I know I've gone on about love before but let me tell you, this was a river, rolling inside me, this was culmination and realization, and yes, absolutely, a convergence like I've felt far to rarely in my life on this earth. Sweet the conversation, the questions and answers, the touches too long denied and unattended, finally freed and broken out into the air, received so sure and blessedly. All going on aside, out of sight, like something covert, something being born all over again, while at the same time, a thing warm and naked, a child from my seed, my blood, my lover my wonder. The ingredients? Aside from the two, my loves, one constant and present, one who had come home to me again, almost no, complete with reverence into my arms. That, sweet elaboration I may divulge at some point. For now? The more fervent details. Once I'd left the party, with the merest taste of mortal blood staining my lips, I stood in the middle of the street and slowly spun around, pausing with my arms outstretched to the sky, the press of the colder nights settling on my skin, offering it's own caress, trying to charm the warmth from my skin, but there was nowhere to go but upward and onward. The fire had been built inside, the furnace was in need of stoking, and as I let the scent of all the night contained fill my senses, I let out a low and wicked laugh, and was off to the river.

Now, I don't hunt in ghettos. Perhaps my aesthetic sense disallows my feet to wander there, though certainly I'll claim it to be a reputable hunting ground, if you're ever in the mood. I've always preferred more highbrow opportunities, however at the hour of four A.M, I couldn't be too particular. The waterfront was always a guarantee at that hour, and there I headed. My ears were filtering every sound. I tell you I was primed, feral, ready for anything that would have come across my path, and sooner than later, just offshore, I heard them in my thoughts. Four. What a nice appetizer. Oooh, the thought. Yes, I was hungry, craving. All thought of decorum and propriety gone for the moment, and that fixation, come on, give it to me. Let me have the feel of it sliding down my throat, thick and warm. Yes.

How easy it is for us to surprise and unbalance the scales of mortal perception. There I was on deck of the medium size cruiser breathing in the dark, sour smell of whiskey filtered through the pores of those on board. All in the cabin, sleepy and drunk. Oh, it sometimes was too easy, I thought. Had the urge not been so demanding a voice on it's own, I'd have rolled my eyes and gone to look for a challenge, but I was there, and instead sat myself down near the back, and began a gentle, insistent tap as I used to meter out while watching recitals. The first two, separately came sluggishly to investigate, and do you know they never returned below deck? No, the sharpness of my terrible teeth found the thick, sweaty fat of their necks, and with a viciousness I haven't felt in years, I tore them wide open, and drank until the last beat thrummed in my mouth. One of the others must have heard something, though neither of the last had screamed in their stupor. I grabbed him from behind with my hand around his throat just as he stepped out of the cabin door. Our weight together nearly toppled us off and into the water, so I did what occurred to me naturally, and held him to me as I rose above the ship. Oh wicked sinner in my arms, your cargo will never make it to the mainland. Your contact will never find anything left of you or your friends in the hours of dawn. Thick the blood came, deep and rich with his intent. The way he choked in my arms was a melody of rapturous horror that only brought him harder against the razor points embedded in his neck, terror that I was, how I wanted more. When he was spent, I let him fall into the water and I let myself jet upward, filled with such a force, wanting more, feeling near to out of control and dizzy with the rush of blood that moment to moment filled out my features and my flushed my skin. The last man on board still slept away in drunken oblivion. He was the worst of all, the killer among them. I crashed down onto the deck and broke through the cabin doors as good as any Western hombre ever had, and in the instant he roused and reached for his admittedly formidable weapon, I was on him, and the richness flowed free. He was lithe and warm in my arms, rippled muscles under my hands only fueling my hunger, my breath become hot and urgent against his neck like a lover's as I tore into him. My tongue sought the wound, and the flesh was drawn, drained and released fast and thoroughly.

I shoved him away from me and staggered back up on deck. My head was swimming, spinning, and I wanted free of the mess. I'd gotten the goods, and I was as drunk as any of them had been. Oh, yes, whole and fierce it pulsed, I could hear it singing inside my veins the way the wind blows in the trees or the way the neon lights of the French Quarter bars hum. Yes, it was like that, I thought, swaggering to the back where I leaned against the seat to regain myself. The garish lights, blinking, calling the tourists, seductive with promises, oh yes indeed neon blood, racing through me, delightful. I'm coming, I've fallen for your poisonous charms once again. I've come undone. Fix me up right and give me more.

I laughed and laughed as I rose above the ship and directed myself back to the shore. Halfway there, I stopped, turned in the direction of the mess I'd wrought, and there, hung in the night sky, I closed my eyes and danced with the crimson lover who held me in her sway, and in one swift vision, an explosion, small but effective, lit the black water and the sky above. Nothing for their contacts to find. Another set of plans I'd ruined. Curses, foiled again.

Once back on the streets, I surely appeared drunk. I didn't care. There was no one around anyhow, and had anyone questioned me, so long as they'd had even an ounce of malodor clinging to them, I might have lain them right down in the alleyway and had my way with them, or perhaps had more than one way with them, if I chose.

No, I had to go home. This wasn't me. I was good, remember? I laughed at myself. Lestat. Wise up. You are what you are. Yes, of course Madame Crimson. How could I ever forget? But then, just before I turned the corner to my sanctuary, that same voice directed my attention to the park, just beyond my line of sight, and with just the hint of a smile, an acknowledgement to the blood as is guided me, I was there, standing just behind the hedgerow.

"What do you think you're doing?", I asked the young man, who appeared to be somewhere in his early twenties. Of course it was apparent what he was doing because the young woman beneath him lay in disarray, half into the shrubs. She screamed when she saw me there, and her assailant was equally off balance at my intrusion. With his pants unfastened and falling down, he stood there eye to eye with me, and for a moment, it honestly looked as if he were going to argue his reasons. No time for that though. Up I went over the withering branches, and landed squarely beside him. "I asked you a question!" I said loudly. Then I laughed. I knew full well my eyes were glowing, hot and preternaturally, the blood again, swimming, drowning me, the magic lifted me even as I tumbled. Glorious feeling about to be stoked even further.

He muttered something, and fumbled with his equipment. His eyes never left mine, but how could they? In one swift motion I knocked him away with my arm, my natural strength compounded inestimably with all I had drawn in. He rolled onto the hard lawn and lay dazed. The woman had scrambled in fear, only back farther into the bush like some scared little cat. I reached a hand down to her, nodding with my head in her direction though I turned my face away. No need to petrify her further with those eyes, Lestat.

"Take it. Come on. Get up, you're safe now. Safer than you've ever been." I turned to look at the punk in the grass, as he moaned. She staggered closer to me and I was sorely tempted toward her frailty, her desperation and need. I wanted to take her in my arms and give her the world, if only for this night. Yet I knew she sensed me. Fleshed out and warm as I was, I could have passed as a mortal man under the most talented medical fingers, yet the blood lust within me betrayed the certain pause and meter to my speech, my movement, and in her instinctive fear, she moved away. Barely facing her, I smiled. "Go on. I'll take care of him." She stuttered and pulled at her clothes, thanking me as much as she could. I couldn't help but want her. Come to me Cherie. Let me love you. Let me make it good. Damn the passion, shut it up! She turned and ran off down the street, leaving me to watch after her, lost for a moment in thought, totally unaware of my surroundings. I was reminded with a blow to my back that moved me only enough to catch my attention. Yes, you. Back to you, my little play toy.

I turned on him and decided to go fully theatrical. Why not? He'd already seen what I was, or perhaps what I wasn't. I widened my mouth, showing the full length and gleam of my teeth, and I do believe I even let out a little hiss, just for effect. He laughed at first, ready to take me on. The streets are so full of crackpots after all. I was probably on drugs he supposed. He was absolutely dim-witted. Oh yes, Cher. A drug you could never imagine. Stupid criminals or as we liked to say, evil-doers, were still up there on my killing scale, and so with yet another burst of strength, I rushed him, hard and full, knocking him to the ground so hard that in a second beneath me he was unconscious. I wasted no time draining him, fueling the wicked pulse, hearing the crystalline laughter of the blood as it rose and rang inside me. Hell's bells? No, deeper even, furiously primal, an ancient dance in my heart, pounding, pounding….. Yes… Infernal rapture, as I fell away to the ground, heaving and writhing with the pleasure. It was too much, I was going to die, I was sure of it. No, hazy, that's right, I couldn't die. I had died. I was born again.

I left him there just like that. He wasn't drained though certainly dead, and I supposed I was breaking another rule again, leaving a kill behind, but in truth I was beyond thought, and definitely beyond caring. Let them think there was a vigilante on the loose. This city could use one anyhow. Good God, I was intoxicated. Truly, as trippingly drunk as I'd ever been when I was a mortal man, and without a doubt, more than I'd been in a good number of immortal years. I was celebratory. I was insane with joy. The cup overflowed and I wanted only to drink and drink and drink.

This condition led me home to no grand denouement, no anticlimactic climax as is sometimes my fashion. I scaled the stairs sloppily, and fell into the doorway of the luxurious room as if I'd never seen it before. I can't tell you how colors swim and stand out. Again I thought of the French Quarter and the lurid signage, the invitation. I was for an instant, every drunken tourist I'd ever seen and I fell into the welcoming arms of the leather chair, loosening my clothes before I suffocated. Now I felt something entirely mixed with the high I was on, and yet, differentiated only by the pulse and tempo it beat in my mind. I wanted only one thing more, and it wasn't sleep. It was another hunger, unsatisfied, and the electricity racing through me left every nerve of my warm mortal skin alive with need. What could fulfill me? Ah, that's right…. There was the answer, waiting and unaware of anything but perfect dreams. As I stood up and took off the last of the damnable garments, angrily casting them to the floor, I slipped into the bed and began another feast altogether.

But that, is another story.

:End:
Posted to www.livejournal.com/users/lestatdelct
on 11.14.03