Chapter Text
In the weeks after Interview with the Vampire is published, Daniel’s baseline paranoia skyrockets to such a degree that he initially accepts violent premonitions of people dying as just another new Molloy-ism. He already jumps at shadows, has weird nightmares, and argues with vampires in his head (Particularly Lestat, should he ever crawl out of whatever hole he’s been hiding to seek vengeance against Daniel for smearing his good name – I kept in the part where Louis compared your dick to heroin; you got nothing to complain about, man. And given Armand no doubt remains furious about Daniel blowing his marriage, Daniel is also troubleshooting comebacks beyond Louis said he’d kill you if you did anything to me. ).
The only real problem with the visions are the head-splitting migraines, but he asks his doctor for stronger meds and quietly leaves out the multi-sensory hallucinations that precede them.
When a vision finally hits him in the middle of a reading on the book tour, he falls pretty hard and an underpaid bookseller has to call the paramedics, who insist on taking him to the hospital, where they find nothing. He’s just an old man with Parkinsons under a lot of stress, but his agent doesn't listen to his insistence that it’s fine and he’s losing his mind in a completely manageable way. He's benched until he can guarantee he won’t collapse in the middle of a televised interview. Won’t he please consider the consequences for his already jeopardized credibility?
Back in New York on a functional house arrest, the radius of his life shrinks to within falling distance of the couch, the bed, or the armchair. Without anything better to do, he begins to keep track of the names and places in his visions.
A teenage boy named Isaac runs from vampires in Long Beach. A woman named Sandra Martens in Pasadena appears to be possessed. The kid with no last time is hard to track, but Sandra has a facebook profile and seems to be a real person, not just the product of his drug-and-age-and-vampire-scrambled mind. Daniel sets up a google alert for her name and a week later, there's an article about her jumping off an overpass, described by onlookers as unnaturally calm about the whole thing. A body matching Isaac’s description turns up in a dumpster not long after, drained of blood.
Each vision hits between a few days and a week before it happens. Each one shows him someone around Los Angeles dying in an encounter with a supernatural entity. But beyond that there’s no pattern – no singular monster hunting them, no profile for the victim.
His frantic messages to Raglan James bounce back, and his emails to Rashid go unanswered. He tries to call one of the victims once, but it’s hard to explain to a stranger on the phone that they’re in danger of being eaten by a vampire if they don’t stop going for night jogs on the beach. The man hangs up before he can get more than a few sentences out and Daniel finds an obituary in the paper within the week.
A few days after that, he gets a different kind of vision, with no death in it at all. It’s just Louis, walking down a street at night in Los Angeles, and an accompanying feeling of certainty that the vision or whatever is behind the vision wants Daniel to go to him.
Almost without thinking, he calls Louis and the moment he picks up, Daniel blurts out, “Are you in LA?”
There’s a pause. Then Louis asks, amused, “How do you know that?”
“Just had a feeling,” Daniel says and then stops, unsure of what to say next. His head is pounding.
“Daniel?”
Daniel stares at the seconds ticking upward on the phone.
“Daniel?” Louis repeats. “Are you still there?”
“Something’s been happening to me, man. I'm getting radio silence from the Talamasca and I–” Need help. Desperation claws up his throat and he swallows it down. “I think I’m supposed to find you.”
“What’s this about?”
“It’s crazy. I’m going–” He breaks off in a half-hysteric laugh. He can’t say any of this over the phone.
“Are you alright?”
“Can I fly out to you? It’d be easier if you just read my mind, I don’t know how else to explain.”
Louis pauses a moment and Daniel is terrified he’ll say no.
“I’m at the Hyperion Hotel in Los Angeles. I can take care of the travel arrangements; how quickly do you need to be here?”
“I can go now. This morning.”
“I’ll have someone send you an itinerary. There will be a car to and from the airport, just stay where you are.”
Because he’s losing it. Good call. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll see you soon.”
Daniel hangs up, takes his migraine medication, and waits for Louis.
From the moment the driver shows up at his door an hour later, someone is accompanying him for the duration of the trip. He’s ushered from the private car to the private jet to another private car. Driver to flight attendant to driver to hotel concierge. It’s coddling, but Daniel can’t bring himself to care when it gets him to the point of a single door separating him from Louis for the first time in a year.
Louis answers the door himself, looking as uncannily beautiful as ever – Daniel’s second divorce didn’t look nearly as good on him as Louis’ does.
For a moment Daniel thinks Louis is going to hug him, but he doesn’t.
“How was the flight?” he asks politely. He opens the door for Daniel to come inside.
“Good. It was– Yeah. Good. Thank you.”
Louis leads Daniel through his unnecessarily decadent hotel room. “You want to say more about what this is all about?”
“I’ve been having visions of the future,” Daniel says, scanning the room for a chair he can faint in, if the visions decide now is a great time to hit again. There’s a little sitting area in a corner of the room and Daniel nearly trips over himself in haste to get over to it. Louis tilts his head as Daniel sinks into the couch.
“Have you seen your doctor?”
“When did you stop keeping tabs on my medical records? I’m hurt, Louis.”
“Daniel,” Louis presses. He lowers himself onto the armchair across from him, annoyingly graceful about something as simple as sitting.
“This would go faster if you just picked through my mind.”
If Louis can just see them, that will be one other person who knows what’s been happening in Daniel’s head over the last few months. Maybe he’ll still think Daniel is crazy, but he’ll see it.
Louis nods. It’s the first time he's read Daniel's mind by invitation and while the sensation of someone else in his mind remains unsettling, there’s no cruelty in his expression now. He sifts through memories with a new gentleness, taking in Daniel's experience of the visions, the research into the dozen or so victims in the months he’s been trapped in his apartment, and the final vision of Louis in LA.
Louis is silent for a long moment and Daniel finally prompts, “So?”
“I’m sorry this is happening to you, but I’ve never seen anything like it. I don't think I can be much help.”
“It’s gotta be something related to you, right? Curses or witches or some kind of prophetic super power bestowed on old men who meddle in vampire business. I mean, they sent me to you.”
Louis shakes his head. “Older vampires – Armand may know more, but I don't believe he’d answer me even if I were to try contacting him. Especially not if it concerns helping you.”
“What about Lestat?”
So that's what Louis thinking he's lost his mind looks like.
Louis starts to reply but his voice is drowned out by the pounding in Daniel's head. His vision blurs and he barely has a chance to brace himself before –
A young, dark-haired woman with a name tag that says ‘Tina.’ She's smiling but her anxiety is palpable –
“Daniel!”
Morning Dove Cafe at 10pm –
Arms around him, guiding him to lay down on the couch.
The woman, now dead on the floor with bite marks in her neck –
The weight of the images reverberate in his skull and he can still see the ghost of each one behind the lids of his eyes.
Daniel? Louis’ voice is in his head. Soft. The light that’s been threatening to burst his skull into flames dims. The worst of the reverberations fade, though his head still aches.
“That better?”
Daniel blinks a few times. Louis is hovering over him, practically on top of him. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”
Louis sits back near Daniel’s feet on the couch.
“The girl you saw is going to die,” Louis says. Daniel mumbles an affirmative and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. “But you’re not on the opposite side of the country anymore. She’s close enough, we could warn her.”
We? Daniel sits up a little, peering at Louis from across the couch. There’s curiosity there, a bit of eagerness that Daniel only caught glimpses of during the interview.
“I tried to stop it before,” Daniel reminds him.
“But it’s different now that you’re here. And I’m here. Don’t you want to see if we can save her?”
Daniel thinks back to the first image of the girl, alive and smiling at the cafe. He nods.
They have time to kill before 10pm, which is just as well. After tracking down the cafe address, Daniel manages to find an Instagram account that matches Tina’s. According to the account, her name is short for Valentina. She’s 24, a Taurus, and she’s only been in LA for a few months. There’s a lot of motivational quotes attached to pictures of her with a tiny white chihuahua at different tourist traps. Not a lot of pictures of friends or family, though it looks like she’s originally from Bakersfield.
From there it’s not hard to dig up records of past employment and a few details on her parents. He could keep going, but none of it seems particularly helpful to finding out why she’s about to get murdered by a monster, besides fitting the profile of an isolated young woman in a new city.
Louis puts on some pretense of busywork while Daniel researches– he’s still an art dealer and a real estate mogul and whatever other hats he wears– but Daniel knows Louis is watching everything he does.
They get to the cafe earlier than the vision suggests. It’s a small enough building that she’s easy to spot – taller than Daniel expected, but with the same dark curls and stressed demeanor he recalls in the vision.
She comes to their table to get their order and Daniel orders the first thing he sees on the menu. Louis stares at her a few beats too long when she turns to ask him what he wants.
“Just a cup of coffee,” he says finally.
When she’s gone, Louis leans in toward Daniel, “She knows she’s in danger.”
“She’s going to think you’re the danger if you keep staring at her like that.”
Tina comes back with the coffee and Daniel clears his throat. “Sorry about him. His ex had him locked down for the last decade and he’s still getting used to human interaction again.”
She slides the mug toward Louis, “They say LA is a good place for a fresh start.”
“How are you finding it?” Louis asks.
“How do you know I’m not a local?” she asks. Louis responds only by looking mysterious and enigmatic. “It’s alright. I mean, I’m not rich and famous yet, but just give it time.”
She shrugs and laughs, throwing Louis a little smile before heading back behind the counter.
“A vampire named Russel has been stalking her for weeks now," Louis whispers, once she’s out of earshot again, “but she doesn’t know his true nature."
“Weeks? Isn’t that a bit long to play with your food?”
“I can’t imagine he has a quick death planned for her.”
“Jesus,” Daniel glances back to Tina, taking an order at a booth on the far side of the cafe. “So what now?”
“If she can lead me to Russel, I can kill him,” Louis says simply. “The book was enough reason for most of my kind to want me dead. One more dead vampire isn’t going to make a difference on that front.”
“And we'll prevent the vision.”
“I can take things from here. You should go back to the hotel, it'll be safer there.”
He takes the key Louis offers him and doesn't bother waiting for his food, although he makes Louis promise to pay for it and tip well. Whether he ever sees the girl again, he at least doesn't want her to think he's a cheapskate.
Back at the Hyperion, he finds himself pacing the hotel room. This morning he'd been in New York. He'd flown six hours to see Louis and somehow despite everything else that happened, he's wide awake. Far too much is now riding on the idea that these visions are supposed to motivate them to do something. What if he's wrong and they are some kind of punishment? What if he's come all this way just to get Louis killed by an unexpectedly powerful vampire?
The front door creaking open in the early hours of the morning rouses him from where he'd finally managed to doze off on the couch. He stumbles upright and sees Louis carrying Tina into one the bedrooms. He emerges a moment later and catches Daniel's eyes.
“She’s fine, she’s just asleep,” he says in a rush before launching into the story of his daring rescue with frenetic energy. After Tina got off work, she brought Louis along to one of Russel's parties, where Russel makes use of his day job as a movie producer to procure victims. Louis confronted him, but when given the choice between finishing off the vampire or getting Tina to safety, Louis brought her back to the hotel.
Throughout the story, he seems to be getting progressively higher on his own heroism, eyes darting to the bedroom door every few seconds.
“Don’t watch her sleep,” Daniel advises as he settles back into the armchair. Louis' here. Tina's here. Maybe he can finally get some damn rest. “And don’t watch me sleep, either.”
“I’m going back for Russel,” Louis says.
“Great,” Daniel closes his eyes. “Let’s put a flamethrower on the grocery list so I don't have to sit out on the fun part next time.”
Louis vanishes as quickly as he appeared and Daniel drifts off again, thinking blearily that maybe this will all work out after all, if he can just get a fucking handle on the migraines.
When he wakes, it's to the cold tile floor of a different room against his cheek.
Tina lies on her back a few feet away, her eyes half-open and jaw slack. Blood drips sluggishly onto the floor from a gash in her neck. He swallows back the bile rising in his throat. As he sits up enough to check her pulse – pointlessly, he already knows what he'll find – he catches a glimpse of the rest of the room. Open concept minimalist bullshit, with a massive window overlooking the city. A vampire with money to spare and a taste for draining terrified girls.
The vampire in question lounges on one of the couches not far away, watching Daniel. He’s a middle aged man in a suit and tie, indistinguishable from any other moneyed businessman types Daniel has encountered, except for the uncanny gold tint to his eyes. The moment Daniel meets his gaze, he rises to his feet and moves to loom above him. Daniel does his best not to flinch.
Russel introduces himself and self-identifies as one of many vampires who hate that his and Louis’ book has exposed vampiric secrets to any mortal with $30 or a library card. They’ve defiled everything vampires stood for and should be made to suffer the consequences. The basic laundry list of things the Talamasca warned him about.
“So I’m bait,” Daniel concludes after a pause. “Did you send the visions too? All part of a ploy to get Louis here?”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Mr. Molloy. I’m very much looking forward to killing you, after I’ve torn your friend Louis’ head from his body.”
“Better vampires than you have tried that one,” Daniel says.
“Yet from the history presented in your book, he's never surrounded himself with such fragile friends before.”
Daniel can see him coil a second before he pounces and sinks his teeth into Daniel’s neck. Daniel bucks up on instinct, trying to throw him off, but he’s still much stronger and Daniel can’t do much more than beat his shaking hands against the vampire’s back. He starts to float above the pain as the blood loss surpasses most of his senses. And then it stops.
Daniel is still alive. Russel has returned to the couch as if nothing happened and opens a laptop.
A woman's polished professional voice greets him, “Mr. Winters. How can I be of assistance?”
“The girl is dead. And I have Daniel Molloy in my office.”
This motherfucker took a bite out of his throat and then got on a Zoom call .
“I see. And your intentions with Mr. Molloy?”
“I’m gonna kill him, obviously. And the other one. I just want to make sure you see no problem in cleaning this up, after.”
“Of course. The girl is simple enough; you haven’t seen her in weeks and her body can be discovered in Nevada. As for Mr. Molloy, you’re currently in a conference call with several important clients who can testify to your presence for the duration of this morning. Your penthouse isn't even on the same side of town where he’ll tragically overdose in a few hours. Witnesses will inform the police they saw him right around this time, checking into a motel room. Housekeeping will place a 911 call once an appropriate amount of time has passed.”
Oh fuck you.
“Impressive.”
“Wolfram and Hart places utmost importance on meeting the needs of our clients. Although we’d politely discourage you from making New York Times bestsellers a permanent addition to your diet.”
Russel laughs, booming and cruel, and the woman joins in the exact right amount to be professional.
Daniel. Louis' voice in his head is the sweetest thing he's ever heard. Can you get to the elevator?
Maybe?
Try. Now.
Every window in the penthouse shatters at once.
Sunlight spills into the room. Russel howls in pain and Daniel can hear his skin sizzle from across the room.
He rolls onto his side, still dizzy, and blanches at the distance between himself and the elevator. He crawls forward, inch by inch, until he makes it and the door opens. Louis crouches in the elevator, hoodie cinched tight around his head. He pulls Daniel inside, hissing as a patch of sunlight hits his hand. They collapse against the side of the elevator, Daniel sprawled haphazardly against Louis’ chest as he tries to catch his breath.
“Thanks,” he manages to say before going completely limp in his arms. He feels Louis' fingers brush against his neck, sealing the wounds over with his own blood.
When they get to the lowest level, Louis ducks under Daniel's arm, pulls him upright, and carries him the rest of the way to the car. Daniel leans back against it, catching his breath.
“Tina?” Louis asks.
“He killed her,” Daniel says. “And he hated the two of us.”
“I listened to him burn on the way down. He's dead.”
“Good. Can’t get to anyone else then.”
“But the girl is still dead.”
“Maybe there’s nothing we can do to change them,” Daniel says. “Just kill the thing that killed her and hope it helps in the long run.”
“Then why send you her face? Why not send you a vision of the vampires?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why any of this happening, I–”
Daniel feels another vision coming on and he does his best to brace himself against is the side of the car.
Post office. Basement. Oracles. Bring Louis. “I come before the Oracles for guidance and direction. I beseech access to the knowing ones.”
When Daniel comes back to himself, Louis’ arms are around him, holding him upright with Daniel’s face pressed into his shoulder.
Louis drives them back to the hotel, where Daniel passes out for ten hours. When he wakes up, there’s a fresh set of clothes at the foot of his bed that he didn't bring with him but are somehow roughly his size. He stumbles to the shower and discovers there's still blood caked down his neck and spends a long time staring at as the red dissolves down the drain.
When he emerges and returns to the sitting area, Louis is already there and informs him he's found the post office and it'll close in just a few hours.
“So we're going?”
“You wanted answers,” Louis says simply. “And now I do too.”
The basement of the post office imitates what Daniel assumes most other post office basements look like, with the exception of the anachronistic stone arch featuring ancient Greek writing across the top.
“This must be the place to, uh,” Daniel tries to remember the phrase and clears his throat. “I come before the Oracles for guidance and direction. I beseech access to the knowing ones.”
Nothing happens at first, prompting Louis to grab Daniel's arm and step them both under the arch.
On the other side, the basement has been replaced with an unnaturally white marble hall, where a man and a woman in black robes stand opposite them. The pair are almost human-looking, if not for their unnaturally blue eyes and metallic-gold skin. They observe at Louis and Daniel, no emotion discernible on their faces. Daniel is about to ask Louis if he's ever seen anything like this before, when the woman speaks.
“Come before us, lower beings. What business do you have with the Oracles?”
“You didn't send us here?” Daniel asks.
The woman tilts her head, seemingly understanding. “Is that what you seek? To understand the source of your visions.”
“Yes,” Daniel says. “Yes, I'd love to know what the fuck is happening to me.”
“The Powers That Be have chosen you,” the man tells him.
“The Powers That Be?” Louis repeats.
Daniel snorts, “What, like God?”
“No. Though the metaphor of a deity is not unwarranted. The Powers That Be did not create this world and the interventions available to them are limited, but they observe and guide humanity.”
“And they did that by sending a dying old man visions of doomed people?”
“Your questions are disrespectful and you do not allow us to finish,” the man snaps. “Yes, the Powers chose you. A messenger…”
“... And a champion,” the woman’s electric blue eyes are fixed on Louis. Daniel nearly laughs, but a glance at Louis reveals that the vampire doesn't seem to find all this as absurd as Daniel does.
“The pair of you already took it upon yourselves to be the instruments of revelation to humanity,” the man continues. “You’ve ushered the world into a new era and the evils of the world grow stronger. There are threats on the horizon you do not yet understand, but the Powers would see the scales tipped back into balance.”
“This is a punishment?” Louis asks.
“It is an effect of which you are also the cause.”
“Uh-huh,” Daniel says, glancing at Louis. “You buy this cosmic good and evil thing?”
Louis doesn’t appear to hear him, fixated on the Oracle’s words with such earnestness that Daniel doesn’t need his new visions to see the rest of his short life flash before his eyes – slowly dismembered by vampires like Russel, who already wanted to kill Louis even before he started a new career in vigilante do-gooding.
“There is nothing to 'buy,'” the man says sharply. “This is the path the Powers offer you.”
“But the girl is still dead,” Louis says. “If the visions are supposed to guide me– I didn’t save anyone. They didn’t help.”
“They are not intended to be instructions," the woman advises. "They offer you a glimpse into an opportunity and a direction, but the future remains open. You will not save everyone, nor will you lose everyone.”
“So what, better luck next time?” Daniel asks, disbelieving.
The man looks between at the two of them, narrowing his eyes, “The Powers have led you to this place and we have offered their insight into what is before you. We have no further guidance.”
Daniel blinks and they’re back in the post office basement, standing on the other side of the pillar.
“So you're god's favorite vampire.”
“That's not what they said. This is because of your book.” Oh, suddenly it's his book?
“If it makes you feel better, they gave me the worse end of this destiny bullshit,” Daniel taps his temple. “You can walk away, if you want.”
But he doesn't want to. Daniel could see the glint in his eyes with the Oracles and it hasn't gone away. This offer of purpose and direction and cosmically-ordained violence against other vampires has a hold over him already.
“We have to save the next one,” Louis says. “If we do this – walk the path – we need to understand how to do it right.”
It's crazy.
Yet realizing Louis will be with him for the next vision and the one after that relieves Daniel. Maybe they can't save anyone, maybe this whole thing is a set-up to torture Daniel for his hubris, but Louis doesn't seem to see it like that. He isn't taking the out he's been given, he's on board for their destiny of solving mysteries and fighting monsters and saving doomed souls.
Daniel doesn't have a choice, exactly, but given the range of options that he's imagined for how he'll spend the rest of his life, there are worse ways to pass the time. And the company isn't so bad, either.