#dollstuck

The candlelit chamber reeked of incense and desperation. Merrick’s hands trembled over the circle she had drawn, her voice low as she whispered invocations meant to pierce the veil. Shadows clung to the walls, restless, as if the dead themselves pressed close to listen.And there was Lestat...pale, magnificent, ruined. His grey nearly violet eyes burned with a fever that was not hunger but grief. He paced like a caged lion, his boots striking the stone floor, his voice a whip. Louis started this, Louis used this beautiful witch to speak to Claudia and like a coward did not go far enough for their child...or at least it was what Lestat spat at him three nights ago.

"Do it, Merrick. Bring her. Bring my Claudia back to me. I cannot endure another night without her laughter, without her rage. The world is ash without her."He seized Merrick’s wrist, forcing her trembling hand to steady. His tone softened, but only into a broken plea."You have the power. You can call her spirit, you can give her flesh again. I will not let her be dust in the wind. She was mine...my daughter, my torment, my joy. And I will have her back, even if the gods themselves spit upon me for it."

"I am frankly unsure as to why I was invited but it was heavily implied that if I did not come ill fate would befall me." Daniel held out a box towards the young vampire, a belated birthday present. Lestat seemed to not be around and this made his visit feel a little more akward but seeing as Lestat was one of the most volatile and emotional vampires around he'd push through his discomfort and try his best to be pleasant company. "I ain't got no clue what to buy women that isn't things you don't buy a girl you don't know well." Women liked dresses and handbags right? "Cute right? You can put your makeup and keys...and wallet and shit in there and still look fetching" What did he know of Claudia other than what Louis had told him during the interview, he would not even question the morality of ressurecting a girl just to make her a vampire again.

Without Armand's protection Daniel knew better than to piss off Lestat by being rude to his precious princess and not make ammends for missing her birthday party. "How was your party girly? It sounded like a hoot. Bummed I missed it but...uh..." Marius had not told him he received an invitation and Daniel had been in such a deep funk just idly playing with his train set to forget the pain of abandonment. No, this was better. Two months late but still he came.

In person. No, he'd actually tell her, maybe he'd avoid an outburst if she knew. "My babysitter didn't tell me I was invited to your party and I was kind of having the big sads. Boys, am I right? All they do is break your heart and stomp it to the ground" Armand was right to leave him, no one could say that he did not try but also Daniel knew deep down how much he hated himself for giving Daniel the Dark Gift. Something he swore to never do, to a boy he loved so much it killed him to watch Daniel die...

"Paris had a way of swallowing the small and the lonely." he spoke first when she noticed him, a very ancient vampire was not something that could be ignored by someone as young as her, like the eerie mist rolling from a dark forest, his aura claimed the room she tried to hand invitations out in,a small little place off the Rue de Lille.

"Paris is unkind to those it deems expendable," he spoke , as if offering an observation rather than a judgment. "And its coven… even more so little Lu." he stood and pulled out the chair on the table offering it to her,the illusion of a choice but would she make it? "Claudia is such a nicer name-"

"The gens Claudia were one of the most prominent and powerful patrician houses of ancient Rome." God, she was tiny even for a teenager and he found himself caught between two contradicting ideals, the weak made for liabilities as vampires...but children had to be protected. And her mind was of a child. Louis didn't want her, she thought it loudly enough, the rejection that pained her, so if she went missing would he look for her? Or would he fall deeper into the coven master's clutches? Either option worked, one more than the other but both were acceptable results.

Of course, IT knew there were creatures like itself within the universe. Beings who had that same hunger that IT had, that same undying lust for a living thing so unlike itself. The only difference was that this particular thing liked to get something out of its prey before it dined. Attention, maybe a spare compliement, this creature seemed to thrive on the domination of the ones she conquered. A deadly tit for tat, if it were.

The young man who now lay drained and pale beneath the vampiress was a paper boy no older than fifteen. Ironic that he had correctly assumed that today would be his last run. Not because he was too old, like his father had said, but because he had been stupid enough to stop and offer a girl a ride back into the outskirts of town on the handlebars of his prized bicycle.

A noble gesture, sure. But look where it got him.

As the vampiress sucked away the last vestiges of life from the husk that was once a paper boy, she could bring her head of brilliant curls up to catch a stray flicker of movement. It was vagrant, brief, the kind of swirling Autumn leaves dance when they are just about to idle away in a stray wind.

It's half past two in the morning, and the house is dormant, the family inside deep in peaceful repose. Rick C-137, however, is as sleepless as ever. Instead, he finds himself reflecting on his bond with Morty — if one could even call it that.

The memories are all queued up, unbidden and inescapable, each one more harrowing than the last. He would be hard-pressed to find any instances of softness between the two of them. Ones that C-137 can recall are tainted by ulterior motives. Kindness was a currency more often than not—just a tool, a means to an end. Initially. Still, It's no wonder why now Morty wants nothing to do with him....

You destroy everything you touch.

On pure instinct, Rick pushes himself up, and before he can even register it, he's halfway down the block. Coal-colored boots hit the pavement rhythmically, each step taking him farther and farther away. Leaving is what he does best, after all.... Plus, it's been some time since he's visited an Earth bar. The booze, the noise, and the potential fistfights might just be what he needs right now.

But the universe has different plans.

The first thing he noticed was the silence.Not the absence of sound ,Matthew had lived long enough to know that true silence didn’t exist but the intentionality of it. A predator’s silence, achild’s silence,a survivor’s silence.He turned before she spoke.Claudia de Lioncourt stood in the doorway like a challenge carved into the shape of a girl. Dark curls wild around her face, eyes too old for the body that held them, posture coiled with a defiance that felt almost… ceremonial.

Matthew didn’t bristle,he rarely did but something in him tightened—an instinctive, ancient ache at the sight of her. A child turned, a child trapped,a child who had learned to survive by becoming something the world couldn’t swallow.

Matthew recognized her immediately for what she was,a child turned too young, carrying centuries of trauma in a body that never grew into its power, he felt a sharp, private horror not at her, but at what was done to her.He has spent his entire life trying to avoid creating suffering, Claudia was the embodiment of a line crossed.

The library room felt smaller,the night felt sharper, two creatures shaped by different worlds, meeting in the thin space where morality, trauma, and immortality collide.It is a weird feeling knowing that a child stalked him, he sensed the presence of the vampire before but ignored it until now, until the girl was right there demanding he confirm that he was what she sensed he was. Another vampire, her thoughts sung of her desperation to find someone of her kind that was not a complete bastard, her thoughts not his..

"Language!" he scolded the child's thoughts. Yes, of all the things to remark on her thinking of vampires being bastards to her was the one thing to break his silence. She ran away from Paris...reading her Mind was not easy but to an ancient like him even her attempt to block him was miniscule, she was young, not only in her mortal age but her vampiric, not even a century old. "No" Matthew remarked on her next thought. "Do not fool yourself into believing you escaped Armand and his children of darkness, if you crossed the boundaries of Paris it is become he willed it so. And you might have been smart to run." The Theatre de Vampires was a disgusting abomination, the Blood Sabbath, the ritualistic excecution of a mortal on stage, no, she had not escaped. Armand let her leave. Why. Why would a Coven Master so powerful allow her to flee with her life.

"Who is Louis..you just thought of him. He chose another one over me..."Her mind was closing but Matthew was 14 centuries her senior he could crack open her mind like a walnut and feast on it's core if that is what he wanted. "Interesting." What on Earth was going on in Paris. He did not know Armand but he knew how jealots treated heretics and what was Claudia but heresy personified.