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Armand dreams, after leaving Dubai.
It does not seem to matter how much or how little he sleeps; whether he goes one day or four before submitting, finally, to the gentle command of the rising sun, exhausted and hollow. Always exhausted, now, always hollow. It does not seem to matter where he sleeps, in a bed or a coffin or any other small dark place he can find. City to city, town to town. Hotel after hotel after hotel: clean white sheets, gauzy curtains, the sun shining in. He could pull them open, let the light stream through the glass, curl up on the bed and sleep in its warm rays; they still prickle at his skin, but their sting is soft enough to be a comfort. Perhaps if he did rest like that, he would burn; slowly, piece by piece, flaking gently into ash, unnoticing. Perhaps he would simply evaporate, dissolved into steam. Perhaps he would wake healthy and whole.
He has never been courageous. He keeps the curtains closed.
Every dawn, the dreams come: relentless, multitudinous, marching against him. An army of dreams, roiling waves of them, armed with the spears and arrows of memory, of invention, of all the many things which he cannot clearly identify as either one. Thousands of stuttering images, beating at the gates of his heart.
He dreams of Daniel. Daniel, pinned beneath him on the concrete floor of the penthouse, his face going pale and blue all around his pale blue eyes, his blood on Armand’s lips, on his hands, in his mouth. Its strange chemical sting. Daniel, his mouth open as if to speak, but only a faint gurgle from his throat. The panic, the horror, in both of their faces. Two mirrors set opposite each other, an infinite hallway of fear.
He dreams of Louis. Louis in the soft black-and-white of Paris; Louis in the cool-colored dark of their Dubai bedroom; Louis in the warm sepia of the Divisadero apartment, that hellish little hovel where they stayed until he could walk more than fifty feet without screaming. Louis insensate in the green-lined coffin, Armand propped on his elbow in the bed beside him, looking down at the charred mess of his companion, twisted up and nauseous with regret. Regret, regret, regret. Another thing to weigh on him forever, another stone around his neck. Another thing he’ll have to carry, this wreck he’s made of the man he loves. Louis, skin pink and new, wrapped in a towel in the luxurious stone-tiled bathroom in Sausalito, saying, Sometimes I think it’d be easier if I didn’t have to — remember. Louis, glass-green eyes hazy and distant, head resting in his lap as he wrote it out, covered it over, careful fingers plucking through the memory: remove the hurt, stitch the space closed, press a careful kiss to the scars. Empty space, more gentle than an awful truth. Always, only, he had wanted it to be easy for Louis. He had thought that he understood, then, thought that he knew what Louis meant, what Louis needed. When he wakes in his hotel beds from these dreams, face sticky and stained from the drying tears, he thinks that he has never understood anything at all, in his short life or his long death.
He dreams of the coven, in Paris. Of those tense final months and weeks, yes, but of the in-between joys, too. The encircling chatter of a weekly dinner, the wild adrenaline of an excellent performance, giving way to a comfortable, perfect satisfaction. The times it felt easy, felt right, to be their shepherd, their light through the darkness. On a motorcycle at the head of the roving pack, the wind screaming through his hair, against his skin. Alive, in that moment, or the nearest approximation he had ever known. Stolen blood singing through his veins. And around him his family, in all their tenderness and cruelty. He had not chosen them; he had not even always loved them, but they had belonged to each other, for a while. It had meant something to him, then. Perhaps it still does. He couldn’t say.
He dreams of Amadeo. A boy burning bright like — not the sun, no, but perhaps a more distant, less stable, star. All beauty and brilliance and bravado, wearing his future like an exoskeleton, wielding his past like a weapon. A boy with a skill. A boy made of eager hunger, wanting a thousand things he had no capacity to know the truth of. A boy asking, and asking, and asking, and not knowing what he asked for. A boy on the brink of the death that, by all rights, he should have had, the natural conclusion to his brief tumultuous life. A boy pulled back from that precipice, back into the world, by the gentle hands and teeth of the death with whom he had lived for so long.
The dreams come, inescapable: an enormous sharp-toothed beast, stalking him through the days. Lurking in the shadows, patient, persistent, unceasing. Neither speed nor stealth seem to shake them. No matter where he runs, he is still, always, followed.
He dreams of Daniel. In Dubai, bright and sharp and afraid, his voice no longer a hammer but a scalpel, glinting silver, incising. Daniel’s rough edges ground into razors, through the years, slicing through. The hum of Daniel’s thoughts through the penthouse apartment: fear, and curiosity, and desire, and shame, and longing, still, for undeath, for that strange liminality of being that he had half-convinced himself he had dreamed, until the tapes appeared again. He dreams of Daniel at the dining table, swirling coffee, black with sugar, in his transparent glass mug. Daniel, watching Louis drink from him, revulsion and want radiating into his thoughts in equal measure. Daniel on the floor beneath him, mouth pressed to the open wound of his neck, his last audible thought an impression, only, of a sweetness like honey. Daniel on the floor beneath him, the blink of Daniel’s eyes like a camera shutter, the change in them: ice blue giving way without warning to pale, cool amber. Daniel’s mouth, open in wild, startled delight, stained dark red, new-grown fangs sharp and shining. Daniel’s blood in his mouth, still all human-sweet and metallic, just hints of a future taste beneath it — dark chocolate. Blackberry.
He dreams of Lestat. Lestat in the catacombs, opposite him in the flickering torchlight, cool hands wrapped around his wrists, the intense blue of his eyes. The blue of a screaming midday sky, a blue he thought he’d only see in those eyes. How strange it had been, the first time he walked into the day, after so many hundreds of years of only night. Lestat’s lips at his wrist, the sting of his teeth. The taste of Lestat’s blood in turn, the comfort of that communion. Vermouth. Annihilation. A precipice, a catalyst, in more ways than he had known at the time. Lestat the gathering storm, the hurricane swirling over the sea.
He dreams of Claudia. On the stage, always on the stage, her proud face washed out in the harsh glow of the spotlight. In teal, on the better nights, her pretty voice lifting, catching in the rafters. She was not always happy, he knows, but there is something that shines through her, then, lights her up brighter than any stage light could. A spark. On the worse nights, in yellow: bruised and raging, a spirit of vengeance, a Fury. Her face turned away, always away. He watches her unblinking, searching for any sign of softness, any hope of absolution. He does not deserve it, he knows. He knows. Her eyes never catch on him; they pass across his shadowed form uncaring, even when she is casting her eyes out to the audience, memorizing every face. She knows his already; she does not need to linger. In the end, when she looks for answers, for meaning, she looks only to her fathers. When the ceiling opens to let in her death, he closes his eyes. He opens them, awake, in the neverending now.
He dreams of Arun. He wakes from these dreams gasping for breath, blood-pink sweat cooling on his neck, his back, his arms. He does not remember these dreams, when he surfaces into the welcome embrace of the night. Blank voids in his mind. Empty space, more gentle. He is grateful every time for that uncertainty. Let the past live in the past. Let it die there.
The dreams come crashing: a tsunami, a tidal wave. They pull him down, and down, and down. He will not drown, if he is careful, if he does not suck in a reflexive breath. He has spent many, many years being very, very careful. But he could, still, be crushed to nothing by the pressure of the deeps. He has spent years fleeing that pressure, though the way it bears down can be a comfort of its own. Still. He fights his way back to the surface again, and again, and again. Every nightfall he wakes feeling almost unbearably light.
He dreams of Daniel. Daniel’s arms wrapped tight around him, Daniel’s lips on his neck, the gentle probe of Daniel’s tongue into his open artery. The press of Daniel’s body against his own, the fragile human softness of him. The last moment of that fragile human softness. Daniel’s thoughts and his own, at that point of no return, echoes of each other, one last-gasp harmony: What am I doing? What have I done?
He dreams of Lestat. Lestat’s voice, soft and insistent in Armand’s mind as he knelt on the wooden floor beside the coffin, Lestat’s words in his own voice, offered to Louis like an extended hand. All but the last. The terrible arrow-point accuracy of that I love you, its unspeakable truth. His silence, the lock in his throat. He had meant it as a gift; he had not given it kindly, and then he had not been able to give it at all. Another failure, tally it up; another mark against him in the eternal ledger. He dreams of Lestat’s voice, a gale wind ripping through his undeath, again and again and again. All catastrophe, all destruction, in its wake.
He dreams of Louis. The storm in Louis’ eyes that final day: a whirlpool, a troubled sea. The gleaming spikes of anger, giving way to a smooth, hardened shell. When Louis looked at him that final time, looked down at him sprawled on the floor, dusted in concrete, his shoulders screaming from the pain of the impact, he saw those eyes close like a shutter. He saw the feeling leave them. He dreams of Louis’ voice, the final words Louis said to him, so deadly calm. When I return, you need to be gone. He dreams of kinder parting words, of some nod, at least, to their years together. Of some gentleness that he does not deserve, some gentleness that he probably could not have accepted, had it been offered. He dreams that Louis offers him a hand up, out of the rubble. He dreams that he would have taken it, if Louis had.
He dreams of Daniel. Daniel at twenty, his eyes so wide and afraid, in the wooden chair in the yellow-orange light of the Divisadero apartment. Daniel’s whisper: I don’t want to rest. The truth of that, a needle in his skin, for years and years to come. I don’t want to rest, he’d said, and Armand had watched as he refused rest at every corner, for the forty-nine years that followed. I don’t want to rest, echoing through Daniel’s brain, echoing aloud in Daniel’s voice in the cavern of the penthouse, as Armand looked down at him. Forty-nine years later and still, in his core, the same boy. The same boy that Armand has underestimated again, and again, and again and again and — ad infinitum. When he wakes from these nights, he wonders if he will ever, ever learn.
The dreams come shrieking: ravenous ghosts, phantoms swirling around his hotel rooms, vapor streaming through the cracks beneath the doors, crystallizing into faces. Their twisted expressions of agony, foggy visions, faces cracking and leaking smoke from their fissures. Their miasma clouding his eyes, seeping into his lungs. An infection of dreams, a contagion. A plague.
He dreams of Daniel. Daniel on the Dubai floor, blinking the blue from his eyes, looking up at Armand, the awful clarity of his irises’ new amber. Daniel laughing, the crinkle at the corners of his eyes, the grooves in his face suddenly alight with an unfamiliar, feral joy. The wild beauty in him, the reborn spark. Daniel saying, Holy shit, his hands fisting in the fabric of Armand’s shirt, his new-grown claws tearing through it, pulling Armand down on top of him, pulling him into an inexplicable, close-mouthed, triumphant kiss.
He dreams of Daniel. Daniel, the blood humming slow and medicated through his body, asleep on the penthouse sofa, as Armand leans forward and tucks a blanket around his shoulders, over his legs. A moment of vertigo, looking at Daniel then. How time has changed him, how it has not changed him at all. A flash of startling, alien affection for this boy, this man, who has sunk his blunt human teeth into the flesh of his life and hung on, who has drawn its blood and drunk it, who has never seemed to rest even once: now, so still and peaceful and quiet. At rest, and still, somehow, alive. The queasy sense of recognition. The speed with which he’d turned away.
He dreams of Louis. Louis in Paris, camera in hand. His cautious, careful smile. Louis ushering him up to the little flat he shared with Claudia, holding the doors open for him. Louis, fear and desire screaming through his thoughts as he pressed Armand up against the wall and kissed him like he was drowning, like his head had broken the surface of the sea and he could finally gasp in air again. Louis in Dubai, drowsy in the pre-dawn twilight, offering him the gift of a sleepy smile from his side of their shared bed. Louis, swirling his ethically-acquired blood in a wine glass, distant across the aching expanse of the dining table. How he had longed to bridge that gap. How he had failed to. Louis’ hand on his upper arm, Louis’ relative warmth a gentle cloak around his shoulders. He grasps at the moments, feels them slide like water through his fingers. Untouchable, now, and always.
He dreams of Daniel. Daniel, following him like a shadow, a half step behind him through every city, every town, every hunt, every insignificant interaction, asking him questions. Asking him the same question, over and over again. Why did you do it, Armand? says Daniel. Why did you break your promise to yourself? Why did you make me? Daniel, armed with his tape recorder, armed with the twin swords of memory and curiosity. Daniel on a fool’s errand, jousting with windmills, looking for his answer. Foolish boy. Foolish, fascinated boy. Looking for the answer that Armand could not give him, then or now. He wakes wondering, and he wishes he could exorcise the uncertainty from his own mind. Wishes he did not, too, care about the truth buried somewhere beneath it.
The dreams come: bright, and burning, and inescapable as the sun. Reducing him, at last, to ash.
He dreams of Daniel. He dreams of Daniel. He dreams of Daniel.
He dreams of Daniel. Daniel with fire dancing in his palm, standing opposite him, eyes alight with anger, hard-edged, cruel. He dreams of meeting Daniel like this again, of bracing himself for the death he deserves. He thinks it would be fair, perhaps, for it to happen this way. A cycle, a circle, something like justice; he had killed Daniel, after all, so why shouldn’t Daniel kill him? The ouroboros of his long, long life, devoured by its own creation. He dreams of Daniel setting him ablaze. He dreams of Daniel slitting his throat, letting that long life leak from the wound. He dreams of Daniel’s teeth in his skin, drinking him, draining him dry. He dreams he dies in Daniel’s arms, the arms of this gorgeous, terrible thing he has made of the boy. His first. His only.
He dreams of Daniel. Daniel, radiant in daylight, on the balcony of the Dubai apartment, his eyes still mortal blue. The shadow-play of the light over the lines of his face, the valleys and crevasses, the glorious scars of a life lived. How he had envied those lines, studying his own face in the mirror: his skin forever smooth, a mask over the wrongness of him. He dreams of Daniel’s arms stretched out in the bright noon, of Daniel’s face tipped up to the sky. He dreams he falls to his knees and begs for forgiveness.
He dreams of Daniel. Daniel prowling through an empty city, head held high: assured, magnificent, invincible and proud. He dreams of walking to the harbor with Daniel, of leaning on a railing and looking out across the water, watching the boats drift in from the sea. He dreams that he meets Daniel’s eyes, reaches for Daniel’s thoughts, finds nothing. Silence. Static. He dreams that Daniel smiles, reaches out his hand, and opens his mouth to speak —
He wakes. He shakes the dreams from his clouded eyes. He splashes his face in ice-cold water. He dresses. He inhales. He exhales.
He parts the curtains, and he stands in the light of the sun.