#convergance

“You’re a pack of fools! Don’t just stand there gawking like owls – get that mess cleaned up before the Maître sees it and gets royally fucked off!”

But it was far too late for that. Armand had melted through the shadows in the space of Santiago’s energetic correction and now appeared just left of center stage with his arms crossed and a look of decidedly controlled aggravation that resolved itself only in the unearthly hardness of his impossible amber-fired eyes.

“I’m afraid your Maître is here, has seen it… and is in fact, royally fucked off.” He began by way of introduction. The entire company held its collective breath. Every pair of eyes lowered to the floorboards and made a marked effort to pay no mind to the corpses of the boy thieves whose mangled bodies with limbs turned out at angles no mortal might possess, lay cooling in a puddle of their own blood and piss on the orchestra pit floor.

“Who is responsible for this?” Armand asked, almost placidly. It was that tone of his though. That tone alone was enough to make every one of them sick with anxiety. He shifted his position ever so slightly, and that was enough for the twins to break down in an explosive bout of mortified tears. The others flinched and were disinclined to implicate themselves by coming in to provide comfort to their bawling sisters.

“We’re so sorry, Maître! Only Dina and I were so starved and overtaken by thirst when we rose this night – “ Dula tried, through gaping sobs and blooded tears. “And these little bastards were in here rooting about our dressing rooms upstairs, looting the costume jewels for easy flog. They broke in from the backstage doors – “

“Which should have been locked up tight if Eglee wasn’t busy sucking whore in the alleyway after curfew.” Santiago interjected bitterly.

“Balls to that! I was running fucking drunkards out of Lestat’s dressing room because his Grace can’t be arsed to deal with his deluded admirers out in the streets-“

“ENOUGH!” Armand’s snap was like gunfire in the chaos. The coven bit their tongues and lowered their heads in silence so dense you could hear a pin drop.

“I have a theatre to run. We are less than two hours from curtain call. Our lead actor is once more absent from rehearsal and as incompetent at standing on his marks as ever before, and I’m already up to my ankles in dead mortals. Broken curfew, non-compliant security practices and sheer lack of common courtesy aside, I am this close,” He gestured, pinching his thumb and forefinger together in the air, “to having heads roll and shutting down the production entirely.”

Chaos! A dozen voices all shouting placations and apologies at once. He raised his hands for quiet, and again the yawning silence came.

“I want these corpses off my boards, or I will make you eat them, piece for fetid piece. Mark me. Now the rest of you, get to fucking work. AND SOMEONE FIND ME LESTAT!”

An utter explosion of kinetic energy ripped through the coven simultaneously. In fact, Armand hadn’t seen any of them move quite so quickly in the past three months or more. Right now he was concerned with the stench tonight’s victim would accumulate in the theatre, for once the rats in the pit were fed full of dead thieves, they likely wouldn’t eat any more. And it would fall to him to once more make arrangements for the corpse to be disposed of outside the city borders.

He had a throbbing coming on again. A pain behind his eyes when sheer exhausted frustration overtook him. Lestat would always respond with off-handed humour at stages such as these. But Lestat had no head for business. And these days, Lestat had seemingly no head for very much at all. Armand wanted very much to just return to his coffin and pretend this night was not coming to pass. Nevertheless, he took the stairs heavily to his office and sighed. He’d have a smoke. Look at last night’s takings and come showtime, this pack of immortal idiots he had come to know and love would find some way to magically right themselves. Downstairs, he could hear Nicolas having a fit over the blood splattered throughout his orchestra pit where one of the unfortunate intruders had his skull cracked open, and his brain matter spilt grotesquely out against the polished timber floors. It was going to be one of those nights.

-- 10:32PM First Interval --

“That was the slowest quick change I ever had in my life!” Celeste complained backstage, pushing past her coven mates and tearing the feather boa from her heavily jewelled wig.

“Sammy, you were too quick in your delivery of the ‘Take her’ line again. How many times have I told you?! You wait for Gustave to cross the third mark and then say the line, not before, you fool! You fuck up the timing for the rest of the cast!” Plache snapped, aggravated beyond measure.

“Well it’s not my fucking fault! I’m waiting for Tuan’s cue because I can’t see the mark when he’s standing over it, and I know if I don’t get the line out perfectly, Rom will shit himself over the lighting change…”

The backstage bickering between the cast and crew that constituted his coven was a continual battle Armand had learned to more or less drown out as he watched them take to their seats and readjust their costumes and make-up. The show was going decidedly well, all things considered. Lestat was only eight minutes late but used the flourish of his preternatural gifts to speed through his dress and pre-show line runs with characteristic cockiness. Only to be humbled in the middle of the first scene when he tripped over Estelle’s line. His co-star recovered with such a venomous glare that the wind was taken from his sails with considerable speed.

Even so, Santiago was the first to voice what he himself had witnessed from behind the wing curtains whilst he followed the performance with his script. “There’s another one out there tonight, Maître. Did you clock him? Six rows back seat fifty-six.”

“I did.” Armand answered simply, not bothering to look up from his page until he completed his margin notes. “Handsome, isn’t he? Have you seen him before tonight?”

The elder blonde vampire with his elegant features and arched brows merely shook his head and went back to adjusting his wig. “Not this one. Smells fresh. Foreign. He’s not a Frenchmen that’s for sure.”

“Are you suggesting Frenchmen have a certain smell?!” Lestat barked, getting into his silk breeches with no regard to his lower nudity in front of the other coven mates, male or female alike.

“Rank – like the back allies in the height of summer when the nightsoil men haven’t been around for a week.” Santiago quipped back.

“Wasn’t that your profession before you came to us, Santiago, my dear?”

God, they were off again. Armand cleared his throat.

“I think I want to watch this one a little closer.” He interjected, breaking up the banter before it could lead to any further wounded pride. “I’ve a taste for the new wanderer. You’ll each do me the courtesy of standing down lest I give the signal. Are we understood?”