Lestat, Armand and their complicated love/hate relationship
I found myself backing out of the room and away from him, staring numbly at his small dirty figure. His auburn hair shimmered despite the dirt in it; his eyes burned like two lights.
Grotesque he seemed, among all the candles and the swimming colors of the flat, this filthy waif of the netherworld, and yet his beauty held sway. He hadn’t needed the shadows of Notre Dame or the torchlight of the crypt to flatter him. And there was a fierceness in him in this bright light that I hadn’t seen before.
I felt an overwhelming confusion. He was both dangerous and compelling. I could have looked on him forever, but an overpowering instinct said: Get away. Leave the place to him if he wants it. What does it matter now? - The Vampire Lestat
“It is like not knowing how to read, isn’t it?” he said aloud. “And your maker, the outcast Magnus, what did he care for your ignorance? He did not tell you the simplest things, did he?”
Nothing in his expression moved as he spoke.
“Hasn’t it always been this way? Has anyone ever cared to teach you anything?”
“You’re taking these things from my mind…” I said. I was appalled. I saw the monastery where I’d been as a boy, the rows and rows of books that I could not read, Gabrielle bent over her books, her back to all of us. “Stop this!” I whispered.
It seemed the longest time had passed. I was becoming disoriented. He was speaking again, but in silence.
They never satisfy you, the ones you make. In silence the estrangement and the resentment only grow.
I willed myself to move but I wasn’t moving. I was merely looking at him as he went on.
You long for me and I for you, and we alone in all this realm are worthy of each other. Don’t you know this? - The Vampire Lestat
I beat him again, turning him this way and that. And then I drew my sword to sever his head.
Let him live like that if he can. Let him be immortal like that if he can. I raised the sword and when I looked down at him, the rain was pelting his face, and he was staring up at me, as one half alive, unable to plead for mercy, unable to move.
I waited. I wanted him to beg. I wanted him to give me that powerful voice full of lies and cunning, the voice that had made me believe for one pure and dazzling instant that I was alive and free and in the state of grace again. Damnable, unforgivable lie. Lie I’d never forget for as long as I walked the earth. I wanted the rage to carry me over the threshold to his grave.
But nothing came from him.
And in this moment of stillness and misery for him, his beauty slowly returned.
He lay a broken child on the gravel path, only yards from the passing traffic, the ring of horses’ hooves, the rumble of the wooden wheels.
And in this broken child were centuries of evil and centuries of knowledge, and out of him there came no ignominious entreaty but merely the soft and bruised sense of what he was. Old, old evil, eyes that had seen dark ages of which I only dream.
I let him go, and I stood up and sheathed my sword. - The Vampire Lestat
He heard me. But he didn’t give an answer. He looked to Gabrielle, who
stood near the fire, and then to me. And silently, he said, Love me. You
have destroyed everything! But
if you love me, it can all be restored in a new form. Love me.
This silent entreaty had an eloquence, however, that I can’t put into words.
“What can I do to make you love me?” he whispered. “What can I give? The knowledge of all I have witnessed, the secrets of our powers, the mystery of what I am?”
It seemed blasphemous to answer. And as I had on the battlements, I found myself on the edge of tears. For all the purity of his silent communications, his voice gave a lovely resonance to his sentiments when he actually spoke. - The Vampire Lestat
“Each time the death and the awakening will ravage the mortal spirit, so that one will hate you for taking his life, another will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of your superiority, another shut you out.” And here he shot his glance to Gabrielle again and half smiled.
“And the veil will always come down between you. Make a legion. You will be, always and forever, alone!” - The Vampire Lestat
“Does anyone else know the size of your soul?”
Witchcraft. Had it ever been used with more skill? And what was he really saying to us beneath this liquid flow of beautiful language: Come to me, and I shall be the sun round which you are locked in orbit, and my rays shall lay bare the secrets you keep from each other, and I, who possess charms and powers of which you have no inkling, shall control and possess and destroy you!
“I asked you before,” I said. “What do you want? Really want?”
“You!” he said. - The Vampire Lestat
He had only moved very fast, and I had moved faster, and we stood facing each other in the doorway of the crypt, and again I said that single negation and I wouldn’t let him go.
“Not like this, we can’t part. We can’t leave each other in hatred, we can’t.” And my will dissolved suddenly as I embraced him and held tight to him so that he couldn’t free himself nor even move.
I didn’t care what he was, or what he had done in that doomed moment of lying to me, or even trying to overpower me, I didn’t care that I was no longer mortal and would never be again.
i wanted only that he should remain. I wanted to be with him, what he was, and all the things he had said were true. Yet it could never be as he wished it to be. - The Vampire Lestat
“You’re mad to blame it all on me. You have no right,” I insisted, but my voice was faltering so badly I couldn’t understand my own words.
And his voice shot out of him like the tongue of a snake.
“We had our Eden under that ancient cemetery,” he hissed. “We had our faith and our purpose. And it was you who drove us out of it with a flaming sword. What do we have now! Answer me! Nothing but the love of each other and what can that mean to creatures like us!”
“No, it’s not true, it was all happening already. You don’t understand anything. You never did.”
But he wasn’t listening to me. And it didn’t matter whether or not he was listening. He was drawing closer, and in a dark flash his hand went out, and my head went back, and I saw the sky and the city of Paris upside down.
I was falling through the air.
And I went down and down past the windows of the tower, until the stone walkway rose up to catch me, and every bone in my body broke within its thin case of preternatural skin. - The Vampire Lestat
Poor Armand. And you told me Louis was dead. Go dig a room for yourself under the Lafayette Cemetery. It’s just up the street. - The Vampire Lestat
“You always make me laugh,” I told him. “I would have laughed at you under that cemetery in Paris, except it didn’t seem the kind thing to do. And even when you cursed me and blamed me for all the stories about us, that was funny too. If you hadn’t been about to throw me off the tower I would have laughed. You always make me laugh.”
Delicious it was, the hatred between us, or so I thought. Such unfamiliar excitement, to have him there to ridicule and despise. - The Vampire Lestat
“It wasn’t that I wanted vengeance,” he whispered. His face was stricken, his heart broken. He said. “But you came to be healed, and you did not want me! A century I had waited, and you did not want me!”
And I knew, as I had all along really, that my restoration was illusion, that I was the same skeleton in rags, of course. And the house was still a ruin. And in the preternatural being who held me was the power that could give me back the sky and the wind.
“Love me and the blood is yours,” he said. “This blood that I have never given to another.” I felt his lips against my face.
“I can’t deceive you,” I answered. “I can’t love you. What are you to me that I should love you? A dead thing that hungers for the power and the passion of others? The embodiment of thirst itself?” - The Vampire Lestat
In mute fascination, Daniel had watched that little clip on MTV portraying Armand as the coven master of the old vampires beneath the Paris cemetery, presiding over demonic rituals until the Vampire Lestat, the eighteenth-century iconoclast, had destroyed the Old Ways.
Armand must have loathed it, his private history laid bare in flashing images, so much more crass than Lestat’s more thoughtful written history. Armand, whose eyes scanned perpetually the living beings around him, refusing even to speak of the undead. But it was impossible that he did not know. - The Queen of the Damned
At last particular movies struck his fancy. Over and over he watched Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, fascinated by Rutger Hauer, the powerfully built actor who, as the leader of the rebel androids, confronts his human maker, kisses him, and then crushes his skull. It would bring a slow and almost impish laugh from Armand, the bones cracking, the look in Hauer’s ice-cold blue eye.
“That’s your friend, Lestat, there,” Armand whispered once to Daniel. “Lestat would have the…how do you say?…guts?…to do that!” - The Queen of the Damned
At the door, I turned and kissed Gabrielle again. I felt her body collapse against me for an instant; then her attention locked on Akasha. I felt the faint tremor in her hands as she touched my face. I looked at Louis, my seemingly fragile Louis with his seemingly invincible composure; and at Armand, the urchin with the angel’s face. Finally those you love are simply… those you love. - The Queen of the Damned
The other immortals are still around, of course-Maharet and Mekare, the eldest of us all, Khayman of the First Brood, Eric, Santino, Pandora, and others whom we call the Children of the Millennia. Armand is still about, the lovely five-hundred-year-old boy-faced ancient who once ruled the Theatre des Vampires, and before that a coven of devil worshiping blood drinkers who lived beneath the Paris Cemetery, Les Innocents. Armand, I hope, will always be around. - The Tale of the Body Thief
“No. Just tell me what’s happened. You’re in danger, aren’t you? Or you think you are. You sent out the call for me to come to you here. It was an unabashed plea.”
“Are those the words Armand used, ‘unabashed plea’? I hate Armand.”
David only smiled and made a quick impatient gesture with both hands. “You don’t hate Armand and you know you don’t.”
“Wanna bet?” - Memnoch the Devil
“My point is simply that I love you, that we’re linked in some way that none of the others is linked. Louis worships you. You’re some sort of dark god to him, though he pretends to hate you for having made him. Armand envies you and spies on you far more than you might think.”
“I hear Armand and I see him and I ignore him,” I said. - Memnoch the Devil
This was Armand.
He sat on the stone park bench, boylike, casual, with one knee crooked, looking up at me with the predictable innocence, dusty all over, naturally, hair a long, tangled mess of auburn curls.
Dressed in heavy denim garments, tight pants, and a zippered jacket, he surely passed for human, a street vagabond maybe, though his face was now parchment white, and even smoother than it had been when last we met.
In a way, he made me think of a child doll, with brilliant faintly red-brown glass eyes—a doll that had been found in an attic. I wanted to polish him with kisses, clean him up, make him even more radiant than he was.
“That’s what you always want,” he said softly. His voice shocked me. If he had any French or Italian accent left, I couldn’t hear it. His tone was melancholy and had no meanness in it at all. “When you found me under Les Innocents,” he said, “you wanted to bathe me with perfume and dress me in velvet with great embroidered sleeves.”
“Yes,” I said, “and comb your hair, your beautiful russet hair.” My tone was angry. “You look good to me, you damnable little devil, good to embrace and good to love.”
We eyed each other for a moment. And then he surprised me, rising and coming towards me just as I moved to take him in my arms. His gesture wasn’t tentative, but it was extremely gentle. I could have backed away. I didn’t. We held each other tight for a moment. The cold embracing the cold. The hard embracing the hard.
“Cherub child,” I said. I did a bold thing, maybe even a defiant thing. I reached out and mussed his snaggled curls.
He is smaller than me physically, but he didn’t seem to mind this gesture.
In fact, he smiled, shook his head, and reclaimed his hair with a few casual strokes of his hand. His cheeks went apple-perfect suddenly, and his mouth softened, and then he lifted his right fist, and teasingly struck me hard on the chest.
Really hard. Show-off. Now it was my turn to smile and I did. - Memnoch the Devil
Lestat, not a bad friend to have, and one for whom I would lay down my immortal life, one for whose love and companionship I have ofttimes begged, one whom I find maddening and fascinating and intolerably annoying, one without whom I cannot exist. - The Vampire Armand
Lestat, my Lestat - for he was never theirs, was he? - my Lestat was crazed and railing as the result of his awful saga, and held prisoner by the very oldest of our kind on the final decree that if he did not cease to disturb the peace, which meant of course our secrecy, he would be destroyed, as only the oldest could accomplish, and no one could plead for him on any account.
No, that could not happen! I writhed and twisted. The pain sent its shocks through me, red and violet and pulsing with orange light. I hadn’t seen such colors since I’d fallen.
My mind was coming back, and coming back for what? Lestat to be destroyed! Lestat imprisoned, as I had once been centuries ago under Rome in Santino’s catacombs. Oh, God, this is worse than the sun’s fire, this is worse than seeing that bastard brother strike the little plum-cheeked face of Sybelle and knock her away from her piano, this is murderous rage I feel. - The Vampire Armand
“Lestat, give me this one embrace and I’ll never ask another thing of you for all eternity. Let me put my lips to your throat, Lestat, let me test the tale, let me do it!”
“You break my heart, you little fool,” he said with tears welling. “You always did.”
“Don’t judge me!” I cried. - The Vampire Armand
“Armand,” I said. “Please.” I dropped down on my knees in front of him, looking up into his face.
All the emotion he had held back was printed there now. He was in a rage.
“Is your heart totally turned against me?” I asked. “Do you have no faith in what we seek to build here?”
“Fool,” he said again. His voice was roughened now by emotion he couldn’t suppress. “I have always loved you,” he said. “I have loved you more than any being in all the world whom I’ve ever loved. I have loved you more than Louis. I have loved you more even than Marius. And you have never given me your love. I would be your most faithful counselor, if you allowed it. But you don’t. Your eyes pass over me as if I don’t exist. And so they always have.”
I knelt there defeated. I didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t know what to say. I felt such a huge exhaustion, I had no way out of it, no way to find eloquence or reason or the vigor to try to reach him, reach beyond his malice to his soul.
He went on again, staring at me as he spoke.
“I hate you as much as I have ever loved you,” he said. “Oh, I didn’t want for Rhoshamandes to destroy you. Good God, that I never wanted. Never. When I heard them crying out that you’d returned I wept like a child. […] But how could I not hate you, you who went in search of my maker all those long years ago when I scarce believed in him anymore — and was found by him, saved from the earth by him, welcomed into his lair by him, you whom he loved, you to whom he told the secrets of our beginning, when he had never come to free me from the Children of Satan, you to whom he gave his love, while resigning me to the ruins of all you’d destroyed around me. I hate you! I understand the very definition of ‘hate’ when I think of you.” - Blood Communion
“You who humiliated me and destroyed my world,” he said, his voice now a fragile whisper. “You who later told with such relish how you shattered my coven, my little coven, my little coven of holy purpose. Yet still I didn’t want for you to die. And I should have known that you wouldn’t. Of course not. How could anyone put an end to you? […]
I found myself on my feet again. I’d drawn back away from him without realizing it. The air was poison between us. But I couldn’t look away or go.
“I love you still,” he said. “Yes, even now, I love you, as they all love you, your minions seeking just a smile or a nod or a quick touch of your hand. I love you like all those throughout this palace who are dreaming of drinking just a drop of your blood. Well, you can leave me now. I’m not going anywhere. Where is there to go? I’ll be here if you want me. And grant me my wish for the moment, you and your august friends. Go and leave me alone.” - Blood Communion
The only thought in my mind, the only image, the only idea, was of Armand, and how Armand would feel when he too could hold Marius like this and know that Marius lived, that Marius had been restored, that all of them were safe and secure, and using my strongest power I sent the word to him. I sent the news. And I sent my love to Armand with it. - Blood Communion
Lestat, Claudia and their relationship in the books
She was simply unlike Lestat and me to such an extent I couldn’t comprehend her; for little child she was, but also fierce killer now capable of the ruthless pursuit of blood with all a child’s demanding. And though Lestat still threatened me with danger to her, he did not threaten her at all but was loving to her, proud of her beauty, anxious to teach her that we must kill to live and that we ourselves could never die. - Interview WIth The Vampire
Lestat played with her as if she were a magnificent doll, and I played with her as if she were a magnificent doll; and it was her pleading that forced me to give up my rusty black for dandy jackets and silk ties and soft gray coats and gloves and black capes. Lestat thought the best color at all times for vampires was black, possibly the only aesthetic principle he steadfastly maintained, but he wasn’t opposed to anything which smacked of style and excess. He loved the great figure we cut, the three of us in our box at the new French Opera House or the Theatre d'Orleans, to which we went as often as possible, Lestat having a passion for Shakespeare which surprised me, though he often dozed through the operas and woke just in time to invite some lovely lady to midnight supper, where he would use all his skill to make her love him totally, then dispatch her violently to heaven or hell and come home with her diamond ring to give to Claudia. - Interview With The Vampire
And I cannot say even now that I regret Claudia, that I wish I had never seen her, nor held her, nor whispered secrets to her, nor heard her laughter echoing through the shadowy gaslighted rooms of that all too human town house in which we moved amid the lacquered furniture and the darkening oil paintings and the brass flowerpots as living beings should. Claudia was my dark child, my love, evil of my evil. Claudia broke my heart. - The Vampire Lestat
Of course, he gave me a doll as usual, the replica of me, which as always wears a duplicate of my newest dress. To France he sends for these dolls, he wants me to know. And what should I do with it? Play with it as if I were really a child?
“Is there a message here, my beloved father?” I asked him this evening. “That I shall be a doll forever myself?” He has given me thirty such dolls over the years if recollection serves me. And recollection never does anything else. Each doll has been exactly like the rest. They would crowd me out of my bedroom if I kept them. But I do not keep them. I burn them, sooner or later. I smash their china faces with the poker. I watch the fire eat their hair. I can’t say that I like doing this. After all, the dolls are beautiful. And they do resemble me. Yet, it becomes the appropriate gesture. The doll expects it. So do I.
And now he has brought me another, and he stands in my doorway staring at me afterwards, as if my question cut him. And the expression on his face is so dark suddenly, I think, this cannot be my Lestat.
I wish that I could hate him. I wish that I could hate them both. But they defeat me not with their strength but with their weakness. They are so loving! And so pleasing to look at. Mon Dieu, how the women go after them!
As he stood there watching me, watching me examine this doll he had given me, I asked him sharply:
“Do you like what you see?”
“You don’t want them anymore, do you?” he whispered.
“Would you want them,” I asked, “if you were me?”
The expression on his face grew even darker. Never have I seen him the way he looked. A scorching heat came into his face, and it seemed he blinked to clear his vision. His perfect vision. He left me and went into the parlor. I went after him. In truth, I couldn’t bear to see him the way he was, yet I pursued him. “Would you like them,” I asked, “if you were me?” - Excerpt from Claudia’s diary, The Queen of the Damned
“Well, of course, you pick the voices that scold you. You always have, in the same manner in which you pick those who will turn on you and stick the knife right into your heart.”
He meant Claudia, but he couldn’t bear to speak her name. I knew I could hurt him if I said it, like flinging a curse in his face. I wanted to say, You had a hand in it! You were there when I made her, and there when she lifted the knife! - The Tale of the Body Thief
“You’re not sorry! You’ve never been sorry! Say it. Say the truth! You deserved the knife when I put it through your heart, and you know it, you’ve always known it!”
“No!”
Something in me broke as I stared down at her, at the
exquisite face in its frame of finespun hair. I lifted her, and rose,
placing her in the chair before me and I dropped to my knees at her
feet.
“Claudia, listen to me. I didn’t begin it. I didn’t make the
world! It was always there, this evil. It was in the shadows, and it
caught me, and made me part of it, and I did what I felt I must. Don’t
laugh at me, please, don’t turn your head away. I didn’t make evil! I
didn’t make myself!”
How perplexed she was, staring at me, watching me, and then her small full mouth spread beautifully in a smile.
“It
wasn’t all anguish,” I said, my fingers digging into her little
shoulders. “It wasn’t hell. Tell me it wasn’t. Tell me there was
happiness. Can devils be happy? Dear God, I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand, but you always do something, don’t you?”
“Yes,
and I’m not sorry. I’m not. I would roar it from the rooftops right up
into the dome of heaven. Claudia, I would do it again!”
A great sigh
passed out of me. I repeated the words, my voice growing louder. “I
would do it again!”
Stillness in the room.
Her calm remained unbroken. Was she enraged? Surprised? Impossible to know as I looked into her expressionless eyes.“Oh you are evil, my father,” she said in a soft voice. “How can you abide it?” - The Tale of the Body Thief
We were in the hotel room again in old New Orleans, and Claudia sat quietly on the chair. Outside, the little city winked here and there with its dull lamps. How dark and heavy the sky overhead, with no hint of the great aurora of the cities to come.
“I told you I would do it again,” I said to Claudia.
“Why do you bother to explain to me,” she asked. “You know perfectly well that I never asked you any questions about it. I’ve been dead for years and years.” - The Tale of the Body Thief
[,,,] when they first set up their studios, it was not for us.“
"For us?”
“David, it had to be done in daylight, don’t you see? The first photographs belonged to mortals alone.”
“Of course, I didn’t even think of it.”
“She hated it,” he said. He looked again at the image. “And one night, unbeknownst to me, she broke the lock of one of the new studios—and there were many of them—and she stole all the pictures she could find. She broke them, smashed them in a fury. She said it was ghastly that we couldn’t have our pictures made. ‘Yes, we see ourselves in mirrors, and old tales would have it not,’ she screamed at me. 'But what about this mirror? Is this not some threat of judgment?’ I told her absolutely it was not.
"I remember Lestat laughed at her. He said she was greedy and foolish and ought to be happy with what she had. She was past all tolerance of him, and didn’t even answer him. That’s when he had the miniature painted of her for his locket, the locket you found for him in a Talamasca vault.”
“I see,” I answered. “Lestat never told me such a story.”
“Lestat forgets many things,” he said thoughtfully and without judgment. “He had other portraits of her painted after that. There was a large one here, very beautiful. We took it with us to Europe. We took trunks of our belongings, but that time I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember how she tried to hurt Lestat.” - Merrick
“Louis will do as I wish, even unto the very destruction of Lestat, which I plan in every detail. Whereas Lestat would never cooperate with my designs upon Louis. So there my loyalty lies, under the guise of love even in my own heart.
"What mysteries we are, human, vampire, monster, mortal, that we can love and hate simultaneously, and that emotions of all sorts might not parade for what they are not. I look at Louis and I despise him totally for the making of me, and yet I do love him. But then I love Lestat every bit as well.
"Perhaps in the court of my heart, I hold Louis far more accountable for my present state than ever I could blame my impulsive and simple Lestat. The fact is, one must die for this or the pain in me will never be scaled off, and immortality is but a monstrous measurement of what I shall suffer till the world revolves to its ultimate end. One must die so that the other will become ever more dependent upon me, ever more completely my slave. I would travel the world afterwards; I would travel the world afterwards; I would have my way; I cannot endure either one of them unless that one becomes my servant in thought, word, and deed.- Claudia’s diary, Merrick
Louis was sitting there. Calm, and collected, as they say, arms
folded on his chest, very much clear of the sticky marble table, and his
mellow green eyes fixed on me.
“Now why the Hell do you want me, of all people,” he asked, “to come with you to France?”
[…]“You know why,” I said turning my head and looking at the nearby crowds. Street performers were out there, dancing, singing, bringing big soft explosions of approval from the crowds. “You know damned good and well why. Because you were there when I was just Born to Darkness. You were there when I stumbled onto these shores and sought to find a companion, and found you; and you were there when we lived all those decades together, you and me and Claudia, and you are the only one living who remembers the sound of her happy voice, her young voice, or the ring of her laugh.
And you were there when I almost died at her hands, and when the pair of you fought me again and left me in the flames. And you were there when I was humiliated and ruined at the Théâtre des Vampires, and they murdered her due to my crimes, my weakness, my blunder, my ignorance, my failure to steer one fragile little bark in the right direction […]
You were there when all these streets ran with mud and river water, and when you and I went to see Macbeth onstage, and I couldn’t stop dancing under the streetlamps afterwards reciting the words, ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,’ and Claudia thought I was so handsome and so witty and so clever, and we would all of us always be safe, you were there.” - Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis
“My coffin,” I said, “put me in my coffin!” When had I said those words before. “Put me in my coffin!” And Louis had not done it, and Claudia had not done it. In came the knife. - Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis
So this is the Court to which I returned, in which some six hundred blood drinkers were lodging, and a place in which I felt at home as I’d never felt anywhere in my entire existence except perhaps, perhaps, in my old flat in the Rue Royale in the nineteenth century, when Louis sat in an armchair by the fire reading the French newspapers and Claudia, in her puff-sleeved dress of white gauze, played the sprightly joyful music of Mozart on the pianoforte. - Blood Communion
Louis and his love for Lestat across the books
I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in
love with Lestat’s iridescent eyes, that I’d sold my soul for a
manycolored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective
surface conveyed the power to walk on water.
“What would Christ need have done to make me follow him like Matthew or
Peter? Dress well, to begin with. And have a luxurious head of pampered
yellow hair. — Interview With The Vampire
It
was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And sometimes
I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just
left the room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow
there was a disturbing comfort in that, and, despite myself, I’d
envision his face - not as it had been the last night in the fire, but
on other nights, that last evening he spent with us at home, his hand
playing idly with the keys of the spinet, his head tilted to one side. A
sickness rose in me more wretched than anguish when I saw what my
dreams were doing. I wanted him alive! — Interview With The Vampire
Lestat,
in fact, had aroused in me feelings which I hadn’t wished to confide in
anyone, feelings I’d wished to forget, despite Claudia’s death. Hatred
had not been one of them. — Interview With The Vampire
And
why should I bother to tell of the times he came to me in wretched
anxiety, begging me never to leave him, of the times we walked together
and talked together, acted Shakespeare together for Claudia’s amusement,
or went arm in arm to hunt the riverfront taverns or to waltz with the
dark-skinned beauties of the celebrated quadroon balls?
Read between the lines. — The Vampire Lestat
"Have you forgotten what it was like when we had the world all around us, and no one could hurt us except ourselves?”
“Is this an offer, Louis? Have you come back to me, as lovers say?”
His eyes darkened and he looked away from me.
“I’m not mocking you, Louis,” I said.
“You’ve come back to me,
Lestat,” he said evenly, looking at me again. “When I heard the first
whispers of you at Dracula’s Daughter, I felt something that I thought
was gone forever. — The Vampire Lestat
Louis,
the watcher, the patient one, was there on account of love pure and
simple. The two had found each other only last night, and theirs had
been an extraordinary reunion. Louis would go where Lestat led him.
Louis would perish if Lestat perished. But their fears and hopes for
this night were heartbreakingly human. — The Queen of the Damned
Stupidly
I stared at him. How perfect he seemed to me as he stood there waiting
with such kindness and such patience. And then, like a fool, I came out
with it.
“Do you love me now?” I asked.
He smiled; oh, it was excruciating to see his face soften and brighten simultaneously when he smiled. “Yes,” he said. — The Queen of the Damned
"I love you,” he said softly. I was amazed.“You’re
always looking for a way to triumph,” he continued. “You never give in.
But there is no way to triumph. This is purgatory we’re in, you and I.
All we can be is thankful that it isn’t actually hell.” — The Tale of the Body Thief
Sometimes you frighten me so badly I hurl sticks and stones at you. It’s
foolish. I’m glad to see you, though I dread admitting it. I shiver at
the thought that you might have really brought an end to yourself in the
desert! I can’t bear the thought of existence now without you! You
infuriate me! Why don’t you laugh at me? You’ve done it before. — The Tale of the Body Thief
“Have you suffered in my absence?” I asked, looking back at the altar.
Very soberly he answered, “It was pure hell.”
I didn’t reply.
“Each risk you take hurts me,” he said. “But that is my concern and my fault.”
“Why do you love me?” I asked.
“You know, you’ve always known. I wish I could be you. I wish I could know the joy you know all the time.”
“And the pain, you want that as well?”
"Your pain?” He smiled. “Certainly. I’ll take your brand of pain anytime, as they say.” — The Tale of the Body Thief
“Come
home with me,” he said. Such a human voice. So kind. “There’s time to
come here and reflect. Wouldn’t you rather be home, in the Quarter,
amongst our things?
If anything in the world could have truly
comforted me, he would have been the thing—with just the beguiling tilt
of his narrow head or the way that he kept looking at me, protecting me
obviously with a confidential calm from what he must have feared for me,
and for him, and perhaps for all of us. — Memnoch the Devil
“I’ll be down there, in our rooms,” he said, “waiting for you. They can’t keep you here much longer.” — Memnoch the Devil
I don’t live like our friend Louis, wandering from dusty corner to
dusty corner, and then back to his flat in the Rue Royale when he’s
convinced himself once more and for the thousandth time that no one can
harm Lestat. — The Vampire Armand
And that perhaps was the real change in him, the change that he welcomed—that he could see himself as part now of all this great and glistening world. He was not part of some mindless force that sought to destroy it. No, he was part of it. He was part of this, this night with its sweet mild rain, and this whispering garden with its fragrant flowers and its trees, and the breezes that moved their branches. And he was part of the roar of the city rising around him, and part of the sharp shining music that came from within the house. He was part of the grass beneath his feet, and the tiny relentless hordes of winged things that sought to devour the human waiting there helplessly for a proper grave.
He thought of Lestat again, confident, smiling, wearing the mantle of power as easily as he had always worn his finery, old and new.
He said under his breath:“Beloved maker, beloved Prince, I will be with you soon.” — Prince Lestat
He leaned close to me, and he put his hand on my arm. “ ‘Wither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people’; and because I have no other god and never will, you shall be my god.” — Prince Lestat and The Realms of Atlantis
“I love you with my whole soul, and I will always love you,” he confided to me. “You are my life. I have hated you for that and love you now so much that you’ve been my instructor in loving. And believe me when I say you will survive this, and that you must for all of us. You will survive because you always have and you always will.” — Blood Communion
Lestat and Louis through the years
I wanted to forget him, and yet it seemed I thought of him always. It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow there was a disturbing comfort in that, and, despite myself, I’d envision his face - not as it had been the last night in the fire, but on other nights, that last evening he spent with us at home, his hand playing idly with the keys of the spinet, his head tilted to one side. A sickness rose in me more wretched than anguish when I saw what my dreams were doing. I wanted him alive! In the dark nights of eastern Europe, Lestat was the only vampire I’d found.
Interview With The Vampire (1976)
"But why, Lestat? “ he asked a little suspiciously. "Why the danger, the risk? After all, you have done it. You have come back. You’re stronger than ever. You have the old fire as if it had never been lost, and you know how precious this is, this will simply to go on. Why risk it immediately? Have you forgotten what it was like when we had the world all around us, and no one could hurt us except ourselves? ”
“Is this an offer, Louis? Have you come back to me, as lovers say?” His eyes darkened and he looked away from me.
“I’m not mocking you, Louis,” I said.
“You’ve come back to me, Lestat,” he said evenly, looking at me again. “When I heard the first whispers of you at Dracula’s Daughter, I felt something that I thought was gone forever- ” He paused. But I knew what he was talking about. He had already said it.
The Vampire Lestat (1985)
I smiled. I kissed him suddenly, thrilled by the warmth of him, the soft pliant feel of his near human skin. God, how I hated the whiteness of my fingers touching him, fingers that could have crushed him now effortlessly. I wondered if he even guessed.
There was so much I wanted to say to him, to ask him. Yet I couldn’t find the words really, or a way to begin. He had always had so many questions; and now he had his answers, more answers perhaps than he could ever have wanted; and what had this done to his soul? Stupidly I stared at him. How perfect he seemed to me as he stood there waiting with such kindness and such patience. And then, like a fool, I came out with it.
“Do you love me now?” I asked.
He smiled; oh, it was excruciating to see his face soften and brighten simultaneously when he smiled. “Yes,” he said.
The Queen of the Damned (1988)
He grew reflective again and very sad. It almost hurt me to look at him. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, but that would only have made him furious.
“I love you,” he said softly.
I was amazed.
“You’re always looking for a way to triumph,” he continued. “You never give in. But there is no way to triumph. This is purgatory we’re in, you and I. All we can be is thankful that it isn’t actually hell."
The Tale of The Body Thief (1992)
"Come home with me,” he said. Such a human voice. So kind. “There’s time to come here and reflect. Wouldn’t you rather be home, in the Quarter, amongst our things?”
If anything in the world could have truly comforted me, he would have been the thing—with just the beguiling tilt of his narrow head or the way that he kept looking at me, protecting me obviously with a confidential calm from what he must have feared for me, and for him, and perhaps for all of us.
My old familiar gentleman friend, my tender enduring pupil, educated as truly by Victorian ways of courtesy as ever by me in the ways of being a monster.
Memnoch the Devil (1995)
“I’ll spend the next few evenings with Lestat,” Louis said quietly. “I want to read to him. He doesn’t respond but he doesn’t stop me. You’ll know where to find me when Merrick returns.”
“Does he never say anything to you?” I asked, regarding Lestat.
“Sometimes he speaks, just a little. He’ll ask for Mozart perhaps, or that I read him some old poetry. But in the main, he’s as you see him yourself, unchanged.” He paused, then looked directly at the sky. “I want to be alone with him for a few nights, I suppose, before Merrick comes back.”
His tone had a finality to it, and a sadness that touched me to the quick. He was saying farewell to Lestat, that’s what he was doing, and I knew that Lestat’s slumber was so deep and so troubled, that even such a dreadful message from Louis might not rouse him at all.
Merrick (2000)
I
stopped. I put my arm around him. I held him close to me.
“I’m Lestat,” I said in a low voice. “Your Lestat. I’m the same Lestat
you’ve always known, and no matter how I’m changed, I’m still that same
being.”
“I know,” he said warmly.
I kissed him. I pressed my lips to his and I held this kiss for a long
silent moment. And then I gave in to a silent wave of feeling, and I
took him in my arms. I held him tight against me. I felt his
unmistakable silken skin, his soft shining black hair. I heard the blood throbbing in him, and time dissolved, and it seemed I was in some old
and secret place, some warm tropical grotto we’d once shared, ours alone
in some way, with the scent of sweet olive blossoms and the whisper of
moist breeze.
“I love you,” I whispered.
In a low intimate voice, he answered: “My heart is yours.”
Prince Lestat (2014)
“Very well,” Louis said.
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged and smiled.
“I’ll come if you want me. I’ll come and I’ll stay and I’ll be your companion if you want. I don’t know why you want this or how long you’ll want it, or what it’s going to be like, being with you and watching all your antics up close, and trying to be of help and not knowing how to be of help, but I’ll come. I’m tired of fighting it; I give up; I’ll come.”
I couldn’t believe I’d heard right. I stared at him as helplessly as I had in the hallway of the townhouse when I’d first seen him, trying to grasp what he had said.
He leaned close to me, and he put his hand on my arm. “ ‘Wither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people’; and because I have no other god and never will, you shall be my god.”
Prince Lestat and The Realms of Atlantis (2016)
“When I was finally led down the stairs, Louis came with me. In the
darkened passage before my resting place, he embraced me and held tight
to me, his lips pressed to my ear. I was aware of my hands moving over
his hair, embracing his neck, drawing him ever closer, in a way I had
never done in our long years in New Orleans. We joined in the posture of
lovers, brothers, fathers with sons.
“I love you with my whole soul, and I will always love you”, he confided
to me. “You are my life. I have hated you for that and love you now so
much that you’ve been my instructor in loving. And believe me when I say
you will survive because you always have and you always will.”
I couldn’t answer. I knew I loved him more than words could say, but I couldn’t respond.”
Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat (2018)
