#interview with the vampire prompt | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

free-for-all-fics · 5 months ago

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So… while working on IWTV prompts, the s3 teaser made me feral. So with the help of my bestie, @une-lueur-dans-la-nuit we wrote this prompt that ended up being so much fun for us that it became almost like a miniseries! There will be 2 parts after this! Special thanks to her for providing the French! Pls tag me if you’re inspired by any of this and I’d love to read it! 🎸❤️🩸

“No, that's how billionaire vampires do it. How does your average Jo Mo vampire keep people like you in line? Unspoken threats?”

“The threat is always there. He could kill us both now. But he doesn't. They are peaceful beings.”

“They drain and disappear us.”

“They have a biological imperative that is in conflict with human morality. But what is that morality other than rules agreed upon?”

“Thank you, Rashid. A romantic answer to your question. The average vampire has minimal contact with humanity. When exposed, they feed or run or kill themselves. And I'd say we're multi-millionaires. Not quite a billion.”

“How do you hide from the Cloud?”

“Your cell phones make you slaves to your fetishes and data retrieval is primarily about profits, so I suspect no one at Amazon is trying to sell us blenders.”

“You kill, nightly.”

“And sometimes you've watched that kill on the local news. You've never been easier to distract. You're at the height of willful ignorance. We exploit it. This is, was… Lestat's prophetic vision.”

“Lestat de Lioncourt?”

“Yes.”

“I really gotta meet this guy […] To hear Louis tell it... Lestat becoming a vampire was a horror show.”

“That may be. But he made a remarkable recovery shortly thereafter. How else could you explain his hand feeding the audience? How words came out like canaries, summer fruit in the dead of winter. They were all in love with him. He had that effect on everyone. He...”

“Was a natural?”

“Entirely unnatural. Using the Dark Gift for what? His vanity? It was heresy.”

Part 1: Orientation

It’s modern day. Ever since you and your older brother, Lestat, became famous rockstars while performing as The Vampire Lestat, formerly Satan’s Night Out, you’ve both been very active on socials. You’ve been around since the 18th century and it’s amazing what modern technology is capable of! You used to have to wait weeks or months for a reply to a letter or telegram, or sit or stand still for hours to have your portraits painted, but now messaging is instant and you can share photos and thoughts with people all over the world. You and Lestat are almost internet addicts with how often you post and interact online. If you’re not performing, rehearsing, writing music, or doing interviews, press junkets, or promo shoots, you’re tapping away on your phones or laptops, always posting. You’ve quickly risen in the ranks of social media influencers and have been trending for months. Together you and Lestat maintain a popular vlog on both Instagram and YouTube where you frequently post all kinds of videos ranging from Get Ready With Me, Ask Me Anything, or just daily life vlogs.

You’re currently on tour, but are in need of some new hires since your and Lestat’s last personal assistants unexpectedly…quit…or were…terminated. They weren’t up to the bar of meeting your and Lestat’s expectations and standards. Since Lestat has far less patience than you and can’t be bothered, he’s left it up to you to interview and screen potential candidates for the Personal Assistant position. Usually he’d have a say and you’d have to come to a mutual agreement before hiring anyone new, but he’s sat through this process multiple times and trusts you to single-handedly make this decision by now. That, and he just wants to dump the work, problems, and responsibilities he doesn’t want to deal with onto somebody else as quickly as possible. So the sooner you find someone, the better.

“Next!”

“Good evening, Miss Lioncourt. My name is Juliette—”

“Well, yes. We’ll get to all that. Sit down. Don’t just stand there, lurking in the doorway and making the place look untidy. What are you doing here?”

“Well, I think I could do a good job as your and your brother’s assistant.”

You read her mind. “You don’t listen to The Vampire Lestat?”

“Uh, no.”

“And before today, you had never heard of me nor my brother.”

“No.”

“And you have no style or sense of fashion.”

“Well, um, I think that depends on what you’re—”

“No, no. That wasn’t a question. A shame you were late.”

“I'm not late, though? I’m fifteen minutes early.”

“What do you mean fifteen minutes early? Did no one ever tell you fifteen minutes early is the new late? Have you had any experience before in this kind of position?”

“I already sent in my CV. All my information should be there.”

“You sent your CV through? You know, I don’t really remember you. Let me have a look. You look very different from your CV. Mmm. Well, your skills and experience are…adequate, I would say. But first thing you should know is that this job is not for the faint of heart. Lestat is incredibly fussy with his PAs. More so than I am. During our time on tour, we have had over sixty PAs come through our doors and, for one reason or another, Lestat or I just…didn’t get on with them. And no one really has ever been as good as… Well, you don’t need to know their name as it’s irrelevant, but Lestat had a favorite Personal Assistant a long, long time ago, and he hasn’t quite gotten over their leaving. Ah, Lestat est si nostalgique (Ah, Lestat is so nostalgic). They were his very most favorite assistant, so you have some mighty big shoes to fill. I hope you know that. Mhm. Well, it doesn’t really matter how well you do your job or how efficient you are. If Lestat or I don’t like you, you’re out. If you disappoint Lestat or I, you’re out. And if me telling you this makes you think I’m high maintenance or a piece of work, you won’t be able to survive in this position.”

Juliette has a feeling your use of the word ‘survive’ in this context isn’t just a figure of speech. She swallows down her nerves.

“I am the patron saint of mercy and patience compared to my brother, so if you have any doubts about your abilities, there’s the door. Otherwise…bonne chance.” (Good luck.)

“I’ll try my best-”

“Now, our concert tonight isn’t for another two hours or so, so we have a little bit of time to go over everything. Apart from us, you’d be working closely with Christine as well, so let me get this straight with you off the bat. You and Christine would have totally different jobs. She’s our lawyer and is in charge of Lestat and I’s schedule, our appointments, and our finances. She gets to go with us to Paris for Fashion Week in the fall, she gets to go to all the shows, meet all the designers, go to all the parties, it’s divine. Christine is also a vampire like us, so don’t think you can do what she can do because, trust me, you can’t. You, as a human, on the other hand, well…you get ‘coffee’ and run errands. ‘Coffee’ is code for blood, in case you hadn’t figured that out. Now, also remember you must pick up our band mates’ and guests’ coffee orders as well. Our guests could be designers, clients, musicians, models, photographers…. Anybody from the fashion, musical, or vampire world, and you are expected to learn everyone’s ‘coffee’ order. Remember, for vampires, ‘coffee’ is blood, and for humans like our band mates, it’s, well…regular coffee. Starbucks, Caribou, Dunkin’ Donuts, wherever you prefer. Now, this does change from time to time, I will admit. For instance, Zakk Wylde used to take his coffee black but now he’s um, not even drinking caffeine anymore, so you’ll just have to keep up-to-date with all our guests and their companions or assistants will tell you what they prefer that given day. We have an internal system of all the orders of the ‘coffees’ and the beverages that everybody drinks so you’re expected to learn that. Now, our internal system has everything, everything that you could possibly ever want to know. ‘Coffee’ orders, all our social media accounts, all our files, all of our system data, so I’ll get you set up on that now.”

You type away at the computer, pulling up the appropriate screen.

“So can I just take your full name? This’ll become part of your username. Okay. And what password would you like? You can change this, obviously. And your date of birth.”

When Juliette tells you her DOB, you do a double take. “Mon Dieu (my god), you look older. Okay. And your social media handles. Your Instagram first. Facebook? And Twitter? Any other social media accounts? Okay. Let’s see.” You click the ‘save new user’ and ‘apply new changes’ buttons. “All right, done. Can I take your number and then this will get pinged over to your phone? Okay. Should be through now.”

Juliette’s phone pings with a new email.

“Got it? Perfect. So those are your login details.”

“Thank you, I might have some qu—”

“Now, Lestat’s and I’s ‘coffee’ orders are incredibly important. We expect our ‘coffee’ to be on our desks precisely when we wake up in the evening. If the ‘coffee’ is late or if it doesn’t arrive for any reason, Lestat and I - especially Lestat - get very upset. One assistant actually missed our ‘coffee’ order because of some, I don’t know, bus crash downtown or something like that, some lame excuse, and…well, we drank him instead. Drained him dry. We don’t often share since most humans faint from just one of us feeding on them. Sharing a human and drinking as much as needed to feel full and satiated before the heart stops would mean certain death for them. With cell phones and social media, it’s getting harder and harder these days to make a human disappear. But it’s not impossible. Now, don’t look so scared! You won’t have to do this every night. Sometimes Lestat and I prefer to hunt for ourselves like in the old days for nostalgia’s sake. You’ll be notified in advance if we decide to hunt ourselves. But if not, it’s up to you to keep us fed, and Lestat and I tend to be very picky eaters. A fresh young girl, that is his favorite food. But the triumphant kill for a sadist like Lestat is always a young man. Young men appeal to him in particular. They represent the greatest loss to Lestat, because they stood on the threshold of the maximum possibility of life. For me, I don’t mind a young woman while she’s on her monthly cycle. It reminds me of who I used to be and what I once had. But I prefer…what do you call them in English? Ah, yes. DILFs or MILFs. Men or women who seem to be doing well in life. They have more ‘taste’, like aged wine. Lestat likes to take away young men from all their possibilities, while I like to take what I’ll never have as well: A menstrual cycle, a pregnancy, Getting old, settling down…”

“Did you and Lestat…feed on pregnant women and children?” Juliette asks hesitantly, as if afraid the question might be offensive to you.

“We used to. Not anymore though. We’d feed on infants too if blood was scarce and we were especially desperate. They were so small, there wasn’t much blood in their bodies to drink before their tiny hearts stopped. It may seem especially heinous, but in the 18th century when we became vampires, medicine wasn’t what it is now and the mortality rates in women and children were already very high even before the Revolution. People would notice if too many men died or disappeared as they held the most power and societal influence, but nobody would bat an eye if it was a woman or a child. They’d write it off as another stillborn or another unfortunate victim who succumbed to a tragic and fatal accident or whatever disease was most prevalent at the time. We were beggars and couldn’t afford to be choosers in those days. But now, like I said, we are much more particular. We don’t feed on animal blood and we don’t like cold blood from blood bags. Even if it’s been heated up in the microwave and poured in a glass, it’s not the same as when it’s warm and flowing directly from a still-beating heart. We’ll only feed on blood bags or animal blood if we absolutely have to - for example, if we’re seriously wounded from sun exposure or major loss of blood. If we cannot consume high-quality blood, we might as well drink blood from Florida. That being said, I am sure there is still decent blood to drink in Florida. But I would bring a test kit anyway. But if you value your job and your life, you’ll find us each a human volunteer to feed from, preferably ones that match our specifications.”

“And where—”

“Yes, our ‘vampire victim’ preferences and sleep and feeding schedule will be noted on the internal system so pay very close attention to it. Use Tinder or other dating apps to find matches, if you must. We don’t care what you have to do to make it happen, you’ll get us our goddamn blood. And then, once we’re done, we’ll have a car waiting for our human volunteers so they can be taken home to sleep it off. The vampire’s kiss can be like an opiate, but their blood sugar tends to drop and they get very woozy afterwards. We’ve been doing really well so far. Our kill percentage has been decreasing lately with only one or two upward spikes here and there. We’d like to keep that going.”

“That’s quite a reli—”

“You are also expected to update our social media. Every. Single. Day. The social media schedule is on the internal system and you must adhere to it. Like biblical. Lestat and I are in charge of and personally manage our personal social media accounts, so you won’t have to worry about those, but you will be in charge of managing our business accounts, including our official page for our band. And we get very upset when our assistants don’t post to social media or they forget to post to social media or it’s not right. And you cannot just upload anything just willy-nilly. Lestat and I approve every social media post, so if it hasn’t been approved by either Lestat or I, then don’t upload it. Now, when we go to Paris in the fall for Fashion Week, you’re expected to double the amount of social media posts that you will already post as a minimum.”

“But the time difference…”

“What do you mean about time differences? Well, you’re not expected to sleep whilst Fashion Week is on. Qui dort pendant la Fashion Week, franchement? (Who sleeps during Fashion Week, seriously?) You’ll have to figure it out. Our photographers will be sending you the pictures that they take from all the shows and all the couture and all of that and you’re expected, once Lestat or I have approved them, to be uploading and retweeting and regraming around the clock. You’re also expected to filter out any derogatory comments or any sort of foul language that is on the social media pages. Yes, it’s pretty intense. What, you don’t think you’ll be able to do it? You’re also expected to take pictures that represent us on a daily basis and put those up on the Cloud for Lestat and I’s approval before posting.”

“Will I be provided a camera for this?”

“Yes, you’ll be given a camera that’s state of the art, top of the range that you’ll be expected to use. As I’m sure you know, Lestat and I also have our own fashion magazine - Veins & Vanity. Yup. It’s a bestseller. Even more popular than Daniel Molloy’s trashy novel about us.”

“Who’s Daniel Molloy?”

“What do you mean? You don’t know who Daniel Molloy is? Have you been living under a rock? Pas très maline, celle-là. (Not very smart, this one.) I don’t have time to explain it right now, but— As the new personal assistant, you’ll eventually be in charge of dropping off the book each night to our apartment. But Lestat and I are very private and we don’t like strangers in our house, so until we both decide you’re not a total psycho, Christine gets the lovely task of waiting around for the book. Let me show you an example.” You flip through a thick, spiral-bound book. “This is the book for this month. As you can see, it’s a mock-up of the newest edition of our magazine. This is usually assembled at 10 or 10:30 in the evening and you must wait around for it until then. A car will take you straight to our house and you let yourself in and you do not talk to anyone. Do not look at anyone. This is of the utmost importance. You must be invisible. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“So you open the door and you walk across the way, you hang our dry cleaning in our closets across from the staircase and you leave the book on the table with flowers. Do NOT go upstairs for any reason. That is the coffin room where Lestat and I sleep and it’s strictly prohibited to humans. We do not like our sleep to be disturbed. We are very light sleepers so if you try, we will hear your footsteps squeaking on the hardwood floors before you even make it halfway up the stairs. And when we’re tired, we’re not so kind. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You will quietly leave in the same car you arrive in. Then, in the morning, it will come back to you and be left on a desk - usually it’s Christine’s desk - and Lestat and I will leave notes, which are in blue and red sticky notes here. You will then drop it off at the Art Department where they can systematically go through Lestat’s and I’s notes and make changes. So, that is the book.”

You pause as realization dawns on you that Juliette has just been sitting there, listening to you but not typing or writing anything that you’ve said down.

“…Have you not been taking notes?” You rub your temples. “Oh my god, have I just been talking to myself this entire time?” You hold your hand up, stopping Juliette from attempting to explain herself. “No, don’t. I don’t care how good your memory is. Just…just…” You clench and unclench your fists in frustration, your nails digging into your palms.

Your cell phone rings.

“Look, let me take this phone call, you make notes, and…” You pick up the phone. “Y/N Lioncourt. Yes, hello, Christine. No. No, the Molloy interview is next week. …What time? Yes. I will let everybody know. Yes. Yes. Yes, take care, Christine. Salut, salut, salut.”

You hang up the phone.

“Okay. Something major has just happened. The Molloy interview, which was meant to be next week, has been moved to tonight at 2:30 after the concert. So people are panicking and my cell phone is going to be ringing off the hook. Les humains sont toujours si stressés.” (Humans are always so stressed out.)

You go into your recent calls and redial Christine’s number with a tap of your finger.

“Yes, Christine, me again. What time is the editor coming in? So we’ve got a little bit of time before the documentary crew arrives. Yes. Yes. Have you let Sophie know? Yes. And…yes. What about our jackets though? Lestat expressed he wanted to wear the chartreuse with the ostrich feathers… Oh, they’ve been dropped. Okay. That’s fine, I’ll make a note of that. Okay.”

You hang up but it isn’t even two minutes before your phone rings again.

“Y/N Lioncourt. Yes. I know, I know. Yes. Tonight 2:30. Yes. Yes. Can you remember to bring those belts as well? All right. Thank you.”

You hang up and focus your attention back on Juliette.

“Like I say, people are panicking. Now, you’re expected to note down everything that Lestat or I do and don’t like. Now, Lestat, if he likes it, he’ll nod his head once. If he nods twice, he really, really likes it. And if he shakes his head, he doesn’t like it, and if he purses his lips…disaster. I think there was only two records of a smile. And that was for Louis Vuitton way back in 1858 and Yves Saint Laurent in 1966. So you’ve got everything now? Well, there’s no time to explain anymore, this Molloy interview business is really…”

Your phone buzzes repeatedly, something that only happens if given an emergency call or alert.

“getting…out of hand… This isn’t good. Y/N Lioncourt. You’re joking. How long? Yes. I’ll let everyone know. Merde!”

Your fingers rapidly type a quick message to send out in a group text before you dial a number.

“This is not good. This is not good. Mia, it’s me. Lestat is coming in twenty minutes! Yes, I know he’s early! Can you let Sophie and the team know? Well, I can’t do it because I’m babysitting this new PA. Please, Mia. I’ll let you have my Prada bag. Thank you, Mia. Yes, salut.”

You hang up again and nearly jump out of your skin when you glance over and see Juliette still sitting in front of your desk.

“Oh my god, I totally forgot you were still here! That’s crazy. Yeah, sorry, babes. My peripheral vision is kind of selective. Like if my eyes get the vibe something is boring they just won’t tell my brain about it, you know what I mean? Yeah, that’s why I failed my driver’s test eight times. At a four way stop if the other drivers seem ugly, they’re basically invisible to me. All right. Lestat is coming in early, and he’s going to be here in twenty minutes, which means we need to get you ready because I can’t possibly let you in to see Lestat looking like that. Did you even look at yourself before you got dressed this morning? I don’t understand why you look like you rolled out of bed or something. Like you just said, ‘oh my god, I’m late, let me just go to work.’ Look, you can always be two minutes late in life. Nobody’s gonna tell you nothing if you’re two minutes late. You could put on a nicer top. It doesn’t take five years to find a nicer top and get out of your pajamas. I don’t know. Maybe it’s something like your culture. I’ve seen a lot of people on the streets just walking around in pajamas, going into the store to get something. So maybe it’s a cultural thing. Maybe the less attractive you look, the better your chance to find a mate or something? I don’t understand this dynamic, but I’m learning. Don’t worry, don’t worry. Calm, calm, calm. Les humains, vraiment tous pareils. (Humans, really all the same.) I’ll fix this. Right. What size are you?”

“Six.”

“Well, that will have to change if you want to continue working here. Four is the new six, you know. All right. I’ll see what I have available but… I can’t promise anything. What size shoe are you?” You get up from your desk and pace around before going into another room.

Juliette can hear you mumbling to yourself, “Everything is just everywhere! Danielle, have you got those, um, Prada pumps?” before you come back shortly with a pair of heels in your hand and a dress draped over your arm. “All right. This is all I could find in your size unfortunately. So I got you some nice heels here. They’re beige. They’re last season, but beggars can’t be choosers, right? Heels are a must. I don’t want to catch you in loafers or, god forbid, sneakers. So heels must be worn at all times.”

You lift a backpack and hold it up precariously by pinching your thumb and index finger together on the top loop, as if you don’t want to touch it at all. You look at Juliette. “What is this? Is this your bag? Oof. It’s hideous. Elle n’a donc vraiment aucun goût! (So she really doesn’t have any good taste!) Don’t let Lestat see you with that. Absolutely hideous. And I got you this Gucci dress. And…well, that’s all I could find for you.” You hand her the heels and dress. “Now, look, go and get changed.”

“Here?”

“Well, yes, here! We don’t have time for you to go wandering around the building.”

“But the walls are glass! Anyone could walk by and see me in my underwear!”

“Well, it doesn’t matter! We’ve had so many naked women and men in this office, more than an adult film sometimes. Now, come on, get on with it, I don't have time for this!”

Your phone rings again.

“Y/N Lioncourt. Yes, he’s coming in twenty minutes. Well, probably less than that now. Yes. You’ll need to send somebody out for ‘coffee’. Well, yes. This new PA is just a nightmare. You can get Jack to go? Yes, that’ll be great.”

You hang up again. You turn back to look at Juliette, now dressed in what you gave her.

“Are you done? Let me have a look. Well, that doesn’t go like that and let me just pull that down for you there. Seriously, do you even know how to dress yourself? That will do. It’s a little bit tight but…what about shoes? Good? All right. Let me have a look at your hair. Oh. We don’t have time for this. We really, really don’t. It looks like you’ve just stepped off the subway.”

“Well, yeah…”

“Why on earth did you take the subway? You can get a cab. Elle doit être tellement pauvre pour prendre le métro. (She has to be so poor if she is taking the subway.) Don’t worry. Let me just look at you. So, yeah, first priority is gonna be how you smell because I’m going to have to experience that the entire time I’m working on you and currently these are inhumane working conditions.”

“Do I really smell that bad?”

“Yeah, you smell like a gymnasium. Don’t worry, babes, we’ll take care of that. We’re gonna douse you in Cloud, everyone loves it. Yeah, it’s a universal favorite. It will make you smell like you’ve been in a bubble bath your entire life up until this very moment. I got enough Cloud to make a crowd scatter.” You spritz the perfume all around Juliette.

“Ouch!” She blinks and rubs at her eyes.

“I got it in your eyes? Close them. Oh my god, so much better already. Next up is your hair. Oh my gosh, I love your hair! Um, is it okay if I touch it?”

“Sure?”

“Cool, thanks. It’s so pretty. It’s so soft. It’s gorgeous. I like this color for you. It’s very nice, very good.”

“Thank—”

“But…uh…” You rub her hair between your pointer finger, middle finger, and thumb. “Oh, it’s very dry. Oh my god, it’s very dry! It’s not healthy at all! Can I tell you that? It’s not at all healthy. Do you use any product on it? Do you use anything to help it? Like some kind of oils or cream? Something?”

“Not really?”

“So like…what kind of products do you use on your hair usually?”

“Pantene.”

“Pantene? Babe, you might as well be using Nair. What the hell? It’s very straight. You must use a straightener like every day. Yeah. And yet it’s so frizzy somehow. I hate frizzy hair and yours is kind of hay-like. C’est comme de la paille. (It’s like straw.) Like a frail piece of straw that’ll break from a gust of wind. It’s not good. How many times do you try to straighten your hair? Okay, I’m just asking because the more I touch it the worse it gets. Look at it, it’s so thin. It’s so thin. I feel like if I touch it too much, it’s going to snap. It’s going to snap.” You curl a strand that falls out around your pointer fingers and pull. “It makes a sound too! It sounds like plastic. Look at that! It’s plastic.” You let it fall away and shake off your fingers. “It’s quite disgusting in my opinion. No offense.”

“But you just said—”

“I know what I said. I thought I liked it, but it doesn’t look very good up close. It’s like one of those abstract paintings. From afar, it makes sense and I can see the picture, but when I come close to it, it’s like…why don’t I understand where the paint strokes are going? I don’t understand this. What is happening here? Like from afar, it looks very nice, you look very good, very put together. But then when I come close, your hair looks like trash. And when I touch the texture of your hair, it feels like it will break. Lestat and I have curly hair too, so no hate towards curly hair, but this is…interesting. I don’t know…”

“Do you use anything on your hair to get it so curly?”

“No, ours is natural. Yeah. In our family a lot of us had blonde and/or curly hair and we didn’t dye it or perm it or use heat on it. Yeah, if you watch him closely, you’ll notice Lestat’s hair is like bleachy blond. It’s so light that sometimes it appears white under fluorescent lights. He takes after our mother, Gabrielle. Lestat and I’s hair is all natural and we don’t have to use anything on it. It just dries curly. That’s why it’s so healthy. Oui, nous avons de la chance. (Yes, we are so lucky.) That’s why Lestat’s grew past his shoulders and mine grew nearly to my butt by the time we were changed. We cut it and it just grows back the same way. Yeah. That’s why we have a lot of it. Lestat and I actually did each other’s hair today. Yeah, he did my hair for me so it’s like perfect today and I just don’t want anyone to touch it. But yours is like…very thin. So thin. And the amount of frizz and hair damage you have is ridiculous, even though you definitely don’t dye it or style it or anything whatsoever. So how you managed to get it looking this bad…honestly, an enigma. It’s really disturbing actually. Have you ever thought about dying it? Yeah, ‘cause the closer I look at the color of your hair, it’s very…off. Yeah, the… What do you call this color? Strawberry blonde?”

“Yes, it’s—”

“The strawberry blonde moment is just not doing it for you. I don’t like it. Again I use the analogy of the painting because, from afar, it looks good, but, up close, it looks like ramen noodles. I don’t know how to explain it. Do you know what I mean? Non, elle ne doit pas comprendre. (No, she can’t understand.) Like ramen noodles in the box and you put it in the hot water. And it’s yellow and hard. That’s what…yeah. I don’t know. I just think of you as more of a soft caramel color. Especially a little bit lighter at the ends I think would look really good later down the road. Well, for now, I think you have to just cut it all off. Just go short and start over. I feel like a lot of split ends are here. Yeah, you have a lot of split ends, oh my god. You’re full of them. Just take it all off and stop using heat on it. Just stop it all. Don’t do anything anymore to it. Just don’t touch it. Don’t touch it anymore. Do you ever go to a hairdresser to cut your hair?”

“Of c-”

“You know what? I’m gonna hook you up with my stylist, Celeste. Yeah, she’s amazing with hair. She does mine and Lestat’s and she’s just amazing. I think you’re gonna love it. I think just a little bit of layering because you’re very much all one length here. Yeah, that was like so…2005. Yeah, you gotta change it up a little. Put some layers in and I think it’s gonna look really good. Some nice face framing layers and, like I said, a nice caramel color. Like a chocolate at the top and, as it goes down, it gets lighter and lighter. We’ll go to Celeste and you don’t talk to her. Let me talk and I’ll tell her what to do because this is, in my opinion, unacceptable. I don’t understand why you wanna keep it this way. Elle est donc aveugle. (So she is blind.) Do you like it like that? Do you like it looking frizzy and breaking? Because if you like it like that, you just keep it, you know I don’t care. It’s really none of my business what you wanna do with your hair. It’s just not a good impression in my opinion.”

“No, no, I ca—”

“No offense, but it looks like you really don’t take care of yourself at all. It just gives a wrong impression like you don’t care about yourself and when you have that impression like, ‘I don’t care about myself’ and you go out like, ‘I don’t care about myself, so why should I care about other people.’ Do you understand? So I think this is something that you need to work on. Because I don’t like when people just look like they don’t really care about anything. Because it’s like, then why are you even here? Why are you here if you don’t care about anything at all? Do you know what I mean? If you don’t care, just go live on a mountain or something. Don’t come and live in society because there’s certain standards that we want and have to uphold. And this is not it. This is not it. You use your hair as a safety net but it’s not gonna save you from a bullet or a train, so it’s not really a safety net. So for today, I have the lovely challenge of making your chemically damaged hair look passable for Lestat. Yikes! I really don’t even know where to begin. Just kidding! Yes, I do! We’re gonna start with detangling spray. A nice spritz of this is gonna make all of those millions and billions of little tangles so much easier to manage. Close your eyes this time, okay? Perfect. I love this detangling spray so much. The tangles are working out like butter. Brush, brush, brush it all out. Brush, brush, brush it all out. The next step is gonna be this hair oil. Thick and full, Biotin and Collagen weightless oil mix. It’s got vitamin B7, Biotin, Collagen, hydrolyzed protein. All kinds of goods that your pathetic little strands have never seen in their lives. This is gonna make your hair look so silky and healthy instead of thirsty and tragic. Gonna work that through. As far as the style - Oh, god. What if we just like, grab a stand from either side and clip them together in the back? That can be pretty foolproof. I think I’ve got a clip over here. Yeah, this’ll be cute on you. Let me grab a strand from the right side of your face. Little bigger than that. Grab a strand from the left side of your face and then meet them together in the back, grab that clip and clip those together. Oh my gosh, so much better already, but still a ways to go. On progresse, on progresse. (We make progress, we make progress.) Then there’s your makeup. It’s not doing you any favors. Like really bland. Wait - are you even wearing any makeup?”

“No…”

“No?” You gasp. “Nothing at all? Oh, wow! Okay.” You interlace your fingers together in contemplation. “You’re actually pretty cute - in like a weird kind of way - like an armadillo! But yeah, cute. Okay. This has me rethinking everything. I thought we were starting from an entirely different place. If this is the blank slate we’re working with, there’s actually hope! We can get you to like a solid…6.5. I’m serious! But it’s gonna take hard work to get there. Blood, sweat, and tears, babe. But it’ll be worth it. I’m gonna pull out all my best tricks. Have you ever taken care of your skin? It looks just…dull…but I think I can bring it to life because, even though it is dull, it also has this perfection to it that not many have. This is good. This is good.”

You pat Juliette’s skin with cleansing pads.

“I’m going to use products from Lestat’s and I’s makeup brand. It’s called Bloodlust. I’m just trying to cover up some of the imperfections so that when I style you next time, I can have a better idea of what the final product is going to be. First we’re gonna moisturize you up nice and good because your skin texture is like asphalt. Let me grab a beauty blender. Hydrating your skin, giving it that gorgeous, gorgeous glow it desperately needs. Making sure that the foundation is gonna have a nice surface to stick to. Wow, your skin is seriously drinking this up, it’s so dry. Have you like, ever moisturized before in your life? You’re like a freak of nature. No offense. Les humains peuvent être des créatures si étranges de nos jours. (Humans can be such strange creatures nowadays.) ‘Kay. Now we’re gonna plop on the foundation with that same beauty blender. Just layering on more and more and more and more and more until we cannot see even a single pore of your actual skin anymore because it’s giving very much Nosferatu. And now, thanks to me, it’s giving very much Malibu! Let’s pick the perfect blush shade for you. Let me get a closer look at your skin, actually. Okay, so even with the foundation on, I can still tell that you’re working with a pretty warm undertone here. So we want something pretty and peachy rather than like a pastel pink. Got it! I know just the one! Blending that over your cheeks. Oh yeah, it’s bringing some life into your face in a big way. C’est pas encore ça, mais c’est déjà mieux!” (We’re not done yet, but it’s already better!)

You open your eyeshadow palette. “For your eyes we’re gonna do something kind of light because your eyes are actually one of your nicest features.”

“Thank you?”

“Yeah, so we want to highlight them, not hide them. Let’s take this nice bronze and just do like a nice subtle wash through the outer corner into the crease. Do you even know what eyeshadow is? Ridiculous. Just add a bit of depth and sparkle and let’s pick up a highlight color and dip that in your inner corners. And then a touch more sparkle in the middle. Now we’re getting somewhere. Next is the mascara. Just a little tip from me to you: Mascara is the most important step of makeup. I swear even if you don’t have time to do anything else, mascara is the one thing you cannot skip. Like if I was human and saw a bear lunging towards me, I’d take the time between then and my mauling to apply a fresh coat. If that gives you any idea of the importance. Never, ever, ever let me catch you outside of your house without mascara.”

“I don’t really—”

“Like even if you go to the gym, I want you to wear that because you can’t just like, be associated with me or my brother if you’re gonna look like you just rolled out of the trash, you know what I mean? The most important thing to remember about this job is that you must look impeccable at all times. Your hair, your makeup…flawless all the time. Lestat and I get very upset if we see people looking drab or unkempt or unmade up. So you must look good at all times. Just blink when I say. Wow, cute. Can you look up for me? Oh and, next time, we have to do something about your eyebrows ‘cause they’re just all over the place. Yeah they’re just a little bit too bushy for my tastes personally but if you like looking like an orangutan, that’s fine. It’s up to you. Oh yeah, I could totally bring you to my esthetician. Or I could just do them for you like I’m such a pro. When I was human, I did Lestat’s, I did my mother’s. I do it for my human band mates and friends. J’espère qu’elle ne croit pas que nous allons devenir amies.” (I hope she doesn’t believe we’ll become friends.)

You check your phone.

“Well. We’re out of time, so this is as good as it’s going to get. It’s showtime. Stay after the concert and I’ll introduce you to Lestat before the Molloy interview. Don’t worry, I won’t let him bite or kill you on your first day.”

Unseen, Juliette watches the entire show from the sidelines. Your set exceeds the usual 45 minutes or hour most concerts are, on account of you and Lestat deciding to play at least three encores. After the concert, Juliette is waiting for you in the hallway that connects the main stage with the backstage area. Finally you exit, your bass slung over your back and Lestat beside you, your human bandmates somewhere else, probably the bar. Your hair and makeup are still flawless since, as vampires, you don’t sweat. Having slipped out of the Prada heels for comfort’s sake, she had been casually leaning against the wall for the duration of the show since nobody would notice her in the dark. But she straightens up from her slouched position immediately, quickly slipping back into the heels and smoothing out her hair and the dress you loaned her before either you or Lestat can notice as you meet her offstage. Phew. That was close.

“Mr. Lioncourt,” Juliette says, using every muscle in her body to speak up with conviction and not shake or twitch from anxiety in his presence. Although you promised you’d protect her today, that protection may expire eventually. She knows that you and Lestat hate weakness, and she cannot show it in his or your presence if she hopes to keep this job.

“Yes? Can I help you?” With his arm slung around your shoulders lazily, he furrows his brow. Arching it questioningly, he barely makes eye contact with her and instead focuses his attention on you, as if waiting for an explanation as to why this human has been allowed backstage, is standing in front of him and you, and is addressing him.

“Well… I’m Juliette, your new assistant. Ms. Lioncourt hired me earlier this evening,” Juliette explains.

“You’re the new PA? You’ve got to be joking.” While keeping an eye on Juliette, he turns his head halfway to whisper in your ear, “Ma soeur, avons-nous eu si peu de candidats qu’il a fallu que tu choisisses celle-là?” (Sister, did we get so few of candidates that you had to pick this one?)

“I’m sorry if I’m not what you were expecting but… Mr. Lioncourt, I need to tell you that I absolutely love your yellow jacket. The bird feathers are a nice touch. Very stylish. Very you.”

“Are you colorblind? It’s not yellow, it’s chartreuse. And they’re not just bird feathers, they’re ostrich feathers.”

“Are they real?”

“Do you know anything about fashion?”

“I wouldn’t—” Juliette catches your warning glance. “Yes, of course I do.”

“Then you know that, of course, they’re real. I only wear clothes made out of genuine leather and fur because I’m all about being genuine in my music and my personal life and I want what I feel on the inside to reflect on the outside. Many animals had to die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make if it’s for the noble cause of making me look this good.”

“Do you wear clothing made from endangered species too?”

“Sometimes. My sister and I both still have articles that were made from now extinct species too. But we were around long before those species ever became endangered or extinct. The failure of your kind to preserve and protect your environment is not our fault nor our problem. Enough chit chat. Onto the main issue: Let me have a look at you. Turn.”

Juliette turns in a circle very quickly.

“No. Slower.”

Juliette turns in a circle again, this time much slower than before.

Lestat scoffs in annoyance at her inability to follow clear directions. “Just stay still.” He leaves your side to walk in a circle around Juliette, looking her up and down with his hand on his chin, his fingers moving over his mouth occasionally. He doesn’t look away from her as he switches to French, once again talking about her as if she isn’t there. He clicks his tongue, as if tsk, tsk, tsking. “Vraiment, ma soeur? C’est tout ce que tu as trouvé? Elle ne sera jamais à la hauteur. Son visage passe encore, mais il va falloir qu’elle apprenne à s’habiller et se coiffer dignement.” (Really, sister? Is it all you have been able to find? She’ll never be good enough. Her face is okayish, but she will have to learn how to dress and do her hair with dignity.)

He switches back to English. “Well. Juliette, is it? I hope you know you are very lucky to get this position. Anyone would kill to be standing where you’re standing right now. We had over one hundred applicants for this position and, trust me, it was not easy whittling them down, I must say. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be here. I always hire the same boy or girl…stylish, slender, of course…worships us and the band. But so often, they’ve turned out to be…I don’t know…disappointing and, um…stupid. So you, who probably has an impressive resume and made a big speech about your so-called work ethic… my sister must think you’ll be different. And since I left her in charge of hiring the new PA this time around, I guess I’ll just have to live with her decision.” Lestat then looks at you and waves you both off. "Vas-y, ma soeur. Prends le risque. Embauche la grosse intello.” (Go ahead, Sister. Take a chance. Hire the smart, fat girl.)

On the other side of the large and thick industrial double doors, you and Lestat, thanks to your super hearing, can hear Daniel and the documentary crew talking, clearly growing impatient.

“The car’s been on the lot for hours, man.”

“Hey, look, if you want, I can have somebody knock on the window.”

“I, uh…I think they…”

“What? What? You think what?”

“I think they’re entertaining somebody right now,” someone says, pointing out that he saw you and Lestat earlier, and Lestat had bite marks and hickeys on his chest while you had a new girl next to you.

“Do we have insurance for homicide?”

“You know what, we had three deaths on the Banger Sisters, don't worry about it.”

You and Lestat push open the doors and make your entrance.

“That's them. Jesus Christ, look at them,” Daniel says in awe.

You gesture with your arm for Juliette to not follow you and to instead wait on the sidelines with the rest of the human crew while you and Lestat walk to the matching black leather chairs waiting for you.

“Okay, let's go. Mr. and Ms. Lioncourt, hi. Mark Johnson. I'm the executive producer. We’ve talked on the phone a couple of times.”

“We're really excited about the...documentary...” Daniel trails off awkwardly.

You and Lestat leave Mark hanging, not making any attempt to shake his hand. You can smell that he didn’t properly wash his hands and instead just used hand sanitizer. Disgusting. Is basic hygiene really a lost art among humans? You stare at him blankly, as if bored already from listening to him speak.

“Je ne me souviens pas de lui, est-ce que tu te souviens de lui, ma soeur?” (I don't remember him. Do you remember him, Sister?)

“No. Usually I have a memory like a steel trap but we talk to so many people every day, and, clearly, this human didn’t leave much of an impression or impact. Comme la plupart d’entre eux malheureusement.” (Like the majority of them, unfortunately.)

“…Okay.” Mark awkwardly puts his arm back down.

“Hey, man. Thanks for the tickets last night. Great show,” Daniel praises. His deadpan voice leaves you unsure if he’s being sincere or sarcastic.

“You have 45 minutes and they’re gone.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“This is Christine Claire, Mr. And Ms. Lioncourt's lawyer.”

“Hair and makeup now.”

“Hi, I'm Tami—”

“Hi, I’m Sarah—”

You and Lestat both look up and pull your heads back so their makeup brushes and hands don’t touch your faces or hair. Lestat’s hair is already giving Michael Hutchence, while yours is giving Patricia Morrison. And your makeup, like your outfits, is already on point. You don’t need assistance when you’ve already achieved perfection, thank you very much.

“Do we look like we need you?”

Both makeup artists pause for a second and then retreat.

“They’re completely booked. No. Don’t even talk to me about it again for the next two months. They’re both booked.”

Lestat looks to his right. His shoulders slump as he deeply exhales and irritably taps his fingers on the armrest of the chair. He smacks his lips. “…There's a goblet on the table.”

“You don't like the goblet? Can we get rid of the goblet, please?” Daniel asks the crew.

“C'est tellement kitsch," (It’s so tacky) you say so only Lestat will understand.

"C'est de mauvais goût,” (It’s bad taste) Lestat concours.

A crew member takes the goblet away. Now that that cheap Party City Halloween decoration is gone, you can get on with it.

“Thank you. We need to wire you both for sound, I hope you don't mind.”

You and Lestat shrug.

“So the camera we're gonna be using is called an Interrotron. I'll be sitting here. You'll see my face in the camera like, uh, like we're talking to each other, and you don't have to just stare into an empty camera lens,” Daniel explains.

You and Lestat allow yourselves to be mic’d, but when the humans invade your personal space to put the microphones on your clothes, your vampire hearing can detect the fluid, or lack thereof, coursing through their bodies. You don’t have a problem with the person assisting you, but Lestat recoils in disgust, crinkling his nose. “Your sound man is dehydrated.”

“We’ll, uh, okay, we'll get him some water. Get him some water please.”

“Je ne te savais pas si attentionné avec les humains, Lestat. Cela me rendrait presque jalouse.” (I didn’t know you were so considerate of humans, Lestat. It almost makes me jealous.)

“Tu sais bien qu’ils ne m’intéressent pas, ma soeur.” (You know very well that I don’t care about them, sister.)

“All right, let's fucking go, people.”

“43 minutes.“

“Shut her the fuck up,” Daniel grumbles.

“We’re rolling! Quiet on set!”

“Take one, take one. And…action! Okay, we're gonna start. Listen, could you state your names for the camera?”

You and Lestat look up from the two copies of Daniel’s book you were leafing through.

“Justin Bieber.”

“Kylie Jenner.”

You and Lestat close your copies of Daniel’s book and place them on your laps, tapping your fingers against the hardcover, subtly nodding your heads.

“I see you have my book there, what do you think of...” Daniel starts retching. “I'm sorry. Excuse me… Give me a second here.”

“Daniel, are you okay?”

With your pointer fingers arched up, you and Lestat listen to Daniel’s retching as if it’s music to your ears. That should be answer enough for him to know what you and Lestat think of his book. The retching and the voices of the crew become background noise.

“I am the Vampire Lestat.”

“I am the Vampire Y/N.”

“Why are we retching?”

“We’re immortal.”

“I'm not doing it. It’s them,” Christine whispers.

“More or less.”

More retching.

“The light of the sun.”

“Can somebody get a glass of water?”

“The sustained heat of an intense fire. These things might destroy us. But then again, they might not.”

Take two.

Your eyes flicker back and forth between the camera and Daniel in front of you and J. Feldman, the first cameraman standing off to the side with the crew. The rest of the human crew either don’t see what you see, or they do and they’re just pretending to be oblivious. To be fair, you didn’t notice it during the first take either. But now that you’ve seen it, you can't unsee it. Not wanting to make a scene, you try to ignore him, but you’re obviously distracted. Lestat is the first to pick up on it, and he discreetly looks in the direction where your eyes are flickering to, but he doesn’t see what you see. If he did, there’d be a bloodbath to mop up. You make eye contact with Daniel and try to focus on finishing answering his question. “But...let's just say we, uh...we-we did a lot of writing. This is just, um...really just, uh… It's so special to be in Santa Carla, California - The Murder Capital of the World - again! The lights, the music, the energy, the people - It’s easily been my favorite venue spot so far on any tour. It surpassed our concert in Death Valley for me, which, before now, I thought was an impossible feat. Hmm.” Fuck it, you think to yourself. Your team and Daniel will just have to be okay with doing yet another reshoot.

“Ma soeur, est-ce que tout va bien?” (Sister, is everything all right?)

“Uh, I'm sorry, Feldman, what the fuck is that?” You ask bluntly, your tone laced with a bite to it as you stand up from your seat and lock eyes with the first cameraman. Everyone around him steps to the side, creating space between themselves and him in case shit is about to hit the fan or something is about to go down.

“What?” He furrows his brows in confusion when he looks at you, like a deer caught in headlights. Too scared that you’ll pounce on him like a wolf and latch your fangs into his jugular if he fully looks away from you for even half a second, he frantically glances from the corners of his eyes at either side of him, and sees from his peripheral vision that everyone has put a great deal of distance between himself and you. They are looking at the two of you with fear and apprehension in their eyes.

“What do you mean ‘what?’ That shitstain of a tattoo on your forearm. What the fuck do you have written there? ‘Armand told the truth’?”

Hearing those words, Lestat jumps up from his seat before the cameraman can blink. Lestat agreed to this documentary because he took issue with his portrayal in the book and wanted to set the record straight. Not because he wanted to invalidate everything Louis said but because when he read Interview with the Vampire, he was like, ‘ARMAND SAID I DID WHAT???’ and was angrily ripping out pages from his copy. He was annoyed with Armand's version of him and not Louis's (though you’re sure he doesn't agree with everything Louis said either.) Now this poor cameraman has two angry vampires standing on either side of him. You in front of him, and Lestat behind him. Just as enraged as you, Lestat is seething, his pupils just as dilated as yours. You haven’t seen him this angry since an incident during your tour in Death Valley.

You and Lestat pulled up to the auditorium in your shiny Porsche, dressed to the nines and exuding an air of money and status, ready to perform, but the security guy wouldn’t let you through at the gate. And Lestat was getting furious. The guy was like, ‘sir, miss, I can’t find your names on the list,’ and Lestat was steaming red because his ego was bruised. He’s a legend. Everyone knows his name. Anywhere Lestat goes, people flock to him, asking for selfies and autographs. He should be on the goddamn list. And even if he isn’t, he should be allowed through anyway because he’s Lestat fucking de Lioncourt. He’s a vampire aristocrat and rockstar, nowhere is inaccessible to him. He was really mad and was like, ‘why do you need my name?!’ so finally the guy was like, ‘sir, how do you spell your name?’ And Lestat went, ‘F-a-m-o-u-s!’ and then just hit the gas, breaking the barricade. It turned out the security guard couldn’t find your names on the list due to a spelling error, and Lestat’s name was listed as ‘Lesander Lionsourd’ (Lionsourd meaning deaflion).

His anger now is that times a billion. He is ready to tear out J. Feldman’s throat or rip his arms off. You make eye contact with Lestat and subtly shake your head at him. If you were anybody else, he’d ignore you and just go ahead and decapitate the man. He lived by the motto of ‘don’t ask for permission, ask forgiveness later.’ But for you, and only for you, he’ll be patient. Not just because you’re his sister and he loves you, but because he understands that you signaling for him to wait doesn’t mean you’ll show mercy. You don’t want this man dead. Yet. You want answers first.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think that because we were born French on our father’s side and Italian on our mother’s that we can’t read English? Who tattooed that on you?” You ask.

“Uh, Joel Emerson, I think.”

“You think? Where does he tattoo?”

“O-over at Inkspire in L.A.”

“Christine, get that tattoo shop on the phone. And if Joel’s not working today, find his personal cell phone and call that.”

Christine quickly Googles the shop and dials their phone number. She hands her phone to you while it’s ringing. You hold it to your ear while glaring daggers at the soon-to-be former first cameraman.

“Hello, is Joel working today? I’d like to talk to him. I don’t care that he’s with a client right now. Tell him to put his machine down and come to the phone. It’s urgent. This is Y/N Lioncourt. Yeah, I thought so. Thank you. Joel, why? You fucking asshole. How could you agree to tattoo that on someone? I don’t care. I don’t care about ‘consenting adult clients’ and ‘it’s their money and their body, so they can get whatever they want’. I’m going to police people’s bodies if they’re going to do stupid shit like this! Because this is offensive and unacceptable to Lestat and I! You have no fucking idea who Armand is or what he’s done. You and every other human on the planet don’t even know half of it. You weren’t there because you weren’t even fucking born, so you can’t know! You can’t even begin to comprehend what the 18th and subsequent centuries were like. He’s a fucking cult leader, for fuck’s sake. Did you know that? Have you tattooed anything else relating to Armand on anybody else? No? What about the other artists in your shop? No? Are you sure? You better not be lying to me because if I look on your and your coworkers’ Instagrams and see another tattoo showing love or support of Armand, whether it’s his face, his name, or any more of that ‘Armand was right, Armand told the truth’ bullshit, I will get our lawyers involved and they will eviscerate you in court and take your shop and your tattoo license from you. I will not hesitate to do the same with other tattoo artists and tattoo shops. And don’t think deleting posts will save your ass. The internet is forever and my lawyer will use the Wayback Machine or find some other way to dig up those photos even if you delete them. Understand? Good. You won’t be hearing from me, Lestat, or our legal team so long as there won’t be any further issues. Have a good rest of your day. Bye.” You give Christine her phone back and she’s already typing away, working on keeping tabs on Inkspire and any other tattoo shop in the state for damage control.

“Uh...”

“And you! You amateur fuck. You’re fired.”

“What?”

“You heard me. There’s obviously a conflict of interest here, so you can pack up your shit and go. I want you to leave.”

“The building?”

“No, not just the building. I want you to leave the state.”

“I can’t just move to a different state! My friends, my family, and my entire life is here!”

“That’s not my problem. You should’ve thought of that before permanently scarring your body with a steaming pile of shit. I hope, for your sake, you either get it lasered off or covered up with a better tattoo. Then maybe, just maybe, you can move back. I am being lenient by letting you off with a warning and letting you walk away with your life. If either I or Lestat see you again and that still isn’t gone or covered, then we won’t be. I’m going to chop your fucking arm off with Lestat’s tiny pocket axe. I’m the more merciful of the Lioncourts, so it’ll feel like a massage compared to what Lestat will do to you. Go. Now.”

He runs away crying with his tail between his legs, urine running down his pant legs. You and Lestat scrunch up your nose at the foul odor. Disgusting. He’s lucky he didn’t get any of it on your Chanel boots or Lestat’s Christian Louboutin’s. Although you can afford it, it’d be a shame to ruin such expensive and stylish designer outfits with blood, guts and sinew. While there are frantic calls for a cleanup and reset, you and Lestat storm off to your dressing room, uncaring that you’re leaving Daniel behind, unsure on what to do or if there’ll even be an interview tonight. You pace back and forth in there, trying to get your breathing back under control. Once your eyes return to normal, you text Juliette that she doesn’t need to worry about picking up dinner. You and Lestat will get it yourselves. You could use the air and will be back in an hour. Lestat and you send Christine a similar text, telling her you’ll still do the Molloy interview, but you’re going out to feed and won’t be back for an hour. You both need to cool off and blow off some steam by going on a hunt. You both need a fucking meal before going back in there to attempt the interview again. Now would be a good time for Daniel and the crew to break for lunch. In the meantime, she should find another cameraman to replace Feldman. You and Lestat change into more “casual” clothes that you don’t care about getting messy. “Casual” for you meaning “old” designer clothes from last season.

#interview with the vampire #lestat de lioncourt #lestat #rockstar lestat #iwtv s3 #amc iwtv #amc interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire prompt #Lestat and sister reader #fic prompt #fic idea #pls tag me if you’re inspired by this #I’d love to read it

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free-for-all-fics · 4 months ago

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Final part of the Modern Rockstar Lioncourt Saga Prompt! Again, special thanks to @une-lueur-dans-la-nuit for adding the French! Pls tag me if you’re inspired by any of this and I’d love to read it! ❤️🩸🎸

“Lestat and I have decided to start this vlog uh, so that we can answer some questions about being a vampire. Hi, my name’s Y/N Lioncourt. You guys probably recognize me from my band, The Vampire Lestat. As you probably already know, I’m a vampire. Um… I’m eternally 26 years old, um… I’ve got to suck peoples’ blood until just before they die to survive, as does the rest of my family. My brother's a vampire, my mother’s a vampire. It’s…hereditary.”

“Sister, come on, I’m trying to watch this figure skating. Can you settle it down?”

“Lestat, you’re still watching figure skating?”

“Yes, it’s very graceful, sister, you should get into it. Calm and soothing, relaxing…”

“All right, Lestat. I’m trying to do my vlog.”

“Tu as besoin de le faire ici?” (Do you have to do it here?)

“Lestat! This is the only place I’m allowed to have my computer!”

“Oh! C’est mon moment préféré! (It’s my favorite part!) My favorite part! Look!” Lestat points at the screen. “He just lifted her up and put her down!”

“Okay, listen, watch your figure skating, I’m getting back to this, okay? The thing that really, really sucks is that people don’t really know much about vampires. Lestat and I are always having to answer stupid questions like, you know, like, ‘does your family celebrate Christmas?’ and yes, once and for all, we celebrate Christmas. Lestat, qu’est-ce que l’on fait pour Noël?” (what do we do at Christmas?)

“We drink eggnog-infused blood…”

“That’s when we get humans soooo drunk on eggnog. There’s rum in that. That’s what eggnog is. It’s like basically what you make mayonnaise out of and rum. How much eggnog-infused blood did you have that one Christmas, Lestat?”

“I don’t know. Like…18 adult humans’ worth or something? I fucked up.”

“Yeah, you did! Eggnog’s strong! You can’t just have 18 adult humans’ worth of eggnog-infused blood, Lestat! You can’t keep bringing humans over to our house every Christmas and have them drink all the eggnog!”

“I didn’t know that at the time. Oops.”

“Lestat!”

“What?”

“What do we play at Christmas?”

“We like to play Gargoyle.”

“I’m really good at it.”

“She’s the best gargoyle! Elle est incroyable!” (She is incredible!)

“Should I…should I do it?”

“You wanna do it? Show them your gargoyle!”

“All right. Ahhh I don’t know! So at Christmas, we go up on top of the roof of a church, we watch people go in and out and we play gargoyle and I always win. Here’s my gargoyle.” You lift your hands up like a cat with claws out and make a face, baring your fangs and sticking your tongue out a little.

Lestat starts wheezing.

“But you have to stay like that for like, two hours! Right?”

“Two to three hours sometimes!”

“Because when the people come back out, you can’t like, you can’t move because then they’ll know what you’re doing.”

“No, no, they’ll know you’re a real person! And not a gargoyle!”

“Exactly!”

“And my favorite is, you know, what churches nowadays have gargoyles?” Lestat bursts out laughing.

“Yeah, exactly! Fucking idiots!”

“Hey, hey!”

“What?”

“Someone has a question for you!”

“Okay?”

“Let me read it: ‘You guys are vampires and stuff, do you turn into bats?’”

“I don’t think we’ve ever tried…”

“Why don’t you try first?”

“Right now?”

“Yeah!”

You squeeze your eyes shut and try to concentrate really hard.

Lestat laughs. “Looks like you're taking a shit!”

“Hold on!” You grunt and hold up a finger. You open your eyes. “Am I bat?”

“No. You’re still you.”

“No, I cannot turn into a bat. I really tried.”

“I knew that. I just wanted to see what you’d do.”

“I hate you. I actually really, really just tried.”

“Well, that’s boring! How old are you?”

“I’m 256. You know that!”

“Yeah, but the viewers didn’t! Okay. But wait, what— what’s— what’s like— what’s up? What’s up?” Lestat’s head falls on the counter. His head snaps back up a few seconds later. “No, I feel fine! Let’s go out! Let’s go to um, Jack in the Box! Do you know what I wish for?”

“What?”

“I wish Santa would come early this year and give me like all kinds of shoes and tops and cell phones and blood types…”

“Oh my god, Lestat, did you dip into the eggnog-infused blood early?”

“Maybe… Merry Christmas, little girl! I got you a puppy! Mojo! Come here! Mojo!”

“Lestat, you already got me the puppy… We’re doing our vlog. You came over to do our vlog.”

“Sister, let me show you what our graphic designers just made for the tour! Look at this!” He holds out black t-shirts with your and his face on it that say ‘Bite Me’ on the front with the tour dates on the back.

You gasp. “LESTAT! What are you doing?”

“I think it’s very creative!”

“That’s our picture!”

“I know! Not only that, they come in different colors! Look at that!” He holds out a gray one.

“Lestat! What?! Il est en train de devenir fou.” (He is getting crazy.)

“And in different sizes! This gray one is a small…”

“You’re trying to torture me!”

“Sister, here’s an extra large for you to give to your friend, Juliette.”

“Did you just call Juliette fat? I told you we can’t call her that anymore. People say it’s offensive.”

“Not fat. Extra large.”

“Oh. Then it’s okay.”

“Look, It’s like you or I are saying, ‘bite me’ on peoples’ tits!” Lestat laughs as he holds a shirt up against his chest, “that’s funny! Juliette has got to hang out with us more! I like her sense of humor! I’m gonna go suck the blood out of some people!”

“Hey, guys. Lestat and I are in our dressing room, just getting ready for the show. Lestat is in the other room. I know you can’t see him, but you don’t need vampire hearing to hear him practicing his vocal warmups. He takes eons to get ready. I thought I was a perfectionist, but he gives the word a new meaning. When I last saw him, he had finally picked out an outfit and was dressed so, unless he’s changed his mind for the hundredth time on what he’s going to wear, I don’t know what he’s doing. Qu’est-ce que tu fais, Lestat?” (What are you doing, Lestat?)

No response. He just continues with his vocal warmups.

“He’s probably perming his hair, painting his nails, or bleaching his eyebrows to match his five o’ clock shadow. I’m just about done, just putting on the finishing touches, like my jewelry. Luckily I had my ears pierced in Paris while I was still human, so I don’t need to use clip-ons, unlike Lestat. Ha! But you know what every rockstar needs? A tattoo! But as vampires, our skin is like marble and can’t be penetrated with needles. The tattoo machines just break upon contact. Even if they could penetrate the skin, the ink would just disappear. So I had Juliette, our Personal Assistant, go out and buy a bunch of temporary tattoos in bulk. I gave her my card and told her to go from store to store and just get whatever, buy the store’s entire stock if she had to, and Lestat and I would choose which ones we wanted from there. So hopefully she does not disappoint. I’ll be back once she gets here! J’ai tellement hâte!” (I can’t wait!)

“Hey guys, I’m back. So Juliette is here - say hi to the viewers, J!” You pan your phone camera over to her so she can be seen by your viewers.

“Hey everyone!”

You quickly move your phone camera back so it’s only you in the shot. “Okay, that's enough screen time. I know you’re like, camera shy or whatever. But look, she brought in all the temporary tattoos! She really did buy pretty much the entire stock of every craft and Halloween store in the vicinity. She came in holding like, what, four bags on each arm? There’s a lot of really cool ones in here. I chose this really cool sleeve piece. It’s got flowers and this lady portrait, but looks kinda scary. Like a demon or something. And if you guys know me, you know I love things that are pretty but have a twist of horror or gore. It’s a large piece, so Juliette is going to help me apply it. Lestat is still deciding which tattoo he wants. Not sure what he’s going to pick. Probably a lion head and a crown for our family name and his overinflated ego. He’s a basic bitch. I’ll be the one to help him apply his tattoo, since he can be very anal about his appearance and tends to nitpick, but I know what he means when he tries to describe what he wants. I’m worried that if Juliette tries to do it, she’ll do it ‘wrong’ somehow and Lestat will get impatient, throw a tantrum and, I don’t know, bite her head off or something.”

From the background, unseen, Juliette yells, “Uh, yeah, I’d rather not!”

“Lestat and I have gone through so many assistants in the past decade alone. It’s so hard to find good help these days and Juliette’s grown on me - like a parasitic twin - but still I like her. And we had so much fun at my sleepover last weekend.” You raise your voice so Juliette will know you’re addressing her. “Did you have fun, J? Shock of the century: My friends love you. Adore! They said you’re super sweet, really funny, practically begging me to invite you again which I will, of course. Can’t let the girlies down. Are you free this Friday?”

“Yeah, I should be.”

“Okay, perfect, perfect. Come over to my place straight from work. Yeah. So we’re doing a dessert themed sleepover, which means you have to bring your favorite dessert for everyone to try - everyone that’s human, that is. And then I and my vampire besties get the pleasure of sampling the blood of the humans - not you, of course. You’re my bestie! Yeah, like a dessert buffet. So fun! And you have to wear cute pastel colored pajamas, okay? Do you have anything like that or are all your pajamas like Minecraft themed?”

“I don’t have pastels, no.”

“Okay, no worries, babes. You can borrow some of mine. I’ve got plenty. I’m picturing you in this like silky lavender top I’ve got. It’s gonna be darling on you! With…these fuzzy baby blue bottoms. Oh oui, tu seras tellement mignonne avec ça! (Oh yes, you will be so cute with this!) And then um, we’re gonna play Candyland. We’re gonna do face masks. We’re gonna watch Marie Antoinette. Sofia Coppola’s version, obviously. Yeah, it’s gonna be a blast!”

“Hey guys, welcome back to our YouTube channel. The Vampire Lestat here. That’s right, my name is Lestat de Lioncourt, and I'm a dead man. Well, kinda dead, at least. See, I'm a vampire. I’m lucky, though. I have my sister chérie, who saw beyond my fangs. She taught me my letters when we were human and, now vampires, showed me vampires aren’t monsters. Or at least, they don't have to be. And how my thinking was keeping me from finding any kind of peace. And come hell or high water, she was gonna prove it to me. After our family passed on and we went our separate ways from Gabrielle, our mother, in Egypt, we roamed America for 100 or so years, figuring out ourselves and what it means to be a vampire, and we found revelation, our calling: To be rockstars! Now, if you think that means all that Dracula nonsense like hissing, wearing skin-tight leather, and hunting humans for sport, I wouldn't blame you one bit. That's exactly the sort of thing I’m doing now with my bandmates and my sister, and let me tell you, a vampire who's got a strong stage presence can be a real terror. Anyhoo, I have a story to tell you. It's about something that happened to me. It begins in Miami, in the year 1987, and I really want to start right there. As the world started getting smaller, more vampires tracked me down. Them being my kin, I wanted to help them see the world like I did, but they still had the same monster mindset I used to have. We were on tour from Miami to Death Valley the next night but figured we should make a pit stop to Santa Carla and check things out there. We landed in Santa Carla and arranged transportation for our coffins. I became a graffiti artist—”

“Just that the graffiti were fan letters to Marius, asking him to get in touch—”

“Did some vampire sightseeing. They got a boardwalk there that was the hot spot for carnival rides, movies, music, drugs, tattoos, piercings, and sex, and an all-you-can-eat human buffet! It was infamous as the Murder Capital of the World! That only attracted more tourists, which meant more snacks for us. Apparently that place had been accepting of heathens like us for a long time! People there were eating and screwing like there was no tomorrow. People were up all night doing all kinds of kinky stuff. I’m more than a quarter of a millennium in years but those guys could give me some lessons - and did! Well, we stayed longer than anticipated and had an impromptu concert, met some fine folk, too…apparently they’ve got a nice art scene there. There was even local funding for video game development. Isn’t this some kinda world? I can’t believe people are still playing Star Invaders and whatnot! I liked it there! I didn’t even have to speak French! We went to a coffee shop and while Andy, Larry, and Tough Cookie ordered their coffees and pastries, my sister and I funneled in stoners from upstairs to a secret club and everyone had a fucking blast.”

“Until you decided that the best way to overcome your writer’s block and to create a work of art was to ‘open your mind to the infinite possibilities of what the cosmos had to offer’ and took LSD for ‘divine inspiration’. Except you thought being a vampire meant you needed to take more than an average human to feel its effects, and you accidentally took too much and tripped for more than eighteen hours. You hallucinated so hard that you believed yourself to have had a major revelation and went to both Heaven and Hell. Something about ghosts, television evangelists, some woman named Veronica, and, among other things, you believed that you had seen Christ's crucifixion and that he offered you his blood to drink. Then you had a full Lady Macbeth meltdown and washed your face at least 20 times in those 18 hours. You were scrubbing your face so hard, paranoid that the blood from your face wouldn’t come off. Your face was perfectly clean. You were scrubbing at nothing. Then you began fighting an invisible adversary, yelling something about a veil Christ gave you for safekeeping, and nearly took your left eye out, yelling about how the devil snatched it from you. I had to restrain you to stop you from tearing yourself apart. Then you began ugly crying, wailing about how I pulled you out of Hell and you were forced to leave your left eye behind. When I showed you your reflection in the mirror to prove to you that you still had both eyes, you started whooping and hollering that Maharet must’ve returned your eye to you, singing her praises. I had to force you to go the fuck to sleep in your coffin but you were stubborn and said that you would declare war on humans and vampires because you were curious about what would happen. And when I asked you where the hell you got that idea, you said that the fish people from Atlantis told you to do it. You’re supposed to be the older brother, the responsible one in our family, yet there I was, babysitting you. Tu es et a toujours été un enfant. Un enfant insupportable.” (You are and always have been a child. An insufferable child.)

“Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. Not my finest night. I should’ve stuck with the weed like the four of you.”

“You missed out. It was sooo good. Gave us the munchies something fierce, though. I could’ve gone for some blood chips, extra sodium. Mmmmmm…”

“My sister and I drank from more necks in one week than I could count. While we were there, we found a fan who was the leader of a group of teenage vampires. Punk guy named David, supposed to have been almost a hundred years old. Super cool guy. Met his friends or ‘brothers’ that he sired and they were also very hot. We hung from train tracks, drank blood, got high, had sex, you know how it is. But now, in 2024, I got hooked up with this newfangled Internet thing…”

Trying not to laugh your ass off, you dramatically pantomime Lestat in the background, your voice so loud that you’re drowning him out. “‘Oh, mon dieu! Look at this! Louiis mon cher.... I found this internet place called redd it.... come, you must see this article.... c'est très important.... it says that les oiseaux are NOT réels?????? that they're government agents... comment dire.... spies??? and to think que tu manges these little monstres??? Louiiis you MUST stop eating them..... peut-être que the government poisoned Paul with these birds.... Louiiiiis you MUST promise me not to eat these nasty little créatures again.... mais non! c'est grave!!!!! CHERI arrête de rire and LISTEN TO ME.... they don't even have enough vitamins in their blôôd, louieie!!!!!!’”

“Can I tell my story or are you going to be an annoying little smartass the whole time?”

“I’m your little sister. It’s my job. Et quelqu’un doit s’assurer que ton égo ne te tue pas.” (And someone needs to make sure your ego doesn’t kill you.)

“Whatever. Anyway. David asked me, my sister, and my band to come out to Santa Carla, California to perform again. He said that everyone who was in the audience back in ‘87 was dead or moved away, so nobody would recognize us. So we were going on a trip, I guess. But it felt like the perfect opportunity to experience those highs again and to overindulge!”

“Because overindulging worked out so well for you last time.”

“Shut up!”

“I had to post to my Instagram story. Look.” You then read off your phone word-for-word what you wrote:

“‘I lost my fucking brother. His name is Lestat but he’s a bitch and keeps forgetting to charge his iPhone. I keep buying him chargers. Even got him a portable power bank and he somehow either loses them or forgets to charge those too. And even if his phone is charged, he still doesn’t respond to it most of the time and leaves me on read because he’s a bitch. But I love him and still want him back. Allez savoir pourquoi!’” (Who knows why!)

You tap to the next slide.

“‘We’re on tour right now, and we’re in Santa Carla, the murder capital of the world! After our concert on the boardwalk, we met up with our old friends David, Paul, Marko, and Dwayne and rode on our Harley Davidson motorbikes, got a bite to eat, and hung out at their place. They had a lot of cool stuff in there, (I might have to steal that vintage bass guitar and Jim Morrison poster if I can’t sweet talk or bribe my way into getting them).’”

You tap to the next slide.

“‘Anyway, I don’t know what the fuck they spiked the blood with, but I started getting buzzed. Lestat was much worse. He was high off his ass. I got the munchies and I ate so much Chinese food and drank so much blood that I passed out. I don’t know what the fuck happened but, when I woke up, the six of us were in a Walmart, surrounded by dead bodies and blood. Lestat was crying, screaming, shitting and pissing himself, throwing up, and eating his own vomit. The boys were either bouncing off the walls or zoning out. By the time the boys and I stuffed the bodies in the supply closet, Lestat was gone and now we don’t know where the fuck he is. $500 reward to anyone who can find him and get him to answer his fucking phone.’”

“Exciting announcement! Though, I’m pretty sure most of you would have guessed this was coming. Lestat and I get a ton of DMs from people who want to ask us questions and watch and listen to us answer them on our Instagram page or YouTube channel, so we’ve created our own Reddit thread! This is where you can submit questions, ask us for advice, share crazy stories, etc.! Don’t forget to upvote/downvote other participants! Stoked to read and answer your submissions! Doo Doo Doo. Oh! Here's somebody who just sent in like ten questions. Okay, question number one: ‘Do vampires ever injure themselves with their teeth?’” You show the camera your bruised and punctured arm. “Can you see that? You know what happened? Right here? It’s recommended that vampires brush after every meal or at least once a day because blood, if not washed and brushed away properly, gets stuck in the teeth and causes very, very bad smells. And humans and vampires alike will know the vampires who don’t brush their teeth because their breath absolutely stinks. Especially the ones that are quite partial to the garlic-infused blood or the nicotine-infused blood, you know, the gross people. So I was brushing my teeth earlier this morning before going to bed and the toothbrush slipped out. Um…you know how they can sometimes kinda get your gum a little bit with your toothbrush? For whatever reason I went this way and just bit right into my…into my arm. It’s kind of a…”

“You think that’s bad, I’ve had vampires do that to my cock. Et ça pique.” (And that stings.)

“Oh my god.” You scroll down, looking for more questions. “Oh my god! Lestat, so you already answered question number two which is: ‘When vampires give head, see question above.’” You look into the camera. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

Lestat is looking at your phone screen from over your shoulder. “Wow, who is this guy? You gotta come over here. You and I can sit down and I can tell you a couple things.” He winks.

“Ugh. Please. Okay, let’s just… So uh, the next question is… ‘Dear Mademoiselle Lioncourt, is vampire sex better than regular sex?’ Being a woman from an aristocratic family in 18th century France, I didn’t have the freedom to just have sex with people before marriage. I only had one experience when I was human, but it was only because I was like sixteen or seventeen and being a rebellious girl. I didn’t agree with how my virginity or purity or whatever was placed on such a high pedestal, like it was an important part of my identity to sell me off to a man. I wanted to lose it and be done with it, so I only had one sexual experience in my human life. It was with some random boy in the village. I think he was a year or two older than me, and he was cute from what I remember, but I can’t recall his name. It got the job done, I guess, but it had to be kept secret, so it was very brief, like five minutes or less, and he didn’t even make me come. Never did get married in my human life so it didn’t really matter in the long run, but I guess the upside is that now, as a vampire, my skin down there doesn’t grow back and I’m not a virgin every single time I do it… So, um… The short answer to your question would be…I wouldn’t know.”

“I’ll tell them. It’s very simple. If you’re a vampire, you have four holes…”

“Oh, Lestat! No! Lestat, no! Lalalalala…” you plug your ears.

“Well, you know, they should know about vampire sex. It can be very dangerous. It’s not like what they do in that False Blood show, you know what I mean? It’s really…it’s not always fast and quick. Sometimes it takes seventeen weeks to have proper sex with someone. Mais ça en valait la peine.” (But it was worth it.)

“Oh my god! Really?”

“Yes! Good tantric vampire sex, baby.”

“Seventeen weeks… Who wants that??”

“I was with Louis once in the ozarks…six and a half months.”

“I don’t know if… I don’t know if I’m more grossed out by the six and a half months or the ozarks.”

“Ozarks are great. People up there are nice, they taste good, they’re healthy. And no one can hear them when they scream because they’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s a win-win situation, tu vois.” (you see.)

“Oh my god.”

“I gotta teach you some things, little sister.”

“Wait. I got another one. A good question.”

“What?”

“‘Since vampires have so long to live, their families can get really big, right? So what’s the biggest vampire family?’” You take a second to think about it. “Kardashians?”

“Kardashians.”

“Oh, and this question sorta ties into the last question: ‘Why are vampires so wealthy? How do they make a living?’ Well, other vampires might tell you that the average vampire has minimal contact with humanity. When exposed, they feed or run or kill themselves. But for Lestat and I, we’ve always been attracted to le feu des projecteurs! (the spotlight!) The bottomless inheritance Magnus left Lestat certainly helped create a nice little nest egg for us, and yes, naturally we stole from anyone and everyone we killed and fed on, but we still wanted to work. In our human lives, we started off working as stagehands, then became actors, performing on the stage. We were attracted to singers, dancers, music, and the arts. And so we continued doing that even after our transformations. Put on a grand show for the humans and then feed on our human scene partners after curtain fall. We did that for, what was it, two years?”

“Two years, yes. And then we founded the Théâtre Des Vampires in Paris with Armand.”

“And that was a huge success. That was our cash cow and main source of income for a very long time. But by the 100th year or so, we were beyond bored. So we left the Theatre and moved on. Then we rediscovered our love for music after coming across a human rock band that called themselves Satan’s Night Out.”

“They were playing in dingy bars and underground venues, but they had potential. They were just missing something. They needed us. So I became the lead singer.”

“And I became the bassist.”

“We renamed ourselves to The Vampire Lestat, in honor of yours truly.”

“Mon frère est narcissique, que voulez-vous.” (My brother is narcissistic, what can we do.)

“And we became a worldwide success. Almost overnight, you could say. And the money kept flowing and still flows to this day. And I’d say we’re multi-millionaires. Not quite a billion. Pas encore.” (Not yet.)

“It’s not about how you start, it’s all about knowing how to save and make good financial decisions.”

“I mean, if you’ve been around for hundreds or thousands of years and are still broke, just step into the sun.”

“Lestat, s’il te plaît.” (please.)

“Vampirism poses the question: ‘What if there was a fundamental, horrible, unending well of want in your soul that, if truly satisfied, would lead to great pain for all those you hold closest and, in turn, their absolute and total revilement of you?’ and naturally, as a person with no problems, I don't relate to this in any way at all. I’m not Louis. ‘Immortality sucks because all your friends die’. All your friends die anyway. Those we do not mourn are those who mourn us. ‘Immortality sucks because you forget who you are.’ We always forget who we are. Do you remember who you were at four years of age? Who you were at fourteen? ‘Who I am’ is a shadow cast on the wall. ‘Immortality sucks because…’ skill issue, skill issue, skill issue. Shut up and suck it up or go visit a vampire therapist. Stop being so melodramatic. Fuck.”

“And let’s address the elephant in the room. Yeah, we were entirely responsible for the epic triumph and tragedy during the almost-apocalypse back in 1985, after we presented ourselves to the world through our autobiographies and formation of a rock band, singing vampire secrets. It was the wrong place and the wrong time to give a live rock concert. How were we to know our songs would awaken Akasha, the Queen of the Damned, from her sleep, right? Whoops. That was our B.”

“And it was our B when you drank from her and I drank from Enkil when Marius wasn’t looking. He turned his back on us for like twenty seconds and we immediately made bad decisions.”

“If God wanted us to make decisions, he wouldn’t have made us bisexual. I mean French.”

“I’m bisexual. You’re a bisexual disaster. ‘Oh, join me in my search for the ancient vampire Marius,’ you said. ‘It’ll be a fun learning experience for us,” you said. Je ne sais pas pourquoi je t’ai écouté et pourquoi je t’écoute encore.” (I don’t know why I listened to you and why I still listen to you.)

“And it was! Their blood made us strong, allowed us to learn more gifts.”

“I mean…you’re not entirely wrong. But I just feel stupid for giving in and going along with it. Not that it would’ve mattered. Knowing you, you would’ve gone anyway. And knowing Akasha, she would’ve inevitably killed her husband no matter what.”

“If you think about it, her killing her husband spared you from the wrath of her violently jealous ancient king.”

“Whatever. Stay on track and answer the question.”

“Right. She killed her husband then kidnapped me and made me her consort while she embarked on a mass killing of vampires, finding them by listening to their thoughts. She killed countless weak fledglings as part of enacting her horrible plan to take over the world. But the silver lining was that the sex was incredible. La meilleure amante de tous les temps.” (The best lover of all times.)

“Is that seriously your main takeaway from that whole ordeal? You and every other man on the planet, mortal and immortal, would’ve died. So many of us almost did.”

“No, I don’t think Akasha would’ve killed me. She planned to kill only 90 percent of the world's human men, and to establish a new Eden in which women would worship her as a goddess. I probably would’ve been part of the lucky 10 percent. She saw the desirability of me as her consort.”

“Tu délires! (You’re delusional!) Did you not hear what I said? She literally drained her own husband of all of his blood to make herself the single progenitor of the vampire race and to be rid of him. She literally grew bored of the husband and consort she had for millennia. She definitely would’ve killed you as soon as she got bored.”

“Are you calling me boring, Sister? Oh, how you wound me. What can I say? Akasha just wanted to dominate and be worshiped, and have everyone obey her, no matter how many lives were lost. I loved her completely but did not fundamentally agree with her morality. I just didn’t vibe with her plans to be the new god of the world. Neither did you or any of the others.”

“No, we didn’t. We all refused to partake in Akasha's plan despite her vow to destroy all of us if we didn’t comply.”

“We were all duplicit in the destruction of Akasha, which led to her demise.”

“Her plan was so fucking dumb. It was insane. I mean, come on. She wanted us to be her followers as ‘angels’ in her New World Order. Et je suis une sainte, pas un ange.” (And I’m a saint, not an angel.)

“Yeah, that was fucking dumb. Oh, someone sent a question in the chat: ‘How many of you were there before Akasha woke up again and how many survived?’ I’m not sure the exact number of how many vampires there have been since Akasha went on her murder spree, but I wanna say, including us, around…twenty…vampires managed to survive her onslaught? Does that sound right?”

You and Lestat began to count on your fingers. “Well, let’s see. There were the twins Maharet and Mekare, me, you, Louis, our mother Gabrielle, Armand, Marius… Yeah, I think that’s right.“

“They were all either vampires that Lestat and I loved, old ones Akasha could not kill easily, or those she could not detect because they blocked their thoughts from her. Oh, another question: ‘If Akasha is dead, why aren’t all vampires dead too?’ Just before she could destroy us all, Mekare, whom no one has seen for 6,000 years, suddenly appeared in the room and charged at Akasha, shoving her into a glass wall, causing a large shard to decapitate her. Just as doom was spelled out for all vampires, Mekare came in clutch when she devoured both the brain and heart of Akasha, taking into herself the Sacred Core which contains the spirit of Amel. Successfully bonding with the Sacred Core, Mekare became the new queen of all vampires, while Akasha's body became a transparent shell. That whole adventure forced Lestat to do something so absurd it’s unspeakable, but I’m going to say it anyway. He had to…think of things and people other than himself for one of the first times in his long life. Je sais, je sais! (I know, I know!) I’m just as shocked as you are, viewers!”

“Je te déteste.” (I hate you.)

“The adventure changed him forever, forced him to begin fighting for a kind of redemption—though, as you can see, Lestat has remained his old, devilish self, reveling in his identity as the Brat Prince.”

“So we are gonna answer some more questions. ‘Are you related to any famous vampires and if not, have you met any?’

“Well, we are related to Marie-Madeleine Pinochet de La Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette. We’re distant cousins or something. Her husband, François Motier, comte de La Fayette, disappeared from her life after the birth of their two sons and it was long supposed that he died about 1660. He ‘disappeared’ because she’s a vampire and she killed him when she fed on him.”

“That’s true and actually we just got online. We just got into ancestry.com. And we were looking back um, at a bunch of different uh… Comment on dit déjà?” (What’s the word again?)”

“It’s all gynecology.”

“No, it’s not.”

“We went on gynecology and tried to see where our family was from.”

“No, we didn’t. Lestat, s’il te plaît, tais-toi.” (please, shut up.)

“It’s a gynecological chart.”

“It’s not. It’s called genealogy.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Nope.”

“Gynecological.”

“Nope. That is— I know it’s a big word for you. Guys, Lestat, until just recently, didn't know what dialysis is. He thought it was a type of rotary phone or radio.”

“Can you tell me what a gynecologist is? I know that’s a word.”

“That’s a lady doctor, Lestat.”

“Who’s a lady doctor?”

“A gynecologist.”

“There’s lady doctors? What for?”

“All right. Fair enough. We’re on the gynecological website called ancestry.com and we were looking through our relatives and it turns out we are related to royalty. Just so you know. William the conqueror. Clovis the First. Charlemagne. Uh we go right back up to Edward the First. You know the Longshanks, the Plantagenets.”

“Lillian Russell. She was hot. On aurait dû en faire un vampire.” (We should have made her a vampire.)

“C’est quoi?” (What is that?)

“This new site. Getfanged.com. It’s like a social networking thing for vampires.”

“What is social networking? What - Do you become friends with them and then what? They talk to you?”

“Yeah… They’ll talk to you, but…”

“And they come to the house?”

“Oh, look at this guy. This guy looks delicious…”

“Ohhh, takeout, baby! I’m telling you, delivery! Does it give blood type?”

“No, Lestat, no! It’s like Facebook.”

“I don’t get that visage book, too many people tell me things I don’t care about.”

You laugh.

“You know? ‘I’m gonna go to the store with Kara to get eggs!’ I’m gonna make a fake account posing as a human and start saying I’m gonna go buy over the counter medication, I’m gonna go buy tampons… Maybe I can wolffish people.”

“Do you mean catfish? Lestat, don’t do that. Et pourquoi irais-tu acheter des tampons??” (And why would you go buy tampons??)

“Why not? It’d be fun. How come you won’t be my friend on Facebook anyway? I keep poking you and you won’t poke back.”

“Lestat, I can’t get onto Facebook and then friend my brother. I’m not even friends with Gabrielle.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s our mother.”

“So? I’m friends with her. You should friend her and me.”

“But we’re family…”

“So what if we’re family?”

“I don’t want you or her looking on my page.”

“Why not? We’re just like everybody else! We’re cool, we’re hip! Look, I got this new leather jacket! Huh? Guy that was wearing it was delicious. So you’re gonna join this thing or what?”

“Ummmm…. I don’t know, yeah, I was thinking about it.”

“Any sexy broads on here? Maybe I can send them to Gabrielle to try. Je suis sûr qu’elle serait intéressée.” (I’m sure she would be interested.)

“Lestat!”

“You know, get a little naked…”

“Hello?! Lestat!”

“What?! You’re old enough now!”

“That’s our mother you’re talking about!”

“I know she is! And she had eight pregnancies, meaning at least eight separate occasions on which she never got to orgasm. Our father is long dead so she’s free to…what does the internet call it? Swear off men and have sex with butch lesbians? Live her immortal life in her girlboss era?”

“Lestat! Please shut up! I’m gonna go back to answering questions. So, ‘Dear Mademoiselle Lioncourt, how is your whole family— How-how are your whole— How is your whole family vampires?’ I don’t know what is grammatically correct there. But anyway. ‘How is your whole family vampires and what do you mean it’s ‘hereditary?’” You use air quotes on the last word. “Umm, so it’s not my whole family that’s vampires, it’s just Lestat and Gabrielle, the people I love and care about. Our father, our older brothers, our sister-in-laws and nieces and nephews… Everyone else is dead. Vraiment morts, Dieu merci. (Truly dead, thank god.) By hereditary, I mean it’s…hereditary. Magnus was a vampire who fed Lestat his blood and made him into a vampire, who in turn fed Gabrielle and I his blood, making us into vampires. Easy peasy fucking sleazy. Humans and vampires can actually have kids too. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean like, you know, so Lestat, you… Can I share this online?”

“Yeah, go ahead. Tell them. I have no shame about it.”

“Okay. So Lestat has a biological son, Viktor. He was created during the mid-90’s, we think. We can’t be sure of his exact date of birth.”

“I had encountered some vampire doctors or scientists. Vampires that were trained in and interested in the study of vampirism, running a lab for it and all these experiments.”

“They collected a biological sample—”

“Sperm. They collected a sperm sample from me with my full compliance. I didn’t even know I still had sperm, to be honest. HOWEVER, without my consent or knowledge, they used my sample to make Viktor! Like a test-tube baby. This baby had a mortal mother, but my DNA. Presumably the DNA needed a little tinkering to make it work.”

“We didn’t learn about his existence until he was like at least 20 years old or appeared to physically look 20 years old. He’s like a carbon copy of Lestat, just slightly taller. It’s kinda freaky. So technically Viktor is considered partially a clone of Lestat. It’s such a complicated situation. They tried to use him as some sort of pawn to shake up the vampiric matriarchy or something. But father and son got reunited, I got to meet my nephew, everyone was happy. But in general, it’s never a good idea for a vampire to marry or reproduce with a non-vampire, just FYI. It’s kind of like if you married a hamburger. I mean, maybe you can hold off for a while, but eventually…you’re gonna eat the hamburger. Right? So Lestat, what happened to Viktor’s mother?”

“I ate her.”

“Exactly. Need I say more?”

“I ate the fuck out of her. And I liked it.”

“Right. The other way to become a vampire obviously is to convert. Um. But it’s a lot of time that you gotta put into converting. Right? It takes forever.”

“Yeah. Tons of years.”

“Yeah. It’s like at least three years or something like that. Something crazy. Because you have to watch them and research them extensively first.”

“You almost become a doctor in a way, you know?”

“Yeah, and there’s so much more book work to it, you have no idea! It’s like Driver’s Ed but like—”

Lestat holds up a finger. “That being said, we love a convert.”

“Yes, we— yes. We love a convert.”

“Yeah, exactly, because, if you choose to be a vampire, I mean, that’s, you know, that’s a big deal. Right? There’s not that many of us. You know? Huge.”

“Huge.”

“So, you know, if you become a vampire, then um, you know you have a big vampire party and all of your new vampire friends bring you presents and stuff, it’s great! It’s like a baby shower!”

“You bring in, you know, a person of your choosing, usually a young man or young woman—”

“Mhm.”

“Put them down on the table—“

“Mhm.”

“They’re alive, everyone gathers around, you know, almost like what humans do with birthday cakes.”

“Yeah!”

“And we sit there and we sing like, ‘For you’re gonna be a vampire, for you’re gonna be a vampire, for you’re gonna be a vampire, now bite this fucking neck!’ And then you kill a person.”

“Right.”

“It’s wonderful!”

You and Lestat sing simultaneously, “You’re gonna be a vampire, you’re gonna be vampire, now bite this fucking neck!’”

“And that’s it! So it’s a bunch of book work and then uh, you know, you ‘blow out your candles’ and you’re a vampire! The most recent party we threw for a convert was for Rose, Viktor’s wife. They ended up getting close to each other and marrying, but they knew about the hamburger allegory, so they did the smart thing by having Rose drink blood from Marius and Pandora, and ultimately her transformation into a vampire was completed by us. But, fun fact, Rose is actually Lestat’s adoptive daughter. C’est dingue comme les familles, c’est toujours compliqué.” (It’s crazy how families, it’s always complicated.)

“Now hold on, hold on, before you guys all get in the comments, relax. It’s not incest. She and Viktor are not blood related and never grew up in the same house together or anything like that. Let me make a small correction: I was never actually her father, I was more of a father figure. Her parents died and she called me ‘Uncle Lestan.’ This isn’t 1612 and we aren’t the Hapsburgs of Spain!”

“It was hard to find a card for the occasion, though. They don’t really have any at grocery stores or at vampire stores.”

“Just another way The Man is holding the vampire down. It’s rude, actually!”

“It is rude! I mean, we’re here!”

“We’re queer! I mean, we’re vampires! Get used to it!”

“Hello. So you might be wondering why I look a little more rosy cheeked today. Uh, it’s because I am sick. I have, I guess, what you call blood poisoning. Um, I've been throwing up for three days. Lestat is sick too. As of now I’m doing the best I can. Feeding from blood bags I snagged from the hospital. Louis is here too, and he’s feeding Lestat some human blood. Thank god. It’s nice to see you’re actually taking care of yourself, mon frère. (brother) Louis is still on animal blood. He feasts on humans every other night. It's his way, but he came to take care of us. So sweet of him. So essentially what happened is a couple days ago we had some Brazilians. And it didn’t go down very well.”

“Wait a minute are you saying…what are you talking about? What are you saying Brazilians?”

“I’m saying that a couple days ago we had Brazilians and we both got sick. As-tu de la fièvre, Lestat?” (Do you have fever, Lestat?)

“That guy didn’t get me sick. I’m talking about my Brazilian wax. I can barely move.”

“What!?” You and Louis exclaim at the same time.

“Yes, it hurts like a bitch!”

“Lestat! You got waxed?”

“Yeah, I got a Brazilian wax!”

“Why?!” You and Louis ask.

“I don’t know, I thought it’d be nice.”

“Oh my god, Lestat.”

“It’s like a little landing strip right above my penis.”

“Lestat! Lestat! Je ne veux pas savoir. (I don’t want to know). But also…”

“What? What?”

“Guys don’t get waxed!”

“Yes, they do! This is 2024, Sister! Not 1794. People do things now. Oh, Louis, while you’re up, get me that Preparation H so I can put that on my dick.”

“No, no! Lestat, don’t do that!”

“Icy hot. Icy hot. Louis, get me an icy hot!”

You can hear every word as Lestat talks to his own dIck in French. You cringe so hard both on the inside and the outside. You want to die.

“Tu sais ce qu’on dit en Français? Il faut souffrir pour être beau. C’était plutôt pour les femmes, mais… le principal c’est de se faire un max de mecs, donc j’imagine que nous aussi on doit souffrir. C’est juste un mauvais moment à passer, t’inquiète, ensuite ce sera du pur plaisir pour nous deux.” (Do you know what we say in French? You have to suffer to be pretty. It was more for women… but the essential is to get the most guys as possible, so I imagine we also need to suffer. It’s just some bad time to get away with, don’t worry, then it will only be pure pleasure for the two of us.)

“Just sit there, please! I can’t take care of you and be this sick at the same time!”

“Sister.”

“What?”

“Get me some more blood.”

“No!”

“I just can’t move. And Louis is busy getting the Preparation H.”

“Then get your ass up and get it yourself! You know what we also say in French: sois un homme!” (be a man!)

“Hey guys! I know that Lestat and I said that we weren’t going to make any videos for a while due to how busy we are, but we got some fun announcements to make, so we’re making another video! So suck it! Here we are! Wow! Je ne tiens même plus en place, tellement je suis excitée!!” (I can’t even stay still, I’m just too excited!!) That was the craziest merch launch ever! But have no fear! After selling out in twenty minutes, you’ll still be able to place an order! You can now preorder the newest collection of makeup and beauty products from our brand, Bloodlust! We’ve collabed with Vamypre Cosmetics for this new collection and I’m so excited for when you guys receive and wear your makeup from the recent launch! Some of you are already wearing your merch and makeup from past tours and launches! I love seeing all the photos. Don’t forget to tag me on Instagram! I love reposting! If you’ve attended any shows on this tour, be sure to get both our newest limited edition t-shirts, hoodies, and other apparel from this tour, available only at the venues because once it’s gone, it’s gone! You’ve also heard us perform some of the new songs on our upcoming album! Just a reminder that if you haven’t placed an order, now is the time to preorder a personalized autographed copy of our newest album from Lestat and I! Preorders are only open for one week. That’s right, you have one week to place your orders starting today! You should receive your pre orders for makeup and personalized autographed albums in a few weeks! Thank you for all the support on this drop, I’m so overwhelmed and grateful you love the pieces!”

You yawn mid-sentence.

“Sorry, I’m still a little groggy. Um, I just woke up from a nap and with our new makeup collection dropping, it suddenly struck me. You know, I get a lot of comments and emails from people asking me like uh, ‘wow you look really pretty!’ and that’s really nice and everything but I just want to let you guys know that I’m just like everybody else and when I get up in the morning, I mean, my hair is a mess and…”

“What are you talking about? Non, mais franchement…” (No, like seriously.) Lestat asks in the background from his spot on the chaise lounge chair.

“I’m just explaining to them like…that even vampires like, get up from a nap or something and they uh, they look like everybody else. You know what I mean? Like we don’t like feel like we shoot up out of bed—”

“So what are you saying? You just got up from a nap and look like everybody else?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re wearing makeup, Sister.”

“No. Lestat! No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. And you painted your nails again. Nice color, though. And I like the nail art you did.”

“Lestat.”

“Eyeshadow, blush… are those crescent moons and constellations on your nails? Very cute. Very you.”

“Lestat! You know that I was born like this.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, you were born with makeup on and painted nails. Yeah. Tell you what, when you came out of Gabrielle’s vagina…”

“LESTAT! I was born like this. I was…this is just the way I look.”

“No, you weren’t. Mon dieu, ma soeur est en train de devenir folle. (My god, my sister is losing her mind.) You know what you looked like?”

“What?”

“First of all this is what the vagina looks like… Et oui, j’aurais préféré ne pas savoir à quoi ressemble le vagina de ma propre mère.” (And yes, I would have much preferred to not know what my own mother’s vagina looks like.)

“No, Lestat! Come on!”

“And then you popped out.”

“With makeup! With makeup!”

“Yeah, with makeup! Yeah, blood—” the sound of your dog barking interrupts him. “Mojo…”

“You’ve upset the dog.”

“Talking about when my sister was born. All right. Calm down. Good boy.” He pats your dog on the head before going back to the question. “You had like blood on you, you had all this like mushy white stuff, it was disgusting. And Gabrielle still had most of her after birth up in there and, when it came out, the dogs tried to eat it…”

“…we’re just like everybody else.” You force a smile to hide your grimace as you go to end the video. “Lestat, tu as de la chance d’être déjà mort…” (Lestat, you’re lucky you’re already dead…)

“Oh, here’s a good question: ‘Do you ever miss walking in the sun?’ The night of my transformation… I was just sitting, doing nothing, and Lestat came floating in and over to me, and I recognized him. Never for a moment did I believe he was dead and when I saw his eyes - those blue eyes I had seen all my life, the same, but different - It was wonderful. He didn’t have to tell me. I knew what he was. And then he gave me the choice he never had. And I said yes. Comment n’aurais-je pas pu lui dire oui.” (How could I have not said yes to him.)

“That's right. I bit you on the neck and fed you my blood.”

“That's right. Do I miss the sun? I did at first - but then I realized these shadows, this darkness - it’s all part of me. I spent too long defined by what other people did to me. The choices other people made for me - but that’s over now. This is who I am, in all my glory, for better and for worse. That being said, I haven’t completely given up on returning to the sun. Once a vampire reaches a certain age, they build up an immunity to UV light. Most vampires have to reach their 1,000th year, but I have heard stories of younger vampires developing this immunity after drinking the blood of an ancient. I drank Enkil’s blood and I happen to know a few ancient vampires myself, so if the opportunity presented itself again - well, I wouldn’t say no. But until then, I am happy.”

“Est-ce parce que je suis ton soleil, ma soeur?” (Is it because I am your sun, sister?)

“Whatever, Lestat. ‘Can you drink the blood of animals? Have you ever thought of it? Would you even consider it?’ The answer to that question is…”

“What are we, fucking monsters?”

“Have you seen our dog?”

“He’s adorable! Mojo, show the audience how cute you are!”

“We have a great affinity for animals. Mojo here, like other dogs we’ve encountered, doesn’t try to bite or attack us on sight. That’s another vampire myth. So sorry to say, but your pets won’t protect you from our kind. C’mon! We met this guy as vampires and he wasn’t scared of us at all! He let us pet his head and he reminded us so much of the mastiffs we used to have that he really made us happy again. You think we would eat this dog?”

“Maybe if we didn’t have access to human blood and we were like the Donner Party and had to eat something. Maybe then Mojo would start to look really, really good. We can only suck ourselves for so long—”

“Ugh!”

“Well, not that way! You know what I mean! You bite down on your own arm and you know, you can get away with things by just—” Lestat pretends to bite down on his forearm. “But, as a vampire, drinking your own blood is toxic and just makes you really sick! And you’re losing blood too! It’s dry, dry, dry! Look at Mojo! Look at him! This is our bébé!” (baby!) Lestat pets and kisses Mojo’s head and scratches behind his ears.

“Mojo is the goodest of good boys! He’s just a giant softie! What’s wrong with you people?”

“Crazy! He is a purebred! He smells good though.”

“Yes, he does. Not like you…”

“Are you saying I need a bath?”

“Well, Mojo already got his, and I just took a shower yesterday, so it can’t be him or I stinking up the room…”

“Stink!? I’ll have you know my bath and beauty products are the best smelling things to ever grace this earth.”

“Guys, did you know Lestat never has less than 17 bottles of various products on the table beside his bathtub or shower at any given time?”

“You’re just envious because the combined scents of my body wash, shampoo, conditioner, cologne and natural musk are so irresistible that they’re attracting all the humans and vampires to me and not you.”

You roll your eyes.

Lestat gives Mojo belly rubs. “We really should get Mojo a friend. I feel bad having to leave him whenever we’re on tour or need to hunt. Maybe another Mastiff or a St. Bernard… Would you like that, Mo? Do you want a friend? Bien sûr, que tu as besoin d’un nouveau copain!” (Of course you need a new buddy!)

You and Lestat are watching What We Do In The Shadows, the popular vlog series that stars your friends over in Staten Island.

“Awww, look! Nandor made a new friend!”

“Is that John Goodman?”

“Lestat, it’s obviously Patton Oswalt.”

“Who’s Patton Oswalt?”

“Lestat, have you seen Ratouille?”

“I know what ratatouille pasta looks like, yeah.”

“No, like the movie. It was animated. He voiced a rat.”

“…Do I look like someone who watches cartoons? I prefer live action.”

“Lestat, it was Patton Oswalt and Peter O’ Toole, it was one of the most iconic movies—”

“I know Peter O’ Toole, but who the hell is Patton Oswalt?! Who’s that?”

“That’s Patton Oswalt.” You point at the screen.

“That’s not John Goodman?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t John Goodman do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is Nandor doing this?”

“The documentary series? Same reason we are, I suspect.”

“No, I mean trying to get a rebound for his human lover.”

“They’re not lovers. Guillermo is his familiar.”

“Mhm. That’s how it starts. Maybe that is John Goodman but older and older he looks like Patton Oswalt.”

“Oh.”

“What are they talking about? Are they making fun of vampires? You know, our people… ça craint quand même…” (it sucks though)

“Oh, they’re really high up. I don’t know about this...”

“We have to go through so much shit. Oh, Look at that.”

You and Lestat simultaneously let out a loud gasp large enough to suck in half of Earth’s oxygen when Nandor accidentally throws Patton Oswalt off the building to his death. His blood pours out from his head.

“Ohhh!!” You start fanning yourself.

“Oh, that was good.”

“Um, that’s really… I’m so hungry.”

“He’s dead. A shame, all that juicy blood gone to waste.”

“Wow.”

“Do we have any more Texan left?” You ask, before you laugh and point, “Nadja and Laszlo are fucking the humans next door!“

Lestat laughs, “Man, those two could fuck. I miss them. We should visit, make a cameo in one of the future episodes. I’m sure they wouldn’t say no to a foursome or an orgy.”

“Okay, okay, we’ll call them later. But we should try to behave ourselves on camera. Back to the questions. People write in all the time and they say, ‘what can you eat? What do vampires eat?’ And um so I just wanna completely sum this up for everybody. So here is the vampire food pyramid. Here’s what we’ve got here, so we got human blood, human blood, human blood, carbs. So that’s three servings of human blood and one serving of carbs per day. Louis for a really long time was just eating the carbs but recently we took a trip to Romania and Lestat and I totally got on him and we were like, ‘Look, we want you to live to see 1,000.’ I am proud to say… Look at the former rat-eater.” You show a professionally shot photo of Louis.

“Yes, yes, thank you very much. Louis started eating more Californians. You know, it’s very healthy. They got more tofu in them. More beans, more rice, more vegetables, more fruit. He used to like to go to Texas and eat people from there because they’re juicy and they’re big. Parce que le gras, c’est la vie!” (Because fat food is life!)

“Right. And they got that sauce.”

“Delicious. Put a nice barbecue sauce on a nice Texan.”

“Sure.”

“But the problem is they’re very high in fat so now the three of us are starting to eat people out here in California while we play our shows. Being rockstars has its perks, doesn’t it, Sister?”

“It’s smart, it’s really smart. Mais après tout, nous sommes intelligents.” (But after all, we’re smart.)

“I think we all look really good. Especially Louis.”

“Yeah. I mean, look at him! He looks great.”

“It’s unbelievable, huh? I like it.”

Lestat goes to the fridge and pulls out the leftovers. Australian, Englishman, Canadian, and…

“Oh! There is Texan!” You clap excitedly as Lestat brings it over.

“Yup! Told you we had some! Mmhmm. This is from a 38-year-old Texan. He had a lot of barbecue sauce in him before he died, you know what I mean? Mmm.”

“It’s spicy.”

“Let’s go out and get something fresh. We can show the viewers how we hunt. And then we’ll go back to watching and talking about weird vampire shows.”

“Okay.”

“And then I’m gonna go fuck Louis.”

“Euugh! He just does it to get under my skin!”

“I’m fucking the shit out of him. Tous. Les. Soirs.” (Every. Night.)

“OKAY! Why does it always come down to this? I try to get on my vlog and tell people how proud of you I am and the next thing out of your mouth is, ‘I’m fucking Louis’. I know you’re fucking Louis. You’ve been fucking Louis for a really long time. I don’t wanna hear it anymore. Je vous entends suffisamment comme ça la nuit…” (I hear enough of you at night.) You sigh exasperatingly. “We’re gonna go grab a bite. Be right back, guys.”

“So, a lot of you guys wanted to know about how we um…how we hunt. So we’re out here in this cheap hotel because it’s probably the easiest place to find people to eat. It’s full of criminals and uh, drug addicts and…we frequently hunt evildoers instead of feeding from innocent victims, but we don’t always abide by this rule because…yeah, once people come here, they don’t really go home so it doesn’t really matter. Um… God, this hat.” You swat the floppy flaps of the hat up and away from your face.

“It’s called a sun hat. It’s not the best, but it’ll protect you from the sun and it looks good on you, little sister.”

“But you’re not wearing a hat! Pourquoi dois-je en porter un??” (Why should I wear one??)

“It’d ruin my lovely golden hair. And it’s your turn to bring home dinner.”

You roll your eyes. “Anyway. Hmm. Shall we hunt?”

“What are we hunting for, ma chère?”

“What are we hungry for, Lestat?”

“Hmm. The pick of the city. The pick, pick, pick of it. A couple, an illicit couple, out for a cheat. His wife and her husband nodding off in their ignorant beds. Hmm. Drain them in heat. Let their children answer a knock at the door. A pale-faced policeman, a ride to the morgue.”

“Yeah, all that. Have a seat. Oh, here’s…okay, people are coming. Here we go. Oh… they’re the blood muffins…they’re the blood muffin girls. So we can’t eat them.”

“What are you talking about? What are blood muffins?”

“Long story. I was experimenting.”

“Hi! How are you? Do I know you from somewhere?” One of the girls asks, using her hand as a makeshift visor so she can see you.

“Oh no, I don’t think so. I…”

“Are you part of the crew?”

“Oh…holy crap! So you guys are…really um… oh God, I’m so sorry. I’m really, really hungry.”

“You guys should come with us! We’re gonna go eat! God, it’s so hot today. Are you sure you don’t wanna come with us?”

“Yeah, I kinda wanna eat your neck.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, nothing! You guys go ahead. You go ahead and eat.”

“Well, you both can come over and join us.”

“Okay. Yeah, maybe we will in a minute. But you guys go ahead.”

“Bye!”

“Bye! My brother made me wear this floppy hat!”

“It’s good, I like it!”

“Okay.”

“It looks good on you!”

You and Lestat look at each other for a moment.

“…Okay, I’m gonna bite! Just a little! I’m just gonna eat them a little bit! Just a little bit!” You say, pinching you thumb and pointer finger close together before running after the girls as they scream.

Lestat sighs, but he smiles too. “The wilderness that is my sister. C’est pourquoi je l’aime.” (That’s why I love her.)

“So update about that girl whose neck I bit in the last video. She accepted my apology and she sent me a thank you note, which is fucking awesome.”

“I told you to get dinner, but that you couldn’t kill her because I wanted to watch the show she was gonna star in. You kill her, we can’t watch the show together. I wanna have a brother-sister moment!”

“Yeah. Lestat—”

“All right? I wanna have a fucking brother-sister moment! Est-ce que c’est trop te demander?!” (Is it too much to ask you?!)”

“I wasn’t gonna kill her, Lestat! I just got excited! It’s kind of embarrassing!”

“You bite somebody’s neck, you better be going in for the kill, honey! We talked about this before!”

“Listen! All right, I’m already embarrassed about this enough, okay? All right?”

“Good! Glad you are!”

“There’s nothing you can do to make me feel worse than I already do about it.”

“You don’t think so?”

“…no. What are you gonna do? Lestat, putain, je te jure que si tu fais une dinguerie…” (Lestat, fuck, I swear if you do something crazy…)

Lestat pulls down his pants and underwear.

“LESTAT!!” You quickly cover the camera with your hands before the audience can see much, if anything.

“How’s that? Make you feel worse?”

“I’m gonna show people.”

“Hey! Show away! Maybe I’ll even start an OnlyFangs. Huh? You screw up again like that, I’m gonna run around the street naked.”

“Lestat, you’re so embarrassing. Il a vraiment fallu que tu sois mon frère… Dieu doit me détester.” (You really had to be my brother… God must hate me.)

“And it won’t be like that time I did it for fun in the village.”

“Do you see how I have to live?! I’m a vampire, my brother flashes people… wait, Lestat…did you hook up the computer to the TV?”

“I paid a guy to do it.”

“What?! You did? How much did you pay him?”

“$100.”

“Well, I can hook up your iPod. The one that you never took out of the box.”

“You can?!”

“Mhm.”

“And then you can help me download! I wanna get that song with that really good country singer who sings that song about love for Louis. You know what I’m talking about? LOOK THEY'RE KISSING!” He points at the tv screen. “Look! Look, Sister! How romantic is that? Huh? Two vampires kissing?”

“It’s not…”

“Show the world that we’re just like everybody else, hm?”

“Anyway…”

“And you know what, Sister, they should start making movies and television shows about vampires. That’s what they should start doing. They got all this popstar and reality tv shit out there. Vampires, I’m telling you, that’s where it’s gonna be!”

“Well, Lestat, you are one step ahead of everybody as usual.”

“Oooh!! Faith Hill! That’s it!! That’s who I wanna download! The one who’s married to Keith Urban!!”

“Who’s not married to Keith Urban…” You facepalm.

“I can’t sleep. Um. Yes! We sleep. I mean, we don’t have to, I guess, technically, but… um, we really like to nap. Napping’s pretty big with vampires. I mean, who doesn’t like a nap, really? Right? I’m getting a lot of questions about um, about um, Buff...erm. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. God, I can’t even get it out of my mouth. Ummm. And people have been sort of writing in and going ‘what do you think about… Buffy… and um… I could do a whole vlog about um, you know, how tough I am compared to Buffy and - and how I could kick her ass and all that stuff but the truth is that uh…I am terrified of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I know what you’re thinking, I know she’s not real, right? I know. I know she’s not real. I get that, right? But there’s this whole television show dedicated to this girl who finds vampires and stakes them until they die. If I was just laying here, minding my own business, and some girl showed up in a cheerleader outfit and ripped my undead heart out of my body and it was legal… huh? It’s just so irresponsible. It’s just so irresponsible that there’s this show about killing an entire race of beings and it’s totally fine, right? Are you listening, WB? Right? Because I hope, I really hope that Paramount buys you out. I hope that Paramount slays you! I mean, she kills vampires right in front of the rest of the school! It’s like my ultimate nightmare. It’s like a cheerleader with a - with a stake kills me in front of her hot friend!”

Lestat stands in the doorway to your bedroom, wearing his silk pajamas and a robe. “Sister.”

“What?”

“What are you doing? It’s 3AM. I was napping.”

“Lestat, I had the Buffy dream again.”

He lets out a long groan of annoyance. “Ugh. Jesus Christ. Are you serious? We’ve been over this a million times, okay? I checked your closet, there isn’t a vampire slayer. I went under your bed, there isn’t a vampire slayer. There aren't any vampire slayers, okay? Look it up!”

“Lestat! How do you know that, though? You don’t know that for sure. Elle peut apparaître et décider de nous tuer, juste parce qu’on est des vampires! Je suis sûre qu’elle nous écoute en ce moment même! Alors comment peux-tu être certain qu’elle n’est pas là?!” (She can appear and decide to kill us, just because we’re vampires! I’m sure she is listening to us right now! So how can you be so sure she isn’t there?!)

“Because the last vampire slayer was killed in 1872, okay? He was eaten by a werewolf!”

“What? Oh fuck, werewolves? I hadn’t even thought about werewolves! Jesus Christ, I’ll never get to sleep.”

“Take a nap. Let’s go. I’m gonna go fuck Louis.”

“Ohhh my god!”

“Okay, so True Blood. We’ll talk about True Blood. God, that show is so fucking funny!”

“It’s hysterical! It’s one of the best comedies ever created.”

“It is! So funny! It’s so funny! Have you guys seen that show?!” Your voice becomes so high from laughter. “It’s so funny! They get everything wrong!”

“That one guy! He’s a dog!”

“I know!”

“He’s like you, Mojo! ‘Hey, Sam! How are you, Sam?’”

“He turns into a dog!”

“This is True Blood?”

“Oh god! So where, um, Jason gets addicted to vampire blood?”

“No, that was later on! This…”

You’re flailing and struggling to speak through your laughter. “Okay, wait, you guys! You can’t get addicted to vampire blood, whatever you do, because the only thing vampire blood does is give you diarrhea. Et oui, pas très sexy!” (Yes, not super sexy!)

“It gives you the shits!”

“That’s it! It’s like a freaking laxative. Louis made up that whole La Petite Mort thing for Daniel’s book. You do NOT—”

“What about your friend? Your friend came over - what was her name?”

“Charlotte. Charlie.”

“She comes over and this one here gives her a little bit of her blood. Even a little bit is the worst thing in the world to a human that hasn’t been bitten first.”

“It - it was - it was like a pinprick. I—”

“Oh. That girl was like a shit factory. She just…” Lestat makes fart noises with his mouth.

“It was awful!”

“It was horrible! It was not fun. I called her Shartlotte as a joke and she was not happy. She didn’t know what was going on, she was very grossed out, so were we. I had to take her to the emergency room.”

“It was awful and, Charlie, I’m sorry. Wait, Lestat, was it - was that - this is something I do wanna talk about - you know how like, Bill like, oh my god, every episode you see him, you see him in his house, he lifts that little latch up and he goes down and he sleeps in a coffin? What an asshole. Jesus. This show was made in 2008? What? We don’t need to sleep in coffins all the time anymore.” You have to fan yourself from how hard you’re laughing.

“There’s a lot of sex on it.”

“That’s true.”

“All right, anyway, being a mortal in a vampire world is tough, but being a vampire in a mortal world…blegh! ‘Dear Mademoiselle Lioncourt, I was just curious what you thought about the Twilight movie.” Um. Okay. Don’t get me fucking started on the Twilight movie. All right, get me started on the twilight movie. Did you fucking read those books? Um. I read those books. I read them in like twelve hours. All of them. I mean it was like literary crack but, besides that, it’s complete bullshit. All right. Where is this house in Oregon with all of these hot fucking vampires living in the same place with their hot ass fucking parents? They’re rich and they’re hot and I don’t know any of them. Fuck. Okay. And last but not least, the one thing that they almost got right in Twilight, they still got so wrong. Okay, you know the part where when vampires go out into the sun ummm, they sparkle like a million diamonds? Yeah, you wanna see what happens when I go out into the sun? Yeah, I’ll show you. This is… it’s not diamonds, I’ll tell you that much. I’ll show you outside in the sunlight.”

“Ahhh! Oh my god!!! Oh!! Oh my god!!!”

“I break out. Bad.”

“Ohh!!! The acne scarring!! Ahhh!!”

“Okay! It’s really bad. So Twilight - go fuck your mother. All right, I gotta go back in. Eternal life sucks balls. Sometimes I just wish, you know, I could be like the other girls like, I just wanna eat pizza and dish out blowjobs just like everybody else. I don’t know.” You scream when Lestat scares the ever living shit out of you by coming up at you from behind with cheap plastic vampire teeth.

“I want to suck your blood!” He says in a bad Bela Lugosi voice.

“Lestat, get off! Tu es tellement stupide!” (You’re so stupid!)

“Oh, come on. You’re 256 years old. Grow up.”

“Get out.”

“Do we have any more blood infused with French wine?”

“Oh, great. I’m a vampire and my brother’s an alcoholic. I’m totally fucked. And not in a nice way.”

“Um, hey Lestat��”

“What?”

“Hey, Les…”

“What? I’m trying to write!”

“Okay! Is it okay with you if I invite my boyfriend over?”

“No, Sister, no.”

“Lestat, c’mon, please! He’s the only other vampire I’ve ever met that isn’t a total dick, all right? And-and he’s really cute and I really, really like him a lot! Les, don’t make me cry! Pourquoi faut-il que tu sois si méchant avec moi, tout le temps?” (Why do you need to be so mean to me all the time?)

“Okay, fine! All right, fine! But listen to me! Do not cry and do not bring him into your bedroom and tell him you’re gonna listen to albums, okay? Because I know what that’s code for. I’m not an idiot.”

“What’s that code for?”

“Please! It means he’s gonna give you the stink finger!”

“Lestat!”

“There will be no stink fingers in this house!”

“Ugh!!”

“The only stink finger I want is mine!”

“Ewwww!! I don’t wanna know anything about your stink finger! I just wanna have my—”

“I don’t know anything about anybody else—”

“I just wanna have my boyfriend over!”

“All right, but no bedrooms!”

“So I can have him over?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good! ‘Cause he’s right here!” You pan the camera to show your boyfriend has been sitting next to you the whole time. “Hi!!!” You clap excitedly. “Okay, so here’s the story. All of you guys keep writing and asking me about um, the guy from that one music video. Okay, so let me tell you the story. Here’s the deal, this is just how my luck goes. Pretty cold. So I meet Jaska, and he’s a vampire, and he gives me these like serious vampire eyes at the after party and we make out and I get really excited and then I find out that he’s a FINNISH EXCHANGE STUDENT AND HE DOESN'T EVEN SPEAK ANY ENGLISH. Not that it matters. He’s back on a boat to Finland pretty soon. But, in the meantime, he has very sweetly agreed to come over and be on the vlog! So um…. Ladies and gentleman, without further ado, this is Jaska. Say hi. Say hi to everybody on YouTube. Say hi.”

“Hi! Hi!”

“If there’s anything you wanna say, you can say it to the YouTube viewers!”

Jaska starts talking in his native language. You have no idea what he’s saying. Nearly 300 years of existence and learning more than the three languages you already know has never been high on the list of your priorities. You’re fine with French, Italian, and English. But his accent is just so fucking sexy you spontaneously start making out with him on camera while he’s mid-sentence.

“Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Ohhh!” Lestat yells, then pushes you apart. “Sister! Thank you, thank you very much!”

Mojo starts barking.

“See, you’ve upset the dog! You’ve upset me! None of this in my house! Vampire or not, I’ll break your fucking neck!” He threatens your boyfriend.

“…yeah. Okay.” Your boyfriend says in awkward English.

“See this is the kind of thing that leads to the stink finger!” He then starts talking in a baby voice to Mojo, “who’s my baby? That’s right, you are!”

“…How do you say stink finger in Finnish?”

“Let’s see…where are we gonna start today? Um….”

Lestat is on the phone. “Yeah, how much is your Mandarin Garnet? Yeah. The one that’s on TV right now. It’s a Mandarin, it’s an oval cut. Yeah. Well, do you think you guys have a discount? Senior citizens? Uh, I’m white…”

“Lestat! Are you buying more gemstones?”

“It’s beautiful, it's Mandarin!”

“Lestat, give me that!” You wrestle his phone out of his hands.

“SEND IT TO ME!”

“He’s not - no, we don’t want any more gemstones.” You hang up his phone. “Lestat, you have a closet full of gemstones!”

“But I don’t have that one!” He points at the TV screen. “It’s gorgeous!”

“Lestat!”

“How much is it?” He takes out another phone.

“Lestat! Give me that!”

“No!”

You wrestle that phone away from him too. “God…”

“I can start using them to bedazzle. I ordered a bedazzler the other day.”

“LESTAT!”

“It was cheap.”

“My brother’s addicted to online shopping. Et il est complétement taré aussi. Enfin, rien de nouveau.” (And he is completely crazy. I mean, nothing new.)

“It was three easy payments of $49.95 every three weeks.”

“What are you gonna do with a bedazzler, Lestat?!”

“I’m gonna use the gems! I’m gonna sell them online on the eBay thing! Put it on eBay! Whatever that is. Oh, do me a favor, call our PA, have her pick up lunch.”

“Oh, I’m so fucking done right now. You can call her yourself.”

“Look how beautiful it is!” Lestat points at the TV screen insistently.

You turn to look. “Oh, that is pretty…”

“Mandarin. It looks like a piece of orange chicken.”

You relent and give Lestat his phone back to order the damn gemstone.

“My brother’s ‘friend’—” You use heavy air quotes. “Raglan James, is in town. He’s been here for two weeks. I fucking hate him. Lestat loves him. Calls him RJ and just cannot get enough of him. Probably because he claims to be a friend of David Talbot, our actual friend. But this guy… He’s disgusting. They’ve been partying for two weeks in our living room. It’s gonna get better though, wait for it, seriously stick around for it. In the meantime—” You try to raise your voice to be heard over their loud chatting. “IN THE MEANTIME, I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS THAT NEED ANSWERING.”

“I’m double fisting! I’m double fisting! I’m double fisting!” Lestat says, in the middle of telling a funny story. Well…humor is subjective.

“‘Do vampires…?’ CAN YOU GUYS PLEASE SHUT UP FOR TWO SECONDS? I’M TRYING TO DO MY VLOG! Putain, je vais finir par déménager, moi.” (Fuck, I’m gonna end up moving out.)

“Yeah, could you please go somewhere else and do your vlog?”

“What’s a vlog? Why do you put a V in front of it?”

“Because it’s a video blog,” Lestat explains. “They call it a vlog.”

“Thank you,” you say.

“Why don’t you call it a…vidiary or a vijournal?” Raglan asks.

“We should call it that, Sister. A vidiary.”

“Sounds dirty.”

“Speaking of vijournal, when was the last time you got laid?” Raglan asks.

“Uuugh!! There’s TWO of them!!”

“It was like 14 minutes ago.”

“EUGH! Personne n’a envie de savoir ça!!” (Nobody wants to know it!!)

“Sarah, do you pay attention in school?”

“Who the FUCK is Sarah!?”

“I haven’t always lived here. I was living in England and studying abroad. Did you know that, in 1588, when Queen Beth defeated the Spanish at sea— You remember reading about that? She threw a— You remember reading about that?”

“They had no tea! The English! No tea!” Lestat says.

“Yeah, but what wasn’t written in the books was that she threw a four-day rager!”

You roll your eyes so fucking hard they nearly roll back into your head.

“No way! I knew The Virgin Queen wasn’t a virgin after all! She must’ve had so many men in her bed. Reminds me of the time I tag-teamed a Scottish girl with—” Lestat starts.

“OHHHH!” You don’t want to hear any more. You pinch the bridge of your nose.

“The Royal line had syphilis for a hundred years!”

“I bet it was worth it though!”

“And in 1749, another vampire ate out Martha Washington.”

“Ohhhh my god! That is NOT true! The Talamasca are so full of shit!”

“Well, she was Dandridge at the time. Martha Dandridge.”

“If I have to keep listening to you, I’m gonna pull a Van Gogh and cut my own ears off.”

“Actually, Van Gogh cutting his ear off is a myth. Did you know that it was actually…”

You drown out his voice. You don’t fucking care.

“I gotta take a smoke.”

“You should go out to the balcony to relax.”

“So my brother’s gonna go to the balcony and then the fun’s really gonna start. Here it comes. Wait for it. Wait for it. Is he behind me? Thought so. Yes, James?” You refuse to call him by his first name. His first name is fucking ugly, just like his face and personality. And you won’t call him RJ, no matter how much he insists that he’s cool and can be called by his initials. He is not cool.

“…Do you wanna go to the Taylor Swift concert with me?”

“Mmmm...”

“Do you like - do you like Taylor Swift? Do you know who that is?”

“Not really my thing, James.��

“We need more matches for the balcony,” Lestat says, then he notices how close Raglan is standing to you. “What the FUCK is going on?”

“Nothing! I was asking her about what music she likes.”

“You cannot hit on my sister! What the FUCK is wrong with you?! Get the fuck out!”

“Les!”

“Come on! Get out of here! And don’t call me Les! You don’t have the right!”

“I’ve had a time!”

“Get out of here! Goddammit!”

“I’ll see you next year!”

“No! Don’t come back! Goddammit!”

“He shows up. He hits on me.” You say to the camera.

“It’s ridiculous! I cannot believe it!”

“Lestat throws him out. And it happens every. Single. Time. Thank you, Lestat! Thank you for throwing him out! Aussi, je ne me souvenais pas à quel point tu pouvais être possessif et jaloux…” (Also I didn’t remember how much you could be possessive and jealous…)

“I only threw him out because he wanted to fuck you!”

“Gee, thanks. Haven't you noticed how he looks different than before?”

“Probably too much plastic surgery. Humans can get addicted to that.”

“I don’t think that’s it… He looks like a totally different person every time we see him.”

“Yeah, that’s what plastic surgery does to a person. If you ask me, it was a poor investment. He got all that work done and he’s still ugly.”

“No, that’s not what I’m— I mean— you know what? I’m just gonna call David and ask him about James. There’s something very off about that guy and I bet David will know what’s up.”

#interview with the vampire #amc interview with the vampire #amc iwtv #iwtv season 3 teaser #lestat de lioncourt #lestat #rockstar lestat #Lestat and sister reader #interview with the vampire prompt #IWTV prompt #fic ideas #fic idea #pls tag me if you’re inspired by this #I’d love to read it

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