These events are corny and small-time, but Daniel still loves them. He found so much inspiration as a kid from them— somewhere, he has a beat up copy of The Martian Chronicles dissected with his own high school notes, and a long, rambling 'dedication' in the flyleaf from Bradbury, who had hung out in a downtown bookshop for its entire operating hours one Saturday in March, and who finally caved to offering personalized writing advice the third time Daniel had waited in line. A formative experience despite the fact that his own work eventually evolved past routine undergrad classics, never able to stick to fiction, far more enchanted with digging at the thing he was writing about than the writing itself (though, still, the writing).
It was just that novelists did more of these than journalists. So he does them, and they're usually half full even in tiny little stores. Now it's a bit of a mess, but it's a fun and interesting mess.
Even when there's a wild animal sitting in the fifth row. Strange that no one else notices. Do wild animals make eye contact? Between two sets of tinted lenses, can either of them tell?
The host is cheery and a fan, a BookTok girl who has used Interview with the Vampire as a gateway drug to reading some of his other work and recommendations and who now feels like an intellectual powerhouse compared to her peers. Which, to be fair, she probably is. Molloy has caught some heat off more established review circuits for engaging with short form media this way, but he doesn't get it. Never has. What if Bradbury told him to go fuck himself? (Well, he did, but he was laughing about it and laughed harder when Daniel stood in line yet again. Angles.)
Questions roll in. He says he can't comment on if he still speaks to anyone mentioned in the book, regarding them as sources who he has a professional duty to protect. He says the best way to get into journalism is to be nosy and take debate classes and do karaoke at crowded bars. Lose your fear. He says he doesn't mind the mixed reaction to his recent book because it's a new experience.
Is the very innocent creature in his cozy sweater and tidy bun going to ask a question as they close out this section, or meander up to a queue?
Absently, Armand flicks through the book in his lap, not reading, just feeling the texture of glossy pages, the photograph inserts, all the while listening. This is not a copy he has read, picked up instead from the special display they'd stacked by the door, but he has, of course, read it.
He certainly has questions.
Hasn't landed on exactly which one when he does raise his hand as the floor reopens, and several other people do. It is nothing at all to steer the attention of the young woman hosting the event to call upon him, already lowering his palm when she points him out.
"I was curious about the experience itself," he says, tone mild, not even too privately amused. "Interviewing vampires. Were you ever afraid for your life, Mr. Molloy?"
There is the predictable murmured chuckle in the room when someone tosses in a question that takes the premise seriously, but all focus honed forwards for the answer regardless.
Maybe this is the sequel. The Vampire Armand. Daniel retells the experience of being tortured in 1973, in full detail past what Talamasca wanted him to expose (what he felt safe exposing— Louis, a serial killer in two countries, Daniel couldn't bring himself to state it all so directly), and the mind games in Dubai, and then a series of encounters.
The creature that kept torturing me, that struggled with his desire to kill me versus save me, sat politely in the audience and asked if I ever felt like he might go through with it.
A little smile. What the fuck is wrong with you. (Oh, are we playing a game, again.)
"Yes." So there's that. Another ripple of laughter in the room, because of course, of course. "A vampire could kill me. Easily. So could a gunshot to the head or a bus hitting me, though."
More audience chuckles.
"I like my life." Echo. Still. He looks at Armand. He knows he is dead. He liked his life before, in the 70s. He did not like it very much six months ago, something he told 'Rashid'. Did you have a restful sleep. Funny. Horror, perhaps: he likes it again, now. "It's not that I don't care about risk or that I think I'm untouchable. I just acknowledge it and try to get on with the work anyway, and then it fades away, because I care about the work. The unsettling thing about the threat of death from a vampire versus the threat of death from a Boeing CEO or whatever," the host goes Oooooo at that around more audience reactivity, topical!! stop assassinating people, Boeing, "is how death doesn't mean the same thing to a vampire as it does to a CEO. If I look at a vampire, and I did, and I think 'This guy is going to kill me', do I even know what that means? What's the experience of death going to be like? Am I changed, in those final moments? How changed? If I die, permanently die, was I a different person for a few seconds? Is the vampire who killed me changed, through me?"
And what if he didn't die. What if the vampire let him go for fifty years. What if the same vampire came back, and killed him, and changed him.
"Art is immortal, and climate damage is immortal, microplastics, vampires. It's an intimidating concept to grapple with while trying to take notes on somebody's love life. So— yeah, I was afraid, in there. In that way."
and he remembers that stubbornness, how much work it had taken to have Daniel fold into him. Armand remembers it as having finally succeeded, but he is no longer certain. His own gentle, relentless convincing, winnowing willpower right down to the edge of itself, and then in that final moment, had he simply reached in and forcibly pulled Daniel's heart out through his chest?
The taste of his blood. He hadn't been hungry for anything it offered save for some other ineffable thing, something he had been trying to discover all week. Maybe he could take it into himself, and be changed by it.
It's a good answer. The audience, drinking it in. Save for one, and Armand turns to look after the sound of a quiet scoff. The sound isn't for show, quiet, only drawing his own attention and that of the woman this audience attendee is with, who lists her shoulder into his to encourage him contain himself. A skeptic who is almost angry at the level of bullshit being spun.
He smells like laundromat soap and synthetic vanilla, and she, some kind of flowery hand cleanser. Armand's attention flicks back forward, offering a small smile that indicates he is content.
It's an answer that plays well with believers and intellectuals, and middling with others; Daniel only tries a little to make it not specifically for Armand, and wonders at himself, incredulously, if it wasn't easier to talk like this. A buffer between them. The performance of it, as Armand likes to fall back on.
How much have I changed you?
He notes the way the ancient vampire's attention shifts for a brief moment. Daniel considers reaching out, dipping into the mind of the attendee who pulled it, but doesn't. Let it be a surprise to ask about later. And let him wrap up this Q&A section without risking a superpowers fumble. The host follows through on his meditation on fear and death, asks him about how changed he feels in terms of his career, and his social circle. Levity and seriousness. She's not doing half bad. Another question from the room about the balance of research versus creativity, then a final one, about an older book, and his thoughts on how the oil industry has carried on without any meaningful change. It detours them a bit, and the host is more clumsy about cutting them off to wrap up, but Daniel is gracious about it. She spends a while with him during the transition, all bright smiles, taking photos and little videos for her TikTok, and Daniel indulges her.
Book signing. An employee sits behind the little folded out table with him, occasionally taking a photo for social media and making sure no one gets Extra Weird. A global pandemic lingers, and so it's not so strange that Daniel wears gloves for this bit, the way items are being passed back and forth. A young couple has wandered in behind the one that annoyed Armand, navigating around chairs being put away. 'I wonder what we missed', 'I think it's the vampire guy', 'Oh woah, sick—' Enthusiastic, they discuss grabbing a copy and hopping in line, drawing an annoyed look from Mr Scoff.
The skeptic lingers towards the front of the store while his partner and her floral hand cream take to the line, and then Armand behind her. That he's here alone isn't too unusual. Currently, a woman in her forties is telling Daniel that she drove from the other state to be here, asking if he'd sign another for her wife who couldn't come. A lone teenager, next, who is too shy to do more than offer his name for the signing, and nod at some prompted question.
A thoughtful audience, then, mostly. Some fans, some curious people who saw the sign at the door. Difficult not to compare it to the theatre. Armand made a habit of, occasionally, sitting amongst them back then as well, not just presiding from his balcony perch. It was good to regard the thing from the proper view.
His turn. He lays the book down in front of Daniel, pushing it forwards.
"I can't say I'm convinced," he says, ignoring the employee sitting alongside. "Given the innate romance of death by vampire compared to death by bus, or CEO. Compelled, perhaps."
A little forward, maybe, but surely, Daniel has experienced weirder fans.
Daniel has never, ever, experienced a weirder fan than Armand.
He looks up at him, finding him both ethereal and comedic in his disguise— which is still more convincing as a real person than his performance as Rashid; in retrospect his dark eyes were fake-looking, though he thinks Armand was less controlled. More willing to snipe and argue. Freedom when he wasn't being himself. Interesting.
"Innate romance?" Eyebrows up, as he slides the book towards himself. "Can the bus not also love?"
Shut up, Daniel. But there's a part of him that almost looks over his shoulder like Armand isn't speaking to him, surely. Innate romance.
"Compelled towards what?"
His hand, pen held, hovers over the blank page facing the dedication (to all the editors who dropped him over this one). Steady.
"The bus is a random event. Your assassins are doing their job."
Armand glances at the employee, who is attempting to summon some courage to find the right place to shuffle him along. Even in this current get up, unassuming jewel tones and cute hair and glasses that veil the intensity of his vampire eyes, it's difficult not to exude something, some sense of warning.
Or, perhaps, he doesn't care not to. "The vampire selects."
And, as for the blank page, he supplies, "Rakesh," easy. "And I don't know. The story, I suppose. It feels nearly true."
"Which story?" Glance down, to write. Glance up, eye contact through lenses; he feels he can see straight through, to warm amber. "The book, or the answer about my mortal fear?"
Daniel gives space for him to answer, even though the employee is looking a bit puzzled. Writing a tad more than 'Thanks for your support'. It's fine, though, the couple behind the good-looking hipster with his hair up are chatting away with each other, clearly not in a hurry.
(Why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad? Pay attention to how things blend Why talk about all the known and the unknown See how the unknown merges into the known)
A curious flick down. That's more writing than most people are getting. Armand's mouth twinges, a faint smile.
"Walking into a vampire's lair and cheating death is a little like bargaining with death itself. You talk of—well, not fearlessness, but your acceptance of your own fear, your own death. But perhaps there's the expectation you will talk your way out of it. Perhaps there's arrogance at play."
A little sharp, and the employee offers the kind of laugh meant to diffuse some idea of tension, maybe their own. You're not meant to accuse authors of arrogance when you get your book signed.
"I mean no disrespect," Armand is moved to say. "Only that it's fascinating."
Daniel ticks his gaze up from where he's doing a proper thanks-blah-blah now, which would look normal if not for where he's crossed out the dedication and written a name that isn't Rakesh. Covered sunset meets— what? Well. His eyes look like nothing in particular, just outlines, but who knows what color they are.
"Oh, you don't know the half of it," he says. A final glance at his handiwork, then to the employee. "He's got a point, which makes me think he might know a journalist or two already. We're not sensitive enough for fiction, and we're too stubborn for acting. The thing that keeps a reporter from flinching is probably 60/40 ego versus nerves. On average."
Who knows what Daniel's split is. He closes the book, and looks back at Armand. Slides it over.
Armand takes the book, and moves off without a glance, without any further outward sign. His book has already been purchased, so he can drift through the remaining crowd, past the skeptic, and out into the evening street.
The couple he had identified emerge not long after. 'All done?' 'Yep. He's so funny.' 'He's a con artist.' 'Oh, who isn't.' They walk off, his arm around her shoulders, their conversation moving to dinner, to a bar he wants to try. The incredible amount of frivolity that mortals fill their tiny little lives with.
He drifts further down the street, doesn't pursue, lingering. Tracking two individuals in a city like New York's, barely knowing their minds, their scents, would make for an interesting challenge. Instead, he flips open the book to take note of all that writing he received.
As he does so, he says out loud, "I suppose you avoid draining those who attend your events," at a normal speaking voice. If Daniel chooses to, he can hear it. "Even if they're rude."
Molloy's handwriting is a jagged, but not as bad as it was; he's able to keep things on an even line. Standard pleasantries, and where his snipe at previous editors is crossed out, Armand is written. This copy is for him and him alone.
The rest— fragments of a poem by Rumi, all of which are on the rambling, stream-of-consciousness side of lyrical. It's about transformation, it's about the point of it all, it's about pointlessness. In the end (that Daniel doesn't transcribe, it's a long poem and he doesn't have the whole thing committed to memory so preciasely), it turns sexual. But it's a Rumi poem. They all do.
—In my head?
A funny half-startle for the last person in line to get a book signed. It takes him a second to realize Armand is doing something and not speaking to him telepathically. Daniel gets through everything graciously, though there are bare minutes left. He doesn't know what his maker (!) has done, exactly, but he puzzles it out while he says thanks and shakes some hands and talks to his assistant about anything they need to pack up.
"Maybe."
Just a word. Trying it out. Vampire tricks, throwing voices, finding one person in a crowd from a distance, even if it's just the awareness of them and not their mind.
He stands in the street and reads the poem fragment, fingertips wandering along the edges of the page. He reads it a few times, as if to more thoroughly parse its meaning and intention, and tips his head at that drifting maybe that he thinks is for him.
"One of them thinks you're a fraud, and the other, a clown. They'll be out late tonight."
Not very long ago, perhaps Armand would have just seen to it himself. Drained the pair a little to weaken them but with more than enough blood left over to satiate a newly made vampire, bundled them up, left them under Daniel's bed with drifting memories of the strange being that abducted them so easily, perhaps an answering fragment of poetry. The impulse is there, even, to create some distance after his little pantomime in the bookstore.
An offer, anyway. Will Daniel kill a woman who bought his book, but doesn't believe in it? Her annoying boyfriend, with his crime of being annoying? Will Daniel wish to hunt with him?
Speaking of distance. Daniel is surprised Armand is still around. Seemed like an artful note to escape on. He wonders if there's some greater purpose waiting for him, or if Armand is just doing what Daniel was doing in that diner— drawing it out and wondering why.
He doesn't manage a response. Trick too tricky, without understanding what's being done, and he isn't actually sure Armand heard him. That could be a response, or just extra goading.
Will he wait, while Daniel finishes up here? Will he be there, when Daniel exits the bookshop and goes to look for him? One thinks he's a fraud, one thinks he's a clown. People are allowed to think that. He's devoured people who've done nothing to him, not even a slight, though he tries to take deliberate aim. The hunger is difficult when it peaks, and Daniel is as prone to forgetting to eat while lost in work as he is prone to over-indulging when he has time. Once (a shard of ice) he listened to a food addict discuss his struggle, saying bitterly that at least with drugs or gambling, you don't have to do some drugs and some gambling every single day. You have to eat. Daniel found it lacking.
Now. Hah.
It's exciting, despite everything, to look for Armand. He can't track his mind, and the bond isn't a tether like that. But he can— sense? Smell? Something. It's something, a feeling that's faint like a whisper that nearly touches him. A person that isn't a void, a person he can't connect with but is connected with.
A little wind-swept from the cold and from hurrying, Daniel appears. Eyes wide and curious. Hey.
Daniel, hurrying to catch up and find him, an earnest question out of his mouth, eyes bright. Something in that that's pleasing. Endearing?
Maybe not every twinge of abnormal emotion needs analysis.
"Yes," says Armand, turning to him, book held at his side. "I've observed it before, between maker and fledgling. It's not reliable, or a secret means of communication, but," a gesture, half a shrug. Something like throwing one's voice, something like relying on that inexplicable bond to pick up the other's words in the wind, automatically honing incredible hearing in on a single note in the symphony.
Hey.
"If a naysayer of yours is found dead each appearance, that may lend some credence to your authorial honesty."
Just an idea. Vampires among us. He's kidding, by the way. It's hard to tell.
He thinks it with the full force of his consciousness, and he makes himself confront that he feels that way. He has been hauntingly beautiful, unnervingly perfect, stunningly attractive in a way that seemed too ideal to even bother engaging with. And he is those things, but he's never thought 'cute' before. It doesn't especially suit him, because he's wearing a costume, but the performance ads to the charm. Reality tips slightly. (To the north?) Armand came to a book signing just to mess with him. His level is messing with him has been playful. With claws, but still playful.
Daniel sets this aside to inspect. Not sure about it. He thinks of eyes on him, always on him, of quiet deep breaths in and hands splayed on the table, restless. He also thinks: That's a cool trick.
"I'll have to practice to get the hang of it," he says. Interested in vampirism, in the things they (he!) can potentially do. His gaze wants to tick down to the book Armand is holding, with its personalized ramble, but he refrains.
"Could also bring the FBI back." Daniel smiles, though, a funny little curious thing, because he suspects humor. Out of Armand. "Why, are you hungry?"
Out here, Armand takes off his tinted glasses, folding them, slipping them into a pocket. Lamp-like eyes again, although—well, Daniel's eyes change, and he might have observed the way bright orange can dull itself down a little. Still striking, still bright, but a little less haunted than they can be.
"Law enforcement can be a nuisance," he says. "And it doesn't seem like the kind of game you wish to play."
Daniel, still engaging with human society, still a person, still a public figure. Armand's tone doesn't imply disapproval so much as observation. It's hard to be a functional celebrity if the feds would like to investigate you for serial murder. Maybe the rude couple will live tonight.
Maybe not. "A little. And you've skipped some meals."
Orange, blood red, not-quite-brown. Deepening layers of it. Daniel has, indeed, noticed; his own shift between clear blue and orange is either more striking or more comical, depending on your point of view. He's glad he doesn't have to watch himself, in any event.
"Dominoes."
One falls, then another, then a hundred. He's not in a hurry to be on law enforcement's radar, not in a hurry to end up entrenched in an increasingly high profile series of kills to get out of a jam. He rationalizes murder just fine, he doesn't need more layers. Besides—
"I want to write the book about the first open vampire to end up in court over biological imperatives," he says, "not star in the documentary. Let somebody else fall on that one."
This little bit of celebrity is fine. It gets him money and the occasional hookup and certain freedoms, which is a nice offset to tanking the credibility of his career (for now). He will pass on more, especially if it comes with restricting his freedoms. Like jail. Pass on jail. Meanwhile: he gives Armand a look.
Daniel steers his attention off a glance to the book, but Armand lifts it, drawing focus. "You quoted Rumi," he says. "Who also once said, 'I have never become less from dying'."
Optimistic. Romantic. Religious, first and foremost, but these words exist beyond their context, a fragment of a poem penned quickly into the acknowledgments of a book about queer vampires and their violences.
Cute, also.
And he begins to walk, a pivot that invites Daniel to stay in step.
"That one gets a little blasphemous," he muses. "Imagining past the death of angels."
Rumi had style. Maybe it was the mysticism— made all the religion tolerable.
Pause. Consider. Mm, what the hell. Daniel follows him. (As if he wouldn't? He tells himself it wasn't guaranteed. It can't be. Armand didn't know he'd follow, or else he wouldn't have to invite him, even wordlessly.)
The city is always packed, it's always busy. A couple of unconvinced, marginally rude attendees fade into obscurity while an ocean of minds and bodies open up, all awaiting assessment for their potential. Daniel is more familiar with video games than the average seventy year old, owing to a combination of nostalgic tolerance based on youthful enjoyment of arcade machines and time sunk in to topics around violence in media. He thinks of the way people decry anything with harm done opponents made out of pixels arranged to look like humans, other living things, the slaughter of which is seen as nothing more than a thing to do to receive experience points.
He also thinks about the movie Gerry when he thinks of video games, but that's like, whatever. A funny thing his brain does, because it's all ridiculous. The point is: converting living beings to an inanimate resource. Thinking nothing of it. Pixels. Mortals. Different from him. He thinks of Louis. Why is a fox less than a human. Why did he tap the woozy Slavic guy's neck like a heroin user lifting a vein, a dismissive and vulgar routine, but fix himself to Armand's throat like it was a lifeline?
"Pretend you're me." Oh, another one of these. "And pretend I want to pick off skeptics. Where do I put the line? What's the most minor offense that still ranks?"
Daniel does not sounds like he thinks this is a morally deep question. He sounds like he thinks it's darkly funny to joke about.
Armand might like a video game, if he could condescend to touching the apparatus. Or perhaps it would seem ordinary. Following road rules in GTA when he could, at any moment, do whatever he wanted instead. Giving the Sims a perfect little life instead of drowning them in a pool. He is, of course, not thinking of this when Daniel asks his question—
But when he does consider the human being, there is something of a game to it. To allow their inner worlds to matter for the chance of a darkly funny debate.
"Suppose they're an infection to the conversation," he says. Gamely. "Not adamant in their convictions, not attempting to discredit you or criticise your work in some way that demonstrates thought and care. They're only interested in rendering inert any interesting question that could be raised, in belittling the curiousity of others. Entropic ignorance."
A steady stream of life around them. Thoughts, ordinary, repetitive, brushing against their minds. Nothing wrong in ordinary repetition. It's like watching a river. "You could imagine that their incurious nature as something that dulls all they touch, not just your book."
"So it's a kind of justice." We're playing a game, here. A hypothetical thought experiment, not life-ruining. Hopefully. "Not in a law and order way. A cosmic balance way. Is art not a force of nature itself, yadda yadda, if reality is defined by what we make of it."
Mixing his philosophies, but Armand is clever enough to pick up that he's doing it on purpose. Daniel is the kind of person to understand philosophy but not put much value on it— finding the engagement between differences and balances across all the spectrums and schools more interesting. Enough that he feels confident in his understanding to be imprecise in their use.
"A removal of rot. What's my motivation? Is it ego? Do I get to decide, because my judgment is unassailable about this sort of thing? Or is it selfless? Do I just like this world because I live here, and it's a community service?"
"Call it justice," Armand says. "Call it gardening."
He had said he likes their conversations. He had meant: that bright, clarifying thing he feels, rubbed raw by the right questions, the shock of revelation. He had also meant: sharp words, testing each other, little moments throughout the interview where Louis, sitting at an angle from him or close to him or across the other side of the room had nearly become ornamental to a wider game while he unspooled his life story.
But isn't it nice, too, to talk philosophy, mixed philosophy, without a recording device nearby. They have more time to do the same thing they were doing before, a kind of mutual figuring out.
"Our way of life is currently only addressed by a set of laws upheld by covens of middling power to enforce them, and none of those laws specify how we go about our selections. There is no legislation dictated by human courts that allow it, is cognizant to it, but perhaps that will change, but let us remain in the present. Even human morality, whether expressed through ancient scripture or afternoon television programming for children cannot abide by a way of life in which the baseline to survival is murder."
Talk of eating only animals, imbibing only from the willing. Louis, a master of his impulses, clinging to these things as if he isn't awaiting the inevitable plummet. Armand won't be there to catch him.
"So." So. "Who can you prescribe your own judgment to, if not yourself?"
"All those laws, and nobody bothered to outline 'who to eat'?"
That's funny, for some reason. Daniel wrinkles his nose though a quiet laugh. "Actually— no, that makes sense. Those laws are morals handed down on high from someone, or something, else. No room for encouraging penitents to make their own independent moral judgements. But still something of an oversight in the machine."
It's a nice night out. They pass a news stand, a hot dog cart. Daniel thinks it's odd that news stands have survived, but he thinks the few that remain are vanity projects. Adding to a culture, not making a profit. Hot dogs don't smell like anything anymore, meanwhile.
"Anyway, I know that's me prevaricating. Gardening. I kinda like that."
It makes him think of Armand's tree, and a question he hasn't asked yet. Still not yet. Biding his time.
"Is my judgement my own? How much of a product am I versus an independent entity, when it comes to a moral compass? How I was raised, by who, the things I've experienced. How long do I have to live, sectioned off from those foundational influences, to manifest a fully unique moral perspective?"
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It was just that novelists did more of these than journalists. So he does them, and they're usually half full even in tiny little stores. Now it's a bit of a mess, but it's a fun and interesting mess.
Even when there's a wild animal sitting in the fifth row. Strange that no one else notices. Do wild animals make eye contact? Between two sets of tinted lenses, can either of them tell?
The host is cheery and a fan, a BookTok girl who has used Interview with the Vampire as a gateway drug to reading some of his other work and recommendations and who now feels like an intellectual powerhouse compared to her peers. Which, to be fair, she probably is. Molloy has caught some heat off more established review circuits for engaging with short form media this way, but he doesn't get it. Never has. What if Bradbury told him to go fuck himself? (Well, he did, but he was laughing about it and laughed harder when Daniel stood in line yet again. Angles.)
Questions roll in. He says he can't comment on if he still speaks to anyone mentioned in the book, regarding them as sources who he has a professional duty to protect. He says the best way to get into journalism is to be nosy and take debate classes and do karaoke at crowded bars. Lose your fear. He says he doesn't mind the mixed reaction to his recent book because it's a new experience.
Is the very innocent creature in his cozy sweater and tidy bun going to ask a question as they close out this section, or meander up to a queue?
no subject
He certainly has questions.
Hasn't landed on exactly which one when he does raise his hand as the floor reopens, and several other people do. It is nothing at all to steer the attention of the young woman hosting the event to call upon him, already lowering his palm when she points him out.
"I was curious about the experience itself," he says, tone mild, not even too privately amused. "Interviewing vampires. Were you ever afraid for your life, Mr. Molloy?"
There is the predictable murmured chuckle in the room when someone tosses in a question that takes the premise seriously, but all focus honed forwards for the answer regardless.
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The creature that kept torturing me, that struggled with his desire to kill me versus save me, sat politely in the audience and asked if I ever felt like he might go through with it.
A little smile. What the fuck is wrong with you. (Oh, are we playing a game, again.)
"Yes." So there's that. Another ripple of laughter in the room, because of course, of course. "A vampire could kill me. Easily. So could a gunshot to the head or a bus hitting me, though."
More audience chuckles.
"I like my life." Echo. Still. He looks at Armand. He knows he is dead. He liked his life before, in the 70s. He did not like it very much six months ago, something he told 'Rashid'. Did you have a restful sleep. Funny. Horror, perhaps: he likes it again, now. "It's not that I don't care about risk or that I think I'm untouchable. I just acknowledge it and try to get on with the work anyway, and then it fades away, because I care about the work. The unsettling thing about the threat of death from a vampire versus the threat of death from a Boeing CEO or whatever," the host goes Oooooo at that around more audience reactivity, topical!! stop assassinating people, Boeing, "is how death doesn't mean the same thing to a vampire as it does to a CEO. If I look at a vampire, and I did, and I think 'This guy is going to kill me', do I even know what that means? What's the experience of death going to be like? Am I changed, in those final moments? How changed? If I die, permanently die, was I a different person for a few seconds? Is the vampire who killed me changed, through me?"
And what if he didn't die. What if the vampire let him go for fifty years. What if the same vampire came back, and killed him, and changed him.
"Art is immortal, and climate damage is immortal, microplastics, vampires. It's an intimidating concept to grapple with while trying to take notes on somebody's love life. So— yeah, I was afraid, in there. In that way."
no subject
and he remembers that stubbornness, how much work it had taken to have Daniel fold into him. Armand remembers it as having finally succeeded, but he is no longer certain. His own gentle, relentless convincing, winnowing willpower right down to the edge of itself, and then in that final moment, had he simply reached in and forcibly pulled Daniel's heart out through his chest?
The taste of his blood. He hadn't been hungry for anything it offered save for some other ineffable thing, something he had been trying to discover all week. Maybe he could take it into himself, and be changed by it.
It's a good answer. The audience, drinking it in. Save for one, and Armand turns to look after the sound of a quiet scoff. The sound isn't for show, quiet, only drawing his own attention and that of the woman this audience attendee is with, who lists her shoulder into his to encourage him contain himself. A skeptic who is almost angry at the level of bullshit being spun.
He smells like laundromat soap and synthetic vanilla, and she, some kind of flowery hand cleanser. Armand's attention flicks back forward, offering a small smile that indicates he is content.
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How much have I changed you?
He notes the way the ancient vampire's attention shifts for a brief moment. Daniel considers reaching out, dipping into the mind of the attendee who pulled it, but doesn't. Let it be a surprise to ask about later. And let him wrap up this Q&A section without risking a superpowers fumble. The host follows through on his meditation on fear and death, asks him about how changed he feels in terms of his career, and his social circle. Levity and seriousness. She's not doing half bad. Another question from the room about the balance of research versus creativity, then a final one, about an older book, and his thoughts on how the oil industry has carried on without any meaningful change. It detours them a bit, and the host is more clumsy about cutting them off to wrap up, but Daniel is gracious about it. She spends a while with him during the transition, all bright smiles, taking photos and little videos for her TikTok, and Daniel indulges her.
Book signing. An employee sits behind the little folded out table with him, occasionally taking a photo for social media and making sure no one gets Extra Weird. A global pandemic lingers, and so it's not so strange that Daniel wears gloves for this bit, the way items are being passed back and forth. A young couple has wandered in behind the one that annoyed Armand, navigating around chairs being put away. 'I wonder what we missed', 'I think it's the vampire guy', 'Oh woah, sick—' Enthusiastic, they discuss grabbing a copy and hopping in line, drawing an annoyed look from Mr Scoff.
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A thoughtful audience, then, mostly. Some fans, some curious people who saw the sign at the door. Difficult not to compare it to the theatre. Armand made a habit of, occasionally, sitting amongst them back then as well, not just presiding from his balcony perch. It was good to regard the thing from the proper view.
His turn. He lays the book down in front of Daniel, pushing it forwards.
"I can't say I'm convinced," he says, ignoring the employee sitting alongside. "Given the innate romance of death by vampire compared to death by bus, or CEO. Compelled, perhaps."
A little forward, maybe, but surely, Daniel has experienced weirder fans.
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He looks up at him, finding him both ethereal and comedic in his disguise— which is still more convincing as a real person than his performance as Rashid; in retrospect his dark eyes were fake-looking, though he thinks Armand was less controlled. More willing to snipe and argue. Freedom when he wasn't being himself. Interesting.
"Innate romance?" Eyebrows up, as he slides the book towards himself. "Can the bus not also love?"
Shut up, Daniel. But there's a part of him that almost looks over his shoulder like Armand isn't speaking to him, surely. Innate romance.
"Compelled towards what?"
His hand, pen held, hovers over the blank page facing the dedication (to all the editors who dropped him over this one). Steady.
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Armand glances at the employee, who is attempting to summon some courage to find the right place to shuffle him along. Even in this current get up, unassuming jewel tones and cute hair and glasses that veil the intensity of his vampire eyes, it's difficult not to exude something, some sense of warning.
Or, perhaps, he doesn't care not to. "The vampire selects."
And, as for the blank page, he supplies, "Rakesh," easy. "And I don't know. The story, I suppose. It feels nearly true."
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"Which story?" Glance down, to write. Glance up, eye contact through lenses; he feels he can see straight through, to warm amber. "The book, or the answer about my mortal fear?"
Daniel gives space for him to answer, even though the employee is looking a bit puzzled. Writing a tad more than 'Thanks for your support'. It's fine, though, the couple behind the good-looking hipster with his hair up are chatting away with each other, clearly not in a hurry.
(Why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad?
Pay attention to how things blend
Why talk about all the known and the unknown
See how the unknown merges into the known)
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A curious flick down. That's more writing than most people are getting. Armand's mouth twinges, a faint smile.
"Walking into a vampire's lair and cheating death is a little like bargaining with death itself. You talk of—well, not fearlessness, but your acceptance of your own fear, your own death. But perhaps there's the expectation you will talk your way out of it. Perhaps there's arrogance at play."
A little sharp, and the employee offers the kind of laugh meant to diffuse some idea of tension, maybe their own. You're not meant to accuse authors of arrogance when you get your book signed.
"I mean no disrespect," Armand is moved to say. "Only that it's fascinating."
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Daniel ticks his gaze up from where he's doing a proper thanks-blah-blah now, which would look normal if not for where he's crossed out the dedication and written a name that isn't Rakesh. Covered sunset meets— what? Well. His eyes look like nothing in particular, just outlines, but who knows what color they are.
"Oh, you don't know the half of it," he says. A final glance at his handiwork, then to the employee. "He's got a point, which makes me think he might know a journalist or two already. We're not sensitive enough for fiction, and we're too stubborn for acting. The thing that keeps a reporter from flinching is probably 60/40 ego versus nerves. On average."
Who knows what Daniel's split is. He closes the book, and looks back at Armand. Slides it over.
"Thanks for coming in."
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Armand takes the book, and moves off without a glance, without any further outward sign. His book has already been purchased, so he can drift through the remaining crowd, past the skeptic, and out into the evening street.
The couple he had identified emerge not long after. 'All done?' 'Yep. He's so funny.' 'He's a con artist.' 'Oh, who isn't.' They walk off, his arm around her shoulders, their conversation moving to dinner, to a bar he wants to try. The incredible amount of frivolity that mortals fill their tiny little lives with.
He drifts further down the street, doesn't pursue, lingering. Tracking two individuals in a city like New York's, barely knowing their minds, their scents, would make for an interesting challenge. Instead, he flips open the book to take note of all that writing he received.
As he does so, he says out loud, "I suppose you avoid draining those who attend your events," at a normal speaking voice. If Daniel chooses to, he can hear it. "Even if they're rude."
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The rest— fragments of a poem by Rumi, all of which are on the rambling, stream-of-consciousness side of lyrical. It's about transformation, it's about the point of it all, it's about pointlessness. In the end (that Daniel doesn't transcribe, it's a long poem and he doesn't have the whole thing committed to memory so preciasely), it turns sexual. But it's a Rumi poem. They all do.
—In my head?
A funny half-startle for the last person in line to get a book signed. It takes him a second to realize Armand is doing something and not speaking to him telepathically. Daniel gets through everything graciously, though there are bare minutes left. He doesn't know what his maker (!) has done, exactly, but he puzzles it out while he says thanks and shakes some hands and talks to his assistant about anything they need to pack up.
"Maybe."
Just a word. Trying it out. Vampire tricks, throwing voices, finding one person in a crowd from a distance, even if it's just the awareness of them and not their mind.
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"One of them thinks you're a fraud, and the other, a clown. They'll be out late tonight."
Not very long ago, perhaps Armand would have just seen to it himself. Drained the pair a little to weaken them but with more than enough blood left over to satiate a newly made vampire, bundled them up, left them under Daniel's bed with drifting memories of the strange being that abducted them so easily, perhaps an answering fragment of poetry. The impulse is there, even, to create some distance after his little pantomime in the bookstore.
An offer, anyway. Will Daniel kill a woman who bought his book, but doesn't believe in it? Her annoying boyfriend, with his crime of being annoying? Will Daniel wish to hunt with him?
Too many unanswered questions.
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He doesn't manage a response. Trick too tricky, without understanding what's being done, and he isn't actually sure Armand heard him. That could be a response, or just extra goading.
Will he wait, while Daniel finishes up here? Will he be there, when Daniel exits the bookshop and goes to look for him? One thinks he's a fraud, one thinks he's a clown. People are allowed to think that. He's devoured people who've done nothing to him, not even a slight, though he tries to take deliberate aim. The hunger is difficult when it peaks, and Daniel is as prone to forgetting to eat while lost in work as he is prone to over-indulging when he has time. Once (a shard of ice) he listened to a food addict discuss his struggle, saying bitterly that at least with drugs or gambling, you don't have to do some drugs and some gambling every single day. You have to eat. Daniel found it lacking.
Now. Hah.
It's exciting, despite everything, to look for Armand. He can't track his mind, and the bond isn't a tether like that. But he can— sense? Smell? Something. It's something, a feeling that's faint like a whisper that nearly touches him. A person that isn't a void, a person he can't connect with but is connected with.
A little wind-swept from the cold and from hurrying, Daniel appears. Eyes wide and curious. Hey.
"Could you hear me?"
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Maybe not every twinge of abnormal emotion needs analysis.
"Yes," says Armand, turning to him, book held at his side. "I've observed it before, between maker and fledgling. It's not reliable, or a secret means of communication, but," a gesture, half a shrug. Something like throwing one's voice, something like relying on that inexplicable bond to pick up the other's words in the wind, automatically honing incredible hearing in on a single note in the symphony.
Hey.
"If a naysayer of yours is found dead each appearance, that may lend some credence to your authorial honesty."
Just an idea. Vampires among us. He's kidding, by the way. It's hard to tell.
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He thinks it with the full force of his consciousness, and he makes himself confront that he feels that way. He has been hauntingly beautiful, unnervingly perfect, stunningly attractive in a way that seemed too ideal to even bother engaging with. And he is those things, but he's never thought 'cute' before. It doesn't especially suit him, because he's wearing a costume, but the performance ads to the charm. Reality tips slightly. (To the north?) Armand came to a book signing just to mess with him. His level is messing with him has been playful. With claws, but still playful.
Daniel sets this aside to inspect. Not sure about it. He thinks of eyes on him, always on him, of quiet deep breaths in and hands splayed on the table, restless. He also thinks: That's a cool trick.
"I'll have to practice to get the hang of it," he says. Interested in vampirism, in the things they (he!) can potentially do. His gaze wants to tick down to the book Armand is holding, with its personalized ramble, but he refrains.
"Could also bring the FBI back." Daniel smiles, though, a funny little curious thing, because he suspects humor. Out of Armand. "Why, are you hungry?"
Want to get, like.
A pizza.
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"Law enforcement can be a nuisance," he says. "And it doesn't seem like the kind of game you wish to play."
Daniel, still engaging with human society, still a person, still a public figure. Armand's tone doesn't imply disapproval so much as observation. It's hard to be a functional celebrity if the feds would like to investigate you for serial murder. Maybe the rude couple will live tonight.
Maybe not. "A little. And you've skipped some meals."
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"Dominoes."
One falls, then another, then a hundred. He's not in a hurry to be on law enforcement's radar, not in a hurry to end up entrenched in an increasingly high profile series of kills to get out of a jam. He rationalizes murder just fine, he doesn't need more layers. Besides—
"I want to write the book about the first open vampire to end up in court over biological imperatives," he says, "not star in the documentary. Let somebody else fall on that one."
This little bit of celebrity is fine. It gets him money and the occasional hookup and certain freedoms, which is a nice offset to tanking the credibility of his career (for now). He will pass on more, especially if it comes with restricting his freedoms. Like jail. Pass on jail. Meanwhile: he gives Armand a look.
"Are you keeping track?"
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To the tune of: maybe.
Daniel steers his attention off a glance to the book, but Armand lifts it, drawing focus. "You quoted Rumi," he says. "Who also once said, 'I have never become less from dying'."
Optimistic. Romantic. Religious, first and foremost, but these words exist beyond their context, a fragment of a poem penned quickly into the acknowledgments of a book about queer vampires and their violences.
Cute, also.
And he begins to walk, a pivot that invites Daniel to stay in step.
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Rumi had style. Maybe it was the mysticism— made all the religion tolerable.
Pause. Consider. Mm, what the hell. Daniel follows him. (As if he wouldn't? He tells himself it wasn't guaranteed. It can't be. Armand didn't know he'd follow, or else he wouldn't have to invite him, even wordlessly.)
The city is always packed, it's always busy. A couple of unconvinced, marginally rude attendees fade into obscurity while an ocean of minds and bodies open up, all awaiting assessment for their potential. Daniel is more familiar with video games than the average seventy year old, owing to a combination of nostalgic tolerance based on youthful enjoyment of arcade machines and time sunk in to topics around violence in media. He thinks of the way people decry anything with harm done opponents made out of pixels arranged to look like humans, other living things, the slaughter of which is seen as nothing more than a thing to do to receive experience points.
He also thinks about the movie Gerry when he thinks of video games, but that's like, whatever. A funny thing his brain does, because it's all ridiculous. The point is: converting living beings to an inanimate resource. Thinking nothing of it. Pixels. Mortals. Different from him. He thinks of Louis. Why is a fox less than a human. Why did he tap the woozy Slavic guy's neck like a heroin user lifting a vein, a dismissive and vulgar routine, but fix himself to Armand's throat like it was a lifeline?
"Pretend you're me." Oh, another one of these. "And pretend I want to pick off skeptics. Where do I put the line? What's the most minor offense that still ranks?"
Daniel does not sounds like he thinks this is a morally deep question. He sounds like he thinks it's darkly funny to joke about.
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But when he does consider the human being, there is something of a game to it. To allow their inner worlds to matter for the chance of a darkly funny debate.
"Suppose they're an infection to the conversation," he says. Gamely. "Not adamant in their convictions, not attempting to discredit you or criticise your work in some way that demonstrates thought and care. They're only interested in rendering inert any interesting question that could be raised, in belittling the curiousity of others. Entropic ignorance."
A steady stream of life around them. Thoughts, ordinary, repetitive, brushing against their minds. Nothing wrong in ordinary repetition. It's like watching a river. "You could imagine that their incurious nature as something that dulls all they touch, not just your book."
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Mixing his philosophies, but Armand is clever enough to pick up that he's doing it on purpose. Daniel is the kind of person to understand philosophy but not put much value on it— finding the engagement between differences and balances across all the spectrums and schools more interesting. Enough that he feels confident in his understanding to be imprecise in their use.
"A removal of rot. What's my motivation? Is it ego? Do I get to decide, because my judgment is unassailable about this sort of thing? Or is it selfless? Do I just like this world because I live here, and it's a community service?"
Poking at the edges of a theory. Arrogance.
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He had said he likes their conversations. He had meant: that bright, clarifying thing he feels, rubbed raw by the right questions, the shock of revelation. He had also meant: sharp words, testing each other, little moments throughout the interview where Louis, sitting at an angle from him or close to him or across the other side of the room had nearly become ornamental to a wider game while he unspooled his life story.
But isn't it nice, too, to talk philosophy, mixed philosophy, without a recording device nearby. They have more time to do the same thing they were doing before, a kind of mutual figuring out.
"Our way of life is currently only addressed by a set of laws upheld by covens of middling power to enforce them, and none of those laws specify how we go about our selections. There is no legislation dictated by human courts that allow it, is cognizant to it, but perhaps that will change, but let us remain in the present. Even human morality, whether expressed through ancient scripture or afternoon television programming for children cannot abide by a way of life in which the baseline to survival is murder."
Talk of eating only animals, imbibing only from the willing. Louis, a master of his impulses, clinging to these things as if he isn't awaiting the inevitable plummet. Armand won't be there to catch him.
"So." So. "Who can you prescribe your own judgment to, if not yourself?"
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That's funny, for some reason. Daniel wrinkles his nose though a quiet laugh. "Actually— no, that makes sense. Those laws are morals handed down on high from someone, or something, else. No room for encouraging penitents to make their own independent moral judgements. But still something of an oversight in the machine."
It's a nice night out. They pass a news stand, a hot dog cart. Daniel thinks it's odd that news stands have survived, but he thinks the few that remain are vanity projects. Adding to a culture, not making a profit. Hot dogs don't smell like anything anymore, meanwhile.
"Anyway, I know that's me prevaricating. Gardening. I kinda like that."
It makes him think of Armand's tree, and a question he hasn't asked yet. Still not yet. Biding his time.
"Is my judgement my own? How much of a product am I versus an independent entity, when it comes to a moral compass? How I was raised, by who, the things I've experienced. How long do I have to live, sectioned off from those foundational influences, to manifest a fully unique moral perspective?"
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