Then Shall Change Red

by Poet_to_None

Summary:

A narrative exploration of Magnus, in his lifetime, and the Vampire Chronicles if he'd chosen to forsake his plan of passing on.

Chapter 1: You, I, And The Meanings Of Fire

Notes:

CHAPTER TRIGGER WARNINGS:

Thoughts about suicide
Attempted suicide
Bodily functions (vomiting/urinating/defecating)

This work follows after Black, Soft, Unearthly, which may be read if desired.

Lestat, and a bucket, I hold.

My elbow shakes whenever my palm slips, gripping his full breast, all the human bile forcing its way out of him, suffused with infant vampire blood. It's not agreeable but he tolerates it well. His delirious gaze occasionally strays over my eyes, with a softness I don't know has anything to do with me.

Is it like this from wine drunkenness?

The huffs dry out now, his stomach empty. I pull him to his feet and toe the bucket between his legs. I pat the center of his chest and wait, his back against my body.

Because I stay him, I feel his silken hair on my shoulder, the beat of his heart so near to mine.

Something about all of this wretched expelling seems intimate if a person's not alone.

I'd been alone.

Of course I'm immune to my human disgusts. If I'd ever. . . had them.

I long to touch my lips upon his forehead or eyelids as I wait- should I kiss them? I think about the sweetest reciprocity to him.

But then it's arrived, the bowels empty both ways and Lestat's laughing. I look down my nose to find the heels of his palms cover his eyes. This insufferable infant -my own- laughing! But I smile, want to laugh too. It's funny!

Ah. Too late.

I pitch the bucket through a window, and next the black leggings that mopped the rest.

As I turn, he wobbles a bit on the topstep of the stairwell. I stumble into flight, faster than time to catch him, my hold upon him immediate. His splayed hands cover the wallstones, my arm clenching his waist. He looks back.

"Thank you," he lilts with his fine french tongue, unconcerned with his fate at the bottom of the steps, like the bucket at the bottom of the tower.

Insufferable.

Lestat slides one loose ankle after the other, more in support of himself, and I watch. Soon he steps like he'd never faltered at all.

They're boring spirals, the stairs, circling on and on in the waning of our night. Here I'm interested in nothing. All this is gone already. I don't give a care.

Of course for him, it isn't so.

Any sight and sound and feeling alone make him pause. Again. And again. Let me list them all. The rats, unbothered to hide; the wintry clumps, the roots, the pebbles, the breeze, that chirping!

It must be wine drunkenness.

"Where does this go?" he refers to the stairway.

"Down," I simply say, "Where you and I take our rest."

He hums, scraping an edge of his lip under his teeth, another idea surely in mind about how we do rest or if together. But I touch then the unhealing scar opposite his bite. My fingertips sweep slowly.

That is our kiss.

He moves his head aside in reflex, not unsmiling. It’s shy.

From mouth to collarbone, from hip to calf, the tributaries of our blood flex on him, as freshly as they spilled. In through the gaps of tumbled stones and dormant braided vines, wherever emerging dawn meets the stairwell dimly, lilac sculpts his every muscle.

For a moment, the mesmer of Paris, in the distant snow, glitters as light in his eyes.

My young Lestat.

He stands princely and cursed. Alive and dead. I still see the mortal he was. Still! This fragile man I bruised and cherished and gave my all. I'll remember him. When he rose from my arms, he rose unbreakable.

There's no word for how fine he appears to me, except that he's my own.

I look away, my voice coming up roughly, meaning to scatter all gentler, kinder feelings, "Aa! -tch!- Later!"

"Later's when you have your fill of all you see."

His eyes dance to mine, confused and trepidatious.

He's meant for this. I know.

I grasp his hand, tug him.

"For now, listen," I instruct him, strongly.

Whether I like it -I don't- our night's slipping from me. And-

"I'm about to leave you," I mutter much weaker, at myself only.

Lestat's bright features chill however. His hearing's sensitive now. Foolish, Magnus. Here it is at last. I narrow my focus.

"You're taking possession of this place. Know that everything in it, is for you." I tell him, abruptly.

Why would I drag it out? I don't. I walk faster until I halt us. "You'll first do as I say though, young Lestat.'' He looks pitiably alarmed, too attentive. I reach to brace his shoulder. "Use this immortality well." I prop my elbow on the barred door beside me, waiting to be opened, and nudge the tower's keyring into his palm.

"Your nature needs blood. Anything else tastes of nothing and won't sustain you. As another matter, it'll look hellish coming from you. Your insides don't do anything,” I go on, and speak harder about this. It's necessary, I think. “Hunt human victims. Be swift and without mercy.” I emphasize tapping the corner of his mouth, “So you kill with this-” my eyes drop while I indent a nail above his heart “-not this-" his lashes flutter "-and of all things-” my knuckles rap over his forehead, “-absolutely not this.”

His golden lashes blink again. Frost. How pretty. How strange. His human tears remain, in ice. But I'm distracted. Must go on.

“Stop your feast before the heart's not beating. The last of it’s not something you want to feel, unless you're strong enough, and who knows if you are. Don't pay a foolish price for it.”

He swallows.

“You're talking as if . . .

. . .you will leave me,” he drones, his deeply made voice in misery, not at all well.

I know the words dry up in my throat, nothing to say. Why’s that, Magnus? It's telling to him. He erupts with such feeling.

“You will not!” he shouts, his infant voice stunning us a moment with terrible pain that might burst our ears. Less now I want to instruct him. Rest, I want real rest. I clutch his wrist harshly to urge him toward the one removable wallstone at our feet. Not entirely flush it waits, for I knew we’d stand here at our evening’s end.

“Grasp that stone and pull it from the wall.”

“Absurd! I cannot! It must weigh-” he sputters at me-

“Pull it out!” I demand at once, crossly.

He flattens his full lips and grinds together his teeth. The same as cursing it seems, but done with his eyes. Then, a flex goes through his biceps to comply in spite- spite alone. So entertainingly it becomes awe, because well it moves. He scans along his hardened nails, with that stone’s grains behind them.

I point to the dark.

“This passageway leads to where you rest,” I tell him, summoning emphasis and brevity, “Each dawn you'll drop as the dead, where you are, that is that. Don't do it somewhere you don't have secrecy and safety. Ever, my little Wolfkiller. Tug the rope bolted on the other side to shut the passage with yourself in it. Press all the way through that way, on your belly, and light the candles, because there's no windows there. Rest in the room. Promise me.”

Silence.

Oh, not good this silence. No it does not feel good.

“You will use it,” I dully self-assure, accepting his refusal to answer. “For now, you must give the obeisance you owe, as I told you.”

A few paces. I push away the beam, and grab the door itself between my arms. I simply tear it from the hinges to carry with me. It's not difficult. I throw it on the pyre, unlit, boards and branches clattering, scattering, dancing in bombardement.

"After I am burned up, you -Lestat De Lioncourt-" I climb through the pyre's edges, checking how I've prepared it "-sired upon my blood, my own and my only will scatter the ashes. Of it all! Every handful you see!" I carefully readied the room, this room. I am small standing in it, small standing on the wood pile. The damp stone and high ceiling ensures the fire dies without spreading into the tower. I look up and down. "It goes to the wind," I assert, almost meditative in the madness of it.

Silence.

Suddenly a hoarse sound I don't expect. The stone sriked by the keyring, after. It chills me. I quickly glance back, Lestat stepping away from the threshold as he speaks. "You'll go into a fire?"

"My God!" he exclaims, a heel reaching the wallstones already, "No! Magnus no!"

Wretchedly he sinks where he stands, knees curled up, hands beside his face.

"Come now, my brave Wolfkiller," I cajole, jumping at once down from my perch in the wood, through the doorway again. "A little mortal courage." I stand as near as I can without touch, fearing to worsen his response with my unknowing hands. "All you need do is accept I've decided this, and make your promise to me."

Silence.

Utter silence.

And no ending of it. Though dawn comes for us. Though now is my time!

What do I do, this cannot be.

"Or-" I raise my voice in reply, maybe now afraid myself, "-though it will cleave my heart in two- I'll throw you into the fire and claim another! Answer me!"

Lestat’s struck, visibly. Shaking his head, a heartbroken ruby streak flows from his eye that he hides at once with his hands.

I spin to the side. I'm furious or disgusted, I can't decide which.

"Your silence changes nothing," I declare, disillusioned and angry. My one courtesy is denied me! I'm anxious in what I've just done however.

I pace the stone threshold, speaking coldly and metrically.

"I go now to find sweet oblivion. Or this hell nobody shuts up about. A 'prince of darkness' I can spit in the face of!" I laugh a little, too sadly though. "Imagine." My voice softens.

"Though none of that will matter to you."

Perhaps already the heart is cleaved in two. The heart of the man and the lover. The heart of the man and vampire. I lack the sensibility to grasp it. I fear to admit it.

I don't know what he does. I don't look to see. He does not sob or cry. I don't hear it.

Oh sweet oblivion. Sweeter than angels. It is my faith, waiting for me. A long, long rest, where madness does not follow. I am so close.

I still, eyes tracing the floor into the room, flicking up a spark that lights the wood, as only our kind can do.

The first slithering flame pries through the black cracks between the kindling. My tension soothes. See. It will be.

Yet I must have Lestat's answer.

I near and then-

-an unexpected burble of words I hear.

". . .it's hellish n-nightmares, you wake yourself up," Lestat whispers, those large strong hands muffling it all the more, "Why can't I wake."

Blood seeps through his fingers, so subtly. Infant tears.

"So," I cut in, for I must, "You'll scatter what is burned."

No answer. An exhalation of crying.

"Or I will rise and do such things to you, young Lestat. Hmmm? You answer me now?"

He looks right through me. Beyond me. Those vacant eyes reflect a fire, building its smoke above lurid licks of orange and blue. I want to say fire's only a beautiful element. The element that transforms. I'll become something. I'll become nothing. He’d not understand though. It’s the work I do. He sharply turns his head away.

"Fine."

How bitter and ancient the tone I use for one word is.

"Keep me talking through this last chance at solemnity. Learn a thing I suppose. Damnable Wolfkiller."

I kneel to him, hair spilling over my legs and hips, not quite as exposed for a moment, maybe even easier to look upon. He changes not at all. He traps himself in his limbs, a pitiful protective posture. He sways, how he sways! He does it all as he did for how long now?

What is this!

It aches to the soul of me to see it!

It's not- it's not expected.

Fix it with your voice, Magnus. Fix with reason. Explain it.

"So you know,” I hesitate, “No earthly means will end your life except a blaze -such as you'll see- or the sun itself. But, if the ashes don't scatter, you'll repair in the night's dark as a burned husk, a hollow body of unspeakable agony, and you'll hunger then."

I swallow, thinking of it.

"And you'll feed. And feed. And after this endless pain and hunger, you'll fully restore."

"It's no measurable sufferance," I add, "Complicated things are in play."

Heat's roaring at my back. It makes my brow prickle now.

"But escape yourself you will not."

I pause. I try to shush and lull. Tears shake from his trembling lids. I coax his child seeming gestures. Have I broken the boy? Foolish, Magnus. I hope for responsiveness, anything at this point. Though idly I return to my thoughts.

"Blood and time fuel us. Your immortality's strong. . .because mine is. I fed. I lived centuries. As will you." I hear my voice dip low and cease. I grow affected now, fingers heavy, dawn oncoming. A last squeeze. Yes. I need to feel Lestat deeper than a graze. Especially if it's my last hour. My arms slowly lift, clasping his precious jaw, plush and firm hands fitting there perfectly, flesh to flesh, bone to bone, eye to eye, mouth to mouth. "Now" I encourage, "Now you do just that, beautiful young Lestat. Live forever, with everything nature gave you, and what I've added to the lot."

It's so intimate, calming.

Oh how Lestat's features grimace- their love overflowing, resonance undiluted. It's powerful. His voice at last trusts enough, despairs enough to speak to me again, "Please stay with me, please," his words tumble over "Only a little, only a night, I beg you!-" a spray startles us, of blood that speckles my cheek. Lestat's eyeteeth have stabbed into his lower lip, becoming his fangs. At the panic of it I laugh, I can't help it. "-oh god I'll long for you-" he confesses, slurred and dizzied by blood "-it's a wretched thought! You cannot leave me!"

"A pity I can, Wolfkiller!" I retort with mad laughing. Although soon my laughs come to end. . .and I thumb the beautiful droplet on Lestat's pierced lip, an eyelash uprising against that same beautiful red on his cheek. "What a thing you are!" I whisper in wonder, "My own."

My hand drops.

In a moment Lestat shows me everything his new fierceness can be, convinced I'm about to rise for the fire, claiming my ribs, my very bones, so that I cannot move if I desire. So that the blood wells from my flesh to escape his nails.

Is it a child's instinct or a lover's? I want oddly to know which.

He, the infant in the reeds, to be watched by the sister red.

He, the sabine bride. The sire's widow! My bereaved and beloved Lady Estridsen- a handsome fate supplying freedom and wealth.

Yes, my plan for him. That he delays so stubbornly!

Ah!

Lovingly I did lay his wolf's coat of red velvet.

Beside the handsomest clothes the servant brought.

And the uncountable jewels and treasures, each a thought of him, untold, when he did not yet exist. 'It will be my bride's.' All for him to use. He doesn't need me.

All consuming azure eyes, unblinking now; endless terror through his stare into mine, that one action will break the spell he holds on me.

What's the truth of it, Magnus. An insanity says dance into the fire. An insanity says ignore the fire. I must know the truth of it. All resolve caves in, like an earthquake rips apart the mighty monuments of the ancient.

Ever so deadly my own fingers mirror Lestat's, harden themselves into him, could tear myself from him.

"Is all the world your repast not enough?" I ask, "Answer truthfully."

"No!"

Without hesitation. With passion even!

"No it is not!"

The curses he finds to use! I'm astounded!

"Hush, hush," I attempt.

He curses yet.

"Magnus!" he begs "Will you not go into the fire!"

Unbound, everything Lestat says starts slurring together, in that unsteadying way french spills between its words to me. All he couldn't say before comes now. A dozen shattered pieces, barely whole.

"Don't-"
"It's a nightmare-"
"Please I’d-"
"I'd-”
“I'd be forced to watch- as the room burned-”
“-b-black like the-"
"-Magnus I’d-"
"I’d have to put my hands in-”
“-this ash that-
“-that-"
"-oh God I can't say it-”
“-is your heart!"
"Your heart!"
"Your hands!"
"Your face!"
"Your eyes!"
"My God! I'll die!"
"Worse than you I'll die."

“Shhh! Hush my-”

“No!” he wails louder.

“Shhh.” My fingers comb through his hair, suddenly, pairing the quiet admonition. Soothing until another hiccup of ardor.

“I love you,” he mutters, sounding so. . .accusing.

“Shhh. Shhh. Hear me. Calm!” I demand, tracing his jaw, inviting him in the place of my arms. “Fate just rest my weariness!" I exclaim, trying to recall what I've decided.

"What am I doing?” I berate, guilt making conquest where my coldness yields. "I thought, young Lestat, many things. Whether you'd tolerate my companionship, the way I do as I do, anything I decide-" I laugh at myself. "Well I thought none about that!" He stirs and stills. "And none about if you'd manage. . ."

. . .a love like this. At the start."

That feels painful to admit. It dwells between us, the fire cracking and hissing and pouring forth waves of heat.

Lestat fits against my body as though he'll never leave it, lips and fangs he doesn't know how to retract heavy on my neck -infant indeed- "What did I think," I whisper, a scoff at myself.

"Let me tell you something," I reflect, mesmerized now by fire. "It goes as this:

Ere looks to be as Black as the crow
Shall seem as White as will be the bone
Then shall change Red

White. Black. Red. There's cycles, to refine a perfect substance. Not just for the pivotal substance. Common ones as well."

"I don't understand Magnus, please, just don't leave me," he says against my neck.

"No, you don't," I agree in laughter "Come on, we go into the passage, we forget the night. It's dawn."

Our embrace ends. My hand curves under his waist as he rolls. He's onto the stone, fingers and toes spread. Moments of apprehension go by. I gently squeeze his heel. He crawls through. Anywhere on the way he should tense, I flick his foot. Much faster I can do this. I keep smudging my fingers in droplets and realize these too are Lestat's.

I uncurl my limbs slowly into the cool dark, after crawling behind him, and create the glow upon the wicks- bubbly orbs of flame, happy to be. No reason to rise without first gathering my infant. He clings to me as he did in the tower. There, there. Oh there. He sobs again.

"Every drop of blood I’ve given you, you cry," I tell him, brushing the wolf's cape into a gentle heap beside the great stone sepulchere. "Tears that flow like all the mountain-born rivers of my childhood, in their storms."

"What's come over me," he mumbles bitterly, sucking breaths.

"How would I know." I uncover the dark beneath the stone lid, like a mouth that yawns impossibly wide. "‘Love’s agony’ the poets always said, loudly it drums the heart, until our emotions are wild."

"Is that it?" he indistinctly wonders.

"Magnus"

My name he addresses with presence. Enunciated vividly, gently.

"What do you feel for me? Love?"

His limbs relax, his body only pressure all around me in the dark depths of our wide carved box. I still must reach the silken braid that draws the lid closed.

"Will you not say it?" he requests, doubtfully. . .I think from hidden self-faults.

"No, young Lestat. Tomorrow is for 'I love you.'" I clench my eyelids. "Tonight? I'll hate you a bit, hmm?" Dark. The nice dark. Cold skin against cold skin. I drag his forearm, the elbow a bit limp, and slap his palm to my chest. "Here, my heart. Alive in your hands! Saved for you greedy child!" I could laugh it's so funny! The silly sound of a clap in the somber dark. "My greedy child. My own. Weightless in the stars I'd have been."

"So what. I surpass the stars in being 'meant for you'," Lestat belligerently retorts.

"You do!" I acknowledge, well amused. My ribs shake gently in the laughter around it. His cleverness for a disagreement! A telling swallow I hear, in our unseeing blackness.

"You would sweep a hand to my future and throw yourself in a fire. Answering none of my thoughts to you."

I coo woundedly, confronted. Too much to know from this honest statement. I don't want to think about myself. So I wiggle the inside of my wrist on his infant fangs -they hang adorably exposed- baiting a bite that no jerk of his neck or fuss will restrain. Needled new fangs puncture between the veins, in their first penetration. My voice beats the air like a wing- sensual and uncontrolled it sounds! Appalling! No arousal should be so intense! I drink from the slope of his cheeks without biting at all. Loving sorrow. Fear. Hope. The beckoning gates of a mind I can idle a step into, a step only.

You cannot send me thoughts without exchange of blood that's fresh and shared. I could not have answered you while you tried.

I cannot? Why?

I hear only it’s so. I don’t know why. It’s a barrier for the blood parent and the blood child.

How nonsensical.

So things are.

It’s all bewildering Magnus. It’s all-

Lestat rips his fangs from my flesh at his laughter. A pulse afresh of crying blood drips into the curl of my tongue. Oh delicious. I join him haltingly in laughter, against the bone of his cheek. He won't stop laughing! Beautiful Lestat. Silly. What follows our laughter, together, is mended silence. Full of something. Potential. His tongue flirts suddenly with it.

"If you hate me I don’t feel bad at all. It feels good, even. A little."

I give pause. I like what he says. Then tentative, I brood on my longings. One pleasure of love I've forbade myself. One alone. No. Now I take it. I must. I open his mouth in the soft expanding of mine. His tongue lifts over my tongue as outgoing and ingoing tides against the other glide, serene and unhurried. Lestat sends his exclamation like sunlight through my mind.

My God, your mouth’s as undoing as-

He moans. He feels at once too primal and incomplete, struggling that struggle against reason to do naught else but feel.

-as. . .You.

He whispers, so soft, lips leaving mine, "You."

"Oh you shall see, hmmhmm, young Lestat," I wickedly whisper "What your mouth can do."

"I fear it. It's terrible."

I tilt my head, askance at this tone of shame. None of that for much longer. Not from my own. The reaction fades though. I cup the back of his neck and make him shelter under my chin. He sighs, so delicately human.

"What will this be," he mumbles.

A good question to end this night. Yes. Good. I rest and you ask yourself this.

"Do I feel tired?" he mumbles again, as soon as it's been long enough to be done speaking "When dawn comes?"

I clench my eyelids for another time. Don't ignore him. "Heavy maybe, on a kind of night." I press my nails, weightless, across the back of his neck. "Tonight is your newborn night." It needs not be said it's unique. "So young Lestat," I muse, fingernails sweeping back and forth in the faintest scratching. "What will this be? Folly or fortune?" His body shivers still over each drag. "My own, guided by me."

"Loved?"

"Yes! I've had it up to here!" I curse "I did not make you without love. Endless love. Say no more. Rest."

And in that, we do.

Notes:

Inspiration for Magnus’ own personal alchemical reminder, all poetic in a stanza, came from The Ripley Scroll.

Chapter 2: Our Dawn

Heeding pangs. Sunrise now.

Flesh about to petrify, senses obliterate, thinking die.

We lay safe, he and I, marriage final.

Ingression final.

It becomes amative, caressing. 

What a mistake I would have made.

My body belongs to his, in decay. It will create the new.

I close my hand around that hand o’er my breast, and I hear him gasp. My sweet boy. I'm here.

Fate’s done with you its way, Magnus.

I yield. I welcome it. No more now. Sleeping death stills my all, even what ought give dreams.

Yet no.

A knife's light cuts the bowels of my darkness, the blazing tides under my athanor spill out to me.

Inside vaulted bricks and ashes, where blood’s stained. . .my emptied womb awaits. . .containing illumination and memory, the miracle of a dream. 

How long I’ve asked for a dream! Since the catacombs begot me in a blood red ending of day, eternal!"

My fingers joyously explore the edges torn up that a reality reveals. It melts below the skin of my hands. Gone! Crying out, my bones and body peel apart! Unravel and scorch! I ignite!

I radiate.

And the life of me, written in blood not words, from first to last breath, becomes of sol and vulcanus and aries, inextinguishable.

The sun comes out of me. 

I no longer see.

Until what burns my vision dims into nightsky.

Afore me it cracks into panes like the chambers of the rose window, a perfection of number and meaning encompassing the whole, as a hue of verdigris landfalls, like a meteor, making itself the moon.

All mountains gather, all I can remember, meadowed, forested, rocky, glaciered, by twisting inward, then rising in the center of the golden ratio. . .

. . .the moon stands, incandescent white, my Lestat, unbound. I knew. I knew! My beautiful Luna.

His need. His want. His love.

He beckons.

I race to reach him, I throw back my arms, to be held. 

I open my mouth for his light, and realize he opens his for mine, and my lungs bring it up. . .

Up from the past to the infinite present. 

Light but more.

Language.

The sound of my tongue is rebirthed. Not at once, but a movement at a time, in our kiss. It sounds loud, it sounds real, like water I've heard under the ocean. And it’s mine once more. Its immersing sounds are beauty to my heart, but none so much as a name. Before anything I am, is a name. Yes. 

Mæritta. 

I speak her name, three centuries silent, Mæritta.

With ‘m’ and ‘a’ to my own alike, ‘r’ that rolls, ‘t’ that’s triumphant, until recalling softly to ‘a’. . .

. . .the whisper that begins the sweetness. . .of waiting for her ears to hear. Sister mine.

My same self, with eyes of the morning sky, blue before me, every moment.

Blue, that’s seeing acceptingly.
Blue that’s sheltering from loneliness.
Blue that’s showing me endless love.  

All I care is if I’m seeing into blue. 

“Are you counting the stones again Magnus?”

I answer not. High sun makes black our walled garden, under the boughs. Fireweed and ferns and meadow buttercup and mountain clover cover our secret moments here. None but us hear.

“You said when you count the stones you know more about the castle. But you can’t remove or add one, why does it matter to know?” 

I answer not. Among the blossoms, visiting bees climb and fly, in the same ease, though it seems impossible they're able.

“Do you think about how all the stones feel Magnus? Making a castle together?” 

I answer not. It amazes me this moment is real, happening.

“I know they don’t have feelings. I suppose.”

Was I not somewhere else, someone else, but no, still me. . .

“Magnus are you counting the stones!” 

“I’m thinking!” I answer. 

"Always thinking," she says, flinging back into ivy evergreen, in a pout, pulling a handful in each hand of her black curls that end at her waist.

"I'd rather I was not," I complain, an annoyance and fear gripping me for a reason I can't understand. Under my knee, the edge of her dress feels inviting, and I spread across it. Grass and clover and flowers hide in the folds there, and I trace the braided and knotted necklaces we've been making, beginning to pick and weave the next strands. Her arms pull me up against her, and I share with her bits of grass, and tangled, dappled, we tie together our treasures.

Notes:

Athanor
Sol and Luna
Golden Ratio
Meteors
Rose Window

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of The Vampire Alchemist (A Tale Inspired By The Vampire Lestat)