Interview With Vampires

chapter two

The present day

The room smelled of old wood, candle wax, and something fainter beneath it — like pressed flowers dried between book pages. The fire crackled, small and low, casting long shadows that danced against the walls. Joe sat across from them, recorder on the table, notebook in his lap. He was trying not to stare.

Celeste Vale looked like something carved from porcelain and breath. Pale skin, long dark lashes, dark suit — timeless, precise, with a stillness that made the air feel thick. Lucien sat beside him, lounging in the velvet armchair like he owned it — or wanted to destroy it. He was younger, sharper, with restless hands and silver eyes that flicked toward Celeste every so often, unreadable.

Joe cleared his throat. “So… you’re the one who made Lucien?”

Celeste's gaze turned toward Joe — polite, unreadable. “Yes.”

Joe pressed gently, “How did it happen?”

Celeste leaned back, folding his hands in his lap like he was preparing to recite a prayer — or a confession.

“It was winter,” he began. “London, 1864. The city was gray and starved for light. I found him half-dead in an alley, bleeding from a knife wound and clinging to life with nothing but rage.”

Lucien said nothing, eyes fixed on the fire.

“I should have left him,” Celeste went on. “That would have been merciful. But I didn’t. I watched him for two nights. Watched the way he fought against death. Watched the way no one came looking for him.”

Joe leaned forward slightly. “Why didn’t you?”

Celeste’s mouth curved into something like a smile — small, painful. “Because I was selfish.”

He looked at Lucien then. “I hadn’t made a fledgling in over two hundred years. I didn’t want a companion. But I wanted him.”

Lucien met his gaze — and for a second, everything between them was unspoken but felt. Old. Unresolved.

Celeste turned back to Joe. “I gave him a choice, though I’m not sure he understood what I offered. He was feverish, bleeding out. When I asked if he wanted to live, he said, ‘Not like this.’ But he took the blood anyway.”

Joe scribbled something. “Was it painful?”

Lucien laughed — low, humorless. “It was agony.”

Celeste’s voice softened. “The turning always is. It’s a death. A burning. And then… silence. The world stops making sense.”

Joe looked at Celeste. “You said you were selfish. Do you regret it?”

Celeste stared into the fire. “No. But I regret what I became afterward.”

Lucien spoke, quiet and sharp. “He loved me. But not gently.”

Celeste didn’t deny it.

Joe looked between them. “What do you mean by that?”

Lucien shrugged, eyes distant. “He was cold. Precise. He taught me to kill with elegance, to dress like a prince, to speak only when I had something worth saying. But he didn’t teach me how to grieve. Or how to feel human again.”

Celeste’s jaw tensed. “Because we’re not human.”

“You still tried to make me yours,” Lucien snapped.

Joe froze, pen hovering.

Celeste didn’t raise his voice. “You were mine. You still are.”

A long silence followed, thick and frayed at the edges.

Joe, carefully: “So… was it love?”

Lucien’s expression changed — not softened, not hardened, just shifted into something older. Something wounded.

“It was obsession,” he said. “Maybe love. But love that never asked if I wanted to be saved. Love that turned me into a shadow so I could stand beside his.”

Celeste’s voice was quiet. “I gave you immortality.”

“You gave me chains,” Lucien said.

Joe glanced between them. “Do you hate each other?”

Lucien paused. “No.”

Celeste said nothing.

“But we’ve killed people for less than what we’ve done to each other,” Lucien added.

The fire snapped loudly. Outside, wind moved through the trees like breath through teeth.

Joe, ever the journalist, leaned forward. “Then why are you still together?”

Celeste looked at Lucien. “Because eternity is long. And we’re both too stubborn to spend it alone.”

Lucien didn’t answer, but he didn’t leave either.