Home / Fan Fiction / V(cough) C(cough) fic / The Chosen of God Part 2

DISCLAIMER: The following stories are all non-profit, amateur efforts not intended to infringe on the rights of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, David Geffen, Warner Brothers, Geffen Pictures, Knopf, Randomhouse, the city of New Orleans, the U.S. Constitution, any copyright holders that I might not have thought of or even a certain author who shall remain nameless but who has a set of initials which are, coincidentally enough, just one letter off from spelling "B.S."

Part Two
by: The Brat Queen

Winner: Best Lestat '98-'99!

Characters: Lestat, Armand
Spoilers: Up to TotBT
Description: In response to Jester of God, Lestat tells his life story.

The topic for tonight's discussion, fratello, is blood. Anticipate that I shall wax poetic.

I've been thinking of blood a great deal lately. The strength in mine. How it affects others. How it might change, or grow. Am I more powerful now than I ever was or weaker? Do you know I honestly can't tell.

Blood.

I'm thinking now of blood on the cuff of my shirt. You know the kind I mean. The blood that hits you when you take a victim and hold him by his shoulders. If you're sloppy, if he bleeds too much against your mouth, a little slips out - just a drop, maybe two - and slides down your hand. It always hits your thumb and slides down the inside, missing the palm, before moving around again to the front of your wrist and hitting your sleeve.

You never notice it until hours later when you shake someone's hand and they stare at you strangely.

Blood on the lips. Terribly messy. Unavoidable if you drink from a heart, though, I'd imagine.

Blood on your shirtfront. Shameful. Sloppy eating, that.

Blood.

If you cut a victim's throat the blood comes out. If you prick your finger the same thing happens.

The body, it would appear, is happy to throw it away.

That's horrendously useless, don't you think? Why would that happen? The body, we are told, needs blood to live. Don't you think, then, that at all costs the body would attempt to prevent any drops escaping? Why would it flow so eagerly once an avenue presented itself?

A cut on the arm, depending upon how it is done, will cause a line of blood to well on the surface of your skin and sit there for a moment - just a moment - until either gravity or another pulse of your heart sends a drop of it flowing downward. Usually on the outside of the arm in a straight line to the floor.

A cut on the arm, depending upon how it is done, hurts more before the knife touches than when you actually do it.

Although this is something that you can quickly get used to.

Since you love science so much, mi fratello, perhaps you can tell me if the answer is pressure? Does the heart beat and beat until so much pressure builds up within the system that at the first chance to lessen it the blood bursts forth?

Is that how it works? A lessening of pressure? I suppose that it would make sense.

When you cut yourself the first compulsion is always to capture the blood. Lick the wound clean or bind it with a cloth and keep it close to your skin. Mortal instinct demands that we not let any of it escape, even if all we can do is keep it with us in a bandage as a souvenir.

They say that licking your own wounds is the worst thing to do to them, if you're a mortal. But it's always more important to put the blood back in your body. It's your mouth, your blood. Your body knows how to handle it.

Skin is a remarkably passive organ until you burn it.

Cutting skin does not do much at the time of the slice. A knife applied to an arm over and over again will draw blood, and pain (aftershocks always, never at the blade itself) but not much reaction from the skin. Line after line can be drawn with the skin remaining remarkably neutral about its rearrangement. Some scars might remain, but even then the skin seems rather bored with it all. A few faint white stripes, if any, and it moves on.

Cutting in to internal organs is another matter, but as you know I only found that out centuries later.

Skin, however, is alive for burns. Take a match, light it, blow it out and apply the smoking tip to your skin and you will feel the cells beneath it dance. It is a soft, low, spreading pain that moves out in almost uniform undulation. Redness comes up, and welts, and the heat of your own blood now pulsing beneath the spot you just touched.

The same effect can be gotten with a twig that has also been lit and burnt out, if science has not been kind enough to provide you with sulfur matches just yet.

Metal is a bit crueler. Metal can be hotter. The scars are there - the scars are it. Metal is scarring. Metal burns create scars as a matter of course. In the same way that pencils create marks on a page by rubbing. To use metal is to scar.

But for pain it is sharper. Metal has a job to do. A purpose. It will hit your skin and eat it away. Metal is to scar and truly to scar alone. It's not enough of a penance.

I should say, though, that metal burned into the palm of one's hand does heat, and itch and make you feel that the hand must be flung away at all costs. Metal in your palm brings tears to your eyes.

And it does scar.

Hitting is an odd matter. Instinctual, I find. Take something - preferably flat and firm but with a little give (I prefer a hairbrush. Or a stick, if none are available.) - and slash it repeatedly at your inner arm. It's quick. Done almost before you know you need to do it. Usually in a burst of three. The burst can be repeated, of course, but three tends to be the pattern, although I've known in my time a five here or there.

One, two, three and the arm is red and warm. Aim the hits correctly and you've covered all of your inner arm. It's not hot, it's not beating, but it is warm and pulsing.

It can be repeated if necessary, as I said, but usually - if done right, with practice - repeating is overkill. Then it hurts too much. This is just to bring the warmth alive and make it stay there for a while.

I've never really noticed when it goes away. Or if I ever did I've since forgotten.

The trick of it now is that you can roll your shirtsleeve down and have no one be the wiser. You can walk about, knowing you have done this thing, yet no one shall look at you strangely. There's nothing to bind, nothing that needs salve. It can stay beneath your clothes and sit there. A stretch of your arm where your shirt feels just a little bit rough against.

Sometimes after a while you'll also feel your pulse. If your arm hangs at your side long enough the redness on your wrist will feel the blood beat into your hand and remember. And with each passing beat the warmth will increase until finally your pulse feels like a small lead weight in your wrist.

Which does nothing, really, but provide passing academic interest.

There is also biting, of course, but it's silly and blunt and doesn't do much. Even when you're a vampire. Sharp fangs do not make up for a needle-quick knife.

Perhaps the blood needs to kiss the air first, before it can be any good.

After all this time, I truly couldn't say.

Bon nuit to you, fratello.

L.

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