Opening it, Henri pulled out several books. "I want you to read these if you can't sleep during the day. Lose yourself into these pages. Imagine yourself to be the main character. Write your own stories. Write poetry, I have a book here on mathematics, work out the equations, and I'll check your answers later."

For months they spent their time occupying their selves with each other. Whenever Louis had visions Henri would talk him through it. He would remind him with a parental embrace what reality was. He would hold him gently, and despite Louis' assurances otherwise, he could feel moments of angry contempt and resentment Louis had of him sometimes. Not for who he was; but for what he was. They often would sit staring at the sea, with Phil at their side, listening to his fanciful stories of sea serpents, and savage men in New Guinea who ate the flesh of men, and actually shrunk their heads. Louis told them stories about bayou witches and loup garous and a strange lady ghost who played on the swamp waters for all eternity, seeking her lost love. Henri told them mildly bawdy stories of romances and scandals which occurred at courts, telling them gossip abut the nobility they only half believed.

One night Phil taught Louis a sailor's jig. They kicked their legs up in the air, their arms around each other's waists. Henri smiled enjoying their laughter. Their boyish faces touched, and they hungrily kissed each other with sweet awkward passion. Phil took Louis' hand and the human strength if his frail hand compared to a vampire's fit Louis like a glove. He took Louis to a friend's cabin. Henri could hear the rustling of clothing, two young voices drunk and happy with each other, then the subtle, supine twisting abut of two mortals holding each other united as one.

He sighed, none of this was arousing to him except for the blood he could hear circulating through their young bodies. He was too young of a vampire to be able to properly focus completely on the sounds of two mortals making love over the roaring and ebbing of a billion voices which made up the background music of his mind. Music he could ignore over his own thoughts, so that most of the time he wasn't even aware of it. The boys' love making was just part of that majestic, worldly music.

He was glad for them. That they had a brief moment of intimacy and decency between them.

Later he met Louis up on the deck, he was alarmed at the strained look on Louis' face, "I, a part of me, a part I will not unleash. I wanted to hurt him."

"Louis," Henri said abashed and scandalized.

"My friend," Louis said taking a deep breath, "I submerged this evil within myself. Indeed I forgot all about it in the innocent pleasure I took from him or rather we took from each other. I enjoyed his having dominion over me. Even if it was at my command. It was gentle and pleasing, but I wanted so much more."

"These feelings of yours, oui, they are singular to men who take pleasure in inflecting wounds on the flesh of other men. You may someday find a man who enjoys such love play to be meted out upon him. They say Armand once, a long time ago. In what was another life."

"Non, I will not give over to these temptations," Louis said firmly, "It isn't love. It's filthy."

Henri ducked his head down, embarrassed, "As you say Louis,"

A week later they arrived in New Orleans. Henri took Louis to an inn.

"Please do not leave me," Louis begged him.

"I will pay you one last visit. For now my friend you shall sleep."

Henri trapped his mind, entered his brain, and stilled it to cause his mind to cast off the labor of being awake. He then went into the hall waiting.

A man in his fifties, slim and in his prime with raven dark hair pulled back with a black ribbon, his dress causal, almost neglected, walked down the hall. His body had the awesome strength of a planter who wrestled with God, the devil, and the elements to create a plantation out of the wilderness. A man who put to rest his conscience about the capture and the repression of the bodies and minds of the slaves he had working on his land for him. He believed in his goodness because at least he was compassionate, as much he could afford to be, to the subhumans in his care. His mature face with its wrinkles was nut brown from the soak of a punishing daily sun. His body was hard as his resolve to live life as much as possible on his terms.

He opened the door to find his son sweating feverishly and twisting on the bed, dressed in fine clothing.

"Louis," he rasped, putting his hand to his son's forehead.

"Father, father, I failed you," Louis whispered, speaking out from erotic and savage dreams he was having. "Father, Alexandre is dead. They murdered him. I couldn't see. Lights too many lights . Their faces were lights father."

Gathering up Louis in his arms, he took him from the inn. He loaded his sleeping, mumbling son into his his carriage worried sick about his sanity.

Louis felt the softness of his familiar feather bed. All his possessions he collected to be in his bedroom were bleary to him in his muted vision. He could hear the wave of subdued voices in the room. His father's, mother's voices calling to each other about him. In the back ground he could see the image of the golden man, his lion's mane on top of his noble face, his mother at his side, she seemed to be a blizzard, all white, cold and sharp. Nicki's violin was serenading him, and Armand was whispering to Lestat. But the golden one's gray eyes would not turn to Armand. Those eyes were locked on him.

The human voices went away.

Henri climbed up the side of the house, he entered a door from the second floor of the verandah. He entered Louis' room. He said in a voice which fell in Louis' mind like a pebble falling through water making rippling vibrations running through his mind. "You will no longer believe. You will no longer believe in that sacred place in your mind in ghosts, in loup garous, in virgins giving birth, in levitating saints, in vampires, in God. You will not believe in devils or angels. You will only give lip service to God because it is socially correct to do so. Your gods will be the meat on a plate, what lies between a male's or a female's legs, the wine in your glass, the cash in your pocket."

And all those childish dreams, fantasies, and faith was uprooted from is mind. The deepness of his imagination was filled and made shallow replaced with ego.

Sadly, Henri watched innocence fleeing from Louis' face.

"And you will humor those who believe in the supernatural with a benevolent contempt," Henri said a tear trailing down is face.

He smiled. He knew Louis' mind was at peace. Belief and disbelief were no longer at war with each other. He was no longer in any danger of being a quaint child who talked frantically about nonsensical vampires. He now possessed the type of sanity which would make sense to the world and to himself.

"Angel," said a small timid voice behind him.

Startled Henri turned around there was a small child of five standing in the doorway. The little boy ran to him. His corn flower blue eyes wide with amazement and awe. "Are you my brother's guardian angel? Is he going to live? Please don't let him die. You're not here to take him away are you?"

"Shh," Henir said, unsure of what to do. He didn't dare try to mesmerize such a small child, instead he said, "Oui, your brother is going to live."

He felt a sad kind of emptiness. "Here," he said before he could think, "Let me take you to bed."

Taking the small boy's hand, Henri walked him down the hall to his room he tucked him into his bed, he noticed a crucifix hanging above his bed, he sighed knowing it would no longer have any significance for Louis unless a great tragedy happened to unhinge his mind. And what great tragedy could happen to such a well loved child?

"I want a story. Could you read me a story?" the child requested.

Common sense compelled him to leave the room. He rebelliously got a small book of nursery rhymes for children.

"Non, " the child demanded prettily, "I want you to read this one, read this one please. About him."

Henri read to him of Saint France of Assisi. "And Saint Francis he sold all of his father's goods, and he gave the money to the poor. His father was rightly furious at the dear saint."

His father was a mean man, a mean, mean man," the little boy said passionately, "he should have given away his goods to the poor a long time ago himself."

"Perhaps," Henri said smiling. He felt so good about himself, laying along side the child. He felt like a mortal man, and the warmth he felt from the candle burning near by appeased his sadness.

I never wanted children, he thought winsomely, I didn't think it would be fair to burden a woman with such a husband as I would make. I did always wish to be an uncle.

He read in a heroic voice of the adventures of Saint Francis. His commanding a wolf to halt its devour of village children. And how the wolf became a good wolf beloved by all. And how Saint Francis' friend, Friar Juniper stole silver bells from the altar to give to a poor woman, and the trouble he got in with his Father Superior. He turned his anger into compassion in time by afterwards doing an importune act of charity towards his Father Superior by offering him a pot of porridge to eat during his devotionals.

"I want to be clever and loved like Fra Juniper, and holy and brave like Saint Francis," the little boy said, putting his head against Henri's chest, laughing, "Do you believe I will be a saint someday?"

"Oui, I believe you will be a saint someday," Henri said absently, thinking he would out grow such a notion once he discovered boys or girls, or both.

"I believe in you angel," he said solemnly.

"I believe in you too," Henri said, surprised how much he meant it. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him he wasn't an angel. He decided the truth would be more harmful than a lie. Time would make the boy forget about him, as time would cause dear flighty Lestat to forget about Louis. He could sense and smell an old woman in the house, a slave, who was dying slowly of advanced breast cancer. He knew what he had to do. He also sensed Louis' father's arteries hardening. He had six years at the most. "I must leave now," he whispered to the boy, passively plucking the boy's name from his childish mind. Paul, he thought.

He went to the door and opened it. Ready to go into the shadows of the house and seek out his victim. He thought about it and sighed, deciding it would be better if he hunted in town.

"Good night beautiful angel," Paul whispered.

"Good night beautiful one," Henri whispered back before he left.

the end.