Disclaimer: This is a work of speculative fiction. All characters belong to Anne Rice and Random House. This is not in any way intended to infringe on the work of Anne Rice. (To whom I’m eternally grateful, I might add.)
This is a little Daniel/Armand angst-fest, with some intimacy between two vampires of the same sex. If that bothers/disturbs you, don’t read it. Blah, blah, blah. You know the drill.
Constructive criticism on the characters, setting, grammar, etc. is welcome via e-mail.
By: Julia ( Juliapi@aol.com )
Snow
I am leaning against the railing on the 16th floor balcony of an extravagant penthouse apartment. Looking down at a New York City street below me, I see rumbling garbage trucks, rushing taxis, and hordes of hurried pedestrians--comforting sights, all of them. I hardly notice the gusts of icy wind and snow flurries that New York is plagued with at this time of the year. I keep hoping for real snow-thick, bounteous flakes, the kind I remember from my childhood. For a second, I close my eyes, and try to reenact the image. I open them again, and sigh as the wind ruffles my fair and stings my face. The cold seeps through my wool sweater, and although it doesn’t penetrate my skin, I do feel it. The sensation is different for me because I am immortal now.
That’s what Armand said the night he made me, wasn’t it?
“You’re immortal now, Daniel.”
Strange how I remember that. That’s just the thing about immortality, you forget nothing. Good memories, bad memories, random facts, your brain might as well be a computer hard drive. Sometimes I wish I could forget.
I hear the gentle creaking of the sliding door that leads back to the apartment. I turn softly, but I already know who is there. Armand. I pause to look at him, to study him. I do that quite often.
His hair is long tonight, and the wind is playing with the auburn curls. His huge eyes look even bigger in the cold. He is dressed in modern clothing, not unlike my own, yet it is remarkable how different he looks. I briefly think of last night. We walked into a video store, a rather anticlimactic event. I wondered up and down the rows, not really focusing on anything until I saw Armand in a heated discussion about a foreign film with a clerk. How surreal it was, to see Armand, a being of the 14th century, talking about a 20th century contraption! It baffles me sometimes, it really does. God, he was alive 500 years before I was born!
Strange how these little realizations hit me at the oddest moments.
I smile mockingly at Armand. My maker furrows his brow briefly. I smile again and turn away. I like tormenting him sometimes.
He hates the fact that he can’t read my thoughts, although he will not admit it.
“Daniel.” He speaks my name clearly, and takes a few steps towards me.
“You called?” I ask, still keeping the same dry smile on my face.
“I was looking for you. Louis and Lestat just came back....And Lestat said something about celebrating the holidays as a coven.” Armand sighs, as if to point out how irrelevant Lestat is.
“A coven?” I think to myself. Vampires don’t like each other’s company that much. Sure, Armand and Lestat love each other, but leave them in a room together for a couple of hours, and you won’t hear the end to their insults and sarcasm for centuries.
“What is it, Armand?” I ask, snapping back to the present. “Jumping on Lestat’s bandwagon, eh?”
Armand is not amused. He dislikes this, me having verbal power over him. Yet this does not stop him by any means. He approaches me slowly, keeping his chocolate brown eyes on my face.
He is now standing next to me, draping his leather clad arm around my shoulder gracefully. He is forcing me to turn toward him and I can feel his slim fingers around my neck. They are cold, and I wonder if he has fed tonight.
Slowly, painfully slowly, he brings his lips to my throat. I stifle a low moan as I attempt to turn away. Oh, what fun this little exchange will be!
“Armand...”
He doesn’t respond. Instead, he opens his mouth ever so slightly, just enough to brush his viciously sharp fangs against my neck. He moves them back and forth, and just when I think his little razors will slice through my skin and draw blood, he stops.
And then he does it again. And again.
I do moan this time. I feel shivers rushing through my body.
This is it, the one thing that is closest to human mating. The sharing of blood. How has it been described before? Ecstasy? Rapture? Believe me, none of those words come close capturing the feeling.
“Dammit, Armand,” I whisper, attempting to turn my face away from him into the wind. The gusts feel colder now.
And then Armand stops, and even worse, he smiles, imitating the patronizing smile I have given him only several minutes before.
He turns away from me, and I touch the spot where his fangs had just been with my right hand. When I bring it up to my eyes, I see one tiny drop of blood on my fingers.
“Let’s go, Daniel,”
Armand says over his shoulder, not noticing, as he turns back and heads toward the sliding door. “Everyone’s waiting.”
I follow him to the glass door. I wonder how we can both have so little control over each other. I wonder why both of us can be so cruel sometimes. Human nature, I guess. I inwardly laugh at this irony.
As I’m about the close the door, I turn and look outside. It has started to snow, and the white flakes are falling in glorious thick clumps, faster and faster, until they finally disintegrate as they hit the frozen sidewalk below.
The End
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