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Venez à Moi

Who: Lestat de Lioncourt, Open
What: Arrival
Where: Temba
When: End of month (during calibrations, so limited to those who are outside atm)
Warnings: Blood, vomiting, violence, Please reply to Opt IN/OUT" post

Even Lestat's hyper acute senses couldn't quite catch where the change had happened. One moment he was facing down the ultimate betrayal, and the next he was outside in some utterly unfamiliar and strange looking place, Loius, Claudia and Antoinette no where to be found. He couldn't smell a trace of them on the air- air that was thankfully dark, he realized- looking up at the strange stars with a snarl. His insides churned, and vomited up more blood, looking quite the bloody mess. Despite this and all the more pressing issues, his eyes landed on a strange...orb, and he staggered towards the thing with purpose. He could feel the hold it had over him, but couldn't fight the urge, hissing at the orb or whatever force was inside his mind, before surrendering to the compulsion to touch the thing. It spoke all sorts of things to him, and when he finally pulled back with wide eyes he was panting, feeling weak and vulnerable in a way he hadn't experienced in a very long time.

The poison in his veins distracted him from any further thoughts into the 'how and why' of things, doubling over to empty up more blood from his stomach, crawling along the ground and trying to scent out a source of blood- any blood- that wasn't his own.

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However far Claudia had ventured from home, and however inhospitable the new place she found, she did always know where to find Louis and for a moment stood watching Lestat, hands still on his arms, unblinking and waiting for a better explanation. The shift of her focus was barely perceptible, first inward as she opened her mind to let him in, then over Lestat's shoulder as she heard only a terrible loneliness. Not just a great nothingness where Louis' voice should have answered her calling, but where there should have been, there always had been, life all around her for Claudia to warm her veins.

Slowly, she finally stepped back, not from Lestat's toothless threat but from this grand isolation, searching with her every sense for something. She smelled it first, sniffing at the air and keeping her gaze locked forward so Lestat couldn't know which way she was going to suddenly dart when she went sprinting across the stones toward the musk.

It was an earthy, oily scent of lanolin and straw over the warmth of the blood. Like a stable.

He could see her reaching out for Louis, and felt a spiteful bit of glee that she would feel that same emptiness that he'd been subjected to for all these long years. It wasn't fair to be jealous of their bond, one which he could never share in. But he was. And it felt right that Claudia should be haunted by it now.

Her sudden darting off reminded him of her youth, when things had been simple and there had been laughter in the house. How long had it been since any of them had laughed?

She had her head start, and soon Lestat darted after in search of her, leaving the coffin where it lay for now.

It wasn't like any stable Claudia had seen before. The paddock wasn't so strange, just incredibly grand, bigger even than the sweeping, empty halls of the colleges that Claudia had visited. It was inside that had arrested her, first at the door, then when she darted forward to step up onto the fence for a better vantage over the strange group. They glowed. A mass huddled mostly together and dozing in the straw, giving off a faint light like a dying ember. It wasn't even the electric sparking of a firefly, it was a steady emanation that looked like the clear green water of Lestat's fountain in the courtyard, lapping out into the darkness of night around them, spreading from these warm beasts.

They were creatures unlike anything Lestat had ever seen either, and he paused as he found her, looking out into the paddock and unable to completely mask his disguise. Much as he prided himself on appearing to know everything there was know, and more importantly- on chiding his charge for not knowing...this was new territory. They were in essence equals in this journey for the first time in their many years together, and he worried about just how long he could keep her from realizing this fact.

"...Not taken after Louis' habits since you've left, have you?" he drawled in a bored tone, as if he weren't likewise intrigued by these creatures.

It would be no fun at all to eat these poor things, Claudia could already tell--despite their glow, the texture and scent of them was like sheep, easily led, bowing to any raised hand. She wrinkled her nose at the suggestion, cutting a narrow look Lestat's way with her lips pursed, and dropped heavily off of the fence to daintily dust her fingers together. "I thought there would be a boy..." she explained, though she couldn't smell anything richer than the glowing sheep, and didn't hear either a snoring or errant thoughts anywhere nearby as she searched for where a stablehand might be napping in the straw.

"Ah, yes. How could I forget your infatuation for stable boys?" Lestat purred in that soft cruel voice.

"Apparently they've all gone away. Most of all them. Being toyed with somewhere by the ones that brought us here."

If Claudia's look before was sharp, this one was razorblade, her slightly raised lip betraying the sharpening of her fang before she had herself convinced not to give him the satisfaction. She wasn't the one who kept taking.

Why they were so incredibly alone made a little more sense at that suggestion, smoothing Claudia's fangs as she tipped her head, eyes up again like she could see up to the stars and their mysterious captors. Less mysterious than she thought, if they plucked people from their homes to 'toy with' them. "When will they give them to us?" she asked, still looking as though she was listening for another voice to answer, distant and thoughtful. They were clearly different, then, not one of the toys, but a playmate.

They were alike in that at least. Lestat had a similar opinion of those they were trapped here with, and would have enjoyed a turn at playing with the toys himself if not for the looming threat of that man creature.

"...I do not know," he admitted, trying to sound bored as though it was of little consequence. "...There are a few that were left behind for us." He looked Claudia over, considering whether or not to offer her a warning after dangling that bait oh so innocently.

It was easy to put aside Lestat's pervasive cruelty; it would come and go, like the moon, constant and reliable and part of the natural order of Claudia's life, not one she missed in her years since leaving its poison but one she knew. It would be back, even after she smiled and held out her hands again for Lestat to take as she said, "Show me what you've done with them." He had evidently made himself comfortable here, and that meant someone else had been suffering.

"..." Lestat's jaw tensed, a sure sign that there was something he was hiding, and he took her hand to tuck into the crook of his arm as he strolled.

"Have you been missing out on meals, *ma poupette?" he asked with mock concern.

(*my doll)

Lestat's reticence couldn't really annoy Claudia anymore, not with the clarity of a few years of separation and every conversation noted in her diary ending with the distinct impression that Lestat never knew what he was talking about. He could withhold all he wanted, and she had no reason to shriek about it anymore. As long as she grit her teeth.

Lifting her chin loftily, refusing to take the question as a slight, she said, "Only when there was no one interesting enough around." She may have had to go hungry a few nights when too many bodies turned up in study carrels and library security started looking too closely at anyone that didn't match the colour of the paper. "I thought educated boys would be so much more engaging. They all say the exact same thing when they die, though." It had gotten tedious quickly, though that didn't take the joy out of getting to mock, "'You bitch, how dare you, you can't do this.'"

He chuckled, admittedly enjoying that sense of humor of hers when it wasn't turned on him.

"Mm, is it not everything you hoped for?" Lestat put on a pout, "The educated ones are dull, aren't they? All that reading and they know nothing of the world."

It wasn't their education that had made them dull, Claudia didn't think, not when she was better read than any of them, and lived about her whole little life at one address. No, it was a certain class of person that tended to populate the college campuses, a class that didn't include Louis, who Claudia had unwittingly led Lestat to take this obvious swipe at. Any delight she had at the mockery was quickly drained for Claudia to frown, going quiet again for the click of their heels on the street to pick up the conversation until she could observe with neutral detachment, "Maybe there is someone in this strange place who can finally teach me something."

He leveled a glare at his troublesome fledgling and wondered where it was he'd gone wrong. She'd been fine enough in the start, hadn't she? They'd been happy once.

"Ah, yes, of course. I've taught you nothing after all, have I? Ungrateful-!" Lestat started off on his usual tirade, pushing to distance himself from her with a growl of annoyance.

Claudia didn't quite smile, running her tongue along her teeth and watching Lestat out of the corner of her eye, glimmering with an ironic kind of satisfaction for his predictable rage. Nothing had changed then, since she last saw them. Nothing ever changed for Lestat, even as he filled his house with luxuries, the walls remained the same. He knew no more than she did. He could try to convince the alien sky otherwise as much as he wanted, while Claudia strolled with her hands clasped, unhurried and taking in these towering buildings curiously. The rain from the top of that tower must have been wonderful.

Both Claudia and the city ignored his ranting, only frustrating Lestat more. It was like being trapped in that house with the despondent Louis all over again, unable to provoke any passion back out of him no matter how he tried.

"...You broke his heart, do you know that? Broke our home."

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