Capturing Midnight: A Post Blood Canticle RP

[alldrenched]

Stella laid balanced on the cement rim of the fountain in Lestat's courtyard. She opened her eyes and sat up and she felt them come, she slipped her feet onto the ground and looked into the sky, yes they would be there soon. She did a trick with her mind, still amazed by the ease with which this all came, with this trick she unlocked the doors, light the candles and the lamps. She stepped into the house, leaving the front door open, and she went into the kitchen. The refrigerator had food, left over from Rowan, Stella set out the plates of it, she realised Jacqueline had not had anything to eat in some time. She also started a pot of coffee, as much for Jacqueline as for herself, the scent was wonderful and warmed the whole house.

She sat down on a lovely antique settee, one in a deep blue damask silk, and waited for them.

Pieter was feeling dizzy,"Yes, yes," he agreed to some promise, but he wasn't sure what he was promising anymore. Julien was bright and burning, the room was shivering and shaking around them. Julien's long delicate fingers were running through Pieter's hair, "Piiieter? Pieter?!" he said in a sing song of worry, but Pieter didn't respond. He felt chilled suddenly, and wet, oh god, he thought, he was soaked with sweat.

Julien was frowning, he was upset, he was holding Pieter's arm but Pieter was stumbling, stumbling backwards.

The door to the little storage closet opened, the hotel room was fading between the dream of it and the tiny room full of medicine samples that it was. Pieter fell back onto the floor, he was shivering, and his head hurt as it slammed onto the tile.

Everything was dreamy and melting, a nurse was taking his hand and leading him to a room upstairs, Charles and Ryan had spotted him and he was being whisked into a room upstairs, a room in the special Mayfair suite.

The terrible sickness that came with spirits was slipping off of him as the nurse mopped his forehead, and within another few minutes he was fine, though he didn't remember bits and pieces of the experience at all.

Charles and Ryan were in the hall talking about stress induced psychosis with the doctors, Sterling Oliver was nearby, his head turned down, focused on his bright yellow legal pad as he wrote.

"Are you feeling better?" Sterling asked, though he continued to write, his head still turned down, focusing on what he had written. He had written all the gibberish that Pieter had said, and recorded it on a digital dictaphone for back up. Only in the Talamasca would an eye witness account be considered a far more reliable source than a voice record.

"I am thirsty," Pieter said quietly, sitting up in his soft hospital bed. He found a cup easily enough, full of cool, clean water, and he drank it down. After, he started popping the aluminum foil tops off of the apple juice, and then the orange juice cups that sat next to him. He only ever saw this kind of container used for juice in hospitals and on small island hoppers around Hawaii and Polynesia.

"Was it him?" Sterling said, looking up now, his small eyes shimmering with a rare glint, fear.

Pieter couldn't think, did Sterling mean Lasher or Julien? He couldn't tell.

"It was Julien," he said softly, as Charles turned around and entered, just in time to hear.

[boo radley]

"Stella," Louis whispered. It was a loud whisper, and yet it seemed as if he said nothing at all. That was Louis's sweet gift. And so he sat. Vittorio joined them. And at last Jacqueline came to Lestat's courtyard and stood, a little awkwardly, next to Louis. Louis was in a little pain. Stella had died and joined them. And yet he was all right with that. Mourning meant little these days. "What are we going to do from here?"

[alldrenched]

Stella heard them outside, she stepped out through the wide open doors, "I don't know," she answered her sweet Louis, more vibrant and painfully handsome now than ever.

She gestured with a sweeping hand and already crystalline nails at the door, beckoning for them to enter as she stepped back inside. She wanted them to say something, something that could busy her, distract her from her thoughts of lose, her self-centered mourning and her quietly building hatred for Rowan, Rowan who had done this to them all, her poor family and now this, her death. Her death which rounded it all out, the last to fall because of Rowan's pride, the last to fatality to come of Lasher's deadly kiss.

Stella felt a shock of ravenous lust as Jacqueline neared her. She quelled it easily enough but Mona's blood would not be able to sustain her for long, she would need to kill soon. The thought of it, of taking a soft human, her kin just hours ago, to her chest and crushing it in the swoon terrified her. A strange body, some grizzly evildoer. No, it held no appeal, she had never longed to be some gothic capped crusader, she had never dreamed of anything like that. Stella did not have Lestat's penchant for melodrama, or David's guiding ideals of right or wrong. She had no divinely ordained moral compass, only a social one. Perhaps, had she been raised wrong, she could have been some sociopath, conscienceless and evil. But she had a strongly developed guiding philosophy, this civilised morality, and she could not make it adapt just yet to the situation; in her eyes killing anyone was equally disdainful and cruel.

She did not want to think of that now, no she did not want to acknowledge any of the tumult of emotions that filled her now.

So she spoke,"It is too early to chase after them now," this held in it the secret that she would not speak, that she was exhausted, that her body was still changing, painfully, that she did not want to chase them for fear of what she would do (and what Lestat would do in turn,) and that she did not know how far this terrible gift of flight could take her, or if she wanted it to take her.


Rowan instinctively grabbed for her bag, preparing to dig out the keys as they neared the house, but there was no bag, no, she had left it somewhere in Mayfair Medical and hadn't even noticed.

The blood samples, the notes, the X-rays, the MRI results, all lost now.

[boo radley]

(sorry I'm having a writer's block right now... trying to think of something...)

[alldrenched]

(it's okay, as long as this doesn't die, ::hugs RP:

[boo radley]

Louis smiled when he saw Stella's expression change drastically at the moment that Jacqueline walked inside. At any moment, she could attack Jacqueline. She was a newborn vampire. But he knew Jacqueline was safe, anyway. What bothered him more was this, that Lestat shouldn't have left Stella. Oh, of course. Lestat could have left Stella merely because he wanted to "dump" her on Louis for the time being. Louis didn't see it that way, but perhaps that was the issue. Stella, I love you. Stella, I hate this. And the problem was, he did not know he felt that way about it. What he knew was... Lestat loved Rowan, yes, and Louis loved Rowan, too. It was simple. But for Lestat to leave like this, to go into the air... why, he seemed almost as wild as Mona Mayfair by now. Mona, Louis could handle. But Lestat acting this way? It was strange. At any rate he looked at Stella. "You must feed. You're ill, and if you don't, you'll die. And it will all have been for nothing." And, Louis realized, it was all for nothing. She did die, after all. It was the last thing he wanted.

Jacqueline grew rigid as she felt Louis sink into despair once more. And then she felt nothing but endless love. Forget Lestat, she told herself. Forget him for now. You can always go back to him... some time or other. It was Louis she felt for. Dark angel. Always despair, despair, that was what was lit in his eyes. She recognized it. And until now she hadn't found the word for it. But here she named it now, and in her compassion she heaved a sigh of sadness. Oh, Louis, she thought. My dearest Louis. There was nothing else to be done. And if not anything else, she noted that he seemed to smile a little at this. She turned to Vittorio, who was a little less than left out of the scene. She smiled and gave a small nod with her head. She nodded as if to say, "It has begun." And really, it had. All the vampires seemed to be here, in New Orleans, and now Stella had joined them. There were almost no humans left among Those Who Knew - that is, Those Who Knew of Lestat.

[alldrenched]

Stella smiled at her beautiful Louis, he was ever a fledgling it seemed, weaker now than she was. Would he really die without blood? She knew she would not, but Jacqueline might. Stella was always impetuous, sure, but she could not bring herself to kill, not yet.

"I am fine, Louis," Louis who worried worried worried, and sunk deeper into his depression than she wanted to see, and it was all so easy to read in his ever gesture now, his despair, his hopelessness. And what would her creation be to him, something terrible surely, and perhaps it would be to her, if she let herself think, if the beauty of the world would let herself turn inward. But thankfully, the glamorous setting would not allow this, and perhaps that was the magic of the Dark Gift, a self defense mechanism, the host of this evil little spirit is distracted, and falls so in love with the world that it hurts them to think of leaving it by the time they wake again from the glorious dream and realise what they have become.

She stared at Louis, as though she could drink in his beauty, as though mesmerized, until she was jolted by the ring of a small alarm on the coffee machine. She turned and poured a cup for Jacqueline, passing it to her though she never requested it. Perhaps she thought she would get some voyeuristic pleasure to see what a human is, and knowledge of what she had been, and what she had lost.

The large antique grandfather clock in the foyer read five o ten, the sun would be coming soon, and she had to hunt soon.

"We can all stay here for the night, Jacqueline, you could stay here or go back to your apartment, but if you do stay here bear in mind this is Lestat's house, and though you are all moon-eyed over him he is a man with a temper, and even a Talamascan should respect some privacy." A Talamascan, she had said it as though she weren't one herself, as though that hadn't been her family as much as the Mayfairs were her family.

"And Jacqueline, if you do stay here, keep to this floor," above and below they might rest, and out in the garden, she shot a look at her, attempt to make it clear how dangerous it would be to disturb a resting vampire, though she must know really.

She looked the group over, she had only an hour now to do something unthinkable. She moved to Louis and wrapped her arms around him, she pressed her face against his chest, his hair falling over her and then she leaned up and kissed him softly.

She pulled back, "I have to go, I will be back before the sun rises."

She turned and looked to Vittorio, "When night falls tomorrow we can discover what has lead us to this, what has brought us all together, and we can depart for the coast."

She felt as though fate had drawn them all together, and would be drawing more in; tonight she would prowl, she would kill, and she would find the others that resided here tomorrow.

[boo radley]

Jacqueline shrugged. Stella was acting a bit over-top since she was turned into a vampire... but I suppose it isn't really her fault. "I suppose I'm not wanted here. And yes, I know not to disturb a vampire, least of all Lestat. Thank you." She pushed the tea away gently and left quickly before Louis or Vittorio had a mind to stop her. She knew they could get to her fast enough. But she didn't want them too.

There was too much happening at the moment... Talamascan, she said. She's a Talamascan. And Jacqueline did not want to be...

[alldrenched]

Stella did it, she found a man, a killer himself who had ordered the murders of many a political enemy, and most recently, the murder of his mistress who had become pregnant and was asking for support. She found him walking the streets, well dressed and drunk. He had spent the night with his other mistress, who had thought he was just grief stricken over the lose of Megan, the pregnant one, when he had slapped her.

The pregnant one, it was his title for the woman he had dispatched, so inhuman and terrible. Stella led him into an alley away from Jackson Square, where she had found him, and in a door frame, like teenagers kissing she pressed him against the wall and did it. She took in the salty smell of his skin, the course hair on his chest as she opened his shirt wider to reach his neck, the hunger that coarse through her at the sight of his jugular, it was glowing and throbbing with blood. She pierced slowly and cleanly, think of what it had been like to watch Daniel do it that time in Prague. Daniel who knew what it was to obsess over vampires, to love them and loathe them, and know them for what they are and sink madly into a need for their company.

The flood of blood was so rich, so different from the burning poisoned blood that ran through Mona, it was so sweet and what came with it made her shudder.

Yes, evil, evil poured out of this man, she saw his every act of cruelty, from torturing a cat as a child to this last one, this last act of violence. She saw his life then as he saw it, the bits that make up the whole, the evils done onto him, as though he were throwing them at her, as though he was pleading his case. She sipped from him slowly, fearing the moment when the heart would stop and this swoon would end. But it came, far too quickly, and she continued drinking, though this made her dizzy and confused, until the last drop came from him.

She pulled back, the man was limp in her arms, like he had never been real at all. She took her fingers and pricked two of them so that a dot of blood rose from the tiny cuts. She pressed the bloody fingers against the wounds she left and watched as they healed for her eyes. She dropped the body and it fell with a thud and a sickening crack.

She sat on a curb nearby and caught her breath, it was incredible, the experience, and remorse had not found her yet. She stood and walked, it was nothing to her to walk these streets with impunity like it had been for Mona, Stella had always had her secret little weapon to protect her.

She soon found another candidate for extermination as it were, a man who was with his beautiful dog. This man was half-crazed, he was a rapist, the dog was just a ploy, an excuse for being out this early on these streets. He put his hands to his lips when he saw her, he ran after her as she pretended to flee like a damsel in distress. He nearly choked his dog,dragging it behind him. Stella turned and crushed him in her arms, she took him quickly, he was mad though, not evil, he didn't understand what he did, he was just addled and mad. She felt remorse for this one, she hated to clean it up, and then she left him in the dirty street.

The dog paid no attention to his dead owner, he walked up to her, dragging his leash behind him, and cordially sniffed her ankle. She smiled down at him, his handsome little cocked ear smiley expression made her pick him up. She carried him home, playing with his ears and rubbing his neck.

[boo radley]

Jacqueline walked further down the street. She was almost on Bourbon, now, but she sighted Stella. She saw what she shouldn't have seen until she was a vampire, if that would ever happen. Stella killed a man. A rapist, it seemed like, as Jacqueline felt Stella feel his memories grow into her. "Stella?" she asked uncertainly. She immediately realized she shouldn't have. She backed away, a little slowly. Suddenly she felt lost. How do I get home? She wondered. Louis...