La Promenade Secrete de Louis

La Promenade Secrète de Louis

He had been following us for half an hour down Jackson Street, but for exactly how long I wasn't sure.  My preternatural senses were not as well honed to the thoughts of mortals.

"It seems your reporter friend has been following us...  Should we have a game with him?"  Lestat said in a low whisper, loud enough for me to hear with my vampiric hearing.

"Perhaps we should leave him--" at that moment Lestat sped around the edge of a building and waited for the reporter to turn, ambushing him.

He grabbed him by his jacket and lifted him high in the air using The Cloud Gift.  Many of which gifts I had not been blessed with.  The Dark Gift is different for us all, and many times Lestat refers to me as the mortal among vampires.

The young man squirmed, being both awed and frighted by Lestat's appearance and power.  After what seemed like an eternity, but maybe a only a few moments to the frigtened youth, he sat him down with great force and joined me at my side.

"I'm sorry, but... I had to follow..." the reporter said with fear trembling behind his eyes."  Rather, I think I was drawn, like  a musician to music... like-"

"I assure you, Mon ami mortel, it is quite different."  I said, trying to reassure him in my calm manner that I was not about to lay harm to him.  "Perhaps not unlike the moth to its fatal flame."  My poetic and verbose nature along with my morbid metaphor set a tinge of resoluted fear into his eyes.

"You're rather quite in luck that we shall not kill you now..."  Lestat's eyes flashed over him in bother anger and annoyance.  As always, he had a tone of insolence to his melodic voice.  His face was flush almost like a human's and glutted full of the blood from our hunting.  "Could you not have waited to get more from our friend, Louis?  Was one book full of his disgustingly human-like guilt for you not enough?  Have we not had enough of your metaphorical tounge, are you a reporter or a writer?"

"Lestat, his name is --" But I was abruptly interrupted.

"Daniel.  His name has become quite well known, although under a psuedoname to protect himself, from what, perhaps me..."

Lestat let his eyes linger over Daniel, before turning South down Rue Royale.  The street lamps played shadows over his back as he walked.

"Daniel, may I ask of you what it is you wanted?"  I tried my best to seem interested, but not wholly excited that he had sought me out tonight.  He always remained close to New Orleans, much like ourselves.  New Orleans was always a ghost that could haunt a person for years.

"The blood.  I've made up my mind, I--"

"Have nothing better to do but romanticize immortality."  I interjected prematurely, cutting him off unawares.  "In my two hundred years I've taken but three companions, all of whom which I regret.  I'm sorry, my friend, you I cannot help."  I was then painfully aware of the sadness that sole across his face, skewing his visage of youth into mask of sorrow.

That is the last time I laid eyes on Daniel.  Though, his reveries in painting models I saw through another's eyes.  I valued his privacy far too highly to forsake it with the Mind Gift.  Armand took his mortality, and Marius', the careful keeper of raptured immortals, keeps a silent watch over him.


July 20, 1983 -- Louis Du Pointd uLac