The concept of 'Immortals' and 'The Game' belongs to Panzer/Davis of Highlander. The characters of Armand and Lestat are the creation and property of Anne Rice. No copyright infringement is intended or implied. Landon, Sam and any other characters belong to themselves and to Rain (me).
Thank you to all my beta readers: Lorenzo, Kim, and my mother as always . . .
Landon's Diary
Miami, Florida
November 6, 1987
God, I'm so cold. I hope I can read this at some later date through all the trembling scribbles my hand is producing. I thought Florida was a warm state. I guess it still is to some creatures wherever they may be right now. "A dead thing that hungers for the power and passion of others," as Lestat has written. And, if I remember correctly, though it's been awhile since I've read the words on the back wall of the San Francisco bar, Dracula's Daughter: a creature targeted for destruction for his allegiance to Lestat. Apparently he was not destroyed.
For a church attic, this room is not very stuffy and the freezing doesn't stop. My teeth are chattering despite my hair being nearly dry and this coat being wrapped tightly about my body. This coat. It's not mine. But I'm sure as hell never giving it back! He'll have to rip it off my headless corpse first!
Nah. He won't want it back. He's got dozens more. He's probably already forgotten where this one has gotten.
I'm hungry, but I don't want to move. Whatever warmth has accumulated is right here in this corner surrounding me. I'll eat tomorrow when the sun comes up and my chill is gone. And my bewilderment is gone.
An hour ago I was on a Miami beach, the blanket of stars above me I saw first. Then I felt the soft grainy carpet of sand beneath me. I heard the waves crashing into shore. And I smelled the salt air. I also smelled blood. My own. I had fallen very far. From a hotel balcony overlooking the sea. I'd held tight to my sword, climbed carefully over the railing and leapt. The landing probably hurt. I can't remember. I thought for sure that I would be safe from him then. But Sam, the other Immortal, had also jumped. He was still dead beside me when I woke up smelling the sea and the blood. I didn't have much time to run.
Every single bone hurt, they weren't finished knitting themselves back together. But I had to get moving, and so I forced myself into a quick hobbling gait. I still clutched my sword. A miracle. I should have stolen his, then he'd have nothing to kill me with. But of course I hadn't thought of that.
The Buzz of Sam's close proximately tore through my injured frame and I fell to the sand as his wiry arms closed around me from behind. He dragged me to my feet and toward the ocean. I wanted to fight, I really did, but he held so tight I couldn't move my shoulders or twist the blade of my sword into his flesh.
I finally managed to bite his hand. He screamed, and dropped me face first into an incoming wave. I sputtered and tried to stand. He pushed me back under the water and at the same time wrenched my sword out of my hand. I yelped in pain, but instead of noise coming out of my lungs, thick icy liquid rolled in. I kicked and flailed my petite limbs for any solid thing. My fist connected with the Immortal's groin.
"Bitch!" he swore, and he let me go again.
I was able to sit up, and cough my guts out, before he slapped me. He grasped my hair at the back of my neck and glared into my face with his pale green eyes.
"That was for punching me! This," he ripped what remained of my bloody and torn blouse off my shoulders. "Is for jumping off that balcony! And this," Sam said softer, the blade of his sword inching closer to my neck, "This." He licked my lips. I closed my eyes, the hard steel pressing into my skin below my chin. "This is for telling me no. We could have ruled the world together with that Prize. Now I'll have to rule it with YOU inside ME!"
I waited for the killing strike. He would not be rewarded with much. I've been Immortal for five years. I've received exactly two Quickenings. And neither of them were impressive compared to what I've both seen and heard of others tell.
I waited for the murderous strike, but it never came. His blade still pressed unrelentingly into my neck, but the pressure did not increase. I dared open one eye. The Immortal, who called himself Sam, just a boy really, wasn't looking at me. His eyes held a peculiar glossy sheen, and he stared down the beach over my head. I couldn't breathe. What was wrong with him? And more importantly, could I get away?
My indecision faded quickly, and I took my chance against him. I grabbed his wrist and twisted it up, plunging his sword through his stomach. A sick, gurgling sound escaped his throat. I stood as he fell to his knees. I pulled the weapon from his body, and completely beyond my original plan I raised it above my own head. Uncharacteristically brave, surprisingly calm, I swung backhandedly, separating the boy's head from his body. I stood staring at him still, his form almost refusing to fall over. Jeering at me, taunting what I'd always considered innocence. These three seconds ticked by in an eternity until at last the awesome electric charges sputtered from where his head used to be. He pitched away from me. The sea swallowed him. I threw his sword far out after him and took the horrible jolts of light his Quickening offered. The energy sparked flashes of memories, a childhood Halloween party where Sam had dressed as a lion but no one talked to him all evening, an expensive engagement ring thrown back in his face, dozens of Immortals intent of taking his life, but Sam absorbing theirs in the end. And now this lonely life of over forty years was my legacy.
The Quickening ended; fading away gradually as the initial shocks had begun gradually. I cried into the beach, half-hoping I might bury myself there. I wasn't a killer. Yet I had killed again. Life and death. His or mine. But I had lost the fight. Why did I still live?
I should have come here to the Holy Ground of the church straight away. Picked myself up off the sand and stumbled through dark alleyways clad in dirty blue jeans and bra and up the stairs of the first Methodist Temple I saw. I could have cried my tears here for Sam--Idiotic Game--And been able to thank God in person for saving my life if that is what had happened. Why else would an enemy Immortal have frozen in time to let me behead him? Me, essentially a kid, a defenseless and terrified Immortal? Why else?
I want my sword, I told myself. I floundered around in the shallow water hoping to kick it or brush it with my fingers, but had no luck. The water was warmer than the air but I was freezing. I just couldn't give up. I had to find my sword. As much as I despised the necessity of carrying it, it would be hell trying to obtain a new one.
Suddenly I felt eyes watching me. I didn't care if people thought I was a crazy. What would the police do? Lock me up in Juvie? Yeah, I've escaped from those before. It's not hard when you can make yourself bleed profusely just long enough to get out of the locked-down hallways.
But these eyes were different. They weren't…institutional. More like…contemplatively amused.
I turned around slowly. Standing a few feet from me, also knee deep in the ocean was a boy about sixteen, maybe seventeen. He had thin, slanting eyebrows, a strong nose, and delicate lips, which almost held a smile. His hair was auburn and long, thick. He was wearing the most unusual coat, right out of a fairy tale. A tailored, dark mauve coat that hung to the middle of his thighs. He wore pants of the same color, and he held his hands behind his back.
We stared at each other long enough for me to see all this.
"What?" I called to him. "Why are you just standing there?" He wasn't an Immortal like me, but he was very strange. I heard him speak but I'm not sure if his lips moved.
"I am waiting to be certain you want more assistance."
"More assistance? What's that supposed to mean?"
Now the boy took a few slow steps toward me. Watching him, I was overcome by how beautiful he was. I immediately forgot what I was doing besides fighting these new lusty feelings, despite his being a complete stranger.
His mouth moved this time. "You are not one who wishes to die. And therefore, you did not die."
"Of course I don't want to die! Who does?"
"Many do."
"So what now? Are you gonna tell me you're the Angel of Death? And it's not, quote, my time?"
"No," the boy told me steadily, taking one more cautious step toward me. I should have stepped back away from him but I was now caught in his mesmerizing brown eyes. It dawned on me.
"When he was about to kill me, Sam looked up and saw you."
"Yes."
"And you did something so he wouldn't stop me from killing him instead."
"Yes."
I felt the air rush out of my lungs. "Why?"
"You are not one who wishes to die," he repeated, then after a pause he said, "and I have seen you before."
No way, I thought. Now I'M being tailed? The groupie queen?
"I haven't followed you," the boy corrected. "It was Halloween. Two years ago." He waited for my reaction.
I did remember Halloween of '85: The Vampire Lestat's rock concert in San Francisco. The terrifying, riotous grand finale of fire and panic.
"Not a night to forget quickly," he agreed, barely audible. "You were there. You saw me. And I…saw…how you saw me."
My throat was closing up. This guy was reading my thoughts. He saved my life. And he doesn't seem to care in the least that I'd killed someone moments ago. But how had I "seen" this boy two years ago? What did he mean?
He took a final step closer. Now he was standing right in front of me. My eyes, if looking straight forward, met the collar of his expensive white shirt. He put his hands on my bare shoulders. Soft hands. Cold hands.
"You wanted me."
What he whispered over the crashing of the waves at our feet was true. I had stared at him at the concert, before the mayhem, before the terror, and I had wanted him. Purely and wholly I had wanted him. He was making me remember. There's no way I could relive those feelings without his help. It had been a fleeting glance between us at best. But now it seemed an endless fixation, the rest of the crowd swirling away from us, deadening their cheers and chants for the Vampire Lestat, leaving this boy and me to our heartbeats. Slow and rhythmic, pumping and pounding in our ears.
I blinked my eyes and I was on the beach once more. The boy had removed his mauve fairy tale coat and was slipping my arms through the sleeves. A breeze caught the spacious, silk sleeves of his shirt and blew them about.
Then he was holding my face in his hands and bending down. And lightly brushing my lips with his. I prayed for more Heaven and his hot tongue plunged into my mouth. I steadied myself and explored with my own tongue. I found two tiny sharp points among his top teeth. A shriek caught in my throat. The boy ended the kiss and somehow I knew it was true. The books I'd read were all true. Lestat, Louis, Claudia, Marius. It was all true.
I opened my eyes in astonishment. The boy with the flowing auburn hair and the pale face of an angel whispered beside my ear, "And Armand."
And suddenly he vanished. I turned around and around but Armand was nowhere. A vampire had saved my head. A vampire had kissed me. And a vampire had left me. He had also left me a present on the sand. I stumbled out of the ocean and gently plucked my sword out of the ground, where the blade had lodged itself perfectly perpendicular. "Armand," I pronounced to the wind with a smile of my own. Oh yeah, my search for this weapon was the reason I had remained on the beach in the first place. So now I should leave.
I sheathed my sword in the long coat I now wore, and somehow, still in a mental fog, I ended up here. My duffel bad remained where I'd left it, so I still have you, Dear Diary, to report in. I'm finally warmer by reliving the night, and I only ask, Why did Armand save me? Because I'd "wanted him" in San Francisco? That didn't seem enough of a reason. Will I see Armand again? Or was this our only chance?
Armand is really real. I tasted his fangs. He answered my thoughts. I am alive. I have no right to be alive, yet a damned creature has decided I live.
I'll try to snuggle inside his huge coat and sleep. In the morning I will probably believe this night's events all a dream. Until I read this journal. I always knew there was a reason I kept this thing.
FIN
© 2000 Rain Pierson
first penned November 2000
revised through November 2000
